Famous animator Miyazaki disgusted by AI Generated animation...

Blond

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc

And the article:

http://qz.com/859454/the-director-of-spirited-away-says-animation-made-by-artificial-intelligence-is-an-insult-to-life-itself/

A really interesting reaction..I'm posting this because this is esactly the kind of technology that could be implemented into games, if it was more developed and advanced....I'm pretty there has been countless attempts at automating animations in games and here we have the opinion of a lifelong traditionnal animator on the returning topic of machine ''helping'' us doing art...

jStins

Computers will ruin animation!
3D tools will ruin animation!
Motion capture will ruin animation!
AI will ruin animation!

Miyazaki's reaction seems to be the intended one for the most part. The AI created animation incongruous to what humans conceive as plausible and the results were disturbing. I'm sure the results would be more disturbing if the authors had aimed for the AI to generate typical bipedal locomotion and tried to pass it off as a way to generate more common game animation. This looks like another tool that needs authorship by a skilled artist to really be effective (for now... >:) )

Kwramm

Interesting. Gotta agree with Miyazaki that they made a quite revolting piece - they could have chosen a different dummy.
But Miyazaki also shows a very Japanese attitude - Japanese highly value manually done arts and crafts work. But even in many smaller companies the degree of automation is much lower than in the US/EU. E.g. letters are still written by hand, accounting is done in books rather than online, etc. Despite pride in your own work, a reason cited was also that it allows for innovation (aka change of process, improvement of quality) to take place when things are done manually and when workers get a deep understanding of their work. I think this is certainly true from where Ghibli comes from - there is an intense pride in the process and craftsmanship of making animation the old school way.

ZacD

Regarding this type of tech ruining animation and automation is bad:

Giving artists and designers tools to make art quicker, easier, faster, etc, in the end means better art. Personal passion projects can be done by one person in a reasonable time due to tools being faster, easier, and more automated. That's part of the reason there's been such a huge boom in indie games.

Without computers taking the jobs of artists and craftsmen, we'd never have 3d animation, no video games, no Pixar, no Jurassic Park, no Starwars, etc.

Advancement in art and technology in the end has always made things better for the creator, and that will continue to be the case. Although it might not always be an easy and smooth transition.

Today an artist with a tiny budget could make a movie, an animated short, produce music in that past could only be made by an entire band or full orchestra, a video game with hundreds of hours of content, etc. These projects and be just as raw, emotional, and human as anything else made in the past without computers, sometimes even more so. A few hundred years ago, an artist might just have the mediums of paint, drawing, literature, and sculpture, and even those were always accessible to everyone. 

Regarding this tech in particular:

I think it would be awesome to have a game where you could blow limbs off a monster and it would never stop limping, crawling, dragging itself towards you. Also this tech can be used for games like Spore or No Mans Sky. I personally love the idea of AI and evolution powering procedural aspects of games, instead of making them randomly generated. 

A lot of this goes back to that Halo 2 GDC talk about automation in game art. 

fearian

Wolthera

Well, if you read the article, he partially seems offended because he feels it's devaluing how hard it is to move the body(but he uses an example of a disabled friend for that, and I am not sure if that is the wisest example...) and the rest is a sense of the technology being autonomous. The article ends on

"I feel like we are nearing to the end of times,” Miyazaki says later. “We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

Which is sorta weird, because a human made that AI(unless it was neural networking, but still), right? So I have the feeling that one of the problems might be that he is not able to see the craftsmanship that went into the AI, and perhaps the producer should have taken more care to show that, especially with someone who is known to value good craftsmanship.

I mean, even with procedural texturing, the quality of the input makes the big difference impact the quality of the output. I imagine that it would be the same for a procedural animation system.

huffer

- He didn't see the context for games and other applications (I don't think he plays or has interest in games)
- so he was triggered because it reminded him of his disabled friend. I also think he has pretty strong opinions sometimes and ignores any other viewpoints, so it's easy to have this reaction
- the guy in the left looks like he's about to cry 
- I think he would have liked this

Jonas Ronnegard

He has done some great work but he has also made a lot of stupid and weird comments in the past.

Trying to make these guys feel bad by bringing disabled people into the discussion is just weird, and something I would expect to hear from someone working in a church, not from someone working in a creative field.

I know some famous and loved japanese game producers etc that has done very little to gain their fame and have been riding on other peoples backs. Kinda makes me wonder if a person with such a closed mind could actually create what he has created and if he also might be one of the people riding on other peoples backs, probably not but kinda makes one wonder.

