Black mirror imagined last week on Netflix what could happen in the television industry if studios suddenly gave priority to artificial intelligence. Would the series need to have actors present on the set or would it be enough to obtain the image rights to produce the scenes? At the moment, those who are intruders in the profession are the creatives of the credit titles: Marvel Studios has used this new technology to produce the head of Secret Invasion, its latest production with Samuel L. Jackson, Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman at the helm. .
Those who have taken a look at the designs generated by the AIs might have been suspicious when they saw the beginning of the series. In the images you can see illustrations of the characters, the appearance of spaceships and a predominance of green, the color associated with the Skrulls, the extraterrestrial race that tries to invade Earth. They have a very characteristic appearance and, according to the director of Secret Invasion, Ali Selim, this artificiality played very well with the themes of the story it tells.
“When we contacted the AI ??providers, this was part of the fun: it seemed straight out of the identity of the Skrull shifter world,” he argued. The series, after all, shows aliens usurping the place of humans by imitating their physique to the point that they can infiltrate the upper echelons of politics. “We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words and then the computer would go and do something. And then we could change it a bit using words, and it would change, ”he explained fascinated to the Polygon portal. What was more consistent than allowing an AI to usurp the site of the corresponding creatives in the header?
In fact, Disney and Marvel Studios did not completely dispense with the creatives to make these credits, but rather they commissioned Method Studios, which in turn worked with Artificial Intelligence to come up with the result that the viewer has been able to see. Responsible for this company are Adrienne Mitchell as executive producer, Claire Dorwart as design producer, Theo Daley as creative lead, Keri Moller as art director, Andrew Hess as animator, Felix Soletic as concept developer, Zach Lewis as technical visual effects and finally Sagans Carle as an AI technician, although they refuse to explain the process followed to obtain the header.
Criticism, however, has not been long in coming. “The problem of using Artificial Intelligence to make the intro of Secret Invasion goes beyond whether it is ugly or not (which it is, it is horrible)”, they criticized from Geek Zone, “the problem is that AIs cannot create art, they use art stolen from artists to make something, without paying or crediting them.”
“Many will brag about how good Secret Invasion is but this series marks the first major invasion of artificial intelligence on a major studio job, it’s completely terrifying to think this is just the beginning,” lamented one user whose thread has become viral and in which he asked to remember “all those incredible introductions created by REAL HUMANS” with The Sopranos, Breaking bad, Daredevil or True detective as main examples.
“They knew that this election would upset hundreds of artists. They did it anyway. Judge for yourselves”, lamented the screenwriter Victor Santos (Polar) while opining that “the credits are horrible” and that “the artistic justification is pathetic”. A conceptual exception or an excuse to save four bucks in a production with a budget of more than ten million dollars per episode?
Be that as it may, it is an especially controversial decision considering that the Hollywood industry is negotiating with the writers union. One of the points to debate? The artificial intelligence that writers fear (and now possibly even more so) will usurp their jobs.
