Star Wars’ Showcase of AI Special Effects Was a Complete Disaster

If Disney leadership has its way, we’ll all be drooling over endless Star Wars reboots, sequels, and spinoffs until the Sun explodes. And what better way to keep the slop machine humming than using good old generative AI?

Unfortunately, as highlighted by 404 Media, we just got a preview of what that might look like. Industrial Light and Magic, the legendary visual effects studio behind nearly every “Star Wars” movie, released a new demo showcasing how AI could supercharge depictions of the sci-fi universe.

And unsurprisingly, it looks absolutely, flabbergastingly awful.

The demo, called “Star Wars: Field Guide,” was revealed in a recent TED talk given by ILM’s chief creative officer Rob Bredow, who stressed that it was just a test — “not a final product” — created by one artist in two weeks. 

It’s supposed to give you a feel of what it’d be like to send a probe droid to a new Star Wars planet, Bredow said. But what unfolds doesn’t feel like “Star Wars” at all. More so, it’s just a collection of generic-looking nature documentary-style shots, featuring the dumbest creature designs you’ve ever seen. And all of them are immediately recognizable as some form of real-life Earth animal, which echoes the criticisms of generative AI as being merely a tool that regurgitates existing art.

 

You can watch it here yourself, but here’s a quick rundown of the abominations on display — which all have that fake-looking AI sheen to them. A blue tiger with a lion’s mane. A manatee with what are obviously just squid tentacles pasted onto its snout. An ape with stripes. A polar bear with stripes. A peacock that’s actually a snail. A blue elk that randomly has brown ears. A monkey-spider. A zebra rhino. Need we say more? 

“None of those creatures look like they belong in Star Wars,” wrote one commenter on the TED talk video. “They are all clearly two Earth animals fused together in the most basic way.”

Make no mistake: ILM is a pioneer in the special effects industry. Founded by George Lucas during the production of the original “Star Wars” movie, the outfit has innovated so many of the feats of visual trickery that filmmakers depend on today while spearheading the use of CGI. Its bona fides range from “Terminator 2,” and “Jurassic Park,” to “Starship Troopers.”

Which is why it’s all the more disheartening to see it kowtowing to a technology that bastardizes an art form it perfected. What ILM shows us is a far cry from the iconic creature designs that “Star Wars” is known for, from Tauntauns to Ewoks.

Sure, there’s some room for debate about how much of a role AI should play in filmmaking — with labor being the biggest question — and Bredow broaches the subject by pointing out that ILM has always taken cutting-edge technologies and used them along with proven techniques. He assures the audience that real artists aren’t going anywhere, and that “innovation thrives when the old and new technologies are blended together.”

That’s all well and good. But to jump from that sort of careful stance to showing off completely AI-generated creations sends a deeply conflicting message.

More on AI in movies: Disney Says Its “Fantastic Four” Posters Aren’t AI, They Actually Just Look Like Absolute Garbage