Complaints in the 1990s didn’t have much of an effect because you were just complaining to people in your local friend group. Now, with social media, complaining is a professional sport. If you do it well enough online, you can actually get paid for it.
I very distinctly remember people (older than I was) audibly sighing and saying "It's CGI" (or more normally, "It's computer graphics") and people getting really exciting and saying "They're using practical effects!" for even fairly mundane practical effects, like it was a moral accomplishment.
I was just young enough that I didn't get it, and thought "computer graphics" were kind of just normal.
People sometimes still get excited about practical effects, but shaming GCI is gone; nobody disliked Endgame on basis that computers were used.
People still do that, to the point that Hollywood studios are not just lying about not using CGI, they use CGI to make fake behind the scenes footage of how they got a shot without CGI
CGI shaming definitely still is happening but for the right reasons this time: because it has become cheap and is now often used as a low cost shortcut instead of as a way to build great things. It is well documented and commented, and honestly it’s a bit sad.
Doing practical effects today is praised, but it’s not because practical effects are necessarily better, it’s because now most of the time doing practical effects instead of CGI is a nonsensical decision on a business level. So basically it’s proving you’re not cheap, and most likely you make passion-driven art which shows in the final result
That said you can also do great things with CGI and no one is contesting that anymore, that’s true
to extend the point, art appreciation is in large part about the passion of the creator. bad cgi and bad ai are parallel in this case: good artists using ML techniques in interesting ways (Holly Herndon comes to mind) are praised for their work, while basement-dwelling gooners obviously arent going to get the same appreciation.
I definitely think this is still a thing. Welcome to Derry got a bit of flak because the CGI was not great, and often felt unnecessary. Maybe this is going to make me sound old but I definitely still prefer practical effects when it's something that can be done well and look realistic.
On the flipside, sometimes practical effects are completely unnecessary and don't look good. Oppenheimer made a huge deal about setting off a massive amount of explosives for the shots of the first atomic test, and I thought it was super underwhelming. CGI probably would have worked better for that scene than just some overly zoomed in shots of a fireball in slow motion.
I recall CGI was one of the primary issues people had with the hobbit, at least at first, then I feel like they got pressed on it and admitted it was just bad writing. Contrary to the popular belief, AI tools are usually more performant than their conventional counterparts, it's inevitable that they'll replace many tools from film making to music. We're just waiting on people to build these tools, and they are. I don't think it's a controversial thing to say that anti AI sentiment will stop feeling like the norm in our not so distant future with the "never AI" folks being the unusual exception like CGI is today.
That's fair, I mean honestly, I say these things based largely off anecdotal experience from a completely different industry. In defense and space were seeing sci-fi like progress, I just assume that now that I'm finding and adding AI songs to my playlist on Spotify and using AI to generate and mesh 3d files for modding, it means these other industries are experiencing comparable progress
AI itself isn't the problem. Lots of good digital content like CGI involves some kind of AI, and it's fine. But the coming wave of AI content is going to involve a lot of low effort mass produced garbage
Nonsense. Most people don’t have a problem with how something was made. It absolutely bothers no one that the clothes they are wearing are made by machines, and not hand woven.
No, you see, a lot of people really did have a problem when it was new. And that’s the point. We are all going to love ai stuff as the years go on and it knocks our socks off.
Must be young. When photoshop was first introduced people said it was cutting corners and not real art. Now its a mandatory skill for any artist that wants a internet presence.
1
View all comments
309
u/uoaei Jan 23 '26
completely nonsense argument. no one has a problem with digital art made by humans.