Marvel Studios' Disney Plus series Secret Invasion made a creative choice that received backlash. However, the director attempted to explain why they made the controversial decision.Secret Invasion follows Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury as he teams up with MCU characters Everett Ross, Maria Hill, and the friendly Skrull Talos. Any of the characters that fans see on the screen could be a part of the evil faction of Skrulls trying to invade Earth. The tagline of the show is “Who do you trust?” But this goes beyond the characters on screen. Can you even trust the creators of the series?Secret Invasion includes creepy opening credits that were designed by Method Studios using AI. Fans may have noticed this because the intro looked like many other viral AI-created videos. Director and executive producer of the series, Ali Selim, told Polygon why that decision was made. Selim thought the idea of AI-created work plays with one of the main themes of the show. “When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it — it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?”
This decision was met with a lot of backlash on Twitter. Some users have said that they are “disappointed” with Marvel Studios for making that decision while others called the Secret Invasion opening sequence “gross.” Selim may have thought he had a good artistic reason for making that decision, but some people on Twitter have said there is no justification for a decision like that.
What makes this decision so controversial is that AI searches through countless source images to create something based on a prompt. Some artists argue that AI violates their intellectual property rights and can copy their own work or style. Additionally, members of the Writers Guild of America are on strike right now and one of the points of contention between the WGA and the studios is whether or not the studios should be allowed to use AI to replace jobs.
AI art has been popular on the internet, with people creating everything from memes to allowing people to visualize The Last of Us series back into a video game. Some even argue that AI can be good for indie artists who need help finishing projects. However, Disney is far from an indie artist. With this much backlash, it will be interesting to see if they try to change the Secret Invasion opening credits.
Secret Invasion episode 1 is streaming now on Disney Plus.
Source: Polygon