Those A.I. posters in True Detective: Night Country were supposed to be a knock on A.I., apparently
Eagle-eyed True Detective viewers noticed that a poster in the background of episode two advertised the world-famous "2st LIVE Metal U.S. Tour"
Aux News A.i.
Hollywood’s writer and actor guilds just went on a 4-month strike largely in response to the unwelcome use of A.I. on set, but the best defense is to… just use it anyway but badly, apparently. This at least seems to be the philosophy behind True Detective: Night Country creator Issa López’s decision to use an A.I. generated poster in the background of the show’s second episode last night, a choice which generated almost immediate discourse on Twitter/X this morning.
While the left-hand poster may be a real advertisement for K-pop group Ive, at least according to one X user, the right-hand poster is unquestionably generated by a computer. Wonky grammar like “2st LIVE” and the fact that it’s simply advertising a tour for “METAL” are obvious tells, not to mention the fact that at least two of the “singers” don’t even have heads.
According to López, however, these mistakes are very much intentional. “The idea is that it’s so sad up there that some kid with AI made the posters for a loser Metal festival for boomers. It was discussed. Ad nauseam,” she wrote on X in a speedy response to the growing speculation and criticism. In a separate reply, she added: “Exactly! Chat GPT came as.we [sic] were shooting. So, we were— feeling not kind towards AI.”
All of which begs the question: if the show’s creative team was “feeling not kind” toward A.I. when engineering the set, why dip into the topic in the first place? It’s not like the show, which follows two detectives (Jodie Foster and Kali Reis) as they investigate a chilling mystery in a barren Alaskan town, is about anything regarding the pitfalls of artificial intelligence. In fact, the term A.I. isn’t mentioned at all—at least not in the two episodes that have aired thus far. More likely, this is either an odd attempt at a backtrack after being caught using the controversial technology or, as one X user suggested, an attempt at a last-minute cover-up after the show got in trouble with someone’s reps for copyright infringement. Despite López’s explanation, this decision still feels only slightly less mysterious than the one within the show itself.
(Max did not immediately respond to The A.V. Club’s requests for comment on this story.)
82 Comments
“All of which begs the question: if the show’s creative team was “feeling not kind” toward A.I. when engineering the set, why dip into the topic in the first place?”
Did a broken AI write this stupid fucking question?
SHE EXPLAINED WHY THEY DID IT, asshole.
“an attempt at a last-minute cover-up after the show got in trouble with someone’s reps for copyright infringement.”
Yeah, they got in trouble with the copyright owner of “Metal”.
Good fuck, people are so fucking stupid.
“Despite López’s explanation, this decision still feels only slightly less mysterious than the one within the show itself.”
“Yeah, isn’t it MYSTERIOUS that the showrunner would think of things of small, seemingly unimportant details”, said the lazy-ass hack writer for the AV Club.
I’m sorry, I’m not from the US, and while I do consume a fair amount of cultural/entertainment content from there, which lets me think about hot topics in the current cultural discourse, there’s a fair amount that I just don’t feel yet.
Could someone explain to me why would anyone feel like they’re owed an explanation about a poster in the background of a TV series?
Is this genuine concern that the big studios are breaching their commitments on AI non-usage, causing real harm to writers, so this is effectively a show of solidarity with the would-be writer who lost the background poster job to bad AI? (Okay, I shouldn’t be entirely flippant here – if we’re on this path, I suppose there could be an argument that the same thing might be more prevalent, so shining a spotlight on it is worthwhile. But are we on this path of genuine concern?)
Or is this just old-fashioned class warfare, big studio bad, working class good? You know, where most people find it easy to hate the rich as an impulse reaction, but then also have that voice that cools them down, suggests that reality is a bit more complex – so they need to be riled up, need to be given justifications to listen to that first impulse, to convince themselves that hate is deserved, because, well, one background poster at a time.
As I said, I’m not from the US, so I’m just trying to get some perspective on this, I certainly don’t want to suggest how you steer your cultural space. But please don’t forget that amplifications of class warfare sentiments have always ended in utter disaster, and that disasters in the US tend to envelop the world.
lmao you made a new account to post this blather that nobody will reply to except me
Well it was a quick “sign in with Google” account creation process, my first Kinja profile, it’s not like I’m trying to hide this away from another “main” account or whatever. Not sure why I would, it’s not like I’m hiding from you.
