Devin Coldewey reports on TechCrunch that Netflix’s AI-assisted green screen bathes actors in eye-searing magenta.

Netflix researchers have described an experimental way to create more accurate green screen mattes. They propose lighting subjects with magenta light in front of a green background. Devin says:

“The technique is clever in that by making the foreground only red/blue and the background only green, it simplifies the process of separating the two. A regular camera that would normally capture those colors instead captures red, blue and alpha. This makes the resulting mattes extremely accurate, lacking the artifacts that come from having to separate a full-spectrum input from a limited-spectrum key background.”

Once the mattes are created, green information needs to be added back to the subjects. The solution? AI. It learns how to do this task more accurately than a simple green filter:

Read the full paper here.

My take: Not quite ready for prime time, especially if actors need to perform under magenta lights.