r/antiai • u/TheMirrorUS • 10h ago
AI News šļø South Park viewers rage over alleged AI use as series contradicts criticism of billionaires
https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/south-park-viewers-rage-over-2047912?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=reddit321
u/Techcrea 10h ago
It's worth noting that South Park creators Matt and Trey have owned an AI company since 2020. https://www.deepvoodoo.com/press
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u/RavenscroftMedia 4h ago
They own a deepfake company, 2 years before deepfakes were called "ai". There is an effort to rebrand everything that used to be CG/ deepfakes as "ai" to normalize the new technology's invasiveness.
I don't know what their current intentions are with technology.
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u/Techcrea 4h ago edited 3h ago
Deepfakes use neural networks that learn from data, the neural nets are trained, use autoencoders, use GANs (generative adversarial networks), generative diffusion models (like most image generators), sometimes voice cloning. The models generalize from examples, generate new content, every single one of these techniques are from the field of Artificial Intelligence, which dates back to the 1950s, just because Bob in accounting didn't learn about the concept of Artificial Intelligence till recently doesn't mean all these these things aren't AI.
The blanket term of "AI" was used for every technique in the field till the 90s when developers wanted to distance themselves from the term (mainly to distance themselves from the unfulfilled promises of AI due to the previous AI winter), so they started referring to things by the name of the techniques, like "this is Fuzzy Logic", "This is an Expert System", "This is a Graph Neural Network", etc... Today there are so many methods and model architectures, often combined into one system that the term AI came back as an umbrella term, as you can't expect everyone to learn the differences and combinations of hundreds of different methods, techniques and architectures in the field of Artificial Intelligence. AI just covers it without having to get into a million details.
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u/RavenscroftMedia 3h ago
They should know the details. People should know things. Our ignorance is being leveraged against us constantly. I see the revisionists say "Lord of the Rings used AI for the hordes." No one was calling it that when it was made. There were artists using 3D models and physics engines.
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u/Techcrea 2h ago
You're talking about Massive, which I've worked with and is an agent based simulation system where each character is autonomous with a "brain," a network of fuzzy logic rules, which sense their surroundings (terrain, sound, what other agents are doing), decides, and picks an action, etc... There's no complex neural networks used, sure, there's some manual work to give the agents their "personality", then you let them run and they do their own thing.
But it was called AI back then (and still is). Stephen Regelous built it at Weta Digital in the late 90s for LOTR, and the production and press commonly described it as AI and "artificial life."
The famous anecdote is that in early tests some agents ran away from the fight instead of engaging. Massive's own materials still describe its agents as having AI brains. It was legitimately AI just not using deeplearning like a lot of the systems are doing today.
Here are some references, some from 20+ years ago calling it AI/artificial intelligence.
https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2003/01/26/25861-massive-attack-2/
https://www.nzonscreen.com/profile/stephen-regelous/
https://www.intelligent-artifice.com/2002/12/battle_of_helms
https://www.wired.com/2002/12/digital-actors-in-rings-can-think/
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u/RavenscroftMedia 2h ago
If you want to get granular about my statement. You are correct.
People did call it AI. Just like the ghosts in Pac-Man are AI.
The main difference is that no one was talking about leveling rural neighborhoods to install LLM data centers to create some sort of āhuman intelligence ā, a metric that does not exist.
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u/Techcrea 1h ago
That's a whole other conversation than whether a technology, technique or method is being used by a few hundred or thousands of professionals. The difference is in scale of training, data and deployment to billions of people. Deepfakes do take a lot of compute to train and I remember them being crunched on GPUs sometimes for weeks at a time a couple of years ago. If billions of people were doing that we'd have the same problem of scale.
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u/Subliminal_Kiddo 3h ago
Have you seen the on thing that studio produced? Itās literally a fake news program - hosted by Trump - warning about the dangers of deepfakes.
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u/Techcrea 2h ago
They're primarily a VFX service provider, not a production company creating a bunch of their own content, they do work for hire with a team of 20+ people.
Sure, they've done music videos such as Kendrick Lamar's "The Heart Part 5", with the faces of OJ Simpson, Jussie Smollett, Nipsey Hussle, Kobe Bryant and Kanye West put on Kendrick, Billy Joel's "Turn the Lights Back On," which shows him playing the song at multiple ages in his life, The Rolling Stones' "In the Stars," TV shows such as Sassy Justice, the live action Donald Trump in South Park, Apple TV's Before, the show Ted, turning Seth MacFarlane into Bill Clinton, TV spots, content for live shows and "holograms", hush hush beauty work for performers, etc...
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u/Fickle_Mix_6119 8h ago
Itās South Parkā¦are people that stupid? They obviously did it as ironic satire. Ā
This show has been going on for decades and people still donāt get their style?
