Animators Against Slop
My interview with Howard Wimshurst, independent animator and anti-AI activist
My main goal with this newsletter is to get a full sense of how AI is really affecting the animation industry without falling into the hype or the doom. And that means talking both to folks who are embracing the technology wholeheartedly, and those who are adamantly against it.
One of the biggest stories right now surrounds the people who are fighting against generative AI. Fan backlash has caused some productions to reverse course on their plans for AI, and many artists are being vocal about negative ways the technology is affecting their livelihoods and the entertainment industry in general.
Howard Wimshurst is a British independent animator and educator with a strong following on YouTube. His personal style leans heavily into the handmade nature of traditional animation, and by extension he is a fervent advocate of human-powered art. When I saw a video of him speaking at the anti-AI demonstration at the Annecy Animation Festival this June, I knew I had to speak with him.
Howard is passionate about animation and his love for not only the craft, but also the community of artists surrounding the medium was evident the moment I started speaking with him. I hope you enjoy our conversation!
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
LIFE IN THE MACHINE: We’re going to get into AI, but before we do, I’m curious where your love for traditional 2D animation comes from.
HOWARD WIMSHURST: I got into animation in the early 2010s on Newgrounds. I started playing Flash games in the IT rooms at school, slacking off when I should have been doing homework. One of the great revelations for me was learning that the animation in these games was being made by teenagers like me. And Newgrounds definitely had that edgy, angsty vide. It was very rough around the edges – there was nothing corporate about it.
So, I started joining these animation tournaments where the prize was just street-cred. It’s hard to describe in words how that felt, but I've been trying to carry the torch in my own way to preserve that feeling. Something that's raw and real. At the core of a good artistic project, there's some kind of passion that's moving it forward. Art, animation, and game design is a deep form of communication.
That’s why I don’t see this new wave of [AI] “content” as real art. It doesn't seek to communicate, it seeks arbitrage. It’s taking advantage of real artists, but there’s no desire with AI slop to communicate something important or meaningful.
LM: When you look at generative AI, is that the biggest issue you have with it, the lack of human connection?
HW: I wouldn’t say that’s the main issue; that’s just something personal to me. I'd say the main issue is - and I’m not being hyperbolic here - we are not only facing the potential destruction of the illustration, art, animation, and gaming industries, but of the mediums themselves. And it's destruction through flooding.
AI has the ability to create near infinite impersonations [of art] to the point where you can’t find the authentic one. There will be one authentic piece in that crowd made by a person with intention but if it can’t be identified then the artist who created it will not get rewarded. What’s really insidious about it is that these AI models rely on artists. It is parasitic in its nature. Artists do not need these AI models, but these AI models need artists to keep on creating.
I shouldn’t have to explain why it's a problem that there is a generator that's sucking up the energy to power entire countries and we're using it to create derivative, generic averages of media that already exists. I shouldn’t have to explain how that is damaging to the ecosystem of the internet, and it is watering down true human connections from one person to another. It is destructive. It absolutely is.
Anywhere you go in the world where there are hydro electric dams, you will find a similar story.
To build the dam, they had to displace some local villages. Some of the villagers didn't want to be displaced, but they were outvoted. They were bought out with large compensation packages, offered new housing on high land out of the way of the flood area, and ultimately the needs of the many trumped the needs of the few. These dam constructions are controversial. Sometimes the villagers were too stubborn, and it prevented the dam plans from going ahead.
This is not an accurate analogy for what's happening with AI.
To make this analogy fit what's happened with the AI boom, we need to make it far more heinous:
In order to make a product/service that people actually liked and accepted, The dam company needed precious materials belonging to the villagers. So in the dark of night they stole these materials from the village to complete their build.
The dam company did not tell the villagers about the dam until they switched it on and flooded the land. The villagers who could swim thrashed for their lives in the flood. The ones who couldn't swim drowned.
The dam company did not compensate any villagers at all. Zero dollars in compensation.
The dam drained electricity from the power grid.
The dam did not create more jobs than it destroyed. It supplied the people with a shiny over-valued toy with limited use cases. It mainly supplied an odd group of people called "influencers". Nevertheless, it was hailed as the future. Those who were able to use the toy to speed up their work were promptly given even more work by their bosses to compensate. Work hours stayed the same. Offices shrunk their staffing.
To top it all off, water the dam produced was not clean. It was disgusting shit water that smelled like the uncanny valley.
LM: Currently there are models like Adobe Firefly that claim to be trained only on licensed images. You have said in the past that even if there are AI systems that are “ethically trained” you would still have a problem with it. Can you explain why?
HW: I have a problem with Adobe Firefly, because the artists and designers who contributed to those datasets clicked “agree” to some kind of contract, but that contract was written before this [generative AI] technology was invented. We can all agree this is not what people were thinking when they clicked agree.
It's very clear that when companies are going to use their dataset in an entirely different way, the decent thing to do is ask people again and be transparent. They weren't. And they're not.
LM: Why do you think generative AI seems to bring the grifters out of the woodwork who are just trying to use this technology to make a quick buck?
Well, these are the same people that came out of the woodwork during the dot-com bubble. They're the same people that came out of the woodwork during the first crypto boom, then the NFT boom, and now the AI boom.
I will say this: They're not from the community that I'm from. These are people I had never heard of. These are people who had never taken an interest in art before they saw a way to exploit art, exploit the medium, and exploit the community. Why is that? They saw a grift. They only came along when they saw something that they could exploit for quick cash. I'm not going to use the word lazy. No, that's too simple. Some of these are motivated hustle bros. I don't think lazy is the right word, but I would say [they are] completely morally bankrupt.
