Will artificial intelligence replace motion designers?

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Petya,

Do you think it’s possible for artificial intelligence to COMPLETELY
replace motion designers. If so, how soon do you expect that to happen?

What a great question, thank you.

The short answer, is “No” 🙂

IMHO: Many of the suppliers out there suddenly offering A.I., has only removed “Machine Learning” from their product description, and suddenly replaced it with A.I. without adding “intelligence” to the product.
OK, that was harsh, but on point.

If you come from the point that A.I. is an actual being, will it ever have your understanding of creativity, aesthetics, functionality and messaging? (there is a likely to be a few more descriptive words to add to that list)
Of course it won’t, because just like humans, we, and the A.I. are all individuals.
But it will, much faster than a human, be able to learn your way of doing motion design, and replicate that look and feel.
Which by the way is only useful to the A.I. if someone can articulate what their desired end result is – therein you’ll find that understanding the needs of your client, often is more important than the execution of the job itself.

Have you ever tried to work as a supplier in a long chain where there is external PR, communications and marketing companies working with internal managers at large scale businesses? Often everybody has to make a change to your work, except, a month later, the Fortune 500 CEO gets to watch the “community version” of your work, and their final changes takes it back to be exactly like the first version you delivered…

Keep in mind that most, if not all A.I. today, is “trained” using source of information that is only available on-line. If you take a specific point, space, location, in time, you may feel the rain, see an angle that has never been photographed, whilst having the smell of spring in the air (any of those words can be replaced. but you get the meaning). The A.I. can not generate that feeling or knowledge if it does not have it. The same goes for empathy, love, hate, compassion, anger – the “Machine Learning mechanism” can explain it, but can not feel it.

When all that is said, A.I. is undoubtedly a game changer to our industry, any industry, and if left unchecked it can wreak havoc.

But on the positive side, anyone working in Motion Design today are already using A.I. to make better and faster results in their work.
One example is Adobe Sensei, which are already speeding up how work is done in Creative Cloud products such as After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and so forth.
(https://www.adobe.com/uk/sensei/creative-cloud-artificial-intelligence.html)
Except, once you read the fine print, you might come to the conclusion that Adobe, which has got one of the largest ever set of data points ever collected, that this data is what goes into their Machine Learning. Because Adobe Sensei can not accurately tell whether it is the cat, or the dog, that you the designer want to remove from the picture. But once you tell it, it will do it much faster and neater, than how you would have done it previously.

If you look at history, these tools will be a game-changer to the industry. And you either have to keep on up-skilling, or be left behind.

One good example is from back in the day when large corporate presentations was done on DIA slide projectors. Where the slides was expensive and time-consuming to make, and the projectors took time and loads of effort to program – that whole industry got replaced by PowerPoint and video projection.
Back then, executive human “A.I.” clients in pursuit of cost savings, allowed themselves to be guided by the Comic Sans font, low resolution over the top bar-charts and family photos to make up for professional photographs. Soon they found professional designers who could deliver the job, better. Whilst also getting the message across to an audience otherwise bewildered.

The role of a good Motion Designer will always be in demand, but whether they will ever again create and use a new key-frame, is the big question?

Just an opinion 😀

Atb
Mads

[Darren Ruddock]

I was about to post on this exact topic. I have been using After Effects for some time but would really like to push my skillset further.

The trouble is, I wondered if I would be wasting my time doing a course in After Effects if AI is gonna wipe motion artists out ( or the world lol).

Also, what would you suggest learning alongside After Effects? Which AI developments are worth putting the time in to learn???

Many thanks

[Santanu Bhattacharjee]

Besides a filmmaker, I am also a computer engineer working on AI and various other software. Since ChatGPT and midjourney every other person is offering half baked AI products. In the near future, we will see many small plugins and tools like generative AI, predictive AI, Search AI for mundane tasks. They will get better by day.

However, for exact design to be created, as in the creators mind, AI has to start with 3D geometries. This is already happening, but very rudimentary yet. It would need quantum computing and large convolutional networks for that size of number crunching. And quantum is still in its early prototype phase. Another 10 years…

http://www.santanu.biz

santanu.biz

Corporate Video and Film Makers Mumbai - Santanu Productions

Premium Corporate Video & Film Makers in Mumbai. 29 years experience, 3000+ productions, 500+ clients, 90% returning Customers. Call 9892913567

[Burt Hazard]

Hello. Unfortunately I’m going to have to be the downer here. 😒 I actually do think A.I. is going to replace a lot of the work done by graphic designers/motion designers. What I’ve seen of Open A.I.’s DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and the like is insanely impressive. Of course this is already in a long running discussion that “machines will never be able to…[fill in the blank].” The game of Go was considered to be too complicated for computers to understand then Alpha Go beat the world champion in a well publicized series of matches. I’ve heard people like Vladimir Chopine from Geek At Play studios say that he uses A.I. as a “starting point” (I think he uses Midjourney) for his artwork, but more and more I think it is the end point itself. If you can type in “a lemur surfing in the style of Monet” and the software can produce that as well as totally photo-realistic images, then I think any human designer has a run for their money.

Boris FX’s new version of Silhouette does use Stable Diffusion and right away it could be argued that it eliminates a Photoshop artist in a pipeline. Amazingly though, product head Marco Paolini did say that they are still working on having the software automatically do roto work, but I think it is just a matter of time.

