Before** Ben Affleck** celebrated his 54th birthday on Saturday with a family outing at the Brentwood Country Mart — the “Good Will Hunting” star appeared at a high-level AI conference with power producer** Kathleen Kennedy** and execs from Meta, Google, Paramount, A24, Lucasfilm and more, we hear.
A film source told us of the AFI and Google-hosted conference, “AI Summit Creators at the Center”: “Everyone wished Ben a happy birthday at the start of the day,” mentioning that the dashing star — who recently won “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” — appeared in a suit on a panel before dressing down for lunch.
“He was the best dressed in the room,” said an insider, adding the Affleck was “very smart” and “a nice guy,” and he stayed after his panel to chat with attendees until he had to roll out to celebrate his birthday with his ex, Jennifer Garner, and two of their kids at Farmshop.
The AFI campus confab — with Chatham House Rules that barred guests from sharing what was said — included, “breakfast and networking, a keynote, a lunch, panels and breakout groups,” a spy said.
Affleck co-founded the AI startup InterPositive in 2022 — he sold it to Netflix for nearly $600 million earlier this year — and appeared on a panel with former Lucasfilm head Kennedy and others. Also at the conference, we hear, were names including A24 partner Scott Belsky, CAA agent Greg Siegel, Chris Parnell of Paramount+ Originals, “Stutz” producer Diane Becker, AMPAS president Janet Yang, producer Jed Weintrob, director Jon Avnet, AFI dean and executive VP Susan Ruskin, **Rob Bredow **of Lucasfilm and many more.
Said a source: “There were a lot of important people on the tech side and on the film side,” adding of the AI topics, “We never know what tomorrow’s going to bring. The breakout groups were really interesting. Some people are excited, some people are opposed. It’s just getting ahead of the conversation.”