You seem to be hiding your opinions on the topic though, behind all this unpleasantness – I’d love to actually hear them.
Yeah it sucks that the dumbest asshole here responded to him first.
AI is a hot button topic atm, so anytime there is a headline to be made about AI they post an article because getting clicks is what matters most these days. You’re pretty much guaranteed to see some AI related headline on AVC, Kotaku, or Giz at least once a week.
I can’t believe that news and pop culture sites would cover things that are happening now that’s crazy it must be a conspiracy
It’s not about the motivations of AV Club for writing a piece on it (hot topic, clicks, etc, boring), it’s about why the readers/Twitterers care about this in the first place.
Did you put any effort into thinking about it? The show is a mystery so people are paying attention to details for clues, this was an odd detail that many people noticed, so people were talking about it. AI is a weird new thing that people have opinions and concerns about, you maybe heard about the entire writer’s strike being largely focused on the use of AI? So the use of it as a dig on it is an odd thing so soon after that, and people are still talking about it. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me.
Right, I get the motivations of AV Club making the best of this content, I’m just more focused on why does it resonate so much with the readership (and Twittership). It could all boil down to generic anxiety about the incoming disruptive tech, but I’m wondering if it ends up feeding other (predominantly anti-establishment) cultural trends, and what comes out the other end.
1st, welcome to AV Club.
2st, AV Club likes to find pop culture related tweets and make content from them. Seems to me that’s all that’s happening here.
Thanks, long-time reader, first-time commenter here.
Well if that’s all there is, I suppose that would be good news.
A number of AV Club writers have been hitting the question of generative AI hard (e.g. Sam Barsanti, another writer, lowered each of his grades for the Disney+ show Secret Invasion because its main credits were developed in part by generative AI.) I think they see its emergence solely as an attempt to replace artists, and any example of its use in film or TV as an unjustifiable affront to hard-working creatives.That attitude isn’t limited to this publication, and there are distinct similarities to the cultural backlash to GMOs in foods that occurred here over the last decade or so. People emotionally reject a technology that 1) they don’t understand and 2) would enrich people they (correctly, in some cases!) identify as bad actors.That’s easier than rejecting particular uses of that technology, which requires a bit of nuance and study. Who’s got time for either of those?
Basically Industry replacing creative people’s jobs with tech is a hot button topic for Internet thinkpeices . Possibly if industry replacing non creative jobs in manufacturing, IT,administration with tech previously had been a hot button topic for Internet thinkpeices too we wouldnt be in this mess , but sadly they werent deemed that important.Sometime in the future C suite execs will be the only ones left employed , and honestly I can’t wait to see their shocked faces when a computer replaces them
Okay, but then we’re effectively saying that any story about AI usage, no matter how small, will (and possibly should) be connected to the general issue of AI adoption and how to ensure the resulting gains are spread around fairly in society. Which could be quite counterproductive, with a million more such little stories on the way.
Jfc… This is legitimately one of the absolute dumbest f**king comments that I have ever read. You’re issuing warnings about the dangers of class warfare and revolution… because a few people asked about an AI-generated poster that was in the background of a TV show for 2 seconds. Youre warning people to think about the dire impact it will have on the rest of the world… if a few people ask about an AI poster in the background of a tv show (and coming fown on the side of “revolution bad, establishment good,” to boot).Even the strained and desparate attempt at somehow trying to frame this (and again, by “this” we are referring to a few people asking about a poster that was in the background of a tv show for a split second) as some sort of knee-jerk anti-establishment “Eat the Rich” sentiment in the first place is just amazingly asinine, and embarrassingly stupid.And those are just a few of the multitude of reasons that this comment is amazingly stupid and obnoxious. Seriously, how were 8 people actually dumb enough to like this comment? Those likes must be AI-generated. (Oh no, now the whole world is fucked because i asked whether likes on an article were ai-generated!!!)
