\nOscar-winning animator and director Alberto Mielgo has hit back at accusations his cinematic short for Bungie’s Marathon is AI-generated, insisting the production is “not AI”, and was in fact the result of “155 incredible people and hell of hours, days, [and] months” of time.
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\nMielgo – who won an Oscar for his animated short The Windshield Wiper in 2021, and has created two short features for Netflix’s Love Death and Robots – served as director on Marathon’s eight-minute-long reveal cinematic. The short, narrated by Ben Starr, was released in April as part of developer Bungie’s big news blowout for the extraction shooter<\/a>.
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\nMarathon’s reveal was, of course, a chance for the increasingly embattled Bungie – which has faced ongoing reports of tumbling staff morale<\/a> and senior management toxicity<\/a> over the last 18 months – to shift the narrative to something more positive. However, the studio instead found itself embroiled in a plagiarism scandal<\/a>, which appears to have led to unfavourable discourse around Mielgo’s trailer – and the director has now clearly had enough.
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\n“I can’t believe we’ve reached a point where I have to clarify this, but here it goes,” a clearly exasperated Mielgo wrote on Instagram<\/a>, “this is not AI. HELLO. Everything you see in this film: paintings, animations, 2D and 3D work, compositing, and renders done with huge team – 155 incredible people and hell of hours, days, months… Yes, our Achilles’ heel: time.”
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\n“Many of you ask me what my opinion on AI is,” he continued. “Honestly, I have no idea. But one thing is certain: AI will never take away my (your) urge or joy for making art and painting. That part will never be replaced.”
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\nAccording to The Game Post<\/a>, Mielgo also addressed Marathon’s plagiarism scandal in now-deleted follow-up comments, saying none of the assets Bungie admitting to using without the original artist’s permission “ever reached [his] team]” and did not feature in the trailer. He reportedly also said he believed the incident was “genuinely a mistake, blown out of proportion”.
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\nAs for Marathon, Bungie delayed the game indefinitely in June<\/a> following “passionate” alpha playtest feedback. However, comments by Sony CFO Lin Tao this month appeared to confirm it’ll still launch by March next year<\/a>.
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