A viral post claims Spider Verse used AI in production; the studio did use machine learning for ink lines, trained on its artists' own drawings

Context

The post gives no source and no detail. Sony Pictures Imageworks has described using machine learning on Into the Spider Verse to predict facial ink lines, which artists then corrected, so the claim is accurate only in that limited sense and does not refer to generative AI.

Deep dive

On October 17, the account The Intern posted that Spiderverse used AI in production, quoting an October 15 post that praised an anti AI edit. The attached video shows a 3D model of the character Miles Morales with drawn ink lines on his face. The post gave no source and passed 3.2 million views.

There is real reporting behind a narrow version of the claim. Sony Pictures Imageworks, which animated the 2018 film Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse, says it built a line drawing system that let artists draw lines on characters the way an illustrator might, and used machine learning algorithms to automate the animation of some of those lines. It says the system learned from each adjustment an artist made, saving time for animators.

Effects supervisor Pav Grochola told fxguide and SideFX that rule based approaches did not look hand drawn, so the team trained models on its artists' own line drawings to give a first pass prediction, which artists then adjusted. He said the models ran inside Houdini using an open source machine learning library.

That is different from generative AI tools that create images from text prompts, which is what most current debates over AI in animation are about. The post does not make that distinction, and it does not say which Spider Verse film it means.

What to expect next

Watch whether studios disclose more about how machine learning tools are used in animation, as debates over generative AI in film and TV continue.

Also watch for clearer labeling from studios and posters about the difference between artist trained assistive tools and generative models. Claims like this one tend to resurface whenever new animated films are released, so accurate sourcing will matter.