Is AI going to replace animators? An animator's (very biased) answer

Let me get something out of the way immediately: I use AI in my work. More than I would have admitted a year ago, before everyone started asking.

The question I keep getting, from clients, from other creatives, from my mum who doesn't entirely understand what I do but is very supportive, is some version of: "Should I be worried about you?" Which is a sweet way of asking whether software is about to make me redundant.

Short answer: no. Slightly longer answer: it's complicated, and anyone who gives you a clean yes or no is either lying or trying to sell you something.

Here's my honest take, from someone who's actually in the weeds with this stuff every day.

What AI is genuinely good at (in my world)

Scripts. First drafts of scripts are now dramatically faster than they used to be. I still write the final version, the rhythm, the jokes, the specific turn of phrase that fits a brand's voice, but the blank page problem is basically solved. I give Claude or ChatGPT a brief and a brain-dump of bullet points, and I get something to react to in minutes rather than staring at a cursor for an hour.

Image generation, and this is where it gets interesting. A couple of years ago, if I needed to put a real presenter's face onto a historical figure for an educational video, that was a days-long Photoshop nightmare. Now? I recently swapped a client's face onto Napoleon Bonaparte for an educational project in minutes. Lawrence, you looked magnificent commanding the Grande Armée... Sorry Loz.

That kind of thing, taking a specific creative requirement and executing it fast, is where AI genuinely earns its place in my workflow.

That's roughly where it ends, for me.

What AI is genuinely terrible at (in my world)

Generating actual animation. I've tried. You've probably seen the results floating around the internet, that uncanny, drifting, morphing quality that looks impressive for about four seconds before your brain registers that something is deeply wrong with physics, with timing, with the way that character's fingers just did that.

The fundamental problem is that good animation isn't just movement. It's intentional movement. It's knowing that a character should ease into a landing rather than just stop. It's knowing that the camera should hold for half a beat longer than feels comfortable, because that's where the joke lands. It's ten thousand small decisions that happen so fast you stop noticing you're making them. AI doesn't make decisions. It makes predictions. And in animation, that difference is everything.

I spent an afternoon trying to use an AI motion tool on a client project once. I got something technically competent and completely soulless. I scrapped it and started from scratch. The client never knew. I lost half a day.

The thing nobody wants to say out loud

AI is already affecting animator jobs, just not mine. Not yet.

The roles feeling the squeeze are the entry-level ones. The junior animators doing templated social content, the motion designers producing the fifth iteration of the same lower-third, the people whose job was essentially: take this After Effects template and swap in the new logo.

That work is going away. Not all at once, not dramatically, but steadily. And that's a real problem, not just for those individuals, but for the pipeline. Those junior roles were how senior animators like me learned the craft. If that rung of the ladder disappears, what replaces it?

I don't have a clean answer to that. Anyone who does is guessing.

What I think AI genuinely cannot replace

Taste. Creative decision-making. Knowing when something is almost right but not quite, and knowing specifically what would fix it.

This is harder to defend than it sounds, because taste feels abstract. But here's a concrete version: when a client briefs me, they tell me what they want. My job isn't to give them what they asked for. It's to figure out what they actually need, which is often quite different. That requires reading between the lines, understanding their audience, drawing on experience from dozens of similar projects, and occasionally telling them gently that their idea won't work.

AI can execute a brief. It cannot interrogate one.

So should you commission a human animator in 2026?

Yes, but not just because I need the work (though I do, obviously, please get in touch).

Because the things that make an explainer video actually work, a script that sounds like a real person, animation that feels considered, a creative direction that fits your brand rather than just technically functioning, those things still require a human being making thousands of small judgements.

AI is a tool I use to do my job better and faster. It is not, yet, a replacement for the job itself.

Ask me again in five years. I reserve the right to be completely wrong about all of this.

If you're thinking about commissioning an animated explainer video and want to talk through what that actually involves, AI-assisted or otherwise, I offer a free 15-minute discovery call. No pitch, no pressure, just a conversation. Get in touch here.