Everybody's Talkin': AI

Everybody’s talkin’ about AI since fantastical selfies spread all over social and chatbots like ChatGPT began contributing to the conversation. But what are people actually saying?

If you’re not all caught up on the happenings, luckily, a bajillion publications are pitching in; The New York Times came in hot this week with the pop-up newsletter equivalent of AI for dummies, which I’ve voraciously consumed. Every morning, I’m ready to spew the latest with a nuanced understanding comparable to fan favorite Clark in Good Will Hunting.

If that reference didn’t hit home, Clark’s haughty regurgitation of others’ perspectives ultimately leads to the iconic “How do you like them apples?” line cheekily delivered by Matt Damon.

I digress, and don’t worry; I’ve no intention of plagiarizing today. But while we’re on the subject, is AI pulling a Clark?

Not quite, but since generative AI relies on referencing others’ work, the question of copyright and giving credit where due has been a hot topic. Art notoriously resides in a fuzzy gray area when it comes to litigation—abstraction does not pair simply with a courtroom.

So, is AI generating, reinterpreting, or stealing? The New Yorker article “Is AI Art Stealing From Artists?” sheds some light—I recommend it. If that’s too on the nose, check out this Document Journal post or this Vice article to learn more about the debate.

Now, AI’s been around for a while with a foothold in tons of industries, but only recently did it begin to take the creative world by storm as new technology wriggles into human spaces thought untouchable.

While some people are wary of quick, ill-thought-out adoption and encourage people to at least “reckon with AI” before becoming dependent, others see ready potential as a tool for inspiration and augmentation (if used responsibly and respectfully).

With tech titans now calling for a pause amidst a fractious surge in development and an open letter pushing for a full shutdown, citing “profound risk to society and humanity,” we’re left to wonder at these not-so-tiny implications.

So everybody keeps talkin’. Some people are freaked. Some people are excited.

Image generators like Midjourney, Lensa, and DALL·E aren’t exactly the AI frightening theorists, but they are part of a network that may be getting ahead of itself. What do you think?

The role that AI can and should have going forward, specifically in motion design and animation, is a question we LOVE to ask our creative guests on Ideas in Motion.

Read their enthusiastic, considered, and unfazed perspectives below.

* BTW, for kicks, I prompted ChatGPT to generate this whole intro. What I got back was arguably an improvement on what you just read, but presented with decidedly less personality.

The following conversations have been edited for clarity and brevity. Note that older conversations reflect a landscape that has since evolved.

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"One Size Does Not Fit All” — Motion Designer Julio Michelon

July 29, 2022

Audience: What do you think about DALL·E and other AI-generated art?”

Julio: What do I think? Based on what I’ve seen with Midjourney, it’s pretty insane. I signed up, played for half a day, and immediately paid for a month to experiment. I love throwing ridiculous prompts at it, like, “House music, eating a donkey.” I want to see how it interprets abstract thoughts.

But will AI replace the art world? Not really. It might replace some practical tasks—concept art, storyboarding, mood boards — where speed and cost matter. But the nuance, the story, the artist’s vision, that’s irreplaceable. AI doesn’t carry the six months of dedication an artist brings to a painting.

Adrian: Exactly. Miles Davis said it’s not about the note; it’s how you play it. Anyone can hit the same notes, but your signature, your swagger, that’s uniquely human. AI can mimic, but it can’t create that singular signature.

Julio: Yeah, AI is part of a larger conversation about tech and the time we live in. We've created something we don't know how to deal with. Social media is a shit show because we don't really- sorry, can I say shit? It's affecting how we communicate and our politics, blah, blah, blah, and evolving faster than we can process. But I think this hyper-growth will give more and more value to what's uniquely human. AI can generate something in 30 seconds that would take an artist hours, but it won’t be human. That human element—expression, intention—will always matter.

Adrian: So we’re on the same page. AI is a tool, a potential asset for idea generation, but it can’t replace human creativity. It’s about augmenting, not substituting.

Julio: Exactly. It’s fascinating and worth exploring, but the moment it tries to stand in for the human touch…that’s where it falls short.

"The Craft is in the Details" — Scholar Art Director Liam Elias

October 14, 2022

Audience: What's your take on AI, and how does that play into the future of animation?

Liam: It's the million-dollar question everyone's trying to figure out. Like everybody else, when it first came out, I used it nonstop for two weeks. It was amazing and-

Adrian: Then you panic a little bit?

Liam: Yeah. You start thinking it’s going to take all the jobs. But I’m always open to new tools, and it is cool that you can make something out of words. I’ve used it to generate characters that look surprisingly close to what I imagined. I’ll save them, build folders, create little libraries for stories.

