At the Annecy Animation Festival, AI gets whistled
Like every year, Annecy lives for a few days to the rhythm of its famous International Animated Film Festival. “But this year, all eyes are on the handful of works that have been programmed by the festival despite the fact that they contain images generated by artificial intelligence – or perhaps they were chosen precisely for that”, reports the Spanish daily El País.
Since the announcement of its program, the festival has been the subject of strong reactions to this decision, and, “on social networks, the controversy ignited and Internet users attacked the festival or the authors of the works speaking of ‘shame’ or ‘stolen work’”, specifies the newspaper.
A boo clip
Nearly 17,000 visitors from 104 different countries are expected during this 48e edition of the essential animated cinema event, which started on June 9 and ends on the 15th. In total, eight works using new generative AI technologies were selected.
From the first day, tensions were high, reports Variety, the reference magazine in Hollywood. So the music video Shooting star, by the Chien Méchant duo, produced using generative AI, “had the unprecedented honor of being whistled by the spectators”, underlines the magazine.
For some people, “this image generation software was formed by illegally drawing on copyrighted material, and therefore programming works that use these images – whether at the time of creation or production – amounts to to advocate theft”.
Big concerns
The specialized American site Indie Wire reported the reasons given by the festival management for including such works. Its artistic director, Marcel Jean, indicated that he had received dozens of applications of this type, and that the festival does not have rules to disqualify films for the sole use of AI.
While emphasizing that the majority of these works do not possess great qualities, he added that certain directors nevertheless demonstrate real creativity with this new tool. He justified himself by recalling that the innovative aspect of stop motion used on photos in the film Tango, by Zbigniew Rybczynski, awarded in 1984, caused a scandal at the time, while today it is considered a masterpiece of animation.
According to Indie Wire, the selection of a film particularly tensed the public. This is the feature film Who Said Death Is Beautiful? by the Japanese Ryo Nakajima, “because the AI software used (Stable Diffusion from Stability AI) is the subject of several class action lawsuits for copyright infringement.”
For El País, this edition reveals above all “great concerns about the consequences of AI, not only on copyright, but also on the future of artists”.
