Yikes! Did season 1 episode 6 use AI-generated art?

[Enterprise1701]

Earlier this week, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 episode 6 "Come, Let's Away" introduced the old derelict U.S.S. Miyazaki, whose backstory notably includes being the focus of a renowned and debatably propagandic comic book Tales from the Frontier, which kept spirits up among ex-Federation citizens during the galactic dark age following the Burn. Unfortunately, several viewers have observed oddities in the comic book pages which suggest an A.I. algorithm was used as a budget-saving measure. Firstly, that's not a 31st century uniform style! And then observe Captain Chi's hands in some frames. Or the very limited facial expressions. Also, the abysmal lettering of the speech bubbles and caption boxes. Did these images come as output from using the Kelvin movies as input?

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Star Trek: Starfleet Academy ScreenCaps "Come, Let’s Away" (S1:E6)

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Spoiler

Phil Murphy (@crashtesterx.bsky.social)

If this is true then I can't tell you how much it sucks , so so many artistic fans out there would kill to have thier name in the credits of a #StarTrek show and you already have so many fantastic artists working for you . [contains quote post or other embedded content]

bsky.app

Starfleet Design 🖍🖖 (@starfleetdesign.bsky.social)

I'm as certain that this is AI as I am certain that they didn't hire a professional letterer. What's a shame is that something like this would have been the perfect opportunity to commission some fan artