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Technically, it can and has been done already. The problem is that AI is very bad at creating new ideas and even worse at understanding what it has created (as is required for plots or jokes). As a result, any writting created with heavy AI influence tends to sound like a child's stream of thought with an adult's vocabulary, and any jokes rely purely on randomness or on repeating an existing well-known joke. Similarly with art and animation, because the AI doesn't understand what it is creating, it struggles to keep animation of elements consistant and often can't figure out how elements should be included in the scene. Voices are probably the strongest part, but even then, it can be buggy and won't change correctly to match the context of what is being said.

None of this is to say AI is useless. Its very good at creating a "good enough" quick-fix, or to be used to fill unimportant or trivial work. If used to help clean up scripts or fill in backgrounds, it can speed up the process greatly at minimal cost. It's a tool to be used by someone who knows the field, not to replace them.

Probably technically possible now, but it's not going to be any good. If you mean "of the quality of what is available now," then it's still going to be a while.

Not too far, or its possible right now depending on jow you want to define "animated". I feel like there uses to be really low-budget cartoons on air which were really just still frames with some shake added, couple soumd effects, and voice acting. A lot like SolidJJ on YouTube now. Those wouldn't even be too hard to do, if the AI were just one tool in the set - could probably crank out a few a week, anyway.

If you're looking for twenty minutes of animation that doesn't shift around like a fever dream while you're watching it, maybe six to eighteen months. I do think human voice actors would be required, but you could do the music with Suno.

A very long time hopefully.

As far as I know it is possible right now. There are some really impressive video generative AIs out there. Us regular people probably cannot do it, as nobody who runs such a model would let us use their resources to that extent.

But if someone with such a model decides to go all in, they could probably do so now. However, "now" does not mean instant. They could push the button now, and then the computers start to churn, and considering the size and complexity of a full movie it's going to take a while.

And then you have the first pass done. The first of what will probably be many. I find it hard to believe that you'd create the entire movie in one go. Because if the AI fucks up just a few details, the entire movie will be garbage. It is better to do it scene by scene, and then stitch them together afterwards. So you run multiple passes for every scene until you have what you want, you stich them together, and then do whatever else you need to do to release this end result.

I'm sure the NVIDIA and AMD CEOs are currently having wet dreams of someone deciding to do this, because it's going to cause GPU prices to skyrocket.

not a tv series but:
you are in luck, some "people" of chosen "Intellect" already made a movie!
https://youtu.be/KhQnnISdDIU

We could technically do it now, but you'd need a ton of quality control.

A basic workflow:

Use an image generator to generate start (and optionally end) frames of each scene.

Use a video generator like Runway to create the scene.

Use something to generate the speech, either a realistic text-to-speech engine or a record the dialog yourself and use AI voice changing software.

Use a lip synch AI to match the mouth flaps to the audio.

Generate music using something like Udio

Job done.

All these technologies exist and in some capacity are available to use. The only issue at the moment is consistent quality. This is coming on in leaps and bounds, however.

When you say “by themselves”, you mean one person would still write the scripts manually, and AI would replace the grunt-work animation teams that shows like the Simpsons and South Park employ in East Asia?

As far as we are from the death of art I guess.

There's some slop on youtube that's either pure AI or really close to it. You need to delved deep into baby youtube to find it though. Five Finger Family would probably be a good starting point.

I used to watch AI Peter quite a while ago, turns out it’s still live http://www.youtube.com/@ai-peter

I think it gets the text promos on its discord then it animated scenes based on the topic. Sometimes is funny as heck.

i think 5 to 15 years max.

I'm more worried about someone using AI to harvest the power of all these smart devices to record our daily lives in real time.

Like your samsung tv records what you watch, while you watch. Your samsung phone records gps of where you go, when you go, how often you go. The little voice assistant on android records your speech paterns, and is able to create a voice profile of you.

Your laptop/pc records what you do in real time, even with no software installed on your pc. Even if you use linux, because they're logging this data outside your control via the link between you and your isp.

The grocery store records what you buy, when you buy it, how often you buy it.

And all these companies start mingling, and sharing data between them. Which as of 2019 is totally legal. They build personalized profiles on you, using AI to collect all the data from the various sources, and ties it all in to one profile. So even though best buy shouldn't have any reason to know what day you got married, it knows because your wife registered 15 years ago at some bridal registry. Now best buy may not have any use for that info, but its part of your profile. And now everything in your life is documented, profiled, archived, and shared.

And it's not crazy. Most of this has been happening for decades. The only part missing is the AI to gather these individual profiles, and tie them into one collective profile, and seek information out to add to it.

What's your shoe size? AI adds data from that time you shopped at footlocker. What's your phone number? That was added from AT&T. Where do you work? That was gathered from Verizon when you used your place of work to get a discount 2 years ago, and your daily GPS records confirm. What's your mothers maiden name? That was added from a website you used this as a password recovery option on. Whats your pets names? This was taken from your vet.

All this info and data. Just out there seperately, and now AI can gather it, build a profile on everybody, track you in real time, and not have any oversight or responsibility because nobody is in charge of it. It's just data shared around.

Meanwhile you wonder about cartoons.