Did Nick Park wake up and put on the wrong trousers this morning?
In a recent interview with Radio Times, the creator of the beloved claymation series “Wallace and Gromit” said his animation studio, Aardman, would “embrace” AI — albeit in a “cautious” manner.
“When ‘Toy Story’ came out [in 1995], we thought, ‘How long have we got?’ But we’ve managed to survive CGI,” Park told Radio Times, as spotted by GamesRadar. “In fact, there’s been a resurgence of interest over the years in our stop-motion animation. We use CGI as well, but AI is a whole new thing.”
“Obviously a lot of people will be fearing for their jobs,” Park admitted. “We want to embrace the technology and find in what ways it’s going to be useful to us, maybe to do animation a bit quicker, but we’re going to be very cautious not to lose our values.”
“The clay is our USP [unique selling point],” he said, “and we pride ourselves in that. Authenticity is the most important thing. It’s where the charm is.”
It’s not quite the grovelingly glowing pro-AI press release we’ve numbed ourselves to hearing from many an artist and celebrity who’ve caved to that sweet tech startup money. But while Park may not be crackers about AI, it’s still an intriguing — or worrying, depending on your perspective — thing to hear from one of the key figures at Aardman, which built its reputation for its meticulously handcrafted claymation across films like “Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” and “Chicken Run.” AI usage remains hugely controversial among creatives, who fears its potential to destroy jobs and steal original work, on top of arguably being antithetical to creativity itself.
Park seems to be in a similar camp with legendary director and special effects wizard James Cameron, who joined the board of the image generation company Stability AI last year. Cameron, however, has since come out strongly against the tech’s use in entertainment, calling generative AI replacing actors “horrifying,” and emphasizing that his upcoming “Avatar” film, “Fire and Ash,” does not use generative AI whatsoever.
“I’m not personally interested in using those tools, in using any pathway that uses technology to replace human creativity,” he said in a CBS Sunday Morning interview. But echoing Park’s stance, Cameron also said he could see AI being used to improve workflows as long as it’s implemented “ethically, morally and practically.”
To this kind of fence-sitting, we retort by quoting a classic Wallace-ism: “It’s no use prevaricating about the bush.”
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