'Air Head': AI-generated film redefines rules of animation

"They say everyone has something unique about them. Something that sets them apart. In my case it's quite obvious what that thing is." This is how the short film "Air Head" begins. The special thing about the protagonist is that instead of a head, a yellow balloon grows out of his neck. The film itself is also something special: It is entirely generated by artificial intelligence.

Sora turns text prompts to video

The video clips were generated using the as-yet-unreleased text-to-video generativeAI tool Sora. The technology comes from the company OpenAI, which is also behind the chatbot ChatGPT. Sora works very simply. You describe the video you want to generate and receive it within a few seconds.

"When we heard about Sora, Walter immediately said: We're making a movie," says the film's producer, Sidney Leeder, referring to her husband, Walter Woodman, a writer and director with the Toronto-based multimedia production company Shy Kids. Together with the second director, Patrick Cronenberg, he created the film in just a week and a half. That's an incredibly fast time for an animated film like this. 

The team entered hundreds of text prompts, as the instructions to the AI are called, in order to achieve the final result: A short film that at first glance is indistinguishable from a live-action movie.

Sora's speed enabled the team to quickly generate new images at every stage of production. This is almost impossible with conventional animation.

Admittedly, not everything in "Air Head" was created by AI. The human masterminds behind it still needed to put the clips together and perform post-production with small adjustments such as color corrections.

Faces and hands are still a problem

Like the protagonist in "Air Head," who tries not to burst in a cactus store, the filmmakers also had to dodge a few pinpricks. "It's hard to get persistent faces and performances so we sidestepped this problem by making it a yellow balloon," says director Patrick Cronenberg.

In addition to consistency, the hands and certain movements are also a problem. "It's more simple to make something beautiful. To make this beautiful thing do what you want it to do is much harder," says Walter Woodman. It was particularly difficult to make a headless body run after a balloon head.

AI as creative tool

Director Cronenberg describes working with Sora as a crazy new kind of collaboration. "AI prompting is about tricking the computer into doing what you want it to do." The AI often painted a smiley face on the head," he says. "It is not enough to give the instruction that the AI should not give the balloon a face. Then it does the opposite and puts a face on the balloon. The most promising prompt was: 'Man with a yellow balloon for a head. The yellow balloon is clean with no markings on it.'"

Volker Helzle is Head of Research and Development at the Animation Institute of the Filmakademie Baden Württemberg and conducts research into AI animation. He was impressed by the film, but he criticizes the fact that Sora's rise means a part of human creativity is lost. As an animator, "you normally immerse yourself in a topic for hours and days and animate details. With Sora, you sit in a time machine and don't take part in the creative process," he says.

For Walter Woodman, however, Sora is merely another team member in the creative process. "As a director, it's frustrating. Sometimes you want the actors to do exactly what you want. You need to find a way to collaborate with them. It's the same with Sora: You have to collaborate with it. You have to leave space for God to enter the room. You have to let serendipity happen. With whatever collaborator, you should allow their voice to be heard. You expect a thing to go one way but then you start jamming together and that collaboration turns into something better."  

'Our understanding of creativity will change'

"We are moving in a direction in which our understanding of human creativity will change fundamentally," believes Helzle. "In 10 years' time, my 5-year-old daughter may no longer be interested in whether something is AI-generated or not. Maybe there will already be AI content that is generated directly based on user behavior."

The character in "Air Head" is "one pinprick away from extinction" every day. Is that also the case with the animation sector? Walter Woodman doesn't think that Sora will replace all animation. "It always depends on the artists and their vision. For example, Studio Ghibli. I think part of the reason people like them is that their productions are done by hand. I think that's going to be right for Studio Ghibli. They may not use this technology at all."

200,000 jobs are at stake, but new ones will evolve

Everyone in the industry agrees that there will be changes on the labor market. That is also confirmed by a survey conducted on behalf of US animation workers, which concludes that AI will disrupt some 200,000 entertainment jobs in the country by 2026.

However, new professions will be added. One of them is held by Jonas Trottnow, an AI engineer. He believes that new fields of work lie in the area of prompt engineering and in the technical understanding of generative AI.

Has OpenAI become too powerful?

Trottnow criticizes Sora for the fact that American companies such as OpenAI have centralized power over the models. Helzle also sees this as a problem. "This is dangerous when it comes to serious topics, such as conflicts in films or documentaries. What parameters does the AI adopt? And who controls them?"

He also describes a "clear backlash against US companies that have squandered a lot of trust." There are also legal concerns, as it is unclear what data were used to train the AI.

With Sora, anybody can create animation films

Nonetheless, everyone agrees that when Sora comes onto the market at the end of the year, it will open up endless possibilities for small production companies. Soon you may no longer need a great deal of knowledge to animate; anyone will be able to animate clips.

"We are going to see what kind of ideas they've got inside of them and that is very exciting. I am always looking for originality. This is an opportunity to encourage it," says Walter Woodman. "The next film that will change the world will come from somewhere we really don´t expect. Maybe it's an anime dragon in a cyberpunk setting."

This article has been translated from German.