Did Ben Affleck Use AI in Animals? Yes, and He Won't Say Where. I Think the Secret Is the Bigger Story

I'll be honest about my first reaction, because it wasn't outrage. It was a small, nagging curiosity, the feeling of being handed half a sentence. Ben Affleck says he used AI on his new Netflix thriller Animals, and then he declines to say where. That's the whole story, and I haven't been able to shake it since I first read it.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'll walk through exactly what Affleck said and where he said it, sort what's reported from what's actually confirmed, show where critics split on the movie itself (it landed today), and give you the yardstick I'd use on any AI disclosure, not just this one. One thing up front: I haven't watched Animals yet. It only arrived this morning, so everything I say about the film comes from published reviews, and I'll name the outlet each time.

A note on method: every Affleck quote below is short and attributed, review scores are a snapshot from Friday, Oct. 9 (they move all day on a release day), and anything that's my opinion says so.

What Affleck actually said about AI in Animals

The comments came out of Bloomberg's Screentime event on Wednesday, Sept. 30, where Affleck sat down with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw. Deadline, Yahoo Entertainment and The Hollywood Reporter all picked it up. Here is the cleanest version I could assemble from those accounts.

Look at the shape of that answer. He's open about the fact and closed about the details. The magician comparison he reached for is a good line, and if you've ever had a movie spoiled by someone pointing out the wire, you know the feeling he's protecting. I get it. Where it gets harder is that the person who made the tool, the person who used it, and the company that bought it and now streams the result are all tied together. When that many threads meet in one place, "trust me" starts to feel thin.

Here's how the last few months lined up, because the sequence matters.

Reported, confirmed, or just internet: four claims

Within a day, the story had grown some extra limbs. Here are the four claims I keep seeing, sorted by what I could back up.

My AI disclosure ladder, and where Animals lands

I think "did they use AI?" is the wrong question, because almost every film now touches software that someone could call AI. The better question is how much of it you could check for yourself. So I built a five-rung ladder. It's my own scale, not an industry standard, and I'd happily see someone improve it.

Affleck gets credit for clearing Rung 1. Plenty of people wouldn't have said a word, and he said it nine days before release. He also gave one Rung 5 sentence, his rule about training data. The trouble is that a rule you can't check from the outside is a promise, and promises are nicer with receipts. That's why I place Animals on Rung 2 and not higher.

My own scale, built from the public statements reported by Deadline, Yahoo Entertainment, The Hollywood Reporter, Film Stories and FanBolt.

Four questions I ask about any AI disclosure

Rungs tell you where a project sits. These four questions tell you whether to be bothered. Here's how Animals scores.

Two of those four are fine. Two of them are the reason I'm writing this. A conflict of interest isn't an accusation, it's a reason to show your work.

What critics say about the movie itself

Since the film is out, here's the quick reference people search for first.

Now, the reviews. I'm paraphrasing all of these, and I've tried to give each side its best case.

On Rotten Tomatoes, outlets reported tallies between 38% (Softonic) and 44% on 25 reviews (Comic Basics) today. That's a spread of six points from the same afternoon, which tells you how early this is. Either way it sits in rotten territory. What I notice is the range: from a flat pan at RogerEbert.com to a shrug-and-stream take at The Hollywood Reporter, with FlickOnClick's 3 out of 5 in the middle. Nobody I read calls it essential.

Should you watch Animals tonight?

Our Read: Gustavo Henrique

I want to start with the optimistic part, because I mean it. I'm not scared of these tools. A lot of the work people call AI in post-production is cleanup and polish, the kind of invisible fixing that has always happened in dark rooms. And I like Affleck's training-data rule. If it became the industry default, I'd sleep better.

What I can't shake is the shrug. A film that lands on a streamer, made by the man who sold that streamer an AI company, with "lots of things" as the full explanation, is asking for a lot of faith. I don't think Affleck is hiding something sinister. I think he's protecting a magic trick. But the people most likely to lose work to these tools are also the people who deserve a list, and a list costs him almost nothing if the work is as human as he says.

Here's the part I find kind of funny, in a hopeful way. Animals is going to get picked apart anyway, mostly for a script critics say never comes together. I'd love for it to be judged on that and not on a mystery. A one-page list of what the tools did would take the mystery away, and I think it would make the next conversation about AI in movies a lot calmer and a lot more honest.

That's my take. Does the secret change whether you'd press play tonight, or do you only care what's on screen?

Animals and AI: questions people keep searching