The Cellar / Marvel using AI art.. literally wtf

**Posted by Flint** 8/04/2023 2:33 pm

I'm too exasperated by this to type a coherent post. I started watching Marvel's "Secret Invasion" and it was a pretty strong intro. Good characters, good story. Then the opening sequence played. It's a live action show, but the opening them is animated. It's done with ƒucking AI. On an intellectual property literally based on the creative labor of human artists. They're MARVEL--they couldn't find a group of artists to do the intro "in the style of AI" or something?

Slap in the face.

I'm never watching another Marvel thing again. They suck anyway-- The Eternals was the worst adaptation of anything I've ever seen-- the only thing they kept from the books was, basically the title.

Last edited by Flint (8/04/2023 2:34 pm)

**Posted by toranokaze** 8/04/2023 4:17 pm

The opening was not very well done which seems to be a trend with marvel and Disney, as they are not paying their VFX artists well while giving them near impossible deadlines. AI is going to destroy all jobs, strangely staring with creative fields first.

**Posted by Flint** 8/04/2023 4:41 pm

It's just bizarre that they thought this would be okay.

How could they possibly have thought this would be well received?

I immediately turned the show off, and I'm never watching another one of their products ever again.

ƒucking idiots

**Posted by griff** 8/04/2023 4:53 pm

Jesus. Yeah, creatives will be the first to go? I've been ruminating about this for a while. We're just going to march off this cliff. If UT were here I'd ask him to explain how these efficiencies are ever going to mean jobs or income for working class people or something other than over worked middle class folks cutting each others throats by feeding themselves to AI. I'm glad retirement is around the corner unless the stock market gets wrecked as well.

**Posted by Flint** 8/04/2023 5:10 pm

I'm thinking about pulling the money out of my retirement accounts and taking the tax hit. Considering the alternative is probably, losing half the money anyway when the "office real estate crash/bailout" implodes the global financial system.

**Posted by griff** 8/05/2023 6:07 am

I'm slowly moving into less volatile instruments but keeping the tax benefit.You can get IRA compliant CDs etc...

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 8/05/2023 8:59 am

Who is Marvel's target audience, low teens and preteens?
They probably feel that target group will accept pretty much anything.
No sense is spending a bunch to make something to show while they're getting popcorn or peeing.

**Posted by griff** 8/05/2023 9:57 am

The problem would seem to be that Marvel believes in and defends their copyrights while using a tool that probably was trained on copyrighted material without paying the artists.

**Posted by Flint** 8/07/2023 6:50 pm

griff wrote:
The problem would seem to be that Marvel believes in and defends their copyrights while using a tool that probably was trained on copyrighted material without paying the artists.

And not only is the AI generation built upon the uncredited work of human artists, Marvel's decision to use it here has replaced the jobs of human artists who could have been hired for this, current $212 million project. Use of AI steals from the artists of the past to replace the artists of the future-- it's a double-edged attack against artists.

What could their their media empire have been built upon if the job of "artist" had never existed.??

**Posted by toranokaze** 8/08/2023 4:52 pm

They argue that it is just the same as a regular artist learning by copying other's work

**Posted by Flint** 8/08/2023 7:12 pm

And after the job of "human artist" has been eliminated, because these "free artists" can be used instead, how many years before every piece of art assumes roughly the same look-- a bland mush of familiar, "popular" concepts? A future where, like the Hollywood "reboot" script, every piece of art copies and re-copies from a pool of ideas that never changes, because it never has any new DNA introduced. We're moving towards a future where art becomes, essentially a vague "wallpaper" that corporations paste on surfaces.

And who is here, leading the charge? A ƒucking COMIC BOOK company.

The robots were supposed to replace our meaningless, soul-crushing office jobs, freeing us to THINK and WRITE and CREATE, and elevate the human spirit to new heights. But instead, in this worst-case dystopia, the FIRST jobs that get replaced are artist and writer.

People need to be VERY ƒucking alarmed by this.

**Posted by griff** 8/09/2023 6:29 am

Flint wrote:
The robots were supposed to replace our meaningless, soul-crushing office jobs, freeing us to THINK and WRITE and CREATE, and elevate the human spirit to new heights. But instead, in this worst-case dystopia, the FIRST jobs that get replaced are artist and writer.

People need to be VERY ƒucking alarmed by this.

The AI will be conferred person-hood and corporations can be done with us whatsoever.

**Posted by toranokaze** 8/09/2023 1:47 pm

If AI has personhood I want them to pay taxes

**Posted by griff** 8/10/2023 5:53 am

Damn straight!

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 8/12/2023 12:02 am

AI is wonderful...

**Posted by griff** 8/21/2023 6:43 am

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ai-works-not-copyrightable-studios-1235570316/

AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says in Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause

Last edited by griff (8/21/2023 6:44 am)

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 8/21/2023 11:36 am

AI Al
One is this "new" thing, one is what Paul Simon says you can all him.
Can you tell the difference?

**Posted by Happy Monkey** 8/21/2023 11:50 am

All they need to do is tweak it in some way. I'm sure that some animation house worked on the Secret Invasion opening credits, it just was a lot fewer hours of work editing it than it would have been creating it from scratch.

Or, like with many shows, there wouldn't have been any opening credits at all, just a title card.

The one interesting bit from that ruling would be that if anyone got access to the untweaked version, they couldn't be charged with a copyright violation for distributing it. But they could potentially get a trademark violation, or charged with any laws or contracts they broke getting it.

**Posted by Flint** 8/21/2023 12:45 pm

I don't see an issue with artists using AI generation as a part of a human-driven process--it's can (and unavoidably will be) just another tool in the toolbox-- but, specifically, the AI intro of Secret Invasion appears to be straight out of Dall-E. It looks exactly like every other AI thing that some random youtuber made in an afternoon of dicking around with prompts. You spot it as AI immediately, spend a few seconds thinking that maybe they'll do something clever with it.. they don't.. it's just "sPoOkY tHiNg mOrPhS iNtO aNoThEr tHiNg' that anybody with a computer can do.

Last edited by Flint (8/21/2023 12:46 pm)

**Posted by Happy Monkey** 8/21/2023 3:12 pm

The copyright angle will hang on (assuming the ruling is maintained on appeal) whether the human did enough to count as a creative work. I suspect they'll have a lot of leeway, and the amount of human work required will be pretty minimal.

**Posted by Clodfobble** 8/22/2023 7:18 am

Is there a possibility that the plot of Marvel's Secret Invasion ultimately centers around AI, and the opening is a nod to that? (I don't know anything about it, I'm just spitballing.)

**Posted by Flint** 8/22/2023 12:50 pm

AFTER the show faced immediate backlash for the AI intro, the show creator started saying that the use of AI's unsettling inhumanity was an intentional thematic reference to the show's antagonists being shape-shifting aliens. This is a solid argument, if true, but you know who can create visual representations of thematic ideas?

ƒucking comic book artists

They could have done something cool with that idea, instead they just paid an intern $50 to type "green alien secret agent eye patch" into the sausage grinder of stolen images.

**Posted by Happy Monkey** 8/23/2023 8:59 pm

(and no, there is no AI in Secret Invasion)

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 9/19/2023 12:43 pm

Yo Flint, this made me smile.
https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the
Tired of getting screwed by DC Comics he did an end run.

"As of now, 15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and characters, is now in the public domain. What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by everyone, for all time. It’s done, and as most experts will tell you, once done it cannot be undone. Take-backs are neither contemplated nor possible."

**Posted by Flint** 9/19/2023 2:48 pm

that's a new one. I've never seen intellectual property disputes handled in that fashion