Titled The Dog and the Boy, Netflix’s new animated short film was made by WIT Studio, and the Netflix Japan Twitter account recently tweeted out that the art and background used in the film were AI-generated. It didn’t take long for the backlash to start, especially when you consider that image generation AI has been a huge source of controversy as it’s generally regarded as unethical among animators and artists.
The tweet in question states: “As an experimental effort to help the anime industry, which has a labor shortage, we used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts!”
The irony here is that the animation industry has long been plagued with issues like low pay, high stress, long working hours, combined with high demand, resulting in lots of burnout among artists. The tweet from Netflix Japan comes off as a little tone-deaf as a result, as the issue isn’t necessarily the labor shortage itself, as it is the subpar working conditions in general.
Ironically, the credits also list the background designer as “AI + Human”, implying that human artists were involved in creating the art for the film, but the credits don’t seem to reflect that appropriately. Needless to say, Netflix has been met with tons of flak in the tweet replies, as fans and viewers alike are calling for better working conditions for animators and artists instead of relying on AI for image generation.