Oscar-winning animator and director Alberto Mielgo has hit back at accusations his cinematic short for Bungie’s Marathon is AI-generated, insisting the production is “not AI”, and was in fact the result of “155 incredible people and hell of hours, days, [and] months” of time.
Mielgo – who won an Oscar for his animated short The Windshield Wiper in 2021, and has created two short features for Netflix’s Love Death and Robots – served as director on Marathon’s eight-minute-long reveal cinematic. The short, narrated by Ben Starr, was released in April as part of developer Bungie’s big news blowout for the extraction shooter.
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Marathon’s reveal was, of course, a chance for the increasingly embattled Bungie – which has faced ongoing reports of tumbling staff morale and senior management toxicity over the last 18 months – to shift the narrative to something more positive. However, the studio instead found itself embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, which appears to have led to unfavourable discourse around Mielgo’s trailer – and the director has now clearly had enough.
“I can’t believe we’ve reached a point where I have to clarify this, but here it goes,” a clearly exasperated Mielgo wrote on Instagram, “this is not AI. HELLO. Everything you see in this film: paintings, animations, 2D and 3D work, compositing, and renders done with huge team – 155 incredible people and hell of hours, days, months… Yes, our Achilles’ heel: time.”
“Many of you ask me what my opinion on AI is,” he continued. “Honestly, I have no idea. But one thing is certain: AI will never take away my (your) urge or joy for making art and painting. That part will never be replaced.”
According to The Game Post, Mielgo also addressed Marathon’s plagiarism scandal in now-deleted follow-up comments, saying none of the assets Bungie admitting to using without the original artist’s permission “ever reached [his] team]” and did not feature in the trailer. He reportedly also said he believed the incident was “genuinely a mistake, blown out of proportion”.
As for Marathon, Bungie delayed the game indefinitely in June following “passionate” alpha playtest feedback. However, comments by Sony CFO Lin Tao this month appeared to confirm it’ll still launch by March next year.