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u/30porn87 8h ago
https://aijobs.whatsthebigdata.com/job/ai-tools-pipeline-developer
They hired an "AI Tools & Pipeline Developer" to do "AI Tools & Pipeline Developer; Full Stack / Python / Animation & VFX Production" for "building a new Artificial Intelligence department to support the production of our animated television series" as ironic satire?
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u/bestestdude 8h ago
New layer of satire unlocked?
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u/Sad-Employee-7257 3h ago
Yeah, these guys are comic geniuses lol. Literally write each episode every week, they work their asses off, they know the writing process like the back of their hand. My first thought when I saw it is theres an intent behind it.
Or maybe theyre also tired of doing a show every week and wanna slop off into the sunset.
Either way, ill always give Matt Stone and Trey Parker the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their craft. Some of the best satirists out there.
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u/cryptamine 4h ago
Are their machines trained on stolen IP?
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u/30porn87 3h ago
> The first phase of this role will focus on helping gather, organize, review, and prepare training materials, including images and video, for use in developing internal AI models.
I highly doubt they will be able to train a usable model just from their own data.
95% chance they just continue training of existing, unethically sourced models.
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u/cryptamine 1h ago
So pure speculation then? i also doubt, and hate ai, but the concept of locally hosted machine learning and generative AI trained on your own IP is good, useful tech I guess.
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u/Mundialito301 2h ago
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually is satire, given South Park's history.
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u/StuMacherGhostface 19m ago
Don't argue with South Park (America) fans, they are blindly loyal to Matt and Trey and think they can do no wrong because of s a t i r e
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8h ago edited 8h ago
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u/cunningjames 5h ago
Having someone knowledgeable about them is a pure necessity now.
[...]
Obviously SP donāt need to make advanced water sims, it was just to give an example of how using AI in TV and movies isnāt black and white.
South Park's animation style is extremely simple, meant to resemble construction paper cutouts, and was designed as a low-cost way to pump out episodes very cheaply. They can do an episode in single-digit days. Though I haven't watched it in a while, to my knowledge there are rarely flashy effects that require advanced VFX. As you note, they don't need "advanced water sim"ulations. So what do they need AI tooling developers for? It's tough for me to wrap my head around the need for them on a show like this unless it's to replace the work done by an actual human being, whether or not it would generate something you consider "slop".
My employer doesn't tell me to use AI at my development job because of some necessity. They want me to use AI because they think it'll mean I can do more work, and they can hire fewer people, or get more contracts with the same amount of people.
That sort of thing sucks, and stuff like this is why we're here at an anti-AI subreddit. You realize this is an anti-AI subreddit, right?
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u/PuppyPenetrator 3h ago
This sub is incredibly fucking stupid despite its good intentions. Theoretically I want to see this kind of content, so it keeps coming back in my feed, but every other post is so so dumb
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u/Starbreiz 1h ago
I think a lot of people aren't up on the details. I commented in another sub about running an Ai model locally for research and STILL had someone tell me I'm ruining their drinking water. So I don't even know anymore. I think it can be used responsibly but the industry has quickly run amok.
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u/Old-Push9343 6h ago
I work in the movie industry (VFX), and I can tell you guys that soon, starting next year, almost every movie that you go watch will have AI in some way or another.
And soon enough, there will be a patina of AI processing over all the computer graphics we produce.
I hate it, of course. But it is already happening, in major projects. The clients are pushing for it, they want "discounts".
AI has already been used for a while to produce concept art, but soon it will be in every step of the pipeline. We will even have agents doing certain tasks pretty soon.
And this is just the beginning.
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u/EmpathyFuzz 5h ago
Why should I pay to go see a movie no one made?Ā
Thereās going to be even more piracy in this era, because if the corpos want to devalue their art, people will choose to not pay the same cost.
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u/Old-Push9343 5h ago
There will still be people involved, at least for a while, but they hope to be able to cut time and jobs this way.
And hey, you don't have to convince me...Ā
I am one of the people who are probably going to lose their job sooner or later.
This sucks.
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u/EmpathyFuzz 5h ago
Anyone reading this and feels sad, needs to just not pay for studio films until they all have "NO AI was used in the making of this film" banners at the end. In the meantime, support independent film.
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u/UnwieldilyElephant 5h ago
Independent film may be even worse in that area.
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u/EmpathyFuzz 4h ago
I mean, obviously support independent film that doesn't use AI.
There are PLENTY of people who are passionate about making films the real way, you just have to look.
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u/Earthtone_Coalition 30m ago
So folks are still going to watch and enjoy the films, just not pay for them?
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u/EmpathyFuzz 22m ago
There is little debate that AI could be used in conjunction with regular filmmaking and people wouldnāt be able to tell the distance. AI is capable of generating very passable special effects, for example.Ā
But our concern is not JUST the quality of the movie, but ALSO the ethics of how the movie was made.Ā
It is possible for a movie made using AI to be good, but for people to not feel itās worth paying for.
