A24 is one of the most exciting companies in themovieindustry. Since its founding in 2012, the Manhattan-based studio and distributor has built a reputation as a supporter of visionary artists that also carries indie movies to awards success. It has two Best Picture wins under its belt — for Moonlight andEverything Everywhere All At Once— while also regularly taking big swings on weird projects like Ari Aster’s $35 million nightmare comedyBeau is Afraid. As a film fan, I think this is a vital part of the medium and industry: keeping original low- and mid-budget films in a variety of genres alive, while bigger studios focus on IP-driven movies with terminally bloated budgets. It has positioned itself as a company that puts artists first, and has built a rabid following among young people as a result.
Generating Images Over Creating Art
Which is what makes the company’suse of AI-generated images in the ad campaign for Civil Warso insulting. Over the last few days, multiple posters advertising Civil War have gone viral on social media. They’re drawing attention not for striking imagery, but because they were clearly made with AI. One shows soldiers on a boat in an L.A. pond approaching a gigantic swan. Another shows war boats in the Chicago River drifting between the two towers of Marina City — which in reality are on the same plot of land, not separated by water.
The goal of this advertising seems to have been to personalize the posters for various cities around the country, bringing home the visceral reality of what it would be like to have a civil war fought in the streets outside your apartment. But A24 could have easily paid real artists to make these images. Civil War cost $50 million to make, with millions more devoted to publicity and marketing. Paying artists to make posters would be a fraction of a percent of the total budget. Going forward, it will be a major asterisk on A24’s reputation that, when push came to shove, it embraced a machine’s shoddily constructed images over art made with care by people.
The Infiltration Of AI Images
Over the past two years, we’ve seen AI increasingly infiltrate film and television. Secret Invasionfeatured an AI credits sequence, Late Night with the Devilincluded multiple AI-generated interstitial images, and (in the most heinous example yet) the Netflix crime documentary What Jennifer Didused AI-generated imagesto depict its subject, a woman who allegedly plotted to kill her parents, as happy go-lucky before the crime. Unless there is sufficient blowback, corporations are going to cut corners where they can with vile results.
But A24 has never presented itself as just another soulless company, and has often positioned itself as an alternative to the algorithmic content and IP extravaganza of the big streamers and studios. With rare exceptions, it doesn’t make sequels, and most of its films are based on original scripts. It has earned a reputation for financing creativity, often at the expense of commerciality. Turning to AI thoroughly betrays that ethos, and it communicates (true or not) that A24 only values the artists it considers important for its continued business — filmmakers — not the artists it considers disposable, like graphic designers.
