Travis Knight, the director of the stop-motion fantasy Wildwood and CEO of the studio behind it, says generative AI is “antithetical to everything that we are at this studio.” His comments come ahead of the film’s October 23 premiere, and they put the studio’s handmade approach in sharp contrast with a technology that is spreading quickly through Hollywood.
Wildwood is the most ambitious film yet from Laika, the studio best known for Coraline and ParaNorman. It is a sprawling fantasy adventure that took five years to complete. The production used more than 230 puppets, including 36 of the main character, Prue, alone. A team of 49 animators brought them to life, and more than 1,000 artists worked on the film in some form.
That kind of process is slow by design, which is part of why the film stands out at a moment when AI tools promise instant results. Knight recently joined a group of filmmakers publicly denouncing the technology, and when asked what it is like to release a film like this now, he did not hedge.
“In so many ways generative AI is antithetical to everything that we are at this studio,” Knight said. “It’s not that we don’t believe in technology. We do. We use technology, we use computers. We’re not just making films entirely with tools that we’ve inherited from a watchmaker’s widow. A pencil is technology, a paintbrush is technology, a 3D printer is technology, a computer workstation is technology. But all of these things have meaning and value when you put them in the hands of an artist.”
How Did Laika Use Technology to Make Wildwood?
Laika has in fact pushed its technical tools further with Wildwood. Many puppets now have diaphragms that animators can use to make characters appear to breathe. The puppets’ limbs have more advanced musculature, and the clothing, hair and fur are made from materials that are sturdier and more flexible. Together, those changes make the film look more lifelike than the studio’s earlier work.
For Knight, the line is not about whether a tool is used. It is about who is doing the creative work.
Why Does Travis Knight Call AI-Generated Work Theft?
“When the technology is doing the work of the artist, that’s a different proposition,” he said. “And that’s something that I am steadfastly against, because there is no humanity in what comes out of the other side of that. When you’ve ingested the material that an artist has actually created, and then regurgitate it in a different way, there’s no soul, there’s no spirit, there’s no humanity behind it. That’s theft.”
He also tied the argument to the stories themselves. “When you’re telling a human story, when you’re telling a story about loss and grief and something that means something to someone, that has to come from a person,” Knight said. “A computer has never fallen in love. A computer has never lost someone. They’ve never made a terrible choice and lost a brother. They’ve never had their heart broken. Only a person has done that. And so only a person can speak to what that experience is and what that feels like.”
The technology is moving into Hollywood in several ways. Studios are weighing digital replicas of movie stars, some are training AI models on their own films and shows, and some of the largest players in the industry are investing heavily in it. Against that backdrop, Laika’s commitment to handmade filmmaking is easy to notice.
Is Travis Knight Against AI Entirely?
Knight is not against AI everywhere, though. He said he is wary of how it is being used, both now and in the future, and he sees real promise in some areas.
“I think AI is extraordinary technology,” he said. “On the one hand you have to marvel at the advancement of it. And I do think that it’s going to be disruptive to our society and our world. I think there are a great many benefits that can come from it when you look at medicine and science. There’s a world in which these things can benefit humanity tremendously. And then there’s a world where they can be devastating. I fear for the latter, I hope for the former, but it requires people to be good stewards of this technology.”
He was candid about where society stands on that responsibility. “As a group of humans we have not shown generally that we’re good at that,” Knight said. “But I’m ever an optimist, and I hope that collectively we can see the value in the technology and use it responsibly, and see the danger in the technology and push back against it.”
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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