I guess the problem is not the repetitive task, but electron microscopes are expensive to use, and while you create your gifs others can't use it for actual research. They need vacuum and high voltage to work, which cost money.

I found that to create nice and and clean noise free image you need minutes to hours of exposure time, so it's possible that gif took hours to take. Someone had to pay for the electricity bill during that, I guess you don't want to pay for that frequently.

Please correct me if you are someone with actual experience with electron microscopes. It's hard to find info on this topic.