Netflix standardizes artificial intelligence in VFX work - leaves traditional methods behind, causing disappointment
In a groundbreaking move, streaming giant Netflix has employed artificial intelligence (AI) in their Argentinian sci-fi series, "El Eternauta," to create a building collapse sequence. This innovative approach has significantly advanced visual storytelling, enabling the creation of complex visual effects scenes ten times faster and at a fraction of the traditional cost.
The use of AI in "El Eternauta" has been celebrated for fostering augmented creativity and enabling storytelling complexity at scale. This marks a notable shift in visual storytelling where AI complements and enhances human creativity and technical skill rather than diminishing or replacing it.
Netflix's co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, emphasizes that this use of AI represents an opportunity to help creators make films and series better, not just cheaper. However, concerns have been raised about the potential impact on the entertainment landscape.
Traditional VFX "wouldn't have been feasible for a show in that budget" according to Ted Sarandos. But the author predicts an era of increasingly homogenized visual effects, where every explosion, creature, and impossible landscape bears the subtle fingerprints of the same algorithmic processes. When every visual effect is generated by the same underlying processes, we'll end up with a visual monoculture that's as depressing as it is predictable.
This approach of cost-cutting on visual effects is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes visual storytelling compelling. A show needs to look like something viewers haven't seen before to attract attention. Shows like The Penguin, Severance, and The White Lotus dominated this year's Emmys because they invested seriously in their visual worlds.
Reducing audience engagement and revenue is a potential consequence of cost-cutting on VFX. These aren't just jobs being automated away but real humans and complex creative ecosystems being dismantled in favor of computational expedience. VFX artists who've spent decades mastering their craft, understanding the subtle interplay between light and shadow, and making impossible things feel tangible and real, are threatened by this mentality.
Despite these concerns, creators and VFX artists describe AI not as a creative replacement but as an augmentation tool that speeds up workflow dramatically and unlocks possibilities otherwise unaffordable or impractical. AI-assisted visual effects helped reconstruct a detailed, apocalyptic Buenos Aires amid a deadly toxic snowfall, marrying advanced 3D-scanning with generative AI techniques to produce shots used as final footage—an industry first for Netflix.
This democratization of high-quality VFX technology brought Hollywood-level polish to a culturally significant Latin American story, broadening how local narratives can be globally presented without blockbuster budgets. AI in "El Eternauta" has accelerated production timelines for complex VFX by up to ten times, reduced visual effects costs, empowered visual effects artists, enabled highly detailed and immersive world-building in visually demanding post-apocalyptic settings, and supported Netflix’s strategy to bring regionally important stories to global audiences with cinematic quality.
In conclusion, while the use of AI in visual effects raises valid concerns about job impact and creative integrity, in the case of "El Eternauta," AI’s role has been celebrated for fostering augmented creativity and enabling storytelling complexity at scale. The key lies in striking a balance between technological advancement and preserving the human touch that makes visual storytelling compelling.
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