Chris Sanders

Chris Sanders (born 1962) is an American writer, director, and voice actor who co-wrote and co-directed Disney’s Lilo & Stitch — voicing Stitch himself — and DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon. In 2024 he wrote and directed The Wild Robot, a painterly, hand-touched adaptation that became one of the year’s most acclaimed animated features.

A film in defiance of AI

There is a pointed irony that Sanders addresses head-on: The Wild Robot is a story about a machine learning to feel, yet Sanders insists no generative AI touched its creation. “The interesting thing about the making of the film is that it stands in defiance of AI,” he said. “You take one human being off this film and it looks totally different” — a statement of how completely the movie’s look depends on individual artists.

He frames the value of human authorship in almost tactile terms, citing “the analogue warmth you get from a human-made painting” as something “irreplaceable,” and warns that there is no substitute for the human element. Asked where AI is heading in animation, he answered that for the human contribution, “there is not, and there never will be, a substitute.”

Sanders is not a maximalist: he has said he hopes AI “becomes a support thing” that finds “its place in the system to support human artistry.” His opposition is aimed squarely at AI replacing artists, not at every conceivable use of the technology.