Genies has signed a deal with United Talent Agency that lets the agency’s clients build AI versions of themselves. Hollywood has spent decades perfecting the art of being everywhere at once, and technology now offers a shortcut. Fans may soon find that the celebrity replying to them online has a convincing digital twin doing the work. The avatars, it turns out, are only the start of a much bigger plan.

As fans wonder who is really replying, the answer starts with a Hollywood agency, famous clients, and one very ambitious founder.

United Talent Agency clients can now create AI personas based on their likeness, personality, and experiences to interact with fans online. Will Ferrell, Kylie Minogue and Bad Bunny are among the agency’s clients.

“Every single thing on Earth is gonna have an AI personality,” Akash Nigam, founder and chief executive of Genies, told Bloomberg.

He then added, “whether it’s an AI agent, an AI celebrity, an AI companion, an AI customer service.”

Bloomberg reports that clients will retain control and moderate how their digital doppelgangers behave online. Financial terms were not disclosed. Genies has raised $200 million from investors including former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and Silver Lake Management. Earlier partners include Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association players, Justin Bieber and Webtoon Entertainment. Interest surged, Nigam said, after September’s launch of AI agents like Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots.

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While Genies copies stars with AI, one actor is selling Netflix a different kind of AI for hundreds of millions.

Netflix has acquired InterPositive, the AI filmmaking startup founded by Ben Affleck, in a reported $587 million all-cash deal. The purchase brings its advanced visual and editorial tools under the streamer’s roof. Affleck was already worth an estimated $300 million, yet the deal is structured to pay him for years to come. He explained in an interview with One More Question by GQ that the partnership carries meaning beyond the paycheck.

Affleck chose Netflix because it pairs massive scale with a tech-minded outlook and fits his philosophy on ethical filmmaking. InterPositive does not replace actors or conjure synthetic video from scratch. Instead, it trains smaller custom AI models on footage captured on set for each film, tackling tedious post-production work. Affleck already used those tools in his Netflix thriller, Animals. Between AI tools in the editing room and AI twins in the comments section, Hollywood is clearly learning how to be in two places at once.

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What are your thoughts on AI twins and AI filmmaking tools in Hollywood? Let us know in the comments.