Yesterday, Tyla posted a teaser for the music video for That Girl that she is releasing today. When it came in my feed, I immediately saw the AI. As an animator, it was incredibly obvious to me. However, many of her fans seemed to deny that the popular South African beauty would ever dip her toes into AI.

The video was created by Biuro, a company that acknowledges its use of generative AI in an interview with Coevall magazine.

When I left a comment under the video that literally just acknowledged the very visible AI, people attacked me. They denied the AI usage, and some of them were quite demeaning. It honestly makes me pretty happy that I don’t have a parasocial relationship with any celebrity. I like Tyla’s music. Her recent collab with Zara Larson has been stuck in my head since its release. It was actually the first song I played when I set my new speakers up for my computer. I don’t hate her because I see AI.

Biuro would leave this comment on the post, and you’ll notice that they don’t actually deny AI usage.

This is one of those situations where they’re telling the truth, but only half of it. Again, you’ll notice they do not deny the usage of AI, they just say human hands were used in its creation; which I think is obviously true, but that does not actually mean they did not use AI. Was this in reference to the entire video or just this video? Still, I wanted to break down what I saw as an animator looking at these clips that made it obvious to me this was AI before I found out that the company openly admits to it.

This first scene looks like an AI movement applied to a still (potentially generated) image. It was “composited” in that they added the brick backdrop (which is in focus for some reason) and ripple animation for the puddle on the ground. They probably also did some color correction and likely duplicated a single animation and changed the colors for variety (not a sin), which is why they’re moving at the same pace

This particular scene is pretty damning. First of all, that hand is wrong- try to put your pointer finger out like that. It’s pretty unnatural. There’s also a floating tiger face, and it doesn’t have a body. The motion also doesn’t make sense. If he’s wagging his finger as if to say “no no no!l” that movement is more in the wrist than the elbow and shoulder. You can also see AI artifacting on the hand. It looks like this could be simply a very poorly executed puppet tool animation on a generated image, but I doubt it

This scene is rather straightforward. A video of a puddle with the same ripple effect from the first scene applied to the water and the title, with a rain effect applied in post. The reflection is a bit confusing to me tho. Is that a bus?

The last scene is kinda what gave it away for me because the mirror image of Tyla is a very commonly seen AI-generated style. YES, Tyla stood in front of a green screen, and that image was then taken into post and used for this image, and there is a comic book effect in the background that was also edited by hand, along with the texture. As Biuro says, they DID do some of this by hand, but if you’re imagining that it’s Disney 2D animation drawn by hand, you’re very wrong. It looks to me like they may have used a few still frames and a bit of the moving film they took of her for the frames that are closer together (which is kinda cool tbh).

I’m actually very glad to see so many people understand the difference between CGI and AI! I do get annoyed when people think everything digital is AI! But this is a company that DOES use AI in most of their projects, and you can see that clearly on their Instagram. Compare the movement in these images to the first scene.

Tyla’s fans can be in denial about this if they want. Still, in general, the sense I get is that her audience in general doesn’t care about AI (which is probably why they went with a company that says “Artificial intelligence has always been at the core of biuro’s practice”). A large amount of Tyla’s audience is comfortable with AI, and a decent portion of them actively enjoy and support AI-generated content. People are asking me why I’m even commenting on it, and this was the comment that pissed her fans off:

I like Tyla’s music, but I’m glad I am not in a parasocial relationship with her. It genuinely seems very destabilizing to have this much cognitive dissonance around something plainly obvious. Her fans like AI, so clearly this won’t hurt her. I’m an alternative person, so I already don’t do the celebrity worship thing. I kinda expect this from pop musicians. The AI was disappointing to see, but it’s predictable for acts like her. I think it cheapens her brand for me personally. I will be watching her new MV for the sake of content, but my interest wanes at this point. She won’t lose sleep over it, and I do not hate her. I will loosely root for her from afar. She’s very talented, and I believe she deserves better promo than AI slop. I wish her fans felt the same.

It would have been cool to get a fully hand-drawn animated project for her. But they won’t get greenlit if her audience proves that AI does the job just fine. Many of my colleagues edit AI instead of animating. Animators will continue to get fewer jobs when the audience proves they aren’t needed. I got out of the animation industry a long time ago, but I’m still passionate about the art form, which is why this bothers me. I graduated with a degree in Character Animation in 2021 from CalArts, a school that was started in part by Walt Disney. I spent my youth aspiring to be an animator and ultimately ended up being a YouTuber. These companies rely on an undereducated audience who will accept lower-quality work because of parasociality. Ultimately, what depresses me about AI animation is that I don’t think it’ll ever stick in our brains nearly as much as the traditional animation being referenced in this post.