This Digital Producer Wishes He Had Never Shown His Work To Hayao Miyazaki [Updated]
A video clip of Hayao Miyazaki adversely responding to animation achieved with artificial intelligence has been spreading around the internet and sparking a lively debate about alternatives to traditional animation techniques.
The clip was taken from the NHK TV documentary Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao (The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki) which aired last month in Japan. In it, Miyazaki watches a demo of a somewhat grotesque piece of animation done with AI (artificial intelligence).
He makes his opinion clear about the work to astonished artists. Watch the video below.
“I am utterly disgusted,” Miyazaki said in the clip. “If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
Miyazaki, of course, is a strong proponent of traditional animation techniques, so the Studio Ghibli co-founder’s reaction is probably not so much of a surprise. But the surfacing of the clip has raised questions about the state of AI – and perhaps by extension, cg – in animation, and what drawbacks, from an aesthetic point of view, it could also have on the art.
While it’s unlikely that Miyazaki will be trying out AI technology any time soon, the 75-year-old Japanese legend is not immune to technology: his next project, the 12-minute short Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar), is being made using cg animation techniques.
UPDATE: The person who presented this piece to Miyazaki (and who is shown in the top pic along with Miyazaki) is Japanese tech entrepreneur Nobuo Kawakami, founder of Dwango, which among other things operates the video sharing site Nico Nico Douga. As a personal hobby, Kawakami has worked as a producer-in-training at Ghibli for the last few years. The piece that he was showing was developed by a unit of his own company called Dwango Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, whose mission can be read here.
