Welp, the flood gates are open. With Marvel Studios embracing AI art, it’s only a matter of time before we see just a flood of this stuff in all sorts of production. What’s really baffling to me is why they decided to go this direction since AI art is not protected by copyright.

There’s also this Polygon article with Secret Invasion director Ali Selim which makes it sound like he doesn’t really understand how AI works or why it can be potentially problematic.

Method Studios has done credit sequences for Marvel before like Ms. Marvel and I think a few others. They had a shit ton of people making those sequences whereas for Secret Invasion, there were only eight people credited. That’s the issue. Not only is this generative AI not protected, not only is it built upon a data set that has been unethically sourced from unlicensed artwork, but this use in particular takes away jobs from creatives who are already woefully underpaid and horribly overworked. It’s especially insidious in light of the reporting on how horrible Marvel treats the effects houses they work with.

It would be one thing if Method built their data set from scratch and invested the time and money to develop their own generative models. I think in that case, sure, it’s a useful tool. But none of the commercially available models have been cleanly sourced, and Adobe’s supposed ethical model cannot be used for commercial products.

I just had to get this off my chest because it bothers me so damn much.