Indie Animator Targeted By Hollywood For Using AI Voices

Yesterday morning I woke up to discover a new animation from a YouTuber I’d never heard of before in my feed. It was created by Eagan Tilghman and titled Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In… SPRINGTRAPPED!.

The animation in question is quite good. I really enjoyed it, even for someone who isn’t a Five Nights at Freddy’s or Scooby-Doo fan.

Tilghman used Blender to create a Rankin Bass-styled Scooby-Doo cartoon. He captured the goofs and oddities found in many stop-motion projects of the era.

However, the drama soon followed this cartoon which currently has 464k views. Tilghman had offended the Divine Church of the Hollywood Creatives. As it is written, he had sinned and must be dragged on social media.

So, what was his “sin,” according to SpongeBob SquarePants‘s director Jay Lender and voice artist Grey Griffin? Eagan Tilghman used AI voices to recreate the cast of the 1969’s Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Ah, yes. A young artist can’t make a fun animation anymore without Hollywood chastising and threatening to blacklist him.

In the Twitter thread, Lender takes out his frustration with current parody laws and the 2nd Amendment (for some reason) on Tilghman. He loops in Mindy Kaling and Gray Griffin, but only Griffin responds.

Considering Mindy did not provide the voice for Velma in the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon, what was the point of this? Griffin was also never a part of the initial three-season run of the classic show. This seems like Lender wanted names associated with the current versions of the IP to jump in, but for what purpose?

https://twitter.com/JayLender1/status/1690428145269383168?s=20

https://twitter.com/GreyDeLisle/status/1690489090389532672?s=20

https://twitter.com/Eagtab/status/1690751546974449664?s=20

In case Lender and Griffin decide to take down their tweets, here are the screenshots of them:

Tilghman updated the description of his YouTube short to include the following disclaimer regarding the AI voices:

A.I. DISCLAIMER: I am not a fan of AI. The only reason I used AI voices for Fred, daphne, Velma, and SG Kluger is because I can’t really afford to pay a ton of voice actors ATM, and it’s also difficult to find impersonators for the gang other than shaggy and Scooby. This isn’t intended to make money, it’s honestly created as a portfolio piece and giant joke that took me way too long to animate. so I just used AI considering I’m a one man team and don’t have the means for many voice actors at the moment. If it counts for anything, the rest of the video is painstakingly designed, modeled, textured, animated, lit, rendered, edited, composited, and posted all by me, 1000% from scratch by hand with nothing other than my own brain and creative drive doing the work. I even learned to do a Scooby impression so I could voice Scooby myself! I have some original shorts in the works and I plan for those to be completely AI free, so consider this video a launch pad for my Patreon and my work so that i will be able to bring on more talent in the future. Thanks for the support everyone, it’s very much appreciated. This is a fan animation. I do not own the rights to any of the content in the video. Fair use permits the commentary, criticism, or parody of a copyrighted work without having a license from the copyright holder.

The animator could have gotten people to provide voice lines for a small fee or even free. However, he doesn’t have to, and that’s what is driving this harsh reaction. Writers and actors are upset that the current rules don’t hinder people from creating parodies using AI-generated voices or spliced audio.

What do you think of the situation? Let us know in the comments section below.