I think AI is especially powerful for people who aren’t super technical yet. You can take something and make it look like a painting, then bring it into Photoshop and work from there. We were literally talking about this yesterday—my creative director made this incredible portrait, painted over it, adjusted it, and suddenly it looked like a legitimate finished piece.

For pitches, especially when you’re on a tight timeline, it can be huge. You don’t always get perfect results, but for inspiration or quickly visualizing an idea, it’s awesome.

I don’t think robots are going to take over our jobs, unless they learn how to be sentient and develop their own artistic intent.

Adrian: Yeah.

Liam: Designers still have to solve problems and deal with people. And when AI can deal with people… then we’re not in a good place.

“To Make or To Manage” — CVLT Creative Director Dino Qiu

December 9, 2022

Audience: Have you been following AI developments in the creative field over the last year?

Dino: Oh yeah, yeah, I've been doing that. Midjourney and stuff.

Adrian: Yeah, Midjourney, and what's the new one? Uh, ChatGPL or whatever. There's all this talk of the doom of the creative industry, right?

Dino: Mm-hmm.

Adrian: They're like, “Oh no, the computers are coming and all these things.” Do you think that’s the case?

Dino: I don't think that’s the case.

Adrian: I think it's gonna be another great tool for ideation, for sketching, for cranking out interesting ideas that you hadn't thought about. But that connection of, “This could work, this could work, this could work,” and then getting the client to understand and ask themselves existential brand questions… I don’t think a computer will ever do that.

Dino: No, definitely. It’s a great tool for inspiration. Pinterest is another tool you can use for inspiration. You can try different things, visualize, force yourself to think differently. That’s the beauty of it. But I don’t think it will ever replace artists, client management, or sales skills. Also, the artwork itself—there’s a certain beauty in the crafting process.

If you spend 10,000 hours on one thing, there’s a philosophy in that experience that you can apply elsewhere. It’s not like pushing a button and instantly producing a masterpiece and becoming a master. That’s a different process.

Experience is not replaceable.

Adrian: Yeah, exactly. The joy that we all get from that experimentation phase...

Dino: Yes.

Adrian: AI is good at factual things, but it can’t reach that abstract level of, “Why does this bring me joy?” There are times when you have 20 minutes to make something just to show someone your idea. Quickly showing them, “Look at this,” is great.

But it definitely lacks the depth of a creative challenge.

Dino: The soul—it doesn’t have the soul in it.

“What Goes Around…Comes Around,” — Senior Animator Mark Phillips

January 20, 2023

Adrian: There's that fun train of like, new tools change workflows. New context and new legislation change the industry. The animation cycle has come and gone, like in style, not in style, in style, not in style. And now we've got A.I.

Mark: Now we’ve got artificial intelligence.

Adrian: The talk of the town.

Mark: Oh my gosh. It's the whole town.

Adrian: Yeah, this is the first time a non-human element is introduced into the cycle. Studios are saying they’re losing bids because someone presented an entirely AI-generated pitch deck.

Mark: Mm.

Adrian: And then you get into it, and that data set was based on other artists’ work. It was always assumed that AI was gonna come, first for blue-collar jobs, then white-collar, and everyone thought, “Oh, it’ll never come for creatives because we have our little hand touch or whatever.”

Mark: We have a smooth collar that's just a raggedy t-shirt, you know?

Adrian: Exactly. Jack Ma even said we shouldn’t focus so much on math anymore; we should focus on empathy and creativity ‘cause that's what the machines will never come for. Fast forward to mid-2022, and suddenly the scare tactic is that AI’s coming for all creative jobs: Midjourney, DALL·E, ChatGPT.

Mark: I’ve used it just to type in silly prompts like “M&M butt,” you know, and then see what comes up on Midjourney or whatever. I've seen people really posting hard. And, I guess in that sense it's pretty harmless because it's just a tool to help you think differently.

Adrian: Does any of that ever impress you?

Mark: No, I think that art is inherently a form of expression. Maybe you'll get five AI-generated crying kitten options to express your Monday mood. You know? But I think at the end of the day, humans connect with other humans. That’s what keeps us coming back to human creativity.

I mean, AI kind of looks like shit right now? I dunno if we can say that on YouTube. We're more than 10 minutes in, right?

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Mark: I think when it comes down to artists, especially when it’s very deliberately like, “I like this artist, I’m gonna type their name and get an image,” that gets a little weird. That person probably should have a say.

