The Wes Anderson AI artbot craze is a fun trend with big ethical issues

Recent online discussion has been dominated by the increasing sophistication of AI art generators and their ease-of use. Copyright and crediting have become a major ethical issue. Users experimenting with programs like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Free AI Art Generator are arguing over endless topics around ownership and creative license, down to the question of whether a particularly effective AI art prompt could potentially be copyrighted, even if the resulting art can’t be.

But above all, artists have raised considerable questions around theft of their work to “train” AI art generators to produce work in a particular style. Most of these programs work by learning from the styles in the images they’ve been fed. So if they ingest an artist’s distinctive work, that work eventually starts to bleed into the program’s new “original” creations. But if an artist’s style gets digested into a free bot that can regurgitate it and iterate on it in seconds, how’s that artist supposed to make a living?

A current AI art trend on social media highlights exactly what artists are concerned about: Users have been feeding AI artbots the names of familiar movies and TV shows, and adding “in the style of Wes Anderson.”

Anderson, the director Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, Incredible Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs, Steve Zissou, The Life Aquatic, Rushmore, and more) is an incredibly distinct visual stylist, and has been a prime target for “in the style of” pastiches for years, long before AI artbots were in vogue. Many cinephiles recognize his unique look. He is known for meticulous set design and intricate production design. His films are often rendered in subtle earth tones or pale pastels. For humorists trying to emulate him, there are many common touchstones: his love for fixed tableaus and chapter titles; characters without emotional attachment and a concise, exact way of speaking.

On YouTube, creators have been re-editing movies and trailers into satirical versions of Anderson’s work for years now, especially following the popularity of Grand Budapest Hotel Usually, they’re leaning on the absurdity of, say, a horror or action movie rendered with his deadpan intensity and precision. Whenever Wes Anderson imitation moves into a new medium, it often starts with a version of Stanley Kubrick’s Shining — probably in echo of the granddaddy of recut YouTube trailers, depicting Shining As a rom-com that makes you feel good.

This most recent Twitter trend wasn’t even the first AI artbot attempt at porting his style into other movies — there are similar tweets going back at least to 2020. However, Shining tweetAnderson pastiches exploded in response. They were made in reaction to the Shine art. Others, created earlier, are being retweeted into the thread by users who’ve had similar ideas, and want to share their convergent evolution.

This flurry of new “movie in the style of Wes Anderson” tweets is a perfect showcase for the reasons artists and creators in particular are concerned about AI-generated art, visual and otherwise. Wes Anderson’s work is unique and his artbots are not going to replace him. Individual still images aren’t going to replace entire movies, and Anderson’s films are much more than just the visual imagery.

And all these AI images are funny, in a wry sort of way — a parody of his style and a form of creative expression, similar to fantasy casting. The images showcase the creativity of the creators, who are going further and further into exploring what kind of projects the writer-director’s style can be applied to.

But even so, it’s easy to look at the images above and see how readily AI art generators can devalue an individual artist’s style and voice, by making endless creative variations easily available at the push of a button. Once in a while the joke starts to get a little boring. Every image starts to look the same. Anderson’s signature style can now be reduced to one joke. His actual film stills might not even stand out in this mix.

It’s not that we should be alarmist about a simple viral trend on social media. The Wes Anderson artbot trend is good proof that artists can get programmers to follow their lead. build active protections for their designs and styles into AI bots. It’s a useful way to look at the legal and creative problems ahead, by showing off just how sophisticated and elaborate AI art mimicry has gotten. AI robots in the future may be able to prevent this type of stylistic imitation. For the sake of safety, enjoy Wes Anderson Star Wars as long as you can. And don’t forget that AI pastiche isn’t limited to crossbreeding a familiar movie with a familiar style: You can invent new movie ideas, too.