A series of AI-generated images promoting Alex Garland’s new dystopian film Civil War has angered the internet, sparking new concerns about the role of technology in entertainment and the need for mechanisms labeling.
Independent film studio A24 is facing controversy after using AI-generated images to promote its latest film, Civil War.
The film, starring Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura, follows a team of journalists as they travel across a war-torn East Coast to reach Washington, D.C., where they hope to interview the authoritarian president before rebels descend on the House White. It premiered at South by Southwest in March and was released in theaters across the United States earlier this month.
Yesterday, A24 posted six images to its official Instagram page, each depicting an iconic American location in the midst of some sort of armed conflict. Sphere in Las Vegas, for example, is depicted as a smoking husk lying in rubble, and the fountain in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park is surrounded by heavily armed military transport vehicles. None of the scenes captured in the stills were actually included in the film.
It didn’t take long for fans to realize that the images were generated by AI.
Upon closer inspection, one can discern some sloppy details that would not have been included by a human artist. The road layout shown in the Washington Square Park image doesn’t really look like the real thing. Another image shows one of the Marina Towers in Chicago in the middle of the river – both buildings are, in real life, located on the same side of the water. Misalignment of small details like these is a characteristic of current text-image generative AI models.
Reactions to the Instagram post ranged from bewilderment to outrage. “I’m really discouraged by this marketing campaign,” one person commented. “AI art is theft and it’s aesthetically horrible. Fire the person who approved this garbage. This is disgusting and insulting to your audience.
Another wrote: “For a company that seems to value artistic talent, using AI-generated works for advertising purposes is a real disappointment. »
In other words, A24’s use of generative AI has, in other words, added fuel to a fire already burning around the topic of AI’s impact in the entertainment and advertising industries .
“The debate around (AI-generated images) is really emblematic of where we are today in determining what role AI should (or should not) play in the creative world,” says Alex Persky-Stern, CEO from Waymark, an AI-powered video generation platform. “A24 was probably trying to do something really innovative with (the footage) – but in that quest, they may also have temporarily forgotten the importance of human authenticity.”
The incident comes just months after the recent Strikes by Hollywood writers and actorsin which union members sought to regulate the use of AI in the television and film industries.
“This use of AI-generated creative follows a hard-fought contract negotiation between Hollywood studios and the Writers Guild of America in which (the latter) won significant concessions on the use of AI in film production,” says Forrester principal analyst Jay Pattisall. “The creation of Civil War AI symbolically challenges those who win. It also hits a nerve in broader American society, where a third of American consumers (who have heard of it) are wary of generative AI.”
As Pattisall points out, falsification of promotional material for films is nothing new. Posters for the 1976 King Kong remake, for example, show the eponymous character standing atop the World Trade Center’s twin towers while crashing into fighter jets, when in fact helicopters were featured in the film. More recently, Marvel has been known to digitally alter scenes in its trailers to avoid spoiling important plot points of its films.
But some view A24’s use of generative AI – given the current political climate around AI and given the fact that the scenes depicted are not included in Civil War – as a major strategic miscalculation. “A24 has no valid reason to falsify the scenes we see in their promotional materials,” says digital PR expert Georgia O’Brien Perry. “This is a huge misstep for their reputation.”
Given that the film itself is a portrait of a hypothetical political cataclysm, the AI-generated images were reportedly intended to inspire more thinking about what such a disaster might look like, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited an anonymous source “close to the film”. .”
The fact that A24 didn’t clearly reveal that it was using AI to create the images certainly doesn’t seem to have helped matters.
In recent months, as concerns about the role of AI-generated disinformation in the upcoming U.S. election have continued to grow, a chorus of private and public sector experts has begun to push for policies requiring that AI-generated content is clearly labeled as such. It’s ironic that the marketing team behind a film about a second American civil war – with a team of journalists at its center – could have neglected to label its own AI-generated content, especially since we are getting closer to a presidential election that will be seen by many, it is a decisive moment for American democracy.
“This episode highlights the need for greater transparency in AI-powered advertising and marketing,” says Pattisall. “Advertisers and their agents must clearly label work created with AI.”
Civil War director Alex Garland first rose to prominence with his 2014 debut film, Ex Machina, which tells the story of a power struggle between a human inventor and his AI creation – and serves as a parable about the dangers of powerful AI.
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