this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Disney’s Loki faces backlash over reported use of generative AI / A Loki season 2 poster has been linked to a stock image on Shutterstock that seemingly breaks the platform’s licensing rules regard...::A promotional poster for the second season of Loki on Disney Plus has sparked controversy amongst professional designers following claims that it was created using generative AI.

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[–] [email protected] 161 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I don't understand the controversy really. A graphic designer at Disney used stock photography in their design of the poster, that's pretty normal and extremely common. It turns out that whoever uploaded that stock image to the service used AI to create it, but how is that Disney's fault? I don't get it.

[–] Zehzin 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

AI taking the job of someone else by stealing art aside,

According to Shutterstock’s contributor rules, AI-generated content is not permitted to be licensed on the platform unless it’s created using Shutterstock’s own AI-image generator tool.

The picture was not flagged as AI, so it was sold as real art against their TOS.

I don't think the artists or even the studio did this maliciously, but there needs to be discussion on how stock art should be vetted when used like this

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is that Disney's fault?

[–] ericisshort 10 points 1 year ago

It isn’t.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can we talk about how Shutterstock only allows their own AI-generated images? Stock image sites will be the first to face the guillotine of AI generation, and this is how they protect themselves?

Good riddance. I got my video card and several Stable Diffusion models that are way better than the prices they charge.

[–] ante 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not a business whose sole purpose is to sell/license images. If you read the article, it explains that their models are trained using only images from their library, which seems like a sensible approach to avoiding copyright issues.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's no copyright issues to avoid. Stable Diffusion is not suddenly illegal based on the images it trains on. It is a 4GB database of weights and numbers, not a many petabyte database of images.

Furthermore, Shutterstock cannot copyright their own AI-generated images, no matter how much they want to try to sell it back for. That's already been decided in the courts. So, even if it's their own images its trained on, if it was fully generated with their own AI, anybody is free to yank the image from their site and use it anywhere they want.

This is a dying industry trying desperately to hold on to its profit model.

[–] TwilightVulpine 4 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Here we get the very crucial definition between "legal" and "moral".

It is not currently illegal to build a "database of weights and numbers" by crawling arts and images without permission, attribution or compensation, for the express purpose of creating similar works to replace the work of the artists whose artworks were used to train it and which they rely on to make a living.

That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be legislated.

Really not a fan of this "dying industry" talk in light of this.

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[–] BB69 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Because the corporation is ALWAYS at fault, duh. This is the internet, there’s only one way to look at things

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[–] aufheben 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk if it’s immoral or not, but if Disney is resorting to AI to keep the content slurry flowing that’s more a sign of growing creative bankruptcy than anything.

[–] dangblingus 11 points 1 year ago

They're using as much AI as possible now that there's open revolt from many of the world's top CGI effects studios.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So people are mad at the show creators... because an image that some designer purchased for a poster... may have been AI generated... even though it's not confirmed... and even if it's true, that makes the designer of the poster a victim of a scammer...

So, what, are we just going full rabid at the very mention of AI now?

[–] Wilibus 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think people are mad because they banned technology on the platform and then clearly continued to use it.

Rules for thee, not for me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Okay, so then why are people targeting the show instead of Shutterstock?

Even then, being mad at Shutterstock doesn't make sense because the person who started selling something AI generated on a platform that doesn't allow it obviously wouldn't disclose that fact.

And you can't just ban anything you think might be AI generated immediately, because then you just become the fuckwit mods of r/art.

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[–] dangblingus 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Quick everyone! Let's rush to defend Disney based on a technicality, even though they've been creatively bankrupt for years and no one watches MCU shows.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Loki is a legitimately good show, and I say that as someone tired of MCU stuff and not the least nostalgic about American comics in the first place (I grew up on Asterix, Tintin, the like).

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[–] ante 21 points 1 year ago

You can still think Disney is a shitty company while acknowledging that this is a stupid article/headline. They're not mutually exclusive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

And let's automatically assign blame with no evidence at all, based on the fact that you don't like the company.

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[–] cereal_killer 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This article is so dumb that their entire basis for the artwork to be an AI artwork rests on the fact that there are squiggly lines. Like humans have never edited any photo with squiggly lines.

