Riot criticizes Netflix's 'disrespectful AI-extended Arcane Art': 'This was a mistake.'

Another day, another generative AI drama. This time, it involves a promo image of the League of Legends anime Arcane. Netflix removed the image that appeared as a thumbnail on the streaming app after fans pointed out some hints that clearly pointed to a machine's work.

Eggbertith shared a screenshot on X after noticing something strange in Jinx's hands in a banner. Riot confirmed that the content was AI-generated, but it wasn't happy about it.

"Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention," Riot's brand manager Alex Shahmiri said on X (via GamesRadar). "We have a firm stance that no AI should be used for anything related to Arcane because it's disrespectful towards the incredible artists who worked in the show. This image was a misprint and has been removed. "Thanks again for pointing it out."

This is not Riot's whiff, but someone at Netflix has extended an existing Arcane piece using Photoshop's "generative" fill tool (or similar) to make it fit for a banner.

This is the original picture, which is still available online:

This is what came out--the resolution was lower, but it is clear that the hand has been mangled.

It's not "AI-generated artwork," which, I think, mitigates the problem somewhat, but it's incredibly half-assed and that's its own problem: Media companies, who should know better, seem to have so much faith in the magic of AI, that they don't bother to check the results to make sure it's nothing more than hacked-up trash, leaving us with, you guessed it, hacked-up rubbish. Either that or it's widely believed that mass-media users won't notice that things like a promotional thumbnail of the most expensive animated show ever produced are made with the same quality as a 99-cent hamburger. I'm not certain which is worse.

In a fine "so, you hate waffles?" fashion, a few people pressed Shahmiri on his specific reference to Arcane as if it implied that Riot was fine with the use generative AI for everything else. To one of these questions, he replied: "I can only speak about what I do." "On a personal level, I don't like AI because the human connection is what makes art special. It's not something I want to see AI replace, whether it's through music, art, or any other creative medium.