Marvel has denied that it used AI to craft a new poster for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, despite some fans raising suspicions.
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On Tuesday (February 4), the first trailer for the upcoming entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was released, causing many fans to overflow with excitement and asking, “Is Marvel back?”.
The film stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn as the titular quartet, a group of superpowered scientists that are being incorporated into the MCU for the first time.
Along with the trailer, the film’s initial poster was also shared on Tuesday, and some fans have speculated that the studio might have employed artificial intelligence in its design. Among causes of the suspicions are a character apparently sporting four fingers instead of five and two characters with the same replicated face.
See the poster here:
The Wrap reached out to Marvel representatives for a reaction to the backlash, and the studio confirmed that AI was not used in the poster’s creation.
The film is due to be released on July 25 and has been made possible by Marvel’s parent company Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox in 2019. Directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision), the Fantastic Four are forced to protect their 1960s-inspired retro-futuristic world from the planet-devouring cosmic being Galactus (Ralph Ineson).
The rising use of AI in the entertainment industry continues to be highly contentious, with The Brutalist director Brady Corbet recently defending his film against a backlash after it emerged that it used AI to alter Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian accents.
“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” he explained. “They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed.”
“This was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.”
Paul McCartney recently spoke out against changes in copyright law, arguing that if they were to go ahead, AI would be able to rip off artists, resulting in a “loss of creativity”.
This is the fourth Fantastic Four movie, after the Chris Evans and Jessica Alba 2005 film and its 2007 sequel Rise Of The Silver Surfer, and the disastrous 2015 reboot with Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan.
Recently, Marvel chief Kevin Feige explained that the video game Fortnite was used as inspiration for the Galactus character in the new film. Also, last month it was announced that The Fantastic Four will make their debut on popular game Marvel Rivals.