Insight: Why The Animation Industry (Especially In Hollywood) Fears AI

We told you quite a while ago about a Netflix series on YouTube (you read that correctly) that might be one of the funniest animated comedies of all-time. Called Written By Bots, the animated series produced by David Charles Ebert using AI algorithms would proceed to go viral with clips inspired by stand-up comedies, horror movies, and other subgenres that the internet seems to have enough data to go on to go ahead and skip all of the production elements and just give us an end result.

Fast forward to this past December 2022, only a year later after I mentioned Written By Bots, the increase in technical proficiency was put on display with a Twitch show produced by scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, technology professionals, and more. Described as a “always-on, generative show” inspired by 90’s sitcoms entitled Nothing, Forever, everything produced in the show is generative with the exception of the laugh track and the key art. What does generative mean?

Technically the producers are using the term somewhat thematically, but essentially the series is being produced by use of technology applications like Python + TensorFlow for machine learning models (aka root programming for AI), TypeScript + Azure Functions and Heroku (essentially cloud-operated scripts), and C# + Unity for the client (more programming). Throw in some APIs for neural language (in layman’s terms, connecting different programs to generate speech) and voila, you’ve got yourself a show. No real writers, no real voice actors, no animators, nothing.

The producers of Nothing, Forever say a future iteration of the series OpenAI’s davinci models for dialogue for cost-cutting measures, and Stable Diffusion for art generation. The company, Mismatch media, has other projects coming in the future.

This, of course, doesn’t make everyone happy. We told you the other day about Tuca & Bertie creator Lisa Hanawalt’s complaints about media mergers and how her circle of pals ran to the WGA for back up on the basis of the increased fear in more Hollywood studios testing AI models for various production elements, thereby potentially eliminating a number of jobs in the areas of editing, art production, and even voice dubbing (also why streamers are increasingly interested in anime and other internationally produced efforts). Some artists have taken it upon themselves to file suit against AI companies, a moot effort somewhat indicative of the eras in which railroad companies used to sue car companies due to the advent of mass production capabilities. None of it matters though, and producers think if they continue to run to unions that the unions will protect them. Understand, there was a time when even the milk man had a union. Useless, if nobody uses the milk man.

Some studios are embracing Web3 technologies. We reported earlier on Rick and Morty studio Gold Wolf being purchased by Doodles, a studio made famous for producing a number of NFTs, so clearly there’s still room for animated studios to thrive in an increasingly competitive space. We report on NFT animated series on an almost monthly basis. So, expect AI to usage to increase in the coming years, and eventually, the unions be a thing of the past.