"Civil War": A24 uses AI-generated advertising images ... including artifacts

The Golden Gate Bridge in the background, the remains of the Palace of Fine Arts in the foreground. San Francisco is obviously at war, soldiers are moving towards an unknown object in the water. This and other very realistic-looking images are advertising. They are intended to promote the movie Civil War. But there are those who don't find this particularly successful.

The film by A24 is about a new civil war that has broken out in the USA. A group of journalists wants to make their way to Washington D.C. to interview the president before rebels take over the White House. The film premiered at the South by Southwest Festival in March and has been showing in German cinemas since April 18, 2024.

AI-generated Manhattan, Chicago, and San Francisco

A24, the studio behind Civil War, has now published several images on an official Instagram channel showing various US cities in a state of war. However, it quickly becomes apparent that they contain typical AI errors and artifacts. For example, although the Golden Gate Bridge is behind the Roman temple building of an exhibition from 1915, the angle of the image cannot be correct. The Palace of Fine Arts is higher up, and it is not possible to take a photo from the pond in front of it, in which the famous bridge can be seen in the background. Only a top view would make this possible. Washington Square Park only just looks like the picture of military vehicles circling the square in Manhattan. Chicago's corncobs, two skyscrapers, actually stand next to each other by a river; in the picture, one of the two marina towers is on fire and is structurally separated from its twin - by a river.

The special thing about the advertising images is that they do not appear in the film. They were created exclusively for advertising purposes. And probably quite cheaply. AI makes it possible. Of course, the images could have been created in the same way in the past, but at a higher cost – and with fewer errors. However, it is also possible that the creators even deliberately wanted to accept the AI look, including inaccuracies because AI is currently known to attract more attention than no AI.

Nevertheless, there is criticism that the images are disturbing and should not be so easy to produce. There is also a growing number of comments under the images that AI-generated images are basically theft. Numerous artists are complaining that their works have been used without permission to train image generators and language models. "The aesthetics are atrocious," says grandjen, for example, and writes: "Fire the person who authorized this garbage. It's repulsive and offensive to the audience." Someone with the name davidmbuisan commented: "How embarrassing it is for A24 to use AI instead of hiring a real artist." And sodapopcomics also notes: "A movie about photojournalism uses AI for its marketing."

Marvel and Disney+ have also used AI to create the intro to the series Secret Invasion. In the fourth season of True Detective, there is an eye-catching poster on the wall that was also almost certainly generated using AI. It is the poster of a metal band – or whatever an image generator imagines it to be. But even such details in films and series are chosen with great care.

(emw)