Marvel’s Secret Invasion is already causing a commotion on social media, though not for reasons that the studio may have hoped.

The series, which debuted on Wednesday with just one episode, has touched a sore spot after director Ali Selim confirmed to Polygon that the opening credits were generated by artificial intelligence. Designed by Method Studios, Selim said he thought that the idea of using AI for the opening credits fit into the themes of the show.

-snip-

The revelation is prompting some backlash from audiences on social media, given that using AI presumably eliminated the need for graphic designers and animators to craft the opening credits.

The argument is especially timely, since the WGA is currently on strike after failed negotiations with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which included language about protecting writers against the use of AI in the writing process. Over the past eight weeks, the use of AI to replace laborers has come to the forefront of many discussions about the strike.

-snip-

That hazy surreality was the intention behind using AI-generated imagery. “When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it,” Secret Invasion producer Ali Selim told Polygon, who first confirmed the AI nature of the sequence. “It just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?”

However, what “makes sense” for a series about shapeshifting superspy hijinks and the actual reality of the controversies around AI-generated imagery are two very different things. There is a level of obfuscation about the process around this sequence and just what tools were used, and how. In the same Polygon interview, Selim simply states, citing a lack of awareness about how A.I. technology works, that “the computer would go off and do something,” and the team behind the sequence would tweak and alter the response with new prompts. Secret Invasion’s end credits—which note that 12 VFX studios, including Method, worked on the show—only credit a handful of producers and an art director, as well as a single animator, an AI director, a VFX director, and a concept credit.

But in a world where creatives have repeatedly pushed back against commercial usage of tools like DALL-E and Midjourney—citing concerns of displacing jobs for human artists; plagiarism from databases trained on uncredited, stolen artwork; ethical crediting practices; and more, both in the worlds of art and cinema in general, as the ongoing writers’ strike has made AI content protections a key part of union demands—Secret Invasion’s title sequence is a scary line to cross. This is a major Marvel Studios production using the current tools of AI-generated imagery on a scale no other mainstream show has right now, and while it’s not uncommon for various VFX and art teams to not know what other teams are working on aspects of the same series, there are already artists who worked on Secret Invasion expressing shock and concerns at the show’s use of AI technology.

With the process as currently oblique as it is—io9 has reached out to Marvel for comment on how Secret Invasion utilized AI, and will update this post if we receive a response—it’s hard to say just what could come next from Marvel’s use of AI in this manner, or what it says to the industry at large. But at a time when the studio, among many others Hollywood, has faced increasing scrutiny for the pressure it places on VFX studios for its overwhelming output of content, AI is risky territory for Marvel to step into. “It felt explorative and inevitable, and exciting, and different,” Selim concludes while talking to Polygon—a comment that will no doubt wring hollow and chilling to creatives concerned by AI imagery’s growing presence.