AI-Generated Anime Goes Viral On Social Media Largely Because Of People Who Think It Stinks

For what feels like the umpteenth time in recent months, a Twitter poster has rushed to social media to show off what they perceived as "incredible" content produced by artificial intelligence, only to be told by many that it actually stinks.

After similar stories played out with an AI-generated children's book "writer" and an AI adult entertainment doomer, the latest person to fall victim to finding out much of the internet still thinks AI art is bad, actually, is Twitter's @ammaar, who gushed on the site about a so-called "AI anime" featuring two folks in medieval times playing Rock-Paper-Scissors.

The folks @CorridorDigital combine Stable Diffusion, Dreambooth, and Davinci Resolve for their AI powered anime and the results are incredible! pic.twitter.com/AnxaAd0CHp

— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) February 27, 2023

The piece was made by Corridor Labs and used a mix of Stable Diffusion, Dreambooth and Davinci Resolve. The full seven-minute video, posted on the Corridor Labs YouTube channel, has gained over 1.9 million views in five days, as well as a large amount of positive reception in the comments — though the use of AI in the project is not explicitly mentioned in the description.

The clip was soundly criticized by Twitter users, many of whom noted that the art style was not actually "anime" (more like rotoscope) and that the clip was noticeably "soulless" to some.

Others also defended the clip, noting that while it might not match the quality of work produced by actual animators now, it's a matter of time before AI art is able to overcome its "being visibly soulless" problem.

Some, however, still weren't so sure — though the clip showed AI can at best make a facsimile of an existing art style (in the case of the clip, that of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust), the messiness of its storyboarding, its inconsistencies between shots and basic animation errors gave many folks little reason to believe the technology would one day make something broadly considered "competent."

While time will eventually tell if AI-generated art can ever "get there" and see widespread use in the art industry, its champions may want to carefully consider releasing tech demos that have been oft-criticized as worse than the work of human artists.