LM: In the series of videos you posed a couple of years ago, you used the evocative metaphor that as an animator, illustrators and concept artists are your neighbours, and their homes are being set on fire by AI. You said that it’s only a matter of time before the flames spread to your home. Now two years later, are you starting to see that happen?
So, full disclosure, I'm still getting plenty of work. But I’m not really in the industry - I’m more like a little satellite on the outside doing my own thing. Clients who might have never worked in animation before come to me for my style. So far there isn’t a magic [AI] button to make animation, at least not in my style. I hope it stays that way.
However, one thing I have noticed is a crisis of confidence. I'm in contact with a lot of animation students because I teach animation online. And there are so many students who believe this to be the end of days. They think this is the apocalypse. There used to be a confidence in the value of art and artists, and we see that being eroded by AI and this corporate propaganda. This could be a lost decade when it comes to animation talents. Where are the experts going to come from if no one's willing to step in and put their faith in this [artform].
So, I'm trying to hold AI companies and AI users accountable. But at the same time, I'm also trying to reassure people that this thing that we all love is valuable.
LM: What kind of role do you see unions and governments playing when it comes to protecting against unethical AI?
HW: I'm of two minds about this. There's some people who say we should treat AI like a new thing and create new legislation with new rules and regulations for this completely new technology.
But there's a strong part of me that thinks - No, treat them like any other tech company. There are stringent rules in place for every other company that doesn't have the buzzword of AI. There are data privacy rules in the EU that the EU has enforced. Why aren't they being enforced here? We already know there are images in those datasets that shouldn't be in there and they haven't weeded them out. This is terribly irresponsible. Why aren't they being held to today's standards?
Also, if we're reinventing the wheel when it comes to these rules, they will try to argue the case that those old rules don't apply to them, because they're going to create a tech utopia with UBI [Universal Basic Income] and no one is going to need to work for the rest of their lives.
Oh, yeah? Who's going to decide that? Who's going to enforce that? Are we really going to rely on Jeff Bezos or Tim Cook, or Mark Zuckerberg - CEOs that are famed for their… benevolent charity?
[In we hold AI companies to different standards] we risk being corrupted by their narratives.
LM: What is your response to people who say the genie is out of the bottle and there’s nothing we can do to stop this technology?
I would ask if they feel the same way about SARS. Do they feel like with SARS, the genie is out of the bottle, and we should legalize SARS? We should allow anyone to carry around a little vial that can kill a whole population of people? It's absolute lunacy that anyone could believe that we got into this situation because of the acts of a few bandits but now we have no agency over our situation. It’s fatalistic.
And I tell you what, this is a necessary part of their plan. They need you to give up, stop holding them accountable and stop holding them to the basic standards of legality that we hold ourselves to.
If I were a bank robber, and I just robbed a bank, what's the message that I would put out to the world? Would I say come and catch me? No, I'd say, “Give up. I've already crossed the border into Mexico. Don't pursue me any further. Don't put me on trial. Don't even bother the genie is out of the bottle.
LM: When it comes to AI and animation, what’s one thing you’d like to leave with people?
HW: Whatever you make of the little animation I recently made, this much is clear: If you instructed an AI model to make an animation in my style based on my trail of public data, it would not have made anything close to what I made. Why?
Because I'm not a string of data. I'm a real person in a body that is privately navigating through the real world. I'm going through an organic process of self-discovery and growth. It's scary, messy and exhilarating.
Some creative connections I make are coincidental and spontaneous. Others have been stewing since early childhood. All of them go through me - a real person. My process is slow, fun and organic. Whatever comes out at the end is the result of a sustained deliberate effort to connect with other human beings. Perhaps they will see what I make and feel less alone.
What happens in this medium affects me.
I have a stake in what happens next. If I make an animation in the right way, our situation here on this rock could be improved. This understanding guides my hand to create responsibly.
Unlike AI models, I’m not producing imagery because some peabrain prompter bro told me to. I don't cling to billions of datapoints to squeeze out a uniform average like a soft-serve icecream. I'm not in the business of making statistically perfect animations, nor do I want to be. Perfect is boring.
Animation is a way for me to express something wonky. It's a record of what I'm going through at this moment in my life - mixed in are personal fantasies, ideas, opinions and doubts. If that doesn't interest you, fine, but don't conflate what I do with what a creepy image-generating app does.
There is bitter irony in knowing that the wonky art I struggle to make will inevitably be collected and relied upon by AI to know what to serve to prompters. It will be used to stay up-to-date with the zeitgeist of contemporary art and film. They need a continual supply of these beautifully wonky artworks to have any perception of where we stand culturally.
This is not to flatter myself. It is to defend the medium I love from reckless ignorance. It is also to explain why I will always be attracted to wonky creations made by the singular human hand. Why I will always be unnerved and disgusted by generative AI, whose use mocks the masterful art that make the world all the more profound.
To the tech extremists who insist that I "don't understand the technology", my response is this: you don't understand the artform.
LM: Thanks so much for chatting with me.
HW: Thanks for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
Whether you agree with the anti-AI stance or not, there is no doubt in my mind that Howard cares deeply for animation and the artists who make it. At the end of the day, we all want a stronger animation industry, no matter what it takes.
If you’d like to learn more about Howard Wimshurst and his animation, you can check out his website and his YouTube page.
Seeya next time,
Matt Ferg.
I disagree with just about every thing in this article concerning AI.