{"id":355002,"date":"2025-12-17T23:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355002\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T23:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:24:10","slug":"adventure-time-creator-on-ai-were-cooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355002\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventure Time Creator on AI: \u2018We\u2019re Cooked\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pendleton Ward, the creator of a little show you might\u2019ve heard of called Adventure Time, worked on a new Adult Swim animated special called The Elephant<\/a>. He didn\u2019t make it alone\u2014Ward teamed up with longtime friends and Cartoon Network alumni Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall), and Ian Jones-Quartey (OK K.O.! Let\u2019s Be Heroes). The show, which saw the Avengers\u2019 line-up of cartoon legends craft something without knowing what each other would contribute, gave Ward the jitters over whether their collective, experimental tale would coalesce into something worthwhile. What frightens Ward the most, though, is his thoughts about AI and how it may leave the animation industry as we know it as a hollow, not-so-exquisite corpse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the course of his career, Ward has built a strong body of work as both a creator who shaped a formative part of an entire generation\u2019s childhood and a champion of animation itself. Through Adventure Time alone, creatives like Sugar<\/a> got a rocket strapped to their back, launching them into their own career, all while carrying the flame of crafting bold shows of their own that spoke to adults and kids. The gravitational pull of Adventure Time\u2019s elevated arthouse approach to animation\u2014often serving as a cultural bridge, exposing Western audiences to international talent like former Science Saru creative Masaaki Yuasa<\/a>\u2014embraced creative freedom without hesitation. Ward can easily be credited as one of the bricklayers of this era of highly creative animation, which The Elephant harkens back to. It\u2019s an era that feels on the precipice of dwindling, piece by piece, under the guise of AI as the supposed end-all, be-all of artistic innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Rise And Fall of Queer Cartoons<\/p>\n

Long before LibsofTikTok and Elon Musk called on parents to cancel Netflix, cartoons were already on the tail end of their queer renaissance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After reviewing The Elephant, I walked away with the stark feeling that the special emphatically reached out from beyond my screen, cupped my face, and said, \u201cfuck AI.\u201d When I asked him if that was at all the intent, Ward reminded me that the collaboration was a bit of a misnomer, since he and his peeps couldn\u2019t communicate about what they were contributing to the special\u2019s three acts, not knowing how the whole thing would come together, but trusting that it would be fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re describing is the magic of this piece of art. That there is a meaning [that] emerged from our blind connection of pieces. But in the beginning, all I knew was that I could only get close to feelings of things and not anything too specific,\u201d Ward told me. \u201c\u2018Cause if you get too specific, you\u2019re creating a wall that may not be passable.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I raised the elephant in the room\u2014AI\u2019s looming role in the industry\u2014Ward characterized the magic of The Elephant\u2019s existence as a very cool \u201clast squirt of human creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be weird. I think people are gonna like AI, though,\u201d Ward told me. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be heinous in many, many ways, and it\u2019s gonna destroy the industry\u2014but I think people are gonna like it, ultimately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheAdult Swim<\/p>\n

Whenever Ward thought about the state of the art in the rise of AI, iron bars came to mind, he said. Ward clarified that\u00a0 it was less about prison and more about the lost appreciation of artistry in our day-to-day lives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople used to craft everything. Now, when we look at drywall or something, it means nothing to us. Walls used to be crafted. I think about shaping iron bars. Now, when you walk by those things, they mean nothing because they\u2019ve been industrially manufactured along the factory line,\u201d Ward said. \u201cI feel like that\u2019s going to happen to art at some point, where art\u2019s gonna be this thing that you barely have any appreciation for because it\u2019s all just been generated by machines that have no feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there will still be artists, Ward fears it\u2019ll become a niche hobby, with artists reduced to people who whittle wood, making small things that take hours to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll have value in that way, the way that all original works still have value. But it\u2019ll just become a smaller and smaller group of people doing it for a living \u2018cause you won\u2019t be able to make money,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With major animation companies like Disney playing both sides\u2014pearl clutching over protections against AI<\/a> while partnering with OpenAI for profit<\/a>\u2014Ward and his motley crew of animators are living through a time when the integrity of their craft is under constant threat. Sure, there\u2019ll always be an animation industry, like there\u2019ll always be journalism. But if you want to break through and be a part of it, you\u2019re gonna have to be okay with being poor and deal with AI debasing your craft<\/a> and calling it progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ward sees an inkling of a silver lining in AI\u2014at the very least\u2014creating new jobs for humans willing to work there. But he can\u2019t help noticing how broken a future is where artists push their creativity beyond its limits while still trying to sell commercial art, created in a way that is generic enough for people to relate to, only to have that blow up in their face.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we’re just hired to push the boundaries of art so that AI can eat up all of our ideas and spit them out in different ways, those jobs will become like incredibly creative jobs, because we’ll be needing to push the limits of all styles to feed the AI beast and give it more imagination,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notice how the left lacks all the soul and whimsical charm that makes the right one so pleasing to look at <\/p>\n

AI can copy movements but art comes from the human heart https:\/\/t.co\/MlXmyFXKY7<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 \u261d\ufe0f\ud83d\udca5 (@krystalmelodie) December 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite The Elephant embodying the spirit of a work that\u2019s preserving the soul of animation where human creativity served as the bedrock of its bold and frightening existence, Ward couldn\u2019t help but stifle a laugh when I bluntly asked him if he thought we were cooked. His response, while dour, was brutally honest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cKudos to Adult Swim for making cool stuff and having cool choices like making The Elephant. But yeah, we\u2019re cooked,\u201d Ward said. \u201cAI will be implemented at some point because it saves studios money. It just has to happen at some point, and it just keeps getting better. Time\u2019s a changing.\u201d<\/p>\n