{"id":365670,"date":"2026-03-26T05:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/365670\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T05:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:31:12","slug":"reed-hastings-says-netflixs-biggest-risk-is-if-youtube-ai-content-becomes-cool-and-sexy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/365670\/","title":{"rendered":"Reed Hastings Says Netflix’s Biggest Risk Is if YouTube AI Content Becomes ‘Cool and Sexy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tReed Hastings<\/a>, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix<\/a>, has gone into semi-retirement \u2014 and he now spends much of his time attending to the Utah ski resort he bought in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he continues to serve on Netflix\u2019s board as chairman<\/a> of Netflix, and in a new interview, the exec spoke about what he sees as the biggest risk facing Netflix: if AI-generated free content on platforms like YouTube becomes compelling enough to drive people to stop paying for Netflix.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with syndicated TV show \u201cIn Depth With Graham Bensinger,\u201d Hastings said that he is \u201cvery confident\u201d about the future of subscription entertainment. But he said Netflix has \u201ca couple\u201d of risks, mostly involving AI. He put it this way: \u201cDoes AI transform content creation in ways such that young people only watch YouTube, and YouTube content boosted with AI becomes cool and sexy enough that that takes all their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHastings said that Netflix has to \u201cuse AI well enough to improve our content, along with all the talent that we work with, so that we\u2019re worth paying for. So YouTube\u2019s free, and we\u2019re a subscription, and so we have to justify, which has been the history of television, starting with HBO: Why pay for television? That was the initial thing. And HBO proved that they could do content good enough that it was worth paying for. And so the challenge for us is to use AI to improve the storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this month, Netflix, in one of its biggest-ever acquisitions, announced that it was buying InterPositive, an AI filmmaking tools start-up founded by Ben Affleck<\/a>. The company said the AI technology \u201ckeeps filmmakers at the center of the process\u201d and that it will offer creative partners access to the system. Under the terms of the deal, Netflix reportedly could pay up to $600 million to InterPositive\u2019s investors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHastings, who stepped down as co-CEO of Netflix in early 2023<\/a> after leading the company for 25 years, is majority owner of\u00a0the Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah. He bought the place in a 2023 deal for undisclosed terms under which he assumed the resort\u2019s $100 million-plus in debt, per the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout leaving as CEO, Hastings said, \u201cSo imagine you\u2019re in a 25-year marriage, like I was with Netflix, and then suddenly you\u2019re cast out. You\u2019re free.\u201d About taking over Powder Mountain, he said, \u201cthis was sort of my rebound business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis opportunity came and this was like somebody to love me, and it was like I could run something and take it over,\u201d Hastings said about buying the ski resort. \u201cI loved this place and, and love it still. So it was [that] I could do something impactful that I cared about, something totally different than Netflix \u2014 very visceral, working on everything from menus to lifts to design of different buildings to creating a community, compared to a high-scale internet business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso in the interview, Hastings said that after he stepped aside as CEO of Netflix, he cut his alcohol intake from three glasses a day down to one. He said he was self-medicating to deal with the stress of running the company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was working, I was stress eating and stress drinking,\u201d Hastings told Bensinger. \u201cWhen you\u2019re self-medicating like that, you don\u2019t know what would it be without it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch clips from episode of \u201cIn Depth With Graham Bensinger\u201d featuring Hastings, scheduled to air across the U.S. in broadcast syndication on March 28:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reed Hastings, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, has gone into semi-retirement \u2014 and he now spends much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,1868,164860,80],"class_list":["post-365670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-netflix","tag-reed-hastings","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}