Ben Affleck talks machine learning and visual effects
What happened
On 8 October 2026, Simon Willison reported that Ben Affleck discussed the relationship between machine learning and visual effects. Affleck said he has been interested in computers since childhood, paid more attention to the field after film moved from analogue to digital, and writes "pretty terrible Python scripts". He noted that visual effects workflows have long involved machine learning; convolutional neural networks, the predecessor of the Transformer, can process tensors and perform edge detection and feature extraction, making it easier to cut out green-screen footage and replace backgrounds.
Written by AI from the reports · updated 8 d ago
Timeline
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- Simon WillisonQuoting Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck says he has been interested in computers since he was young, and became more interested as film moved from analog to digital, and that he can write "pretty shitty Python scripts." He notes that visual effects workflows have long included machine learning, and that convolutional neural networks, precursors to what the transformer can do, process tensors to perform edge detection and feature extraction, making it easier to take out the green screen image and replace it with something.
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