The latest viral AI craze has seen quickly generated Ghibli-style art ripping away the craftsmanship of animators for the sake of clicks. But the technology continues to pervade the entire medium of online entertainment, including fake movie trailers. The trend began with splicing clips of actors in other scenes to build a narrative that would fit into, say, an upcoming Marvel Studios or DC Studios movie—and in the past, movie studios would ding the videos to be taken down yet invariably fan trailer after fan trailer would pop up anyway.
As AI improves, YouTube channels that use the tech to create even more deceiving fake trailers have risen in popularity. Many of them have amassed millions of followers and get recognized by the platform as fan trailer creators, as opposed to “view” grifters who make bank out of trolling general audiences. (We all know an uncle or old high school classmate who share fake trailers, naively thinking they’re the real thing.)
For industry professionals, it’s a headache to have to deal with influencers and fan sites that run fake content without checking the source. Filmmaker James Gunn often takes to his social media platforms to call out fake trailers, including widely shared clips purported to be (but are not) from his upcoming DC Studios Superman film. But what exactly is being done by the studios to stop this? Nothing really.
In fact, it turns out that many studios are actually opting to cash in on the fake trailers. Deadline revealed that studios have been reported to be “actively taking a cut” from the earnings of fake AI trailer YouTube creators; Screen Culture was one example given.
“Emails reviewed by Deadline show how Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has claimed monetization on Screen Culture trailers for Superman and House of the Dragon,” the trade stated. “This means that instead of copyright striking the videos (if a channel accrues three strikes within 90 days, it can be banned from YouTube), WBD is asking YouTube to ensure it receives the ad revenue from views. Similarly, Sony Pictures has claimed revenue on fake trailers for Spider-Man and Kraven The Hunter, while Paramount did the same on a counterfeit Gladiator II video.”
Well, capitalism is going to capitalism, as the studios’ move is seemingly to enter into mutually beneficial deals with fake trailer creators at the cost of their talent and the film medium. Sure, they get some money or get the real trailer to run right before or after, but the inundation of the fake amid the real is what turns people off of the actual product being released.
At the end of the day, fake trailers, either with spliced footage from other films or with AI generated imagery, are probably pretty low on the spectrum of bad things that can be done with deepfake technology. But studios’ tacit enabling over AI to use actor likenesses—in exchange for what is chump change to them—only normalizes the worst possible use of the tech in the wide world of the web. That seemingly doesn’t matter to who gets the bucks from the billions of views.
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