According to @thepokeflutist who purchased the stock image, it was published to Shutterstock this year — ruling out the possibility of it being too old to be AI-generated — and contains no embedded metadata to confirm how the image was created.

The image uploaded to Shutterstock was 2500 x 2500. Does any AI image generator even produce those resolutions? Sure, you can use super resolution, but that seems like too much work for AI generated artwork.

Also there were Twitter users pointing out how "4" on the clock is represented as "IIII" and not "IV". Have they ever not seen clocks with Roman numerals?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)

IV is the Roman numeral. IIII is like hatch marks or something, you don't usually see that on a clock.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do an image search. IIII is often used on clock faces because visual symmetry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wow I'd never seen that before. Also just curious on the reasoning, why would they use IIII for symmetry but not do anything about VI, VII and so on? Is it more to do with the width of the number when written down maybe?

[–] code 4 points 1 year ago

I was taught that dividing the numbers naturally into thirds:

I  II III IIII (all I) 
V  VI VII VIII (all start with V) 
IX X  XI  XII  (all contain X) 

Visually looks more "balanced" than having an extra V

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[–] ook_the_librarian 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YOU don't see that on a clock. Your experience isn't universal. IIII was often used for 4. There were no reduction rules when Roman numerals were in use. The idea of IV being THE way to write 4 is a reflection of modern education.

Also, the idea the human clocks have IV whereas a computer trained on human images might write it as IIII when no training images are like that is weird.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've already conceded, jeez.

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[–] dodeca 14 points 1 year ago

Oh look, a clever advertisement for a TV show...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The image shows perfect spiral symmetry, which suggests it's not a fully AI generated image. It could be a base AI image that was edited by hand to form the spiral though.

The same base was likely used for https://www.shutterstock.com/pt/image-photo/surreal-infinity-time-spiral-space-antique-2262957649 as well. Same 'squiggles' it seems.

Online 'AI art detectors' are terrible and rarely accurate, so I wouldn't consider that as proof of anything.

This person has made more images in this style, I wonder how old the oldest one is (since this is one of the most recent ones). If the oldest similarly-styled one is too old, then it would be evidence that the image is likely not AI generated.

[–] Smoogs 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think you’re giving Disney too much credit here. Siphoning from shutter stock or ‘free work’ while suing everyone over anything and pretending they are the victims is their brand. They are known for stealing even from artists they wont even hire. Olaf cough

Not to forget the actors are on strike for stuff exactly this. Their likeness being used by AI without being paid.

“It’s a small small world after all…”

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[–] x4740N 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a chance this is manufactured outrage to help promote the show

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well it definitely needs better advertising. I only found out that season 2 was out because I happened to go on the Disney plus website and saw a link. I wasn't looking for it, I was actually going to watch Inside Out for the 923rd time.

I didn't even know they were filming.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This whole post is a beautiful representation of the fact that pretty much no one reads anything more than the title.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reasonable people do in fact read the full article, but they're not the same degenerates that feel to post an emotional and juvenile comment under the forum post.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A promotional poster for the second season of Loki on Disney Plus has sparked controversy amongst professional designers following claims that it was at least partially created using generative AI.

Companies like Adobe and Getty are also promoting ways for AI-generated content to be commercially viable, but it’s unclear if these platforms are any better than Shutterstock at moderating submissions that don’t abide by their contributor rules.

Some X users have speculated that it may have been used on sections of the image like the miniaturized characters surrounding Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, noting their awkward positioning.

Disney has ignored our request to clarify if AI was used in the Loki promotional art, and to confirm if the company had licensed the aforementioned Shutterstock image.

These tools aim to make things easier for folks with limited design experience, and are typically promoted to organizations who want to produce cheap art at scale.

Stock images are often used by companies because they’re fast, affordable, and accessible, reducing the need to hire experienced designers to make content from scratch.


The original article contains 655 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Fedizen 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they're not even bothering to hire artists, why would anyone watch this?

[–] dym_sh 6 points 1 year ago

at least they still hire actors (for now (unfortunately for disney) )

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