Yes, but also literally AI slop. Stock characters auto-puppeted to a text script with text-to-voice run across it. The artist's input was writing the text and signing off on the final auto-generated product. The reason the two characters in the video are weird superheroes is those were the available stock characters in the XtraNormal.com service he used.

After all, the creator didn't want to be an professinal full-time animator, he just wanted to animate three minutes.

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jesucresta 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is only "literally AI slop" if you widen the definition to include anything made using computers. That is not an honest take on what content made with AI is.

The original author chose those assets and that background, other people made those assets on the first place and had to take a ton of tiny creative choices that changed the final thing and help transmit ideas and feelings (of uncanniness, vulgarity, surrealism, whatever).

Anyone can tell the difference between one and the other.

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morshu9001 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Text to speech in the 2000s would be considered AI

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caymanjim 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The things we called AI back then weren't AI. The things we call AI now aren't AI either. The definition remains wide.

	▲	SoftTalker 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds like Humpty-Dumpty.

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darkwater 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Yes, but also literally AI slop. Stock characters auto-puppeted to a text script with text-to-voice run across it.

Maybe I'm wrong but I would say that the slop feeling of the original version was a deliberate decision and part of its charm. That kind of video and voices were a meme back then, IIRC.

	▲	swiftcoder 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As is the slop feeling of the current, no doubt. I don't think that changes it being "slop" in the sense of low-effort and mostly generated by machine learning (rather than hand-edited like a machinima)

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hbn 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the tech stack used to make that video makes it "AI slop" then every video game cutscene is AI slop.

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shadowgovt 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most videogame cutscenes (well, for AAA games; I'm going to ignore the wide, worthy, and growing ecosystem of "I had an idea and made it in Unity with purchased assets") use bespoke model and texture assets, motion-capture human animation, and voice acting.

None of that is what an Xtranormal auto-puppet show is about.

	▲	hbn 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Motion capture in bigger budget games only started to become common around the Xbox 360/PS3 generation. Go back to prior generations and it was a lot of "2 models facing each other and their mouths wiggle up and down while audio files play" Pretty much exactly what you see in that video.

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parpfish 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

video game cutscenes usually involve real artists designing and animating the characters, not just using preset stock characters