Dreamworks Co-Founder Thinks 90% of Animation Labor Could Be Cut With AI
How AI Became a New Animation Battlefield: ‘I Can’t Wait for Them to Get Sued’ Basically, if the studios can find ways to go around paying artists, many fear that they will. “I sadly wouldn’t put it past companies to choose to not pay artists if they have the option,” she says. For more stories, including how AI can improve accessibility in gaming and comments from experts like Tim Sweeney, check out our hub. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most exciting emerging technologies in this sector, and it has the potential to revolutionize how video production works. The first benefit is that AI can automate a lot of the heavy lifting, freeing up animators to focus on other tasks. This allows them to spend more time on creative pursuits and also speeds up the production process. Additionally, AI can generate visuals faster and with a higher level of accuracy than a human artist could. Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years. It’s all part of a week bringing some much-needed rays of hope to the world of animation, a space that has been battered by layoffs, a contraction in the streaming landscape, a few box office misses and growing concerns surrounding AI. It’s one of the biggest weeks of the year for the animation industry, with the Annecy fest in full swing and ‘Inside Out 2’ hitting theaters, but concerns still loom over AI, a contracting landscape and recent layoffs. This has allowed animators to go beyond traditional resources like 2D art assets and apply AI to create highly sophisticated 3D animations quickly and easily. However, despite its tremendous potential, there are still some limitations when it comes to using AI for animation. And Gibson notes that he might not be himself or Dreistadt, who each have years of experience and credits to the names, who lose their jobs to studios outsourcing AI. Instead, it may be those who are trying to break into animation, as the kind of work studios might start handing to AI could be the sort that entry-level writers and animators do. As time progressed, animation witnessed the entry of major players like Disney, Warner Bros., and Hanna-Barbera, each contributing iconic characters like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. Once you have found jobs and want to apply, you can now generate a cover letter or a letter of introduction, and the AI will also give you a further review of your résumé and other work you’re doing. LinkedIn, of course, is a part of Microsoft, which has a 49% stake in OpenAI, alongside its own substantial AI efforts. Effectively, this takes the pressure of innovating or investing in innovators off LinkedIn itself, leaving it to concentrate on how it can build or integrate tools for its own uses. It launched a suite of OpenAI-powered tools in October 2023, adding reading and writing tools one month later, as well as tools to help with writing profiles, recruitment ads and company pages. Despite this opportunity, many executives remain unsure where to apply AI solutions to capture real bottom-line impact. For example, components typically have more than ten design parameters, with up to 100 options for each parameter. Because a simulation takes ten hours to run, only a handful of the resulting trillions of potential designs can be explored in a week. Companies that rely on experienced engineers to narrow down the most promising designs to test in a series of designed experiments risk leaving performance on the table. Some of the most difficult challenges for industrial companies are scheduling complex manufacturing lines, maximizing throughput while minimizing changeover costs, and ensuring on-time delivery of products to customers. AI can help through its ability to consider a multitude of variables at once to identify the optimal solution. For example, in one metals manufacturing plant, an AI scheduling agent was able to reduce yield losses by 20 to 40 percent while significantly improving on-time delivery for customers. This could mean automating tedious tasks such as a rendering pipeline or using a machine learning model to generate a character’s facial expressions. Additionally, artists can use AI to create more personalized experiences for users. By creating a ML model that can detect a user’s preferences or emotions from a video, animators/artists can tailor the animation accordingly and produce higher quality content. Increasingly, AI and machine learning are becoming potent parts of animation production. AI has the potential to greatly improve and speed up the process allowing animators to focus on more creative aspects of their work. Sor AI, short for Synthetic Orchestration of Realistic Animation, has gained attention for its ability to generate realistic and dynamic animations. There are already generative AI systems that can create videos, although they are short and relatively primitive. AI is being used to provide data-driven predictions about how unusual storylines will land with viewers. Moreover, leveraging artificial intelligence may make animations more accessible, especially for deaf people and those with hearing disabilities. With that said, AI replacing animators’ jobs should be the last thing you should worry about. Instead, keep your eye on how AI in animation can enhance your creative work as an animator in this ever-evolving industry. For example, an AI-based facial recognition system can help animate characters more accurately and efficiently. However, using the power of artificial intelligence, researchers at Disney proposed a nonlinear 3D face modeling method that uses neural architectures. Laika takes several years to accomplish a single film with this complex animation procedure. AI will be used to enhance the accuracy of motion capture systems, as well as to help create more realistic animations. In addition to improving existing video production processes, AI can also help make creating animated videos easier for a variety of users. Motion capture technology has long been used in the