Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Sekiro, AI, and Auteur Directors
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Greed1914
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This did help explain why I was seeing people claiming that trailer used AI when what I was seeing was the "blink and you'll miss it" in-between animation that you'll only notice if you go though each frame.
What some of the other examples say to me is that using AI, at least in animation, will be just another layer of "eh, it's good enough." The real problem is that it will get applied to more an more parts of the whole process. I think I can see what happened with that vending machine. The AI didn't recognize a reflection on the glass, made something else that wouldn't make sense, and apparently despite the human touch-ups, nobody fixed that one. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 8230 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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 Great as someone that grew up watching that series, and with that images you included, now I can't get that out of my mind, I can't unsee it anymore!!! 
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Wyvern
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That statement from the studio is very revealing:
It's really hard for me to believe the techbro talk of AI's supposed "inevitability" when a studio's PR department has to reassure fans that their show is NOT made with AI. Generally, when the public likes or is excited for a piece of tech, you don't sell your product based on its absence. "AI is inevitable! AI is here to stay! Everyone will love AI eventually, whether they want to or not!" is the industry line, but outside the tech CEO bubble, we've got marketing departments reassuring customers that their product is AI-free. The reality on the ground is very different from what the slop merchants are claiming it is. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2560 Location: Online Terminal |
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Greed1914
Posts: 5363 |
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It is. Superman moves fast enough that to the audience it looks like he is a blur. Slow it down, and this is what was done to create the effect. It's an example of what they mean that not knowing enough about how animation works can lead to people assuming every bit of "bad" animation they see is AI. Some people might look at this and point out that animators have used shortcuts and workarounds forever. But, I think the difference is that those are conscious choices. Using AI is more like deciding something is close enough and stopping there. A real person would not draw a vending machine with boxes and bottles shoved into the same slots, but an AI clearly would, and humans decided it wasn't worth fixing. |
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Chakmon
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A human would definitely do that. Plenty of background art in human drawn stuff is messy, ugly, or illogical. 
Feels like saying a human would never color all that stuff one solid color, or color outside of the lines, or forget to finish the outline on so many objects, or let the colors bleed all over each other like that. As we saw with people's reactions to the Sekiro trailer trying to judge anything based on it being 'ugly' never works because human animation can be full of errors or ugly. Even the finger test is funny to me because I remember people would always point out when an anime character was drawn with six fingers quite often and it was a common meme topic. Same with looking at ugly background characters drawn very simply. Or QUALITY as we used to meme about I'm willing to believe a lot of hate was probably from younger people who don't know much about smear frames or animation in general. Or who only know AI from that 2 year old video of wobbly Will Smith eating spaghetti and it hasn't progressed since then. In general the whole "I can always tell" litmus test is prone to failure. Especially if it's being done by people with obvious biases or limited knowledge of something. I wouldn't be surprised if accusing stuff of AI ended up becoming a common insult people do to art they just don't like like how 'gooner' devolved into a meaningless term |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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I think this is the key thing people need to keep in sight. We should trust artists, if we really truly believe they are using AI against their word we should avoid the work but not start a witch hunt. The ridiculous "proof" that people claimed against Sekiro was especially silly. If people are going to try to tell others they know something (not that I agree with that) is AI they should at least understand the medium to begin with. Really no individual artist is going to bring about the biggest harm by using it, the biggest harm is the industry wide effects of forcing artist to compete with genAI work for employment (individual artists contribute to that problem but no single artist is the cause of such an environment) therefore forcing everyone to use them and causing massive energy use as well as taking money away from creative production positions to pay for it, which keeps artists from making a livelihood and ensures they get less training by having less work to gain experience with. So even if you feel absolutely sure an individual artist is using AI, attacking those people won't slow the AI train, the most effect you'll have is messing up someone's life and then companies will try just as hard to replace jobs with it. That's not helpful if you're right and it's tragic if you are wrong. Focus on those business entities with power and not some rando bragging about fan art you don't think they made. That being said, wild leaps of logic by internet weirdos aside, the studio did this to themselves. They didn't deserve to have the work of real artists picked apart by online commentators, but real artists also didn't deserve to be stolen from by companies like the one who paid these artists. To me AI is an ethical crime and economic theft even though it isn't a legal one, bragging that you love to use AI and then being surprise people are upset to the point you have to make a statement when you're accused of it is like bragging about how many tax write ups you make up and then being confused you got audited. Sure people made up some really dumb reasons for what they saw might be AI, but you can't say with your whole chest you are going to generate a full 60% of an actual series with AI next year and expect people not to assume the worst of you. I was also worried it was AI generated, not because of anything I saw in the finished product but because of the company that made it. Now that I know it is confirmed AI free I will at least give it watch, but I would never support the merch or video releases of a company like this no matter how hard the artists worked on this specific project. So as much as there is a lot to critique about people making up AI gotchas in normal animation, I am firmly unsympathetic to the studio here for bragging about theft and then being unfairly scrutinized. There is a world of difference between Studio Orange using genAI for one portion of an opening theme a decade ago before the harms were well known and putting out a 60% AI anime series in 2026. I am only sympathetic to the artists who were hired and actually put in the effort and still faced false accusations, not the companies who laid the kindling for this fire at their feet by trying to cheat artists and consumers. |
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FishLion
Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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I would say that's a far better attempt at saving money and making your animation readable than the AI did. It is flat and wobbly in places and outside the lines, but it gives a solid impression of the space and has style. Consistent application is the name of the game and the AI did a poor job at identifying the relationship between the inside and outside of the vending machine and thus the inside is nonsense at more than a glance. PPG honestly did a far superior job here. |
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Matros
Posts: 440 |
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I feel bad for expressionistic artists/animators, they can't express themselves without some bloke accusing them of using AI. I remember some ill informed takes about Yuasa's Devilman Crybaby when it came out, I imagine the discourse would have been worse if it came out today.
