Amazon Freevee Called Out for Using Bizarre AI Generated Movie Posters

Summary

• AI in Hollywood faces backlash for creating nightmarish figures in movie posters, like Freevee’s rendition of
  12 Angry Men
  .
• Generative AI has caused controversy in movie making, with films like A24’s
  Civil War
  and
  Late Night With the Devil
  facing criticism.
• Despite resistance, some studios, like Sony, are embracing AI to streamline the filmmaking process and cut costs.

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Hollywood is on the rise, despite the extreme backlash from fans and creatives within the industry, Prime Video’s Freeveeis the latest company under fire for using the software to create a poster for the timeless 1957 courtroom drama 12 Angry Men. Despite audience and creatives’ fears that AI will take over Hollywood and put everyone out of a job, the software doesn’t have a great track record for success. In the case of the image generation, the software has a tenuous grasp of human anatomy and often produces nightmarish figures that make Twilight’s CGI baby look photo-real. Add to that its incapability to correctly produce proportionate faces and hands, and AI has become one of the funniest controversies in modern movie making.

Freevee’s release of 12 Angry Men pairs the beloved movie with a horrifying AI-generated thumbnail which, as one social media user pointed out, literally changes the entire concept of the film. Shared on X/Twitter by one Freevee user, the film’s thumbnail features the movie’s logo over an AI generated black and white phot (supposedly) depicting the characters in the film.

However, if you count the number of people in the thumbnail, 12 Angry Men magically transforms into “19 Terrifying Men”. As interesting as that film might be, it’s far from Sidney Lumet’s lorded classic. Looking closer at the characters, it shows their hauntingly distorted faces, as if the AI software took inspiration from Edvard Munch’s The Scream painting.

Several Modern Movies Have Received Backlash for Using AI

Freevee’s use of generative AI to produce a new poster for 12 Angry Men is, as many commenters on the original post pointed out, entirely redundant when a screenshot of the movie could have been used instead. However, it’s far from the highest profile, or most controversial use of AI in the industry. A24’s Civil War recently came under fire for using generative AI to produce posters which featured glaring geographical mistakes. The horror film Late Night With the Devil, starring David Dastmalchian, was also the target of criticism for using AI within the movie for title cards and cutaways.

Most recently, George Miller’s Furiosa, the latest entry in the Mad Max franchise, also utilized AI to transition between a younger and older version of the titular character.

Some studios are even openly embracing the controversial technology. Sony CEO Tony Vinciquerra revealed at an investor conference that the studio will be embracing the new technology. AI was a major negotiation point during 2023’s joint WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but Sony still wants to utilize the technology to streamline the movie making process. Vinciquerra’s statement read:

“We’ll be looking at ways to use AI to produce films for theaters and television in more efficient ways, using AI primarily.”

Despite backlash from creatives and audiences, many believe that AI will eventually become a standard part of the filmmaking process, thanks in large part to its cost-saving potential.