A24's New AI-Generated 'Civil War' Ads Generate Controversy

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/a24-civil-war-posters-controversy-1235876340/

by adrian_mrd • 2 years ago

12 19 2 years ago

It genuinely confuses me how much AI generated content has become a left-wing culture war item overnight. Is this actually out of concern for graphic designers, many of which are the ones using the genAI tools in question?

mock-possum• 2 years ago

It’s hard for me to see it as anything but a moral panic.

threatofrain• 2 years ago

It's not a moral panic, it's a financial panic. Just people who are worried about their career futures. I'd wager that although this is a divisive issue, the majority opinion is on "Yes more generation please, this is so cool."

kyeb• 2 years ago

What makes you say it's a "left-wing culture war item"? I've gotten the impression opposition to using AI-generated content like this typically comes from artists who might have been paid for similar content in the past

swatcoder• 2 years ago

Many artists and digital tradespeople (including developers) are uncomfortable with how current models acquired their training data and how their use of that training data may disrupt real human livelihoods before affected people have a chance to respond or weigh in.

The politics of the people taking that stance are all over the map, and the arguments are about personal economics and immediate human impact.

You may think it's all nonsense, but I don't know how you get to "left-wing" or "culture war" from that.

jncfhnb2• 2 years ago

I find this argument to be fiction. The training data does not matter. Let’s say it all came from art that was sold for pennies. Or from another country where it was legalized. Do you really think artists are going to feel differently if they’re in the same boat but confident that “their” art was not used without consent?

No.

The problem is the economic impact on artists.

megabytemike• 2 years ago

I don't think the concern is out of graphic designers, but the diminishing of humans from the creative process. Art is meant to be expressive of human experience. It's a translation of feeling and ideas (intangible) into a medium (tangible). One could argue AI still achieves this to a degree, and there ARE some really good AI generated artwork out there that does achieve this well but most of it isn't commercial art.

I think the actual concern people have with AI generated art is that the bar for entry has been lowered (expected) but we're ignoring the attention to detail or verifying/confirming the output. Too much trust is being put into AI generated output and we rush to publish stuff that doesn't convey the original idea. With it being commercially driven art, the incentives aren't there to properly review when you are emphasizing quantity over quality.

Take the swan and army boat in Los Angeles lake example. Before fully AI generated art existed, a human would have looked and reviewed that and ask the artist, "why the hell is there a swan there?" There could be a dialogue to defend or change that.

Even without AI, this problem still would have existed if your goal is producing as much distinct art at scale with less humans in the loop. Things are bound to slip through but it only winds up being smaller issues that might not impact expression of idea. Adding fully generated AI art has amplified this problem to a point where we don't have time to review at all.

Yeul• 2 years ago

The Hollywood movie industry has always been about business not art.

jfoutz• 2 years ago

The controversy is stills that don't appear in the movie. For example, Chicago burning, but Chicago isn't in the movie.

Doesn't seem to be about AI, so much as the changing face of movie marketing. kinda. if you squint hard.

Karellen• 2 years ago

Changing face of marketing?

Trailers containing scenes that weren't in the movie has happened for decades.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trailer+scenes+not+in+movie

neogodless2• 2 years ago

I agree with you and my sibling comment.

Misrepresenting movies in their marketing isn't new. It's always super annoying!

Anyone ever see the trailer for Happy People with Adam Sandler? Wow, cannot wait to go see this feel good comedy! Oh wait... depressing movie. VERY depressing. Almost no comedy at all. Grr.

But it is definitely something that we should collectively keep bitching about. Don't do that. (Also, don't go see movies on opening night. Wait for the reviews. Hold onto your money.)

nickelcitymario• 2 years ago

New? No. Fully agreed.

But there's misrepresenting, and then there's "What the hell does this have to do with the movie I just watched?"

Good advertising (and I speak as an advertiser) sets up your expectations appropriately so that once you've experienced the product (in this case a movie) you leave satisfied.

Bad advertising promises you something completely different so that you leave the experience disappointed, which results in bad word of mouth.

Honestly, what none of the advertising for Civil War accomplishes (and I really liked the movie) is telling you that this is a movie about war journalism more than anything else. Yeah, there's a "this could happen here" message. But the core experience of the film is what it's like (presumably) to be a war correspondent. Didn't expect that at all going into the theatre.

Also... I loved Happy People. But yes, it's depressing. Beautifully so, but not a comedy.

neogodless2• 2 years ago

For posterity, I meant Funny People, not Happy People

jareklupinski• 2 years ago

I'm still angry that Cyperpunk 2077 doesn't contain that scene where Keanu tells you to "Wake up" because you "have a city to burn"

gerikson• 2 years ago

Considering the amount of images and video of real devastation wrought around the world in real wars, it's disappointing that the artists went for pseudo-saccharine neon "nice" devastation.

39896880• 2 years ago

Misleading ads for movies is an age old problem. For the longest time, the poster on IMdb for the movie Infernal Affairs (remade in the US as The Departed) prominently featured a woman holding a gun. She isn’t in the movie and to this day I still don’t know who the hell she is. [0]

[0] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTk5ODc1Nzg2N15BMl5B...

voisin• 2 years ago

I was surprised at how limited the scope of the movie was. I expected it to be a bit broader about the war, but I felt like the larger war was almost not featured. The lack of context I think was a missed opportunity.

A24's New AI-Generated 'Civil War' Ads Generate Controversy

Related Stories