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He Made a Movie About Humans Rising Up Against AI. Now He’s Doing the Real Thing | Mike Rianda’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a sci-fi comedy about a family fighting back against Silicon Valley tech. As animators gear up to battle Hollywood studios, it’s becoming a fable.

Mike Rianda’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a sci-fi comedy about a family fighting back against Silicon Valley tech. As animators gear up to battle Hollywood studios, it’s becoming a fable.

That’s because on Monday, the Animation Guild, of which Rianda is a member, begins negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents the major Hollywood studios and the entertainment industry, to bargain their next contract. “More so than live-action production.” Companies like Disney and Netflix have vast stores of images and data that can be used to train large language and diffusion models; jobs at every step of the production process from voice acting to storyboarding, workers fear, are at risk of being automated. We trekked through the interlocking parking lots and the blistering inland heat to a burger joint, where Rianda spoke about iniquities in the industry, the brewing fight with the studios, and his anxieties and anger at what AI stands to do to his profession.

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