Netflix uses AI in 300 titles but stresses the importance of human creativity

Netflix has already used AI in various capacities on about 300 titles, one of its senior production executives said Saturday during an industry discussion at the Busan International Film Festival.
Sung Q Lee, Netflix’s senior director of production for Asia-Pacific, said the technology was being deployed across the filmmaking process, but stressed the importance of preserving human creativity.
“AI is being used in previsualisation, production design, working out set-dressing concepts ahead of time, in editing and of course in VFX,” Lee said. “But the question that matters to me isn’t, ‘How much AI can we put into this title?’ but, ‘What more can this title do with AI’s help?’” 
Lee was speaking at Netflix’s annual Creative Asia event, presented in partnership with the Busan International Film Festival. The panel, co-hosted with the Motion Picture Association, also featured Korean filmmaker Kang Yun-sung, the director of The Outlaws and an enthusiastic adopter of AI tools, and Kimball Thurston, chief technology officer at Wētā FX.
Much of the discussion focused on the opportunities AI could create for filmmakers working with limited budgets, although the speakers repeatedly emphasised the need to preserve human creative judgment. The occasion also highlighted just how differently the Hollywood creative community and Asian content sector tend to perceive the potential perils and promise of the technology, with the former profoundly wary and the latter seeing it mostly as an opportunity.
Kang partnered with self-described AI filmmaker Kwon Han-seul last year to co-direct Run to the West, billed as Korea’s first fully AI-assisted feature. The project struggled at the box office amid bad buzz over its AI visuals, earning about $100,000. Kang said the pace of AI’s advancement meant the film already looked somewhat dated by the time of its release, but he remains undeterred about the technology’s potential for screen storytelling.
The director is now in production on an action film called “The Gulf of Aden”, which heavily utilizes generative AI tools from China’s Kling AI. He said the technology has enabled him to realize myriad scenes that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible due to the budgetary constraints “that have held the Korean industry back from growing to its full potential.”