But I don’t know. It’s a gray area. Everyone references things. You’re kind of a Voltron of references that make you an artist. So maybe it’s just easier for the AI to do that.

Adrian: Yeah. Normally, when you walk into a project or approach a brief, the first step is writing a few lines. This is my general idea. Cool. Then you jump into mood boarding, which has become a standard practice globally. You pull references to help your client understand the picture you could paint without committing to, “Okay, we need a million dollars to show you what you’re gonna see.” So you inherently pull from other things. No idea’s original, etcetera. You combine those inputs into a new concept or expression. Right?

Mark: Yeah.

Adrian: Adrian: Whether that’s a photograph you put in the deck, a doodle someone uploaded to Dribbble, or an AI-generated image that’s referencing existing work, it’s arguable that we’re already doing this with every other tool we have.

Mark: Exactly. We’re just using Google instead of having the AI find it for us. Certain animations, music videos, and movies show up in decks every couple of years.

“Oh, have you seen this Tame Impala video?”

“Have you seen the A-ha video from the eighties?”

Adrian: I was honestly a little concerned when I first saw what Midjourney could do. Like, oh man, this is really going to take us out. But I did a few projects last year that leaned heavily on Midjourney for asset creation.

Mark: Okay.

Adrian: The animation was still done by the team and me. Compositing was still a thing. But when you take a Midjourney-generated image, blur it a bit, use it as a texture, and then make that move? You get a really wild look. Something you wouldn’t have come up with, or maybe would’ve reached after twenty days of experimentation.

There is a cool aspect to using it. I don’t think it’s that different from computer-aided design in general?

Mark: Yeah.

Adrian: There’s always another plugin that does a thing for you. And honestly, I think a lot of the responsibility falls on artists as a community.

Mark: Mm-hm.

Adrian: Two tiers, really. Artists need to be responsible for how we use the tool. And companies need to be responsible for how they allow it to be used.

Mark: Yeah, I agree.

Adrian: I don't see a world where we can't all coexist happily. Of course, that's not how Terminator starts, but you know?

Mark: Definitely not how it starts.

“The Eye of the Beholder” — TikTok Senior Motion Designer Jae Bae

February 3, 2023

Adrian: It almost feels like, in the search for a less polished, more authentic experience—if that’s what we start identifying as human—AI is creating these hyper-polished, technically beautiful outputs.

So is it widening the gap? We used to associate polish with human craftsmanship, and now we’re starting to associate it with machines. Humanity might start valuing things that feel rougher, more personal, less perfect.

Where do you think AI fits into that? And how might it impact what you’re doing?

Jae: I think eventually it’s going to be more about the concept than the final output, and how it actually looks. AI can already do a lot of what we ask. It can create amazing illustrations, animations, almost anything. It could probably replace me at any second. But I think it comes down to what you come up with — the animation concept itself. It’s going to be more about the idea than the execution.

Adrian: That’s an optimistic perspective, and I love that. The artist is still the element that makes something unique, based on experience and point of view.

Jae: Yeah. I’ve been using AI tools to build mood boards and mockups, things like that. But you still have to tell it what you want to see, which makes it a really strong tool.

I don’t know how far it’ll go in the future. I think it won’t be as threatening for people who already have strong ideas. But it might be scary when you’re just starting as a junior animator or designer, still learning the tools, and AI can generate things really fast.

That part could be scary. But I think eventually we’ll learn how to work around that. We’ll find our human niche.

“Bespoke Freelance Workflows” — Senior Motion Designer Lori Samsel Hamasaki

March 3, 2023

Adrian: That is the big looming question mark in the industry.

Lori: Yeah. AI is fun. There’s a tool I really like called Gong Gong (GauGAN) or something, where you paint landscapes with colors. You can be like: pine trees here, rocks in the sky. I like to do that. You can paint letters, too—make typography out of nature. It’s a fun tool. I find it really hard to direct, though. I like a little more control over my projects than what I’ve been able to achieve through AI. So right now, I’m mostly using ChatGPT to write my cover letters, because I’ve never been good at that.

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Lori: But yeah, always learning. AI's a lot of fun. It's really conceptual. It gives me ideas.

Adrian: It’s fascinating because AI, in a way, is one of these new generative tools. I’m actually not particularly afraid of it destroying the industry. A lot of the buzz around it feels similar to when the computer or calculator was invented, and accountants were like, “Ah, it’s going to take my job.” And it’s like, I can say for a fact that a calculator will never replace my accountant. I need a human there, because I can hold you accountable when something goes wrong.

Lori: I'm a hundred percent positive that AI cannot do my job.

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There you have it.

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