Disney's Marvel Studios TV series "Rocky (Season 2)" officially launched on streaming platforms on Friday, and while the series itself has received good reviews, a poster has sparked a "cyber investigation" about generative AI on social media platforms.

(Promotional poster, source: Disney, Marvel, The Verge) Since the series itself is related to "time travel", it makes sense to have a clock on the promotional poster, but in the eyes of some professional designers, the AI element in this poster is a problem for them.
Graphic designer Katria Raden pointed out on social media X that in the middle spiral clock in the background of the poster, there are obvious AIGC features, such as randomly generated meaningless distorted graphics.
(Source: Disney, Marvel, The Verge) An image of what appears to be the clock's background was then found on Shutterstock, a well-known copyrighted image platform. Some netizens spent several dollars to buy this picture, although the metadata of the picture did not make it clear how this picture was generated, but the same contributor uploaded a large number of similar spiral images, increasing the suspected "suspicion" of AI generation. Since the image was uploaded this year, it also objectively ruled out the "alibi" that the technology was not enough to support the generation of such images in earlier years.
(Source: Shutterstock) At the same time, there are multiple AI detection tools that show that this image is generated by AI. It should be noted that since there is no AI detection tool that can achieve high-precision judgment, these conclusions can only be used as a reference. In addition, since many of the shrunken figures in the poster are also rather blunt, it is not clear whether this poster has a higher "AI content".
Whose "pot"?
Like Adobe, a "data validation" concept stock that investors are very familiar with, Shutterstock also has restrictions on AIGC, such as the platform rules that except for images generated by its own AI tools, other AI images cannot be hung on the platform for sale, in order to ensure that the platform has copyright for the images sold. AIGC images also need to be clearly labeled. Shutterstock has also stressed that because the company's AI tools are trained using a library of copyrighted images, they can be safely used commercially.
But Shutterstock has not publicly responded to questions about the image that has put Disney in the middle of controversy, nor has it clarified how the platform is taking action to ensure that sellers of images comply with AI rules.
Of course, Disney's relationship with AI has already gone beyond making posters. In June this year, another Marvel work, Secret Invasion, caused a Hollywood shock because of the use of AI to make the opening title. At the time, Disney also emphasized that the use of AI technology did not lead to a reduction in designer positions on the project.
Katria Raden commented that for many hardworking artists, selling licenses on image sites has always been one of the ways to make a living, and now this AIGC technique is based on "massive exploitation and wage theft."
The Verge commented that since the copyright owners themselves did not identify the source, Disney may not be aware of the image. But even so, allowing random patterns in open materials is not a good sign.
This latest controversy also reflects the simmering conflict between content creators and the AIGC industry. In the past year, a number of image rights providers have launched AI tools, with the main direction of allowing inexperienced users to generate art in large quantities, while also making it cheaper.
More importantly, with the rapid evolution of AI, some of the obvious AIGC characteristics are rapidly being corrected. For example, DALL· E. ·3, released by OpenAI last month, has solved the problem of inaccurate text generation, which will make it exponentially more difficult to distinguish AIGC works in the future.