Netflix revealed that it used generative AI prompts to help create a scene in the Argentine, post-apocalyptic TV show that, until it was revealed, hardly anybody would’ve noticed or recognized as not being traditional CGI.
how (and why) they did it
Netflix’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, was speaking to investors on a July 16 call when he mentioned that the Netflix show, which premiered on Netflix in the US on April 30, 2025, used generative AI to create a special effect more quickly and cheaply than it could’ve done using traditional CGI. Isn’t it funny that CGI has been around long enough for us to use terms such as “traditional CGI?”
“The generative AI used in The Eternaut helped its production team to complete a sequence showing the collapse of a building in Buenos Aires 10 times faster than if they had used traditional special effects tools,” according to Sarandos, per BBC.
He said it also allows productions with smaller budgets, such as The Eternaut, to create special visual effects that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive if using conventional CGI.
Like you’d do with Midjourney or DALL-E, The Eternaut’s creators put in prompts, which the unnamed generative AI used to create the video effect that was inserted into the filmed footage.
Having watched The Eternaut, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it regardless of your feelings toward the use of AI in film or television. Sick of post-apocalyptic fiction or not, given our slide toward apocalyptic non-fiction, it’s a highlight of the genre.
The show is an adaptation of a classic piece of Argentine science fiction published in the 1950s. It takes place in the immediate aftermath of a cataclysmic event in Buenos Aires.
More than most, I think it nails the social dynamics and small-group dynamics of how precisely a society would collapse in the first days of a society-ending event. That is, like an AI-generated building.
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