{"id":197018,"date":"2025-12-17T19:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/197018\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T19:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:18:07","slug":"disney-animators-respond-to-openai-deai-no-artistic-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/197018\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Animators Respond To OpenAI DeaI: “No Artistic Integrity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWelcome to\u00a0Rendering<\/a>, a Deadline column reporting at the intersection of\u00a0AI<\/a>\u00a0and showbiz. Rendering examines how\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0is disrupting the entertainment industry, taking you inside key battlegrounds and spotlighting change makers wielding the technology for good and ill.\u00a0Got a story about AI? Rendering wants to hear from you: jkanter@deadline.com.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis edition: former Disney<\/a> animators ponder whether the company is abandoning a century of storytelling tradition with its shock OpenAI<\/a> deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Disney signed its $1B agreement with OpenAI <\/a>last week, it was quick to reassure actors. Disney will \u201crespect the rights of individuals to appropriately control their voice and likeness,\u201d it said, when detailing plans to hand over characters including Mickey Mouse, Simba, and Luke Skywalker to Sora<\/a>, the generative AI video app.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what about animators? Sure, their creations belong to Disney, and they won\u2019t make a dime out of the OpenAI licensing deal, but that doesn\u2019t stop these craftspeople from feeling a sense of ownership over their creators. Is Disney selling them out? Or is the Mouse House simply keeping pace with inevitable changes in the way people create and consume content?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo answer these questions, Rendering caught up with two former Disney animators who have differing perspectives on the AI deal that shocked Hollywood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Aaron Blaise talks about animating Beauty and the Beast<\/a>\u2018s titular character, he recalls emoting at his sketch pad. If the Beast was angry, Blaise would snarl. If the Beast was awkward, Blaise would raise his hand to his face and thumb his beard. The Beast was Blaise, and Blaise was the Beast. \u201cThat\u2019s what it takes to bring these characters to life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlaise was one of only a handful of animators who worked on Beast under Glen Keane, so there is little surprise he feels conflicted about the character being available on Sora. \u201cThat\u2019s interesting,\u201d he says cautiously.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscar-nominated Brother Bear director picks his words carefully during our interview. He remains a cheerleader for Disney after spending more than two decades at the company, and he is resolutely looking for the positives in AI, but he accepts there is something unnerving about text-prompting the Beast into action.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt degrades it for the filmmakers,\u201d he says, before acknowledging that consumers won\u2019t feel as strongly about artistic provenance once their kids are prompting Elsa. Blaise believes that Disney doesn\u2019t have a choice but to side with OpenAI. \u201cThis is them trying to hold the reins and play damage control,\u201d he explains. \u201cIf you can\u2019t beat them, join them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Disney is literally joining them. The best of Sora\u2019s short-form fan creations will be showcased on Disney+, meaning generative AI characters will live alongside 100 years of animation tradition. Not that Blaise considers it a threat to feature-length stories. \u201cOf the people I know [at Disney], the notion of creating films with AI couldn\u2019t be further outside the universe of what they want,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The Owl House<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney Channel<\/p>\n

\n\tDana Terrace, creator of Disney Channel series The Owl House, has a different take. She urged people to ditch Disney+<\/a> when Bob Iger first hinted at the short-form AI strategy last month. <\/p>\n

\n\tShe is now doubling down following the Sora deal, arguing it is evidence of Disney chiefs doing everything in their power to \u201ctake people out of the equation\u201d (something the company would almost certainly deny). She says that artificial intelligence is \u201cextremely exploitative\u201d of creatives, customers, and the environment, given that the technology relies on energy sucking data centers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s soulless,\u201d Terrace despairs. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any artistic integrity behind it. Art, whether it\u2019s technically beautiful or a child\u2019s drawing, is created with intent, with heart, and with meaning \u2014 even if that meaning is just to f**k around. AI doesn\u2019t have any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTerrace remains in contact with old colleagues at Disney TV, arguing that the mood is \u201cmiserable\u201d among animators. \u201cEveryone is scared for their jobs. There\u2019s barely any shows in development, there\u2019s barely any shows in production \u2026 and this is just scaring people even more,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Terrace and Blaise do not agree on the OpenAI partnership, they do share concerns about how the instant gratification of AI could impact future generations of animators.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith Sora, we won\u2019t have the time or patience to sit down and create works of art that help us deal with our feelings or communicate with others, or create something big and beautiful like a movie because we\u2019ll be used to just getting it instantly,\u201d Terrace says. <\/p>\n

\n\tBlaise knows the value of patient storytelling. Snow Bear, his Oscar-shortlisted animated short, involved two years of painstaking hand-drawing. Depicting the journey of a lonely polar bear across a thawing wilderness, the 10-minute film essentially captures Blaise\u2019s experience of losing his wife to cancer and seeing her almost literally \u201cmelt away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSnow Bear\u2019s YouTube video has amassed more than a million views in two weeks and clearly packs an emotional punch for those who have watched. \u201cThe general, consistent comments we\u2019re getting are that it\u2019s so refreshing to see handmade animation \u2014 and they\u2019re bashing AI,\u201d Blaise chuckles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSnow Bear is a timely reminder that, even as Disney hitches its commercial wagon to generative AI, it\u2019s the human storytellers who really bring the Mouse House\u2019s most iconic characters to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to\u00a0Rendering, a Deadline column reporting at the intersection of\u00a0AI\u00a0and showbiz. Rendering examines how\u00a0artificial intelligence\u00a0is disrupting the entertainment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[220,103521,9618,93,61,60,270,1682,99335,37485,104889],"class_list":{"0":"post-197018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-beauty-and-the-beast","10":"tag-disney","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-openai","16":"tag-rendering","17":"tag-sora","18":"tag-the-owl-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}