The Super Bowl gave us a Centered on Minions Last night’s mini-trailer, of all the things it could have said, was about how bad AI-generated art is.
I’m not what people call a “minion super fan.” I don’t really know anyone who particularly likes them, despite their popularity, except for my dad, who mostly just thinks it’s funny when they say “banana” in a silly sound. They don’t hold much appeal to me, and the recent first trailer for Despicable Me 4 didn’t really convince me – especially since Gru now has a kid, which has a lot of implications. But last night while advertising for its upcoming sequel, animation studio Illumination decided to use the time to do something I didn’t expect: simulate AI-generated art.
Despicable Me 4 – Minion Intelligence (Big Game Spot)
If you somehow missed the boat, AI art is a hot topic at the moment, mostly because big companies are happy to replace talented artists with mediocre and weird AI crap because it’s cheaper and probably not good for the industry or even environmental impact. In the trailer, John Hamm narrates a very typical corporate advertisement, talking about the power and greatness of artificial intelligence and saying that “the future is in the hands of good people”, and then cuts to a room full of villains, Generates all kinds of scary images. It’s an obvious joke, of course, but honestly it’s awesome to see the studio behind some of the most popular animations mocking AI art so openly.
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That doesn’t mean I’m going to fully support the Minions from now on, but I’m going to at least go easy on them. The next time we see them is apparently in the upcoming Despicable Me 4, the first Despicable Me movie in seven years, with Gru (Steve Carell) and his family Must face Maxime Lemar (Will Ferrell) and Valentina (Sofia) Vergara).
Despicable Me 4 is currently scheduled to be released on July 3rd.