[Finney Barndlow]

Sadly, I think that AI might replace motion designers but I don’t see it happening any time soon. I mean, yes, these tools are getting better and better. Still, most of them require, let’s call it, a human touch – mostly in the form of instructions and editing. The final products are sometimes impressive, I admit. But there’s more work to be done on AI tools before they can completely replace this profession.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

I would rather think of it like using a version of “Siri” or “Alexa” where your personal A.I. over time learns (Machine Learning) your way of doing things.

So at some point the user will ask the A.I. to replicate a motion graphics animation, or AE expressions, that they have previously created. But no longer involving the time consuming effort to find that specific project, “copy and paste”, before being able to modify those timings to suit the new project.

But for A.I. to create your visual story without a lot of input, that will take a lot longer before that happens.

Not least, from personal experience, me and “Siri” still have relationship issues when “she” (it) does not want to do what I tell it to do. But instead find something random to offer to me…
Alexa, “she” (it) turns on whenever someone shouts Alexa on the telly…

Just thinking out loud.

Atb
Mads

[Santanu Bhattacharjee]

Coming back to this post after 2 years, I would say, YES, AI has slowly started eating into some of the video guys jobs. My clients now use AI inhouse for all their small content needs like script, talking heads, removing unwanted stuff from photographs, generative images which they were earlier out sourcing to us.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Santanu,

Yes, clients are starting to use A.I., not least as they are being bombarded by big corporates about the advantages of using it. Google is the latest, in a long line of companies, to try and “hike” subscription, whilst using your data to train their A.I. with.

Adobe, has filed in the UK Parliamentary library that they are closing down core Creative Cloud software package(s), to move investment to A.I. tools like Adobe Express.

Like any other hyped market, it is likely to crash and normalise – think the implosion of IT related companies in the late 1990’s. Before then there is numerous examples of how the valuation of a product or a company did not match the reality.

Once your clients realise that you got to have creativity and communications skills to even use A.I., and be able to evaluate GOOD v BAD story telling. They will be using your business for the good stuff.

This is when you should point out to you client(s) that loads of regular work comes with a “retainer” discount. And, if they cut down on work, then you naturally become more expensive, as they only use you on the GOOD stuff, which will sell their products and make them look great – as opposed to the “3-legged employee doing a robotic like presentation”.

I’ve just taken a peak at your website – it looks really profsesional.

Although I have no knowledge of how your market operates “locally” your side of the world, and I myself is currently re-doing the WORST of all websites in the galaxy, I am happy to make suggestions:
Maybe tweak your text intro as to cover what clients in the world of A.I. is getting from you, and what problems you solve for them?
And then, later tell them about all the great stuff that you have done previously.

With that in mind, go Network + reach out to executives to discuss idea generation and the future of Media Production, and why you are a strong partner working alongside their in-house department.

Most importantly: You are not alone in feeling the pinch. But there will always be a space for you, as long as you adapt and meet the needs of the customer.

Atb
Mads

[Santanu Bhattacharjee]

Hey Mads,

Thanks for your detailed reply. And another bigger thanks for taking out time to go through my website. I am already pondering about your suggestions to introduce AI offerings and benefits to clients will surely help.

I agree that just like the dotcom bubble, today’s AI is half-baked and another big bubble. Our offerings is going to be that “novelty” the CHATGPTs and SORAs can not bring to table. You are right, they will only cut the mundane retainer stuff we do. However, it will take a while before our clients reorient in these global recession times.

Also thanks for your positive motivation. Makes me feel not-alone in this new disruption, recession era.

Another big problem is that with the advent of newer tech, the design industry is getting more and more under-valued. The social media is bombarded with novelty. Every other guy is a content creator. However our efforts aren’t getting any easy, except for a few rendering times and automation here and there.

You mentioned Adobe contemplating to close the cloud shop. The other day, I was listening to a post of some Pixar guys ridiculing After Effects comparing with to Unreal. While the new Unreal release can render 144 FPS of realistic, procedural landscape, The latest After Effects struggles to render Realtime at 0.25 fps a simple footage with a simple effect. Similarly Autodesk has been sleeping over their laurels for way too long. The future of AI is novelty not re-creation. AI has to create newer worlds never imagined before by creating 3D models. Re-using existing art for generative content will hit the wall soon.

[Santanu Bhattacharjee]

THIS IS SCARY. I have been dabbling into many artforms in my career of 30 years. I have seen many artforms and hard work of people vanish in my lifetime. In the late 80s, when music synthesizers, octa-pads became popular, live musicians like brass, strings, wind, large studios lost out to them.

With the advent of cheap DSLRs, film crew shrunk. Smartphone cameras killed the photography business because many client couldn’t perceive the difference. Free YouTube and COVID made every other guy a filmmaker. Cinema is dead because of the OTT. Video businesses shrunk.

ChatGPT, shrunk the writers community. Voice artists are losing business to AI. There is an AI for every artform. AI though in its juvenile stage, it will soon be the last nail in the coffin.

Its nice to console that AI is only a tool. AI will not be the problem, but the democracy of every Tom, Dick owning it will. Art will then belong to loudest mouth on the highest cliff = democracy of art.

http://www.santanu.biz

santanu.biz

Corporate Video and Film Makers Mumbai - Santanu Productions

Premium Corporate Video & Film Makers in Mumbai. 30 year's experience, 3000+ productions, 500+ clients, 90% returning Customers. Call 9892913567