AI-generated artwork is becoming harder and harder to spot, and that includes anime. And I don’t just mean the pictures you see on Instagram or elsewhere of the so-called “Ghibli-inspired” art; I’m talking about actual animations. Take a quick watch of the clip below and see if you notice anything off.
If you were like me or many other Redditors on JetKusanagi’s repost from X on r/mildlyinfuriating, you might have watched the clip multiple times, only to come to the conclusion: Where is the AI? The short was originally posted by keshiAIArt, who claims they used Seedance 2.5 and ArtCraft to create the video. There’s no doubt about it: the animation is impressive.
If this clip time-traveled five or more years into the past and people watched it then, would they be able to tell it wasn’t made or drawn by humans? Despite Redditors going into the clip knowing it was AI and still coming out bamboozled, the answer is most likely no. Of course, you could have watched closely and spotted the small details where keshiAIArt’s work falls short compared to something human-made, but what if no one told you it was AI-generated content?
One of Anime’s Strengths in Animation Can Become Its Weakness to AI, Reddit Says
As Reddit user Motivated-Chair puts it, “The biggest advantage of Anime is their lack of movement; AI struggles with fluid motion and consistency across the screen, so having a style that by design stops a lot to save in animation makes it easier to hide.” For instance, if you watch any of Studio Trigger’s work, such as Kill la Kill, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, or Delicious in Dungeon, you can easily pause on plenty of frames that involve morphing or bending characters and objects in unnatural ways for effect.
Of course, there are other factors as well, such as current AI’s lack of consistency, awkwardly generated text, off-sounding voices, and the like. However, these things have been improving noticeably over the past few years, so there’s no telling what the future will hold for an anime that is completely generated artificially.
While the hardcore enthusiast could tell in a heartbeat that, at the very least, something is off with keshiAIArt’s clip, many admit they probably would have never known. “As someone who never watches anime I would have zero clue that this was AI,” remarked a commenter. “If I were a casual watcher I would NOT realize that it was ai, maybe because some of the camera shots seem unnatural but…” trailed off another. “We’re so [expletive] cooked,” laughed a third.
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For sure, plenty of anime fans will feel as JetKusanagi expressed in the repost, “I hate this direction we’re heading in.” On the other hand, many, many more people might not even notice that the content they’re seeing online is AI. It’s happened already with plenty of other media; people question whether a clip or short is AI-generated all the time these days. Now, the next anime we watch might also make us wonder whether a human artists was ever involved.