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u/Earthtone_Coalition 10m ago
I'm surprised to hear this take, as I've observed considerable debate on Reddit over whether any work that relies on AI, even in part, can be considered to have any artistic value whatsoever.
Some of the comments in this thread make me think that we might be at an inflection point where antis no longer deny that works that utilize AI can be considered art. Very refreshing.
As far as piracy goes, I've been told in no uncertain terms that "stealing" art is wrong and bad. Perhaps you're correct and antis will change their mind on that, too.
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u/Sans-valeur 5h ago
Which means the AI will increasingly be trained on AI and eventually it will all be AI replicating AI replicating AI replicating AI.
Hurray.11
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u/Techcrea 51m ago
Yeah, VFX was already a tough industry before generative video models, it's going to be the people with the funding making those calls, not the artists. It's just not competitive to bid for a shot that would for example take a special shoot and cost weeks of labor when there's competition that can do it with generative video models for a fraction of the cost.
It's just the new reality, it's going to be the independent and starving artists or the A-list directors who refuse to use the technology that have the ability to do otherwise, but everything in the middle is in a phase of transition.
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u/Tiny-Little-Sheep 6m ago
I hope they disclose what movies use that so that those of us who cares can avoid them and make their profit margins look shittier
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u/Different_Height1911 10h ago
the irony is doing most of the writing here, assuming the alleged ai use is even real lol
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u/EternalNewCarSmell 9h ago
I'd be disappointed in them if Billionaire Weenieville wasn't 100% AI-generated.Ā
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u/JuliaX1984 8h ago
Um, hasn't this show's selling point always been "bad but simple animation that can be done super fast"?
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u/Song-Historical 1h ago
Even if it's not satirical, this is an actual application for AI that's ethical. South Park has been around long enough that they could train their own model on just their own assets and get great results. They have real constraints in terms of production and treatment where hiring more people doesn't solve their problems because the treatment is so specific and it would take some time to get people up to speed on their workflow/culture and they need to produce things fast.
They train on their own data, build their own tools and have a lot of top down control already. They already work with a lot of custom software to make their lives easier instead of brute force animating it all themselves. This is no different.
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u/cranberryalarmclock 6h ago
They've used AI for things in the last, this isn't surprising. I can't stand it but it's not going anywhere and it's nonsense to expect all creators to never use these toolsĀ
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u/KingTurd0414 6h ago
South Park was cool in 1998-99. It jumped the shark a couple of decades ago.
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u/eat_my_bowls92 6h ago
lol dude I donāt like AI either, but youāre insane if you think South Park peaked decades ago.
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u/israelsuckshard 5h ago
Whatās it like to be the new Woke 1, guys? What brave frontier will your moral crusade march to in your computer chairs next? From immigrant food cart menus to South Park lol.
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u/TennisSkirt1628 10h ago
I've stopped watching South Park.
Used to be my favorite series, but it's very obvious that Matt and Trey don't care about it anymore.
I don't want to ruin my old memories of SP with the new trash that's being produced.
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u/OpeningHappy9692 10h ago
I stopped watching during the Tegridy Farms era. It was just rehashing (heh) the same damn joke over, and over, and over.
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u/console_pleb_36935 7h ago
I think it's great that they're using AI, I will have to watch it
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u/eat_my_bowls92 6h ago
Why are you on an anti AI subs then?
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u/console_pleb_36935 6h ago
Because talking to people we disagree with is a vital part of the human experience and it can expand our horizons
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u/WeHaveArrived 2h ago
You do realize they use ai in an ironic way right?
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u/console_pleb_36935 2h ago
No, I don't think you hire people with expertise in AI workflows ironically.
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u/El_Scorcho_Barbarian 10h ago edited 6h ago
Grow up, folks.
Someone needs to explain irony to the people in this subreddit, since theyāre only capable of dichotomous thinking
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u/Cavalleria-rusticana 10h ago
Hush now, child.
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u/Bossard19 8h ago
Only child I see is you complaining about slop in your slop.
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u/Cavalleria-rusticana 8h ago
No u
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u/Bossard19 7h ago
Hush now, child
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u/ourpodcastisbest 7h ago
Lmao you did it again!Ā
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u/Bossard19 6h ago
Hush now, interrupting child
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u/ourpodcastisbest 6h ago
Oh no, heās looping. Someone come fix their bot.Ā
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u/Bossard19 6h ago
Yawn. How original.
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u/ourpodcastisbest 6h ago
I didnāt think original was a word in your vocabulary! Iām impressed.Ā
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u/marshmallowfluffpuff 10h ago
specifically making the billionaire town ai seems like comedic intent, just like chatgpt co-wrote the chatgpt episode.
not saying i agree with it, but i dont think the show is going full slop.