On a chilly Wednesday evening on the east coast of Australia, my partner and I sat in the living room to watch Marvel’s latest miniseries, Secret Invasion. The last time we did this was for season 3 of The Mandalorian, and we were keen to watch the next chapter of Marvel’s ongoing story.
We were silent when the first scene started. We were also surprised that the show was set in Russia, even though we knew it was filmed in the UK. Then again, the show is about espionage and we passed it off since it was a common movie trope. Then came the opening sequence. As soon as the intro ended, he grabbed the remote and paused it. He looked at me straight in the eye and said: “This looks like it was made using AI.” Mind you, this was hours before it was confirmed by anyone.
My partner is an animator and has worked on huge shows for Disney, Nickelodeon, and Netflix. He also made himself very clear about his stance on using AI in the industry, and he is against it for the same reasons as everyone else. People will lose jobs, copyright issues, and so on.
It’s not just him. Many other artists have also expressed their disappointment with Marvel Studios. They didn’t expect that this media juggernaut would resort to using AI, particularly considering the House of Mouse surely has the budget to hire people to do the work. Marvel is one of the few major studios that has done this. Earlier this year, Netflix released a short anime in collaboration with WIT Studios and an AI company, and claimed that AI could help combat worker shortages in Japan. So when my partner realized that the intro was AI-generated, he spoke for over five minutes about why it looked bad, despite its art-deco aesthetic.
For starters, and in his words, the use of AI misses the point of Secret Invasion‘s story. Why use this technology if the show is a spy thriller? If AI was used during the opening sequence of Avengers: Age of Ultron, then it could make thematic sense since the film was about an AI robot going rogue. Secret Invasion‘s opening could have used a similar approach to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or literally any other spy show out there. Instead, its opening sequence missed the mark due to how it was produced.
The next day, I told him about the reports that no one lost their jobs and that the studio behind the production of the show’s opening used people for the art. He does agree with the idea of using AI as a tool as long as the art is all made internally. However, when he learned that AI was used to animate the movements, it ruffled his feathers a bit. He didn’t think it was lazy of Method Studios or Marvel to use AI for animation purposes, but he did find it “uncanny” that a huge studio would even consider using such technology.
Another point that was consistently hammered home in our discussion, was the suggestion that Secret Invasion’s intro could have been all the more impressive if a human artist made it look like the sequence had been generated with AI. He argued that an animator could replicate those movements easily with the right effects and tool sets. I had to sit through listening to all the different methods on how this could be achieved. Yes, it’s long and complicated, but it is possible for it to be achieved.
My partner acknowledges the innovations Disney and Pixar have made in the past when it comes to animation techniques. However, he feels like this is the first time that there was a “moral ambiguity” in the process. This isn’t just using rotoscoping or 3D software like how Toy Story or The Lion King was produced.
AI is now streamlining or shortcutting the animation process, which could definitely cost jobs in the future. He doesn’t think that AI will ever take over bespoke animation, but even with this example of Secret Invasion, there could be other studios who don’t have the same manpower and won’t follow the same rules as Marvel, which was internal art only.
My partner already has some negative views about Marvel Studios and the way they treat outsourced VFX artists with crazy deadlines and poor work-life balances. Now, AI has been added to that slowly ever-growing list of disappointments. The fact that he is able to notice this immediately was honestly surprising. After watching the sequence numerous times, I slowly start to see his point. Will the use of AI stop us from watching Secret Invasion? Probably not. It did diminish our respect for the company. Especially since they have the budget to hire someone to produce something similar.
