Sylvain Chomet Defends Dior Short Against AI Accusations: 'Everything Was Drawn by Hand'

Four-time Oscar nominee Sylvain Chomet has rejected accusations that generative AI created his six-minute animated short for Dior, "Christian Dior's Night in Color." The film took seven months to make, was drawn entirely by artists, and never used generative AI, Chomet and producer Aton Soumache told Variety.

The controversy erupted online after some viewers pointed to apparent visual glitches, including a character with six fingers, as evidence of AI-generated animation. The stakes rose because Dior positioned the short as a celebration of traditional craftsmanship, launching its 2026 holiday season with explicit parallels between Chomet's hand-drawn animation and the meticulous work of its couture ateliers.

What does the film actually use?

Chomet and Soumache acknowledge one automated tool: interpolation software that generated some in-between frames, the intermediate drawings that make movement fluid. Characters, backgrounds and key poses were all drawn by artists.

"We used an automated interpolation system for a very small part of the process, but the film itself is traditional 2D animation," Soumache said.

"Some people are claiming Sylvain was contacted two weeks ago and that the entire film was made with generative AI, without a single drawing, but the reality is that this film took seven months to make and it was entirely drawn by artists," he added. The production employed roughly 20 people, including six animators, alongside storyboard artists, designers, background artists, compositors and editors.

Chomet, whose latest film "A Magnificent Life" premiered at Cannes last year and was distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics, said the tool only automated the mechanical part of the craft. "It's a way of automating the repetitive, mechanical part of animation, not the creative work," he said.

Why the accusations sting

The filmmaker called the accusations ironic, given his decades of loyalty to hand-drawn animation after CGI conquered Hollywood.

"Before I made 'The Triplets of Belleville,' it was the era of 'Toy Story.' I remember Disney declaring that traditional 2D animation was dead and that everything would be CGI, but I decided to continue making hand-drawn films," Chomet said. "That's why I find it so strange that people are attacking me today. I've remained faithful to drawing throughout my career. At the same time, I'm going to use the tools that technology offers us."

He dismissed the infamous six fingers as a deliberate gesture. "It's a movement where the hand is spread out like a fan. In that kind of drawing, you might see six or seven fingers because you're trying to convey movement," he said, adding: "I've seen a character turn his head and suddenly his nose changes shape completely over five frames. These things happen."

Who made the film?

The voice cast is led by Robert Pattinson as narrator, with Louis Garrel voicing Christian Dior and Camille Cottin playing Marlene Dietrich. Josh O'Connor voices a talking chair, Rihanna portrays Dior's lucky star, and LaKeith Stanfield plays the Hollywood director. Nine d'Urso, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Greta Lee voice the three bees.

The story imagines Dietrich in Los Angeles preparing to shoot a film when the director decides to shoot in color, prompting an urgent call to Paris for a Dior gown. It draws on Dior's friendship with Dietrich, his Hollywood ties and the 1949 Junon gown, and takes inspiration from an early idea behind creative director Jonathan Anderson's Cruise 2027 collection: cinema's transition from black-and-white to Technicolor.

Anderson originated the concept, with Martin Latham helping develop the screenplay. "We developed the script together and then presented ideas for the storyboard, the story and the characters. There was a lot of back-and-forth," Chomet said.

The collaboration extends beyond the screen: Chomet's illustrations inspired Dior's holiday collections and boutique windows worldwide. "Many of Dior's windows are based directly on Sylvain's drawings. They created physical versions of the characters and objects from the film," Soumache said.

Chomet cites Disney's 1961 "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" as his "madeleine de Proust" and frames the debate simply: the creative process is unchanged since he started, only the technology has moved. As AI scrutiny spreads across the animation industry, his case shows how even proven hand-drawn masters must now document their methods frame by frame.