The Dope Sheet - July 11, 2025
This week in animated AI news
This week in news from the intersection of animation and AI: A number of new AI tools for creatives have dropped, and Crunchyroll got caught with their ChatGPT showing.
Let’s get into it.
Tools
The Toronto-based AI startup Moonvalley has finally released its video generation model Marey to the public. Unlike models like Veo or Sora, Moonvalley claims Marey isn’t trained on any copyrighted material, making it safe for commercial use. And after developing the model with various Hollywood creatives, they have created a suite of controls that make Marey seem at least a little more viable as a pro-tool than some of its bigger rivals. (via Deadline)
Elsewhere in the video-gen space, a group of alums from Pixar, Apple, and Unity have created Intangible, an AI tool that attempts to solve the controllability problem by adding 3D space to the mix. Users first set up their scene using basic 3D models, and then translate that to AI video. But, unlike Marey, the video-gen part of the process is created with the existing model Kling which is most definitely not free of copyright issues. (via Fast Company)
On the AI modelling front, Chinese tech giant Tencent released Hunyuan3D-PolyGen which purports to have solved the key problem of previous image-to-3D asset models by creating meshes that are actually production-ready (as opposed to the topology messes previous models have created). I’ll be writing more on AI 3D asset creation soon, so stay tuned! (via AI News)
Anime
After claiming they weren’t using AI for subtitles, anime streamer Crunchyroll got caught by an eagle-eyed fan of Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show clearly using ChatGPT to translate the show into German (see below). Crunchyroll has since said this was the fault of a third-party vendor. (via engadget)
Games
On the heels of their tentative deal last month, video game performers have finally ratified an agreement to end their year-long strike. Central to the deal are protections over AI. (via Reuters)
Ahead of the release of the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, Obbe Vermeij, a former GTA technical lead, has come out to say that future games will likely cost much less because of AI, “I think these banks of artists that are just building massive maps or massive cutscenes, I think some of that will be taken over by AI in the next, you know, five years or so." (via gamesradar)
In contrast, at the Develop:Brighton game conference this week, Cassia Curran of Curran Games Agency offered this perspective:
The development of AI will mean there’s an abundance of content out there. But the way that you can achieve success as a developer will be to lean into the authentic human experience you’ve lived. AI cannot reproduce your feelings or your culture, and these can be reflected in your games. In the era of AI slop, players will be looking for experiences that feel new and deeply human.
Seeya next time,
Matt Ferg.