'AI-Generated Anime' Goes Viral On Social Media, Although Partly Because Of People Who Think It Stinks
For what feels like the umpteenth time in recent months, a Twitter poster has rushed to social media to show off what they perceived as "incredible" content produced by artificial intelligence, only to be told by many that it actually stinks.
After similar stories played out with an AI-generated children's book "writer" and an AI adult entertainment doomer, the latest person to fall victim to finding out much of the internet still thinks AI art is bad, actually, is Twitter's @ammaar, who gushed on the site about a so-called "AI anime" featuring two folks in medieval times playing Rock-Paper-Scissors.
The folks @CorridorDigital combine Stable Diffusion, Dreambooth, and Davinci Resolve for their AI powered anime and the results are incredible! pic.twitter.com/AnxaAd0CHp
— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) February 27, 2023
The piece was made by Corridor Labs and used a mix of Stable Diffusion, Dreambooth and Davinci Resolve. The full seven-minute video, posted on the Corridor Labs YouTube channel, has gained over 1.9 million views in five days, as well as a large amount of positive reception in the comments — though the use of AI in the project is not explicitly mentioned in the description.
The clip was soundly criticized by Twitter users, many of whom noted that the art style was not actually "anime" (more like rotoscope) and that the clip was noticeably "soulless" to some.
Others also defended the clip, noting that while it might not match the quality of work produced by actual animators now, it's a matter of time before AI art is able to overcome its "being visibly soulless" problem.
Some, however, still weren't so sure — though the clip showed AI can at best make a facsimile of an existing art style (in the case of the clip, that of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust), the messiness of its storyboarding, its inconsistencies between shots and basic animation errors gave many folks little reason to believe the technology would one day make something broadly considered "competent."
While time will eventually tell if AI-generated art can ever "get there" and see widespread use in the art industry, its champions may want to carefully consider releasing tech demos that have been oft-criticized as worse than the work of human artists.
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Revic
AI art fascinates me from a theoretical and technical standpoint, but wherever you stand on the subject, I think this demonstrates it is absolutely not field-ready for this kind of usage yet. Those weird faces that are trying to convey yelling/screaming but only indicate it with the mouths and not the rest of the face end up looking worse than soyjaks. I guess I won't fault experimentation but this really didn't work.
Timstuff
YeetYeetAwoo
Okay so earlier you called it moon logic when people say Corridor used AI rotorscoping and here you have Corridor themselves stating that's what they did.
Timstuff
I did absolutely no such thing.
YeetYeetAwoo
"It was a moon-logic extrapolation, just like the people who are saying "Corridor made an AI rotoscoped short film"
https://knowyourmeme.com/comments/6118545
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Libertarian Jackass
Every masterpiece has a cheap copy.
Nox Lucis
What is it with AI and that weird-looking high contrast shading?
YeetYeetAwoo
Wait hold on, Corridor is still a thing?
int
Yeah it's usually 5 minutes of content and 15 minutes of ads.
YeetYeetAwoo
Last time i watched them was before YouTube ads were even a thing.
Peanut970
When I first saw this, I thought there was something off, and I couldn't really figure out what it was. At first I thought this was someone's first attempt at a larger animation project, but they used some kind of machine learning to clean it up. Seems like I was mostly right there.
Xyz_39808
It's always funny that artists hate AI yet audiences love it.
Aurora Helvetica
Yeah because who cares about the people who makes the shit for dumbasses like you think, am I right?
mikeap
The other side of the "holy shit! two cakes!" idea. Consumers don't care about quality or the negative impact the tech could have on the industry. They just see content and lap it up.
Peanut970
I've usually found that it's a 50/50 situation. Either you love it or you hate it. Some people are just excited to see where it goes, but some don't like what it does to artists.
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Timstuff
On the camp of people who hate this short, there seems to be a lot of conflicting messaging: it's either "it sucks, nothing to see here" and "oh this is going to ruin everything because it actually looks like animation." These two things can't be true at the same time.
If your entire argument is that the quality isn't good enough, then what happens if that changes? We've seen how fighting against disruptive technologies plays out over and over again. Every time we're told "this time it's different, someone has gone too far," but everyone else adapts and figures out how to live with it, or make a living from it.
Ten Shadows
Those two things absolutely can be true at the same time. Observe: "It sucks, but it actually kind of resembles animation."
The latter is all the corporations need, and they never cared about the former. Therefore, it's going to ruin everything.
When the quality changes, even if it actually ends up looking good, or "good enough" for both of us, my opinion remains the same: it will still ruin everything. We adapted to CGI, we adapted to digital art, we adapted to CalArts bean-mouths, we made each of those in turn the new standard… and each time the end result gets a little bit worse and art as a whole takes a blow. And this AI thing promises to be a way bigger step than all of those put together. Little by little we've been undermining art by making it all about tech and all about churning it out easily and effortlessly. That's not what art is all about.
I think it speaks good things of human nature that we've still managed to make pretty good-looking CGI movies, and bean-mouth cartoons that don't make me want to rip my eyes out of my sockets. Artists adapt even to these terrible tools and make something of worth out of them – not because of them, or thanks to them, but in spite of them. Perhaps someone manages the same with this AI stuff, too, but I honestly hope they won't. I honestly hope it will just remain a great big con like NFTs and that the other shoe will drop soon. Because it really would be one great big misstep otherwise.
Timstuff
Corporations sure were doing a real bang up job safeguarding the industry before AI, weren't they? Animators should be happy about the possibility that they might be able to make their own shows free of the big studios with fewer resources. After Velma, the democratization of animation is sounding pretty good.
Peanut970
But it won't be "democratization", big companies are gonna scoop up AI and use it themselves. I am 100% sure that if AI really takes off, we're not going to see it in the hands of the people, but in the hands of investors, who can do whatever they want with it. Including blocking people who use it for things they don't like. It's just how big business works.
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rerako
The Good: Certain Artists won't have to suffer as much creating so much for certain frames when it may be cheaper to act it out.
The Bad:
We've just entered the age of shitty netflix/china knockoff tier 3d/anime AI generated like that recent Berserk anime…
And we know Hollywood/Animation studios is getting ready to snort in all that cheap shit in…
mikeap
Just look at how Disney stopped doing 2D animation as soon as CG made it cheaper. big companies will leap at any chance to cut corners where they can at the expense of the creators.
Raul Satisacro
lecorbak
Ralph motherfucking Bakshi