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Zased
 Posts: 145 |
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AI is a tool like any other program that artists have used. It'll be up to people to find a way to use it effectively like any computer program or animation tool that was once new. If the end product looks good I have no issue with it. I suspect it'll have more success with indie artists for the foreseeable future until CEOs stop seeing it as a magic genie that can print money for them and create infinite content. I've seen individual artists make some great work with AI on art websites and they seem to know how to utilize it well. I suspect they're only get better as time goes on.
The reaction to the Sekiro trailer was really unfortunate and just highlights how a lot of the more vocal anti AI people don't really seem to know what they're talking about or seem to understand AI at all. Even now I see people accusing the studio of lying and insisting it's still AI because all they've been programmed to think is weird hands and fingers = AI with no critical thinking skills of why that exists beyond AI. Anti-intellectualism is nothing new but it's always unfortunate to see. |
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Rogueywon
Posts: 308 |
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Could you train an AI to replicate the style of GoHands? That's a win-win, because either it fails and you've found something else the AI can't do, or else it succeeds and... well... it just replicated the style of GoHands, destroying the reputation of AI forever.
More seriously, though, I suspect what happens with AI and anime is what's already happening with AI and games. There's lots of noise and outrage the first time it's discovered, but then some small use of it in something that people actually like slips through the net for a while and the outrage isn't quite as intense. Then a bunch of other projects slip bits and pieces of it in here and there and say "whoops, it was a placeholder" if they get caught. Then before you know it, it's everywhere. |
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Nekbone
Posts: 214 |
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I think it's completely fine to not like Yuasa's animation just like it's ok to think Naruto VS Pain was weird looking. But I agree they'd probably get called AI if they came out today because they look different and I'm sure more art and animation will be mistaking labeled as AI just like the better part of AI art will go undetected as it already is by programs designed to detect AI writing and art that fail to detect many examples. The other day I saw the new rule was anything with a yellow tint is AI art which is odd because I see plenty of AI art that isn't yellow at all and yellow is a common warm tone people give their artwork. Just like people who say anyone who types using an emdash is actually AI - lots of odd rules to be sure. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8230 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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[ REMOVED ] But because you freeze the animation in that format, it turns into a meme (yes, the "wide Superman" has become a internet meme) and also something I (and other people) can't ever unsee. Moderator's Note: part of treating other users respectfully assuming good faith. Someone providing additional information or context to you is -not- the same thing as them implying that you're ignorant. --F |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 884 |
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That powerpuff screenshot is not an example of human "mistakes" it's drawn like that, color outside the lines and all on purpose. It's the Powerpuff girls. It has a specific Style. Every item in the background is not going to be individually colored because that would make the image cluttered and draw your attention away from the important stuff. If you don't know about art then it's easy to point to this as being a mistake just like people who didn't know about animation complained about the Pain fight or that time a star war movie had a scene with no audio and the studio had to tell the people who I guess only ever watced star wars and nothing else that the scene was supposed to be like that. |
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Philmister978
Posts: 531 |
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I think you can, but the real reason no one has is "why?"
Thing is, it can be a lot harder to model or texture something than it is to draw it out (speaking first-hand here). AI (or machine learning as the VFX industry calls it) when used to accomplish more difficult or repetitive elements is not really the issue here. Especially when its tasks that no one actually wants to do or are genuinely incapable of doing without the use of that kind of assistance (think simulations or translating mocap data as precisely as possible in ways that can't be accomplished with keyframe cleanup). It's when you take it out of that field and into the things that need that level of human control that things get a lot more iffy. I still remember the days where CGI and digital effects was getting a bad rap because to people (or rather the average layman, and to some within the industry) it was replacing 2D animation, stop motion, miniatures, puppets/animatronic effects and makeup overnight. And studios abused it to no end, which is why a lot of films from the 90s and early 2000s look so bad. The tech wasn't there and it was abused to hell. The difference here though is that CGI is nothing more than a tool that got overused (and still is, I argue, but they got better at it mostly). While AI is also a tool, there's a difference between using it to assist you (like say, use as a reference prompt, or as troll posts for shiggles), versus using AI to replace people outright (which is what companies are trying to do), and that's where the issues lie. With CGI, even the bad stuff, you still need people to actually accomplish it. With AI, while you do need someone to prompt it. And it's only going to be a matter of time before someone writes an AI to tell that first AI what to prompt. And given how people even outside the entertainment industry are also fearing for their jobs due to AI (AI bros, I'm convinced are either writing the software themselves or are so well off they don't need to work). Trying to even justify its place is a losing battle.[/quote] |
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