Netflix has been open about its interest in AI for a while now. But the scale of that interest became a lot clearer this week, when the company shared its second-quarter earnings results alongside a shareholder letter that put a real number on it.
According to Engadget, the letter states that ‘GenAI workflows have been used in roughly 300 of our titles’ so far in 2026, with most of that activity happening in post-production. Three specific projects were highlighted as examples where generative AI helped create ‘highly complex sequences’: Glory (India), Brasil 70: A Saga do Tri (Brazil), and The American Experiment (US).
That number, 300 titles in a single year, is significant. It is not a pilot program or an experiment tucked away in one corner of the business. It is a company-wide shift in how content gets made.
Netflix has been building toward this for some time. The company was already known to have used generative AI in at least one original show as of last year, but it has since made acquisitions and launched new studios specifically focused on this kind of work. The shareholder letter makes the direction clear, noting that Netflix is ‘increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods.’
That framing, faster and cheaper, is worth paying attention to. It is the same argument made every time automation enters a creative industry, and it almost always puts pressure on the people doing that work. VFX artists and animators are already dealing with a tough job market, and news like this does not make things easier.
To be fair, generative AI is not yet at the point where it can simply replace a skilled visual effects team from start to finish. Human oversight is still a real part of the process. Someone has to review the output, fix what does not work, and make sure everything fits together with the rest of the film or show. The tool does not run itself.
But that nuance tends to get lost when companies talk about AI in terms of cost savings and speed. The real question is not whether AI can help with complex sequences, because it clearly can. The question is what happens to the teams around it as that capability grows. Does AI stay a tool that skilled workers use, or does it become a reason to hire fewer of them?
Netflix has not said much about how it is handling that side of things. With 300 titles already touched by generative AI this year, and that number only expected to grow, it is a question the company will need to answer more directly before long.
