Viral AI Princess Mononoke trailer accused of misunderstanding plot of anime classic

An AI-generated trailer for a live-action version of the acclaimed 1997 Studio Ghibli anime Princess Mononoke has sparked backlash after going viral on social media.

The AI trailer, which uses the English voice acting from the original film, featuring talents like Billy Cudrup, Clare Danes and Minnie Driver, has completely reimagined the hand drawn animation of the Japanese movie as if real people were playing the parts, albeit with CGI.

The Hayao Miyazaki film, tells a fantasy tale of a war between humans and God-like animals in ancient Japan and is largely regarded as a classic, with a message about nature that still resonates today.

The new interpretation has been created by PJ Acetturo, the CEO of FilmPort AI, who claims that the trailer cost less than $100 (£79) to make.

Speaking to the BBC, Acetturo admitted that the trailer was an “experiment to see ‘how close are we to photo realism?’ How far off are we until we can really adapt any film, any concept or story?”

Acetturo went on to explain that he used the AI tools Midjourney, Kling and Runway, to compose and generate the shots which he then edited into the trailer.

In his X/Twitter thread, Acetturo admitted that he knew the trailer would be criticised and that he’s “heard Miyazaki is anti-AI.” In 2016, Miyazaki said that he was “utterly disgusted” after being shown a presentation of AI animation.

“That’s okay,” Acetturo added. “I made this adaptation mostly for myself because his work makes me want to create new worlds. We should look for ethical ways to explore AI tools to help empower artists to create.”

As Acetturo predicted, the trailer which has been viewed more than 4 million times on X/Twitter, has received an overwhelmingly negative backlash.

One person said: “I’m honestly afraid of what Hayao Miyazaki would do if he ever finds out that this exists.”

A second added: “I genuinely dunno if we’ll get a better example of why AI art is garbage than someone taking one of the most purposefully made, beautifully animated films in history and reducing it to a bunch of boring looking shots that are barely connected but somehow all look the same.”

A third wrote: “The entire plot of Princess Mononoke just went completely over your head, huh?

In response, the animation podcast Ghibliotheque, simply said: “No thanks”

The entirety of Studio Ghibli’s filmography is available on Netflix with Miyazaki’s latest offering, The Boy and The Heron, being added to the platform on 7 October.

Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron recently faced backlash after it was announced that he had joined the board of an artificial intelligence start-up.

The 70-year-old will be joining Stability AI, the London-based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.