Netflix reveals AI in 300 productions, from crowd scenes to 17-minute sequences

Netflix is no longer experimenting with AI — it’s operating at scale. During Thursday’s earnings call, Co-CEO Ted Sarandos dropped a number that puts the streaming giant’s AI ambitions into sharp focus: roughly 300 productions now use the technology, mostly in post-production.

The use cases are practical rather than flashy. AI handles tasks that would otherwise get cut for time or money — expanding crowd scenes, building out historical battle sequences, generating previsualizations during concept development. One concrete example: the docuseries “The American Experiment” includes 17 minutes of AI-assisted footage. Sarandos said that sequence was produced twice as fast at half the cost. He was quick to frame the savings as fuel for more content rather than a way to trim Netflix’s $20 billion annual content budget. “It takes great artists to make something great, and AI is not changing that,” Sarandos said. “AI will give creatives better tools to bring their visions to life.”

The company isn’t relying on a single tool. Beyond its in-house Interpositive system, Netflix also uses Eyeline and operates its own animation lab — a signal that the infrastructure is being built for the long haul, not bolted onto existing workflows.

What’s striking is how this squares with the public posture of the broader industry. While Netflix openly discusses its AI usage, many studios still operate under what Simpsons producer Joel Kuwahara calls a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. ByteDance’s video model Seedance has drawn official criticism, yet Kuwahara says plenty of studios quietly use it behind the scenes. The gap between public hand-wringing and private adoption is widening, and Netflix’s willingness to name numbers — 300 productions, 17 minutes, twice as fast — suggests the company sees transparency as a competitive advantage rather than a liability.