Indonesia’s first fully AI-animated show Legenda Bertuah gets mixed reaction

Baca artikelnya dalam bahasa Indonesia

An evil giant thrashes his arms as brown waves of mud swallow the angry beast and he disappears beneath the surface.

At first glance, the creature from Javanese folktale the Legend of Timun Mas looks like a character designed by animators.

A closer inspection reveals telltale signs that this giant has been created using generative artificial intelligence (AI).

At one point the giant’s eyes look in the wrong direction.

As the giant fights a young girl, battle sequence frames jump around and look disjointed.

The scenes are from an episode of Legenda Bertuah, the first television series in Indonesia to use AI to fully animate a show.

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Legenda Bertuah premiered in January and 14 half-hour-long episodes have since been aired on free-to-air television.

While other countries including China have already made fully AI-generated television shows, the Legenda Bertuah series is a milestone for Indonesia and viewers’ reactions have been mixed.

Each episode, which can also be streamed from the website for the company behind the series TRANS7, tells a different Indonesian folktale.

“It’s really cool, quite refreshing and insightful, and it helps gen Z and gen alpha kids learn more about Indonesian legends,” wrote a viewer on social media.

Another audience member described the show as a “quality AI TV show”.

Other audience members were unimpressed with the AI-generated human characters.

“The expressions and tone sound very stiff, it’s obvious that it’s AI. That’s one of AI’s weaknesses: human performance can’t be replaced by AI,” said a viewer on social media.

Another person said the creation was “messed up”.

“Does this country really lack animators? Are you that broke that you can’t hire animators or graduates in animation or illustration to tell these folktales?” they wrote.

TRANS7 spokesperson Mira Khairunnisa denied the main reason they chose to use AI was to save money.

“Producing [a TV program] with AI is not that cheap. We didn’t create it to be cost-effective or anything like that,” she said.

“We see it as a new tool that can be developed in our content production.”

It took the company one month to make one episode, Ms Khairunnisa explained.

About 10 people work on the show.

“It’s just a tool. AI can’t work on its own. It still needs humans behind it,” said Ms Khairunnisa.

“It’s not eliminating jobs, but instead, creating new ones … so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Prompt engineers elicit videos

The process of making each episode starts with story-boarding, agreeing on images, scripting, and video editing, which was all done by humans, explained Ms Khairunnisa.

The company also employs prompt engineers, who come from different job backgrounds such as camera operators and IT professionals, who give directions to generative AI to create the animation.

The engineers first prompt ChatGPT to generate still images for each scene, which serve as visual guides to keep the animation consistent.

Those stills are then animated into video using Google Veo.

The producers finally edit the AI videos to fix sound, colours and lighting.

Ms Khairunnisa said the producers also consulted experts on the folktales to make sure the scripting and visual interpretation were accurate.

“So it can be properly justified, whether it’s the facts, the story, or the authenticity of the background, wardrobe, and everything shown on screen,” she said.

Dermawan Syamsuddin, from the Indonesian Animation Industry Association, disputed that the videos generated by AI could actually be called animation.

He said the movements and acting of the characters were “exaggerated”.

“From a visual category perspective, this is not animated content because it does not use an animation style in its presentation, such as a cartoony look, which is a global hallmark of animation,” he said.

‘Are they simply products of an industry?’

Satriaddin Maharinga, a director, actor and film writer also known as Arie Kriting, said the new series had raised concerns in the creative industry and prompted ethical questions.

Maharinga said he believed AI had been used to make the Legenda Bertuah series to save money.

He pointed out that animation was a specialised skill and there were professional animators who had spent many years working in the field to develop their craft.

There is no data in Indonesia about how many jobs might be lost or gained thanks to AI being used in this sector.

As an artist, Maharinga said the series demonstrated that the implications of AI should be clearly defined before it is used.

“Especially since it [the use of AI] has become a major concern among artists and creative workers, I feel it’s better to at least not rush into using it, until its ethical positioning is clearly understood and established,” he said.

Maharinga said he used AI to help find writing inspiration and simplify his script writing process.

“Some people feel that it may harm the creative process, because the creative thinking doesn’t come from them,” he said.

“Others see it simply as a tool that provide help.”

But as an artist, he questioned how AI content should be viewed and attributed.

“AI has no soul, right? It has no feelings, no independent will, and no creative agency of its own,” he said.

“So, the question then becomes, ‘Are the shows we enjoy still works of art, or are they simply products of an industry?'”

Franklin Darmadi, movie director and Wokcop Pictures chief executive, told the ABC that AI was helpful, but “not everything can 100 per cent be replaced with AI”.

“I think [filmmaking] still requires human touch,” he said.

Darmadi, who is currently producing a family drama movie, said he had used AI to quickly find general information and for small tasks like removing unwanted objects from the background of a shot.

He said he still did not feel comfortable making the main visuals of his films entirely AI‑based.

“There are AI applications that can produce very refined results, but when I look at current technology, I still feel that it’s not truly human as it hasn’t been able to capture micro‑expressions yet, and also lacks the spontaneity and unpredictability that humans naturally have.”

Irvan Satya Prana, research deputy at the Indonesian Animation Industry Association (AINAKI), said animation and design jobs were already being impacted by AI.

“My students, alumni, and people in the community have told me that it’s much harder to find work today and there have been many lay-offs,” he said.

He said artists were transitioning their skills in this new era.

“We’re still preparing ourselves and adapting. I’m confident that we will overcome this transition,” he said.

Regulating AI ‘tricky’

Indonesia has a national AI strategy, known as Stranas KA, which includes ethics and policies but is not a legally binding document.

The government has also signalled it may revise the country’s copyright legislation to capture AI-generated content, which would include regulations to protect artists.

Arif Perdana, associate professor of digital strategy and data science at Monash University Indonesia, said regulating AI was “tricky”.

“If a law is too strict, it risks stifling innovation. But if it’s too weak or too lenient, it can be dangerous for the public,” he said.

“There needs to be a balance.”

Mr Perdana described Indonesia’s regulations as “decent”.

Even though the government was still figuring out the transition period, Mr Prana from the association said it was important to have specific regulations to protect artists.

“Specific policies are urgently needed, very urgently,” he said.

“If this continues as is, we don’t know how long adaptation will take, and it could easily become chaotic.”

A spokesperson for Indonesia’s Ministry of Creative Economy said the government was speeding up work to move from “moral” guidelines to “regulations with legally binding force”.

“[This is] to minimise the risk of efficiency gains leading to mass lay-offs and to ensure fair remuneration standards for creators whose work intersects with the AI-based digital ecosystem,” the spokesperson said.

“AI should be used as a tool, not a replacement for humans, so that key creative decisions remain in human hands.”

Additional reporting by Raffa Athallah