AI is coming for Hollywood. 'It's amazing to see the sophistication of the images,' one of Christopher Nolan's VFX guy says.

• AI-art generators such as Midjourney and Runway's Gen-2 have impressed visual-effect artists. 
• Four VFX artists told Insider that AI could boost productivity and inspire creativity.
• But some worry the tech may replace entry-level jobs in the animation industry down the line. 

When Sebastien Francoeur, a visual-effects artist, first saw clips of AI-generated animations circulating the internet, he was floored. 

Francoeur, a supervisor at the visual-effects studio Rodeo FX, could hardly believe the attention to detail. The AI-generated clips he's seen —  including a "crazy futuristic cyberpunk music video" and "a beautiful landscape with robots" — have lighting and "artistic direction" that makes them on par with work done by human artists, he said. 

Plus, software created the clips from simple text prompts in minutes, Francoeur, who has worked on Netflix's fantasy show "The Witcher" and the horror series "Resident Evil," said. 

That ease is one of the selling points of text-to-image generators including Gen-2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. The companies behind those products have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, according to PitchBook data, while legacy companies such as Shutterstock and Adobe Photoshop are adding AI components to their own software. 

Creatives have used tools such as Midjourney to illustrate book covers and create an Ikea-style furniture catalog. Marvel Studios even used AI to make the opening sequence for the Disney+ series "Secret Invasion."

But many artists have expressed fears that generative AI will make it harder for them to find work, and some companies behind AI-art generators are facing legal battles over claims that they use copyrighted images to train their software. 

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the parent organization now establishing the first VFX union, is urging Hollywood to be extra careful with how the industry uses AI. 

Four visual-effects artists spoke to Insider about how generative AI could change their industry.

Given its impressive capabilities, they believe AI has the potential to save visual-effects artists time on laborious tasks and create new forms of storytelling. However, they are torn about the possibility of AI replacing artists. 

"I don't think AI is going to replace humans — at least not for now," Francoeur, who has experimented with AI in his own work, said. 

Generative AI is impressing VFX artists — but it's not ready for prime time

All four VFX artists who Insider spoke with said the quality of AI-generated animations impressed them. 

Paul Franklin, a senior VFX supervisor at the animation studio DNEG, said he was taken aback when he saw an AI-generated animation featuring "beautiful images of golden sunlight on farmland." Franklin, who worked on visuals for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight," "Inception," and "Interstellar," emphasized how realistic details such as the "corn stalks blowing in the wind" looked. 

"It's amazing to see the sophistication of the images that are coming out of this," Franklin told Insider. 

Mark Chavez, a veteran animator who has worked on films including "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed," echoed the sentiment. After using generative-AI tools such as PYTTI and Disco Diffusion to make his own shorts, he told Insider that AI has created animations that are "starting to create coherent design and motion flow" for character movement.

The technology is particularly helpful when it comes to technical, labor-intensive tasks, the artists said.

AI tools such as text-to-image generators can automate "all the boring stuff" that goes into making quality animations, such as concept-art exploration, image de-noising, and coding characters, said Jennifer Twiner McCarron, the CEO of Thunderbird Entertainment Group, a studio that has made animations for Netflix, PBS Kids, and Marvel. 

That means artists can spend more time on the creative parts of their jobs, including crafting visually compelling stories that resonate with viewers.

Plus, the seemingly randomized nature of the products that AI spits out can help with idea generation.

"You get this sort of almost like this roulette wheel of interesting ideas," Franklin said.

That said, none of the artists are fully ready to press play on the technology.

AI-art generators such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are akin to an "unruly art department" that "goes on tangents" and produces images "completely irrelevant to what you're doing," Franklin said.

And McCarron said that while AI has the potential to create "some really cool looks in 2D" that resemble shows such as "Rick and Morty," the technology is missing the human touch that makes animated films truly unique, especially since AI draws from preexisting images.

"Creativity is the heart and soul that can't be replaced," she said.

'People are concerned': How AI may affect early-career animators

It's that human heart and soul that keeps some VFX artists hopeful about AI's future impact on animation jobs. 

McCarron believes that the technology will enhance the quality of artists' work — not take over.

"It's an assistant, not a replacement," she said. "Once more people embrace it, the more powerful they will be as artists." 

But others are less optimistic. The advancement of novel AI technology could mean disruptive impacts on VFX artists, Mark Patch, an organizer at IATSE involved in the creation of the VFX union, said.

"People are concerned now because you don't know how it will be implemented," Patch told Insider. "We don't have a sustainable career path, really, in visual effects."

Franklin predicted that generative AI will "eliminate a whole tier of entry-level jobs in the visual-effects business," while Francoeur said roles that seem "repetitive" or "very technical" may disappear.

These roles, such as match movers who pair computer-generated scenes with live-action footage, typically give young animators their first break into the entertainment industry.

Chavez said he doesn't think these jobs will be gone entirely. Instead of doing technical grunt work, newer animators will learn to use AI to produce desirable animations, he said. Though he still worries that early-career animators — particularly those trained in a pre-AI world — may not find the jobs they'd hoped for, he said. 

"You have these big student-loan debts, you're 10 years out of college, and suddenly AI comes in and shakes up everything up and makes some parts of your job no longer relevant," he said. "It's very difficult for those folks." 

The solution may lie in embracing AI, not turning away from it.

"Everybody should be looking at AI as a part of the industry," McCarron said. "The people that will be left behind are the people that aren't utilizing AI tools to be more successful in their work."