RyanB

Jonas Ronnegard said:

Trying to make these guys feel bad by bringing disabled people into the discussion is just weird, and something I would expect to hear from someone working in a church, not from someone working in a creative field.

That's why he's a visionary.  He's way beyond "someone working in a creative field".

Jonas Ronnegard

RyanB said:

Jonas Ronnegard said:

Trying to make these guys feel bad by bringing disabled people into the discussion is just weird, and something I would expect to hear from someone working in a church, not from someone working in a creative field.

That's why he's a visionary.  He's way beyond "someone working in a creative field".

The stuff he said in that video is kind of the opposite to what I would expect a visionary to say, but yeah he have created some awesome pieces of art, just have a hard time seeing the art and his way of thinking coming out of the same mind.

He had some cool phrases though, totally gonna use this one when giving feedback, "I strongly feel like this is an insult to life itself."

JacqueChoi

There were lepers in Princess Mononoke, who overcame their disabilities by being productive members of Irontown. Miyazaki depicted them as individuals capable of experiencing grief, joy, and empathy. He didn't showcase a bunch of appendages falling off.

It's a much more positive way of thinking, and employs a strong moral narrative prevalent in all of Miyazaki's work.


I wish there were more film makers like him.

RN

I'm not sure if it's useful as a final result, there'll probably be a lot of noise in the animation. But it could be great to use as reference for when you need something that looks uncanny (the nurses from Silent Hill for example).

And to me an "insult to life itself" is to boil a lobster while it's still alive.

Kwramm

RN said:

I'm not sure if it's useful as a final result.

it may become better though. What's been shown there was likely a very early result. Those neural network AI systems rely a lot on training and learning. Just like with a human, you have to invest time and ensure it gets the right materials to learn from and that it gets good feedback for a very specialized task that you're trying to train it for.

Machine learning is being hyped a lot right now. Everyone is trying to jump on the bandwagon early. It will still take quite some time before we see useful results.

Joopson

I feel like his reaction was partially because of the result. It's interesting, but it doesn't feel "serious" as it were. It's a silly grotesque animation. And while it's amazing technology, to someone like Miyazaki (who I feel sometimes is quite set in his ways, and goes off of his first reaction) this probably feels like a waste of time.

Had they come in with a beautiful walk cycle, I can't help but feel his reaction would have been different.

pior

I think his reaction was perfectly appropriate.

These guys had the opportunity to show their work directly to one of the greatest animator/animation director of all time in a private meeting, yet they didn't take the couple days needed to make their presentation better. They could have re-skinned their work to look like something by Theo Jansen, or more like the video that @huffer linked, or anything else really. Miyazaki is clever and can probably see past the horrid presentation (film-making and animation in particular is a highly technical field after all), but I believe he did them a favor by teaching them a lesson in humility.

Also the guy trying to bullshit his way out of it by saying they are trying to create an algorithm that can "draw like humans" just made it worse really What's sad is that it clearly shows that these guys might be involved in "animation", yet they do not grasp the subtleties and core fundamentals of what makes animation "tick" - because if they did, they wouldn't have shown such footage to the master of the field.

Now I do agree that their work could definitely be "disturbingly interesting", but that's obviously not what Miyazaki is into.

Isaiah Sherman

A lot of people are saying "if he saw a better animation his reaction would have been different". You are missing the point entirely.

It's not about the quality of the animation the AI produced, but the fact that something that is completely detached from humanity is trying to reproduce humanity. His final line of "humans are losing faith in themselves" represents his sorrow towards humans that are passing on their core of creativity to unthinking and unfeeling artificial intelligence.

A lot of people here think only as a cog in a machine and how to make their work easier, but don't stop to think about what the machine represents as a whole, and further miss the point that It's not a machine at all.

Renaud Galand

Since I had a pretty interesting discussion on this topic recently, I thought I'd share it here as well.

First of all, I agree with most of you and found the test shown very clumsy and probably out of line (regarding its purpose). Although, and while I can totally understand Miyasaki's point of view, his feedback was absolutely unprofessional, lacked empathy and doesn't match the image I had of a guy who spent decades working and directing other people. You'd hope that by that time he would have learned how to give a constructive critique with the use of basic management soft skills.

The one thing that I found a bit disappointing (even if it's solely based on the video linked above) is that you can be an "artist" AND a good LEADER or have enough "step back" to not get triggered even on topics that are sensitive to you. It's just basic human interaction at this point... I'm all for giving feedback to younger people that think they found something "cool" without really thinking it through but there is a way to do it without "destroying" the person on the other end of the table. Tearing them down, just because you are "allowed to" (due to your seniority and because you are a master in your field) doesn't make it a good thing, at least in my book. I would have loved to see an actual discussion led by Miyazaki's extensive experience that would have probably guide these guys into completely rethinking their tool and actually HELP them grow as person and developers.

Again, I'm also aware that people react and "lead" in different ways, it's just not the way I would have done it

pior

Oh hi there Renaud !

I'll try to detail my point. If the guys doing the presentation are indeed part of his team (hence under is leadership and responsibility) then I would 100% agree that his attitude was not appropriate - because if he is indeed their boss, then he is just as responsible of the result as they are . However here it looks more like a pitch/investor meeting, and if that's the case they really failed at making their work shine.

But then again, who knows ? Maybe these guys didn't even want to be in that room in the first place, I guess we'll never know. If anything the one thing that I find truly objectionable is the fact that this meeting has been filmed and made public. I think it definitely should have remained private.

Kwramm

Isaiah Sherman said:

A lot of people are saying "if he saw a better animation his reaction would have been different". You are missing the point entirely.

It's not about the quality of the animation the AI produced, but the fact that something that is completely detached from humanity is trying to reproduce humanity. His final line of "humans are losing faith in themselves" represents his sorrow towards humans that are passing on their core of creativity to unthinking and unfeeling artificial intelligence.

A lot of people here think only as a cog in a machine and how to make their work easier, but don't stop to think about what the machine represents as a whole, and further miss the point that It's not a machine at all.

I don't see it as a black and white issue. Either humans OR machines. There is still more than enough place for hand crafted products, but some stuff will be done by machines. Maybe, just to give the humans more time for the things that really matter. Especially in commercial art (and as game devs we're just so well aware of this), budgets do matter. Masters of their craft, like Blizzard, Disney, Miyazaki can afford to hand craft to a larger extent, but it's not a luxury all of us have. Some people can afford a hand crafted watch but most of us buy it factory made.

In any case, machine learning is still guided by humans, so it is far from "entirely detached". Humans select the training material for the machines and this have much influence in shaping the machine's mind. And since no machine makes art, all the reference that's being fed is made by humans too, down to the machine's programming.
When should you get scared? When machines create machines that learn from other machines...

fdfxd2

dustinbrown said:

I want artistry and craftsmanship to always be a large component in my daily work, because it's what gives me joy. It feels like engineers working on these sorts of things are, in a way, trying to undermine what gives my life a sense of purpose.

 Well... whatever happens, happens.

We shouldn't stop progress,ever IMHO.

Who knows? Maybe we'll never invent AI that can 100% replace the artist,laborers,etc.

Maybe the extent of AI would just be a really really amazing Retopo algorithm or a "fact checker" algorithm to see if there are any glaring faults with your prop design(i.e you made a 2 mm barrel for a 9 mm pistol, stock for the rifle you made would shatter on use,etc).

pior

Yeah, I don't think that Miyazaki himself is against tech at all regardless of what the clickbaity video title is trying to imply. Again the guy is *highly* technical. The recent exhibit showing how his movies are made was mindblowing. His studio already participated in the creation of a video game after all.

What he is disgusted by is the result that he was shown, and also probably, the (unintentionally arrogant) attitude of the researchers who clearly put no effort into delivering a solid presentation, and probably never took the time to research animation fundamentals to begin with ...

Stinger88

I wonder if the reaction would have been the same if the devs had rigged a mechanical robot model rather than a horror theme. Also wording the way the rigs "learn" to move differently, without the use of the word "Pain", which seems to have struck a "bad" chord.

"The robots can detect stress levels in their joints and learning to move within stress limits"

AI and code has been replacing humans in all kinds of ways for years. Saw a video the other day with a software program creating music based on music theory and trends, Google self driving cars, Photoshop filters... (and soon the "Make art" button we will have in all our software.)

All these things make our job easier and in some cases safer. Giving us more time to think and be creative. More tools allows us to realise our creative ideas better. ZBrush being an example of software allowing a huge leap in digital modelling in recent years. Animation is art but think how many man hours get saved these days over the hand drawn frames of old. Mayazaki himself has used 3D in his work since Princess Mononoke (maybe before). Im not suggesting we ditch the old ways, people still do thing traditionally regardless of what tech we have. Sword makers still make tradition samurai swords using the old ways...

Anyway...rambling, its a bit of an over reaction imo.