Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age showrunners confirm there’s no AI on screen – ‘mother nature is a better creator than any AI’

Listen, it's no surprise to anybody that 99.9% of the creatures alive during Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age aren't kicking about anymore.

Even though the creators of the Apple TV show had a much more modern frame of reference to work with (you'll see rhinos, sloths and monkeys, for example), everything you see had to be created from scratch.

We've jumped roughly 133 million years forward in time since season 2 hit our screens, and that means the Ice Age wildlife looks a lot more like ours. Gone are the days of the dinosaur in favor of... well... a lot of giant versions of the animals we have now.

At the same time, legends like the Woolly Mammoth became extinct, and that's something we can't witness again on our own. Luckily enough, the Prehistoric Planet team has put their blood, sweat and tears into painstaking recreations of our blasts from the past.

This time around, though, I had a new question about what I was watching. Was any of Apple TV's Ice Age made using AI? It's a topic that continues to divide our industry, with key figures deciding that now is the time to stand for (Disney CEO Bob Iger) or against (Frankenstein director Guillermo Del Toro) its use in our field.

For executive producer Mike Gunton and showrunner Matthew Thompson, the answer is obvious – and it all comes down to the show's "authenticity".

Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age was a ‘labor of love’ for its creators

Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age — Season 3 Official Trailer | Apple TV - YouTube

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"We certainly didn't use AI in the way that people might think," Thompson says. "There's probably a few minor tools in the background that were being used to make certain processes more efficient, but there is no AI on screen. And I think what frames all would say is the work we're doing is so unique.

"We're creating creatures that have never been realized before, and we're creating situations that have never been put on screen. So you could never use AI to create what we've created, because those things aren't there to train them on. I think what we've managed to achieve could not, in any way, have been achieved by AI.

"It's just been an absolute incredible labor of love for 1000 people across the world to create these effects."

Gunton adds: "The thing about working VFX is, of course, you can put a camera anywhere, theoretically. But what we did was very rigorously decide to only put a camera in our world where you can really put a camera as you would if you're making a wildlife show. You get discontinuity, slight loss of focus, and interesting little camera developments which bring you into the emotional drama of the animals. That is something that would not possible if you just let yourself go crazy in the VFX world.

"We have gone around the world shooting our locations and our animals play out their dramas within those real environments, and that's for a number of reasons. One, it adds to that authenticity, but also Mother Nature is still a better creator environments than any AI. It's subtle, but it's absolutely there. You feel the authenticity of it. And really, that's all what we're about."

For some, this will be a sigh of relief. Regardless, it's an absolute feat of on-screen VFX.

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