Tim Haines
Creator of Walking with Dinosaurs
Creator of the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs and showrunner of NBC’s Surviving Earth. Weeks after saying AI was coming at his field “like a giant bull T-Rex,” he promoted generative AI on stage at DinoCon 2026 — drawing boos from attendees and a public disavowal from the convention.
Why this score
How the formula works →- +4.0pro3 pro-AI statements (forceful)
Weights, statement counts, the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field, and the formula’s smoothing are already baked in — the points add up to the score: Firmly Pro-AI · 4.0/10
In his words
…a new technique coming along like a giant bull T-Rex towards the whole area, which is AI.
Not going full AI. Not abandoning the sort of work that Joe could do, but to combine the two and therefore give us something that looks even better.
Biography
Tim Haines is the British producer-director who changed natural history television. A Bangor University zoology graduate turned journalist turned BBC producer, he created Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) — the CGI-driven series that presented dinosaurs as living animals in a nature documentary, won a BAFTA and multiple Emmys, and became one of the most-watched science programmes ever made. He co-founded the production company Impossible Pictures, followed with Walking with Beasts (2001), Sea Monsters (2003) and Walking with Monsters (2005), co-created ITV’s Primeval, and returned in June 2026 as showrunner of NBC’s eight-part extinction epic Surviving Earth.
The T-Rex in the room
Promoting Surviving Earth — a production that commissioned designs from palaeoartists and consulted hundreds of scientists — Haines told Animation Scoop in June 2026 that the next disruption in his field was already visible, describing “a new technique coming along like a giant bull T-Rex towards the whole area, which is AI.” Far from dreading it, he sketched a hybrid future for CGI pipelines.
I think that there is a way in which some of the wonderful work that’s done by artists with their art and AI can be incorporated within CGI pipelines to make a really stunning looking show.
A month later he brought that message to the wrong crowd. Giving an exclusive Surviving Earth talk at DinoCon 2026 in Birmingham (July 25–26, 2026) — a convention built around working palaeoartists — Haines spoke favourably about generative AI in palaeo-media. According to attendee accounts shared on the r/Paleontology subreddit, the remarks were booed from the floor, and the palaeoart community online piled on afterwards. The convention itself issued a statement disavowing the segment, saying it had not been in the approved presentation brief and that DinoCon “does not support the use of generative AI in any way.”
The episode made Haines one of the most prominent film-industry figures to openly back generative AI in front of the community his work helped create — and a case study in how fast that community turns on even its founding heroes.
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/tim-haines
