If you've been online this week, you've probably seen the discourse about AI-generated art flare up again. Into that conversation steps Gorillaz, the virtual band created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, with something that feels almost confrontationally analogue: a short animated film called The Mountain, released alongside their new album of the same name.
The film is not just a piece of promotional content. It is, by the account of those who made it, a deliberate act of creative philosophy. Co-director Max Taylor described the project as a love letter to craftsmanship, produced in what he called a period of AI overload. The words land with some weight when you understand what went into making it.
Chasing the Feel of Pencil on Paper
Animation studio The Line built the film around a strict creative constraint: if a particular visual effect could not have been achieved using 1960s animation techniques, it was not included. Digital pencil work was processed to simulate photocopy degradation. Real paintings were scanned at high resolution, with fine details completed digitally only after the physical texture had been captured. Every background environment was painted by hand on actual paper before being scanned, preserving the grain and irregularity that digital tools typically iron out.
Taylor put it plainly: the goal was capturing the tactile quality that only real materials give you. Each shot was composed to echo classic animated features of the era, adding another layer of period authenticity rather than merely gesturing at nostalgia.
The result is something that looks genuinely imperfect in the way that handmade things are imperfect. That distinction matters more than it might seem.
Why Imperfection Is the Point
Generative AI tools have become extraordinarily good at producing images that are technically flawless. They are fast, scalable, and increasingly capable of mimicking recognisable styles. What they cannot do, at least not yet, is replicate the decisions and constraints behind a human creative choice. When an animator in 1963 made a line wobble slightly, that wobble carried information about the physical act of drawing. When The Mountain mimics that wobble, it is doing so as an intentional statement about the value of that process.
This distinction is at the centre of a growing tension across the creative industries. A recent survey from the Game Developers Conference found that many game developers believe generative AI is actively damaging the industry rather than supporting it. Players have been similarly vocal, with games including Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Divinity attracting criticism after audiences identified what they described as AI-generated assets in finished products.
Let's be real: the backlash is not just aesthetic snobbery. When studios use AI generation to reduce the number of working artists and illustrators they employ, the argument shifts from taste into economics and labour. Australian animation and games studios are not immune to these pressures, and the local creative sector has been watching international trends carefully.
The Industry Is Not Backing Down
Despite the pushback, major technology companies are pressing ahead. Google recently unveiled Project Genie, a generative AI tool designed to create interactive game worlds in real time. The announcement was followed quickly by examples of users generating obvious imitations of existing games, including Fortnite-style content, and several gaming company share prices fell in the days following the reveal.
Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick offered a more measured view, suggesting that many commentators are significantly overstating what AI is currently capable of. His position, that AI will assist creative workers rather than replace them, is one that plenty of reasonable people in the industry share. The technology is powerful, but its limits are real.
That tension between genuine utility and overreach is where most honest observers end up. AI tools can accelerate parts of a creative workflow, handle repetitive tasks, and open certain creative possibilities to people without technical training. Those are legitimate benefits worth acknowledging. The concern is not the technology itself but who controls it, who profits from it, and whether the humans whose work trained it are fairly compensated.
What Gorillaz Got Right
What makes The Mountain interesting beyond its visual quality is that it does not argue against technology. Hewlett and his collaborators used digital tools throughout the production. The point is that those tools were placed in service of a human creative intention, constrained by rules the team set themselves, and judged against a standard rooted in craft tradition.
That is a reasonable model for how AI could sit within creative industries without displacing the people and practices that give those industries their cultural value. Whether the broader industry adopts anything like that approach remains an open question. For now, Gorillaz have offered at least one vivid example of what choosing craft over convenience actually looks like.