Netflix Co-CEO Explains How Gen-AI Was Used in 300 Different Titles: ‘We Believe It Is Going to Enhance Their Abilities’

Netflix disclosed in its Q2 Earnings call on Thursday that generative AI has been used in 300 of its titles, including in the early creative process and in post-production to enhance shots that it says could not have been accomplished otherwise.

The detail about the 300 titles was disclosed in the letter to shareholders, and Co-CEO Ted Sarandos elaborated on that, explaining that in the case of the recent “The American Experiment” docuseries, 17 minutes of the show has AI-enhanced footage. Sarandos said many of the shows have used AI tools for pre-vis, VFX, set references, and post-production, but also in the case of things like enhancing crowd shots or historical battle scenes.

“It enabled us to expand the scope of the series in ways that wouldn’t have been feasible before,” Sarandos said on the call of “The American Experiment. “Those 17 minutes, they were produced twice as fast and at half the cost of previous options. By equipping creatives with these tools, we believe it is going to enhance their abilities and have better and more impact for every dollar we spend on our programming.”

It’s a full-throated embrace of AI after Netflix acquired Ben Affleck’s InterPositive AI company earlier this year, but Sarandos clarified that it’s still early with InterPositive and these are the product of other tools that are all “working together to drive innovation.” The letter to shareholders mentions a handful of other titles that he said used AI, including “Glory” (India) and “Brasil 70: A Saga do Tri” (Brazil).

“Keep in mind that in many of the cases, productions would’ve left out those key shots because they wouldn’t have been able to afford them, they wouldn’t have been able to do them in the time frames that they’re working on,” Sarandos elaborated. “So those sequences are saved by the availability and access to the Gen-AI tools.”

Sarandos did still defend the artistry that goes into each film and reiterated that these are tools for filmmakers to use, but the examples he’s describing today are “just the beginning,” and there are use cases that are “scaling faster and faster.”

“On the content side, we believe it takes great art to make something great, and AI is not changing that,” he said. “AI will give creatives better tools to bring their visions to life. Movies are being made by people who make movies. AI provides them with better tools to make them even better.”

The question about AI was about how the addition of InterPositive could impact the overall $20 billion content spend for Netflix and whether any savings from AI would feed back into other content or into paying talent, and Sarandos’ short answer was yes.

“Content creation timelines can be shortened, and quality can be enhanced, so the cost savings will likely be re-invested into more content on the service, which fuels high quality engagement, and that whole revenue-profit flywheel is going to come from that that we’ve been talking about from Day 1.”

More to come…