Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ Uses AI Art While Real Artists Fight for Fair Pay

Marvel’s Secret Invasion, an adaptation of a comics story arc in which alien Skrulls use their shapeshifting powers to try to take over the world, is now streaming on Disney+, and with the series premiere comes a disappointing revelation: the opening credits sequence is AI-generated instead of created by a human artist.

This opening sequence features shifting, impressionistic renderings of humans, Skrulls, and various cityscapes. A green cast over the images points to the skin color of the Skrulls.

Polygon first broke the news that the sequence was AI-generated, in an interview with the series’ director and executive producer, Ali Selim. In the article, Selim explains that the use of AI fits into the themes of the show. “When we reached out to the AI vendors,” he told Polygon, “that was part of it — it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?“

However, with the AI controversy raging, it’s hard to believe that Marvel’s choice to “reach out to AI vendors” was purely a thematic one.

When AI art first gained popularity in 2021 with the emergence of tools like Dall-E, many (including me) saw them as one potential new tool for artists. However, the dark side of AI tools like Stable Diffusion quickly surfaced, as users found out how the tools mine existing artwork in order to generate their images. In one particularly egregious example, a Getty Images watermark was found on one of Stable Diffusion’s supposedly “new” images. Meanwhile, individuals and organizations looking for design work began to turn to AI instead of paying human artists—and that AI, in turn, poaches the existing work of the very artists who weren’t getting hired.

Meanwhile, film and television writers are fighting to keep their work from being replaced by AI generators like ChatGPT. One of the core issues of the Writers Guild of America strike, which has been going for nearly two months, is film and television studios’ desire to produce content with AI instead of hiring writers. In fact, when the strike began, some studios promptly began trying to use AI as scab labor.

AI is also a major issue for members of the Screen Actors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, which voted to authorize a potential strike earlier this month. Actors are concerned with the potential for studios to use AI to generate actors’ likenesses without their permission.

Even if Selim and the show’s other producers were completely in the dark about the problems with AI—which seems unlikely—this move feels like a slap in the face to the many artists and writers who are fighting to be paid and recognized for their work, instead of watching producers feed it into AI generators to be copied.

Which begs the question: Whose artwork was mined for the Secret Invasion opening credits? What if that person, or those people, had been given the reins instead? The final product is bland and forgettable, but would it have been as memorable as other Marvel credit sequences if an actual artist had designed it?

(featured image: Disney+)