THOUGHTS ON AI
From the first time a human splashed paint across a cave wall to share their vision with the world, art has been in a state of constant evolution. From typography to the printing press to digital screens, each leap forward has expanded what creators could imagine and communicate. AI is the next leap.
At Spiridellis Bros. Studios, we don’t see AI as a tool to make things faster and cheaper. We see it as a new plane for creation. We stand in solidarity with storytellers rallying against the use of AI for creative theft, and against studios who see it as a blunt tool to slash jobs. But we also believe that condemning AI as unequivocally evil does a grave disservice to artists and the world at large.
The artists who turn away from these tools will fail to adapt to the reality of our time. They will find it harder to find work and the world will be robbed of hearing their unique voices. As artists, we cannot run from these tools. We need to learn how to harness them to help us tell our stories.
Artistic resistance is not new. Painters dismissed photographers, photographers dismissed videographers, and hand drawn animators dismissed computer animators. But across each of these leaps, two things are true: history has rewarded the bold, and the bold have redefined culture.
For 25 years, we have surfed every major technology wave. We pioneered viral videos in the dial-up Internet days (JibJab). We innovated personalized entertainment in the social media era (Starring You and ElfYourself). We changed the playbook in kids programming, moving from YouTube to Netflix (StoryBots). Yet as big as each of those technology eras felt at the time, they were ripples compared to the wave that’s coming.
AI is a tsunami that will completely transform the way entertainment is created, produced, and distributed. Jobs that exist today are about to change radically or disappear. We have seen this cycle in the past (see “animation cell painters”). But we have also seen the birth of new art forms and the success of new kinds of artists (see “video game creatora”) who adapted and mastered the possibilities of their times.
We had no idea what the jobs of the future would look like when we started JibJab in 1999. But we knew that if we brought together the greatest artists, and empowered them with technology to tell great stories, people would pay for what we did and we could hire more great artists. We created hundreds of jobs in the past with this approach and aim to create thousands more in the future.
Artists: do not give in to fear. Our time on earth is limited. Use every tool you can, as well as you can, and create! The bell has rung, the siren is sounding, and there is no turning back. The age of AI-enabled creative expression is here. Every day spent fearing the future is a day not spent building it. Bring the bold voice that only you can bring to it, and use it to help define what great art and entertainment look like in this next epoch.
The world needs your art and stories now more than ever before.
