Disney accused of using AI to create Loki Season 2 poster

A promotional poster for the second season of the Marvel TV series Loki, which recently premiered on Disney+, has sparked controversy among professional designers, with many suggesting that at least part of the poster was created using generative AI.

Illustrator Katria Raden flagged the poster on Twitter last week, saying the image of a spiral clock in the generated background had many signs of being AI-generated, including "things being randomly distorted into meaningless lines."

Creative workers are currently using unauthorized resources to train AI image generation, and it may be used to replace human artists in the future. Disney has previously been heavily criticized for using AI generation in the opening credits of another Marvel series, "Secret Invasion." At the time, Disney insisted that the use of AI tools did not reduce the importance of human designers.

Some Twitter users pointed out that the background of the Rocky poster appears to have been taken from a Shutterstock image called "surreal.infinity.time.spiral.space.antique." The image was published this year but does not contain any metadata that could be used to identify how the image was created. Multiple AI image detection tools also flagged it as AI-generated.

According to the regulations of the Shutterstock image library, AI-generated content is not allowed to be uploaded to the platform for distribution unless it is created using the image library's own AI generation tools. This prevents them from using unauthorized resources and allows all created content to be safely used for commercial purposes.

Some people also pointed out that since the clock image used in "Loki" was not marked as generated by Shutterstock AI, Disney may not know its source. However, others said that these problems are very obvious and any professional should be able to find the problems and AI traces in them.