In theory sure, but it seems to me that if the cost and effort to create become lower so will the content. There will always be better and worse, and just like CGI, the content would be good or bad depending on what humans are behind it and the amount of effort they put on.
Im thinking generative AI will indeed make animations ubiquitos to the point we’d ingest so much content to the point of becoming ‘alergic’ to it or seek something other kind of entertainment.
There a huge demand for animation, that is currently being unsatisfied.
Youtube used to have a large genre of short-animations. They all died out, because their production costs are way higher than what weekly-ad-revenues can sustain, compared to the incredibly cheap costs of talking heads, which can update daily.
Not everyone will like animation, but there'll probably at least 50x animation on youtube in 2 years than today.
There's also the quality issue. Animation scales very linearly with budget. With low budget, the best you can do is flash animation, which limits the formats of story you can tell very heavily (99+% comedy)
With AI, individuals can match the quality of professional animation teams, which drastically expands the range of ideas they can explore. So that eliminates a lot of the boredom.
Note this wouldn't displace existing animation studios, it'll just allow them to push their production values way way higher. For hand-drawn animation, even top-budget films, still have moments where they cheap out. In the future, the standard is going to get pushed insanely high, where every frame will be screenshot worthy, because they are literally AI illustrations.
Aka, instead of one Mona-Lisa, expect 1000 Mona Lisa paintings, formed into an animation of Mona-Lisa going through her day in renaissance Italy.
The actual threatened jobs, aren't in animation, but in live action. Because its far harder to make perfect photo-realistic images than stylized images. This gives animation an advantage that live action doesn't have.
For example, the recent Rings of Power cost 1 billion, but an AI animation would both look better, and cost far far less. Sci-Fi and fantasy shows are especially vulnerable to competition from animation.
Im thinking generative AI will indeed make animations ubiquitos to the point we’d ingest so much content to the point of becoming ‘alergic’ to it or seek something other kind of entertainment.