A24's New AI-Generated 'Civil War' Posters Spark Controversy

A24 has released a series of epic new posters touting its acclaimed film Civil war.

There's just one problem. Well, maybe more than one. Or none, depending on your point of view. We will explain.

The five images (below) tease post-apocalyptic scenes in major conflict-torn American cities. The Sphere is a blackened wreck in the middle of a burning Las Vegas. There is a floating cannon unit in a lake outside of Los Angeles. Troops patrol San Francisco. A street in Miami is in ruins. There are tour boats full of refugees on the Chicago River. All scenes suggest war-torn destruction in iconic locations.

Except …none of these scenes actually make it into the film. Some wonder if the campaign is giving potential moviegoers false expectations about what they will see in the film. Civil war is the A24's most expensive production to date, costing around $50 million. Yet the visuals make the film look like a film with twice the budget.

“None of this happens in the movie,” one reader wrote on A24 Instagram post. “I don’t understand this campaign. You're selling a film that doesn't exist and it's very weird. I love A24 with all my heart but I am so confused as to what happened with this movie.

The other potential problem is that the images are generated by artificial intelligence, leading to negative reactions to the use of the technology. The AI's work also resulted in some notable geographic and landmark errors and a bit of “uncanny valley” weirdness. For example, the two Marina Towers buildings in Chicago are actually on the same side of the river, but in art they are on opposite sides. Meanwhile, a photo of a wreck in Miami shows a three-door car. Some think the giant swan in a Los Angeles lake is also an AI failure, but it's probably a paddle boat – although it doesn't really look like a paddle boat either.

“You know very well how the film community feels about the use of AI-generated content,” one reader wrote. “And the backlash [to AI generated stills featured in the horror film] Late night with the devil was more than enough to make it clear to everyone: WE DON'T WANT THIS. How stupid of your marketing team to think this was acceptable. We're doing our best to combat the pressure to open Pandora's box with this shit, and here you are willfully ignoring everyone's concerns about this.”

The ads were posted on Instagram and used as physical posters in several locations. A source close to the film said the footage helped imagine the national impact of the film's fictional war. “These are AI images inspired by the film,” a source said. “The whole film is a big ‘what if’ and so we wanted to continue that thinking about the social – powerful images of iconic landmarks with that dystopian realism.”

The recent Late night with the devil Controversy seems to be the closest comparison, although it is rather imperfect. The IFC Films/Shudder version used AI to help create title cards for the 1970s late-night talk show that is in the film. This use sparked strong reactions on social networks. The film's directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes defended the usestating: “Together with our incredible graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the 70s aesthetic we always envisioned, we experimented with AI for three stills which we then edited and which ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.

Either way, the marketing effort is certainly generating some buzz online, as Civil war begins its second weekend. Writer-director Alex Garland's film opened with a significantly better-than-expected $25.7 million, a record for the studio. After all the talk of the film's politics, or lack thereof, it also attracted an equal number of moviegoers who identified as liberal and conservative according to exit polls.

Ironically, before Civil warGarland was perhaps best known for his 2014 directorial debut, Ex Machinaa film that warned of the dangers of AI.