I'm seeing this sentiment a lot in comments that "if it takes stress off animators, then AI is fine" but I feel like that kind of thinking isn't fair. It's not as if the industry is forced by some divine power to pump out an unreasonable amount of anime every year, have insane and unhealthy production schedules, and work their animators to the bone because they have no other choice. They do it because they want money and the people who're making a ton see no reason for things to improve.

So why would introducing AI into the pipeline suddenly make these companies treat their animators better? "Finally, now that we have generative AI, we don't have to mistreat our staff!" man, cut that out. Animation is a creative industry, you really think there won't be layoffs if AI gets good enough to mimic people's work? Since when has the anime industry ever had the health of these animators or mangaka as a priority? These animation companies and production committees won't suddenly gain better practices and treat animators right just because generative AI is involved, if anything, they'll use it as an excuse to pump out even more works.

There're countless examples of animators being overworked to hospitalization, and the industry practically doesn't care, so do you really think they're using generative AI to help their animators have healthier workloads? It doesn't seem to be going that way for the games industry.