Renowned director Hayao Miyazaki has serious doubts about using AI in the creative arts.
AI and Humanity May Be at a Creative Crossroads as Studios Lean on Apps for Generating Films
In a short but potent article by Zach Sharf on variety.com, we found a quote by a legendary director from Japan who has his own idea about AI and the arts. After Hayao Miyazaki, who recently made the animated film “How Do You Live,” was shown an animation of a zombie-Esque creature created by AI, he responded:
“Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. 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.”
Could Miyazaki be any more to the point? Yes.
“I feel like we are nearing to the end of the times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”
Have we lost faith in ourselves as living, breathing, creating entities?
We have turned over much of the work in our world to AI in the past two decades. In business, AI is becoming the power that runs much of our daily lives, from booking engines to communications. And for the most part, the vast majority of these AI changes have been positive. They have changed so much of how we approach medical treatments. We use AI to design drugs that have never been available before.
We have AI deciding the futures of incarcerated individuals and using AI to decide the length of probation or parole for an inmate. Some courts are using AI to judge the sentences an inmate faces going into the prison system.
While AI is likely the biggest change maker of the 21st century, Miyazaki points out that we might be losing our humanity in the process. And his fellow director Guillermo Del Toro agrees.
When recently asked by Decider about animation created from AI sources and machines, Del Toro responded:
“It’s an insult to life itself.” Del Toro has been making the press rounds in support of his Netflix film “Pinocchio,” a hand-crafted stop-motion movie that stands in direct opposition to machine-generated animation.
AI can create and write stories in sentient sentences, and can even be comedic. It has composed music and generated digital award-winning art. But it’s a collection of man-made gadgets and wires that were put together in such a way as to mimic what a human can do.
Del Toro, whose animated Pinnochio is available to stream on Netflix, put it succinctly when he stated:
“I consume and love art made by humans,” del Toro said. “I am completely moved by that. And I am not interested in illustrations made by machines and the extrapolation of information. I talked to Dave McKean, a great artist. He told me his greatest hope is that AI cannot draw.”
And that, gentle reader, remains to be seen.
read more at variety.com
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