On Monday, an interview was published with filmmaker Eli Roth about his upcoming movie Ice Cream Man. During this chat, he discussed an animated sequence in the film that the interviewer suspected may use generative AI. He initially claimed the sequence was animated via traditional means. However, several early reviewers noticed that AI visual effects company Dark Half is listed in the credits. Roth has since clarified that Ice Cream Man uses some AI.
“I have an animation background and I drew it,” Roth told Polygon in the initial interview. “I worked with an animation team and I wanted it to look and feel like — there’s an old Mickey Mouse cartoon where he goes to a haunted house and there’s brooms and dancing skeletons and this kind of flowing dancing stuff and the jittery style of the animation. So I drew the loop cycles and the styles. Then I had some animators help kind of make it a little more fluid, and I worked with an artist to give it a bit of an old-timey jittery feel. But I sat there and I drew out the frames that I wanted, and I tried to match the style of the 1920s haunted Mickey Mouse cartoons.”
Correction
After the Dark Half credit was pointed out, Polygon reached out for comment. “I misspoke. AI was used in a very small portion of a few scenes in the film,” he said. “It was an opportunity where technology and creativity came together to help bring my vision for the film to life.”
Neither Roth nor Dark Half has clarified which scenes generative AI was used in and to what extent. Being made on a $5.5 million budget and being released through Roth’s newly founded media company, The Horror Section, means this movie isn’t working with as many resources as a major studio.
Nevertheless, the theft and environmental devastation surrounding generative AI cannot be ignored. If movies being made on several thousand-dollar budgets can be created without the technology as a “cost-cutting” measure. It’s hard to believe Roth and his partners, with infinitely more resources, couldn’t have found another way.
There is the possibility that Roth somehow missed Dark Half’s involvement in the project and genuinely did mispeak. But as a note to any future/current filmmakers who may read this, if you resort to using AI, just own up to it, because the public always finds out sooner or later.
Ice Cream Man hits theaters on August 7th. You can check out the trailer below:
