Netflix stirs fears by using AI-assisted background art in short anime film

Over the previous 12 months, generative AI has kicked off a wave of existential dread over potential machine-fueled job loss not seen for the reason that advent of the commercial revolution. On Tuesday, Netflix reinvigorated that worry when it debuted a brief movie known as Canine and Boy that makes use of AI picture synthesis to assist generate its background paintings.

Directed by Ryotaro Makihara, the three-minute animated brief follows the story of a boy and his robotic canine by way of cheerful instances, though the story quickly takes a dramatic flip towards the post-apocalyptic. Alongside the best way, it contains lush backgrounds apparently created as a collaboration between man and machine, credited to “AI (+Human)” in the long run credit score sequence.

Within the announcement tweet, Netflix cited an business labor scarcity as the rationale for utilizing the picture synthesis expertise:

As an experimental effort to assist the anime business, which has a labor scarcity, we used picture era expertise for the background photographs of all three-minute video cuts!

Netflix and the manufacturing firm WIT Studio tapped Japanese AI agency Rinna for help with producing the pictures. They didn’t announce precisely what sort of expertise Rinna used to generate the paintings, however the course of seems much like a Secure Diffusion-powered “img2img” process than can take a picture and remodel it primarily based on a written immediate.

The movie is at present out there to view without spending a dime on YouTube.

Nearly instantly, Twitter customers responded with a torrent of destructive replies to Netflix’s tweet asserting the movie, such as, “I do know a ton of animators on the lookout for work should you guys are struggling to seek out them (are you trying very arduous?).” A number of others quoted legendary Studio Ghibli animator Hayao Miyazaki as saying that AI-powered artwork “is an insult to life itself.”

In a news release, Netflix expressed its hopes that the brand new expertise would help with future animation productions (translated by Google Translate): “As a studio, Netflix focuses on supporting creators within the creation of works every day. Because the scarcity of human assets within the animation business is seen as a problem, we hope that this initiative will contribute to the conclusion of a versatile animation manufacturing course of by way of applicable assist for creators utilizing the most recent expertise.”

It additionally seems like Makihara additionally wished to push boundaries in animation by utilizing AI expertise as a part of the manufacturing course of. The Netflix launch quoted him as saying, “By combining instruments and hand-drawn strategies, we are able to create one thing distinctive to people … I feel that the core of the story is ‘drawing a human being.’ I feel that it will likely be potential to safe and return to its roots, which is able to ultimately strengthen the strengths of Japanese animation and broaden its potentialities.”

Labor scarcity or not, AI help could probably pace up manufacturing instances and decrease manufacturing prices, permitting the creation of extra animated content material than ever earlier than. However will folks be blissful about it? That is still to be seen.