I think there are two topics here – one is that an ostensibly high-budget production from a network known for producing ‘prestige tv’ could have such strikingly poor attention to detail like this. This looks sloppy and amateurish, and I do not for one second buy López’s explanation, which makes no sense at all. There is a lot of backlash from a section of the audience because this is a female-led production in both cast and creative, with the familiar tedious refrain of it being “woke,” and so there are people who have the knives at the ready looking for anything that can be used as evidence that this show is Bad, Actually. I’m not one of those people, but I sure do think this is pretty embarrassing on a technical level and does not speak well to quality control.The other topic is that more and more, humans will be replaced with AI for this kind of thing, and that is a road that few sane people want to go down. Artists do not want their livelihoods threatened and people do not want to see generic digital nonsense replace art.
I think in addition to the AI drama, it’s just lazy. They wanted a poster on a wall but they didn’t really care what it was so they just used whatever garbage. Even the other one, the non-AI K-pop poster, doesn’t make much sense in the setting. This is supposed to a prestige tv series, yet the people making it don’t appear to give a shit.
I don’t know why we need to resort to a complicated sociopolitical explanation for why people are opposed to AI art in this particular case, when the AI art in question looks like complete garbage. If an A-list premium cable series had hired cheap human talent to produce a fake music poster clearly visible in the background of a scene, and they’d done such a bad job that they misspelled words, cut off some of the heads in the photos, and drew a misshapen letter A real big at the top, people would rightly want to know how the eff the producers let that happen.
Yeah, but it still wouldn’t feel the same, no? The fact that an AI produced this trash somehow evokes different degrees of emotions than if a lazy human did. I’m just wondering if we have a good reason for this.
I’m not sure if “class and class warfare” is the issue, although I figure everything boils down to that eventually.
You mention “hate”. Yes, everyone is mad AF. Social media is giving all of us more justifications to feel entitled, so we’re policing everyone but ourselves. People are also very afraid and that leads to anger. Consequently we’re taking any excuse to get riled up and yell about something, anything. Also, getting angry gives us a nice dopamine hit so it becomes addictive. We’re turning into rage-junkies. I looks like Lopez is being accused of being a hypocrite.
Okay, this I find very interesting, because I always thought such behavior to be inherently tribal, ending up grouped into different sets of “us” vs “them”, not so everyone-against-everyone that you’re describing. Aren’t there such tribal groupings that end up structuring the situation here, e.g. along political preferences, liberals vs conservatives, economic status, age groups?
Yes, we’re intensely tribal here in the ways you describe. We’re a big, messy nation. And people just do that; it’s a socio/political/anthropological impulse. But even these usually easily identifiable ‘sects’ are dissolving. The pandemic created a lot of disarray within groups and people are just, generally, choosing isolation over connection. Social media, cameras everywhere. Unchecked policing, surveillance and many other things, are making us all paranoid. This is exactly what our corporatocracy (our government, essentially) wants. Throw in AI and, soon, no one will know what the truth or ‘facts’ are. It’s pretty much every man for himself these days.
I don’t buy that explanation at all. Without being too specific as it could hurt my career, let me just say that as a graphic designer who’s worked in the industry for years, I’ve witnessed subpar AI art snake its way into several graphics that have made it all the way to commercial production over the past couple of years, and there is no oversite or regulation on it. It’s just impossible to avoid these days really. Time crunches combined with lazy or over-worked designers and a patchwork of freelancers and fulltimers with no accountability or standard practices regarding the use of AI make it too hard to to regulate or even spot sometimes. You’ve probably already seen a ton of AI-generated stuff in the TV shows, movies, video games, and ads you’ve consumed since it became easily accessible. This one poster is just especially obvious. It’s the worst use of AI in my opinion. AI covers a massive realm of fields of study and unquestionably has positive and ground-breaking uses, even within the artistic realm. But the wholesale replacement of true human creativity with stolen remixes of other people’s work so that greedy CEOs can more easily cut the artists out of the process completely has no real benefit to humanity. This explanation is BS and pretty insulting to everyone’s intellegence. They weren’t trying to make a statement. They just got caught doing the thing they claim they’re commenting on.
It also doesn’t really make sense from a character perspective.I haven’t watched the show but, from this description, it sounds like she’s arguing that the poster is designed to show how isolated this kid is. They can’t get to real concerts because the town they live in is in the middle of nowhere, so they made fake AI posters and printed them out? No one would do that.Wouldn’t a more logical way to show the sadness and isolation be to cover the walls in real posters for places, activities, and events that the child can’t attend due to their location? That way you show that they have a desire to experience those things but, through context, we know they can’t?(again, i haven’t seen the show so huge apologies if i’m misunderstanding the situation being depicted)Her explanation only makes sense as something someone on set would say as a joke to rationalize the choice to use AI.“Hey! We don’t have time to license some posters but the wall looks blank. Maybe the kid just likes to pretend they see concerts so they made shitty fake ones? Yeah! That’s the explanation! Good enough. We’re behind schedule!”
Makes me think of that joke in ‘The Simpsons’ where Edna Krabapple says she collects matchbooks from trendy nightclubs, and then explains that she gets them by writing to the places and asking for them to be posted to her. Which is funny and highlights how lonely she is, but also still makes more sense than this AI poster thing. Even if you’re faking the experience, you fake the real thing, not a made up approximation.
You sound like a butthurt dipshit.
My brother, who is more into this stuff than I am, showed me how he generated a bunch of art and icons for his blog/newsletter/website in about thirty minutes. It looked awfully good (at least to my untrained eye), and it’s not like he would have hired a graphic designer for his hobby site.
I am sure there are a lot of people out there like him. These techniques and their outputs are proliferating, as you point out, but not just in industry. The idea that some kid making a poster for a music festival last month would have used DALL-E isn’t just plausible, it might be more likely than the alternative. So I’m not sure the explanation is BS. If there’s one writer on staff whose brother has a hobby website, then I get how this point might have occurred to them.
the idea of him fucking around and making a poster is one thing, the idea of a kid going to kinkos and printing it out is another thing.
Unless you have evidence that they scaled back on artistic staff for the production, what would be the point of doing it and then lying about it? They knew that people would see it, and if this is the only AI graphic on the show, it’s not credible that they were trying to save money.Not everything is a conspiracy. It’s okay to disagree with someone’s reason for doing something, but it’s frankly weird to just assume people are lying to you about totally innocuous things.
the explanation makes no sense to me from either a story perspective or a BTS set design perspective.
Yeah, if they had to time to create a “gotcha!” to give the AI industry a black eye, they had time to put something authentic on the wall.Looks like the show creator got got.
That’s kind of a silly take — easier to just get or print an actual Metallica arthritis tour poster than synthesize one. This does seem to have been an active choice.
lol this “showrunner” is absolutely crushing it in all her public statements since the premier
What’s up with the quotes?
the elevation of TV hacks to the level of a film director sickens me. “Showrunner” is a term that’s symbolic of cultural decline!
Ah.You’re a moron.
Just me, maybe, but I don’t think of “showrunner” as an auteur flex. They just run “shows”. What else should we call them?
Yup. You’re officially the dumbest asshole here.
I was thinking of watching it; is it shit then?
This sounds like one of Richard Hendricks’s elaborate gags that only he finds funny and spends a long time trying to explain the joke to his friends only for no one to get it on Silicon Valley.
Yeah, I’m not sure why we’re reaching for some elaborate conspiracy theory since the actual given explanation is “we were clumsily trying to make a statement that no one got.”
This season really strikes me as incredibly pretentious and overly complex for the sake of being overly complex. Time jumps, flashbacks, and missing info can be used effectively to enhance drama. It’s obviously too early to tell for sure but these “mysteries” seem hamfisted into the story in order to make it seem smarter than it really is. Look forward to finding out.
I suspected AI when I noticed the true detective’s calendar said it was the thirteenth of Smarch.
Ooooh, so that’s why everything’s covered in snow and ice.
Wait, you guys don’t actually have a Smarch?
No, but we do have a Septober. That’s when we observe Martian Christmas!
Only during April Fool’s week.
[Sam Barsanti takes over the recaps, docks a full letter grade from every episode for the remainder of the season]
Okay, but tell me more about this METAL tour. I happen to have the 2st off, and Hideously Deformed KISS are my favorite band.
they were great on the 1rd tour but they totally sold out
That’s how you can differentiate them from real Kiss, because the real deal would have sold out much earlier than that.
Oh man, why couldn’t it have been the 5rd?
Just your weekly reminder that current so-called AI isn’t really intelligence.
the show’s creative team was “feeling not kind” toward A.I.
…loser Metal festival for boomers
Sounds to me as though López doesn’t feel very kind towards metal fans or people born in the 1940s-60s either. Didn’t musical tribalism die out about twenty years ago? And good old ageism; apparently the last acceptable prejudice.
Pfft.
She’s Gen X. We were the original generation that the Boomers fucked with. We probably have stronger opinions on them than younger people even do.
Yeah, I’m the same age as Lopez. Metal from the 80s was pretty much garbage and seeing Motley Cure, Ratt and other hair metal acts from that time limp along the Casino/Memberberries Festival circuit kinda bears that out. But it got better. Metal that is. Boomers? Not so much.
No love for NWOBHM? Saxon, Iron Maiden et al? For shame. And López is only a couple of years younger than me (also Gen X)…that doesn’t stop her from being a bit of a cow. Age prejudice is shitty, no matter who is doing it to whom, like all prejudices.
Metal from the 80s was pretty much garbageFuck no lol. Literally all the goated metal bands are from the 80s what the fuck are you on about
Metal from the 80s was pretty much garbage
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Motley Cure, Ratt and other hair metal acts
You think those were the only metal bands active in the 80s? You’ve never heard of Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest, Slayer, Anthrax?
Millennials hate them the most (Boomers are their parents, so…). But, yes, we know them like no one else. It’s not fun growing up under someone’s enormous, obnoxious, godawful Shadow.
Gotta be honest, I’d cross the street through traffic if it avoided an interaction with a Boomer.Every cold snap winter brings us closer to a better society.
Well aren’t you delightful. In a few years when a new younger generation says the same thing about you, I hope you remember how hateful you were when younger.
That’s true.
If I do what those aged fucks did to society I’ll deserve it.
Your parents clearly sucked, so maybe you want them dead
One of them is, 22 years today
Also just checked – my parents were born before the boomer demograph.
It was just distracting. I barely remember what that guy said, and I’m sure we won’t be seeing him again as his plot function is done.
Who gives a shit?
People who comment
That’s not what begs the question me….you know what, never mind.
Doesn’t beg the question beg the question?
I do find AV Club, which was busted using AI to “write” content that was lifted from IMDB almost verbatim, commenting on anything AI related to be pretty fun.
The world has become an enormous collective of people ‘arseing ourselves’. When we point the finger at someone else, there are still three pointing back at us. It’s getting harder to find a conviction and then live it.
2st LIVE CREW
Yeah we don’t like AI so we will demonstrate that by including AI as a background prop. That’ll do it.
I remember the DVD commentary for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where there was some Miramax office populated with movie posters, and none of the posters had any actors in them because it costs money to show a poster with someone’s face, and Kevin Smith singled out the dog one, “Props to fuckin’ Air Bud,” because they didn’t have to write a check to a dog.Lately, I am coming down on the side of AI. People are so up their own ass about how entitled they are to odd jobs in the movie business, as if staying within budget was not a higher priority for directors, producers, studios, and investors than some random piece of art on the wall on the edges of the frame in one scene. If we’re getting a good look at something that’s important to the scene, then yeah, you hire a professional to realize that vision. If there’s a piece of art that’s just window dressing, the movie’s not going to get extra funding to hire an artist, they have to pick their battles to allocate the budget wisely. So the choice isn’t between AI art and paying an artist, it’s between AI art and no art.AI is just a tool. It is not going to replace real artists. It cannot. It has its functions and there is a place for both it and artists. And it’s just comical how bad it is today. We can generate a bunch of stupid shit within seconds for our amusement, and it’s not like we’re putting comedy as we know it out of business.Here, look at this piece of shit. It’s supposed to be Mr. Ed (I had to specify ‘the talking horse’ to not get a generic guy) flying an F-22 in space through an asteroid field while being chased by Pokémon. The misaligned intakes, the paper thin stabilizers, Bulbasaur with a regular ass turtle shell, the helmet is phasing through his face, the seat and steering wheel behind the cockpit like some kind of coin-op ride outside the grocery store. It is gloriously stupid and I love it.
Carefully placed Easter eggs like Blood Meridian and Carpenter’s The Thing … but you think the background poster was some kind of lazy cost saver? Are you folks trolling or are you a couple of chicken nuggets short of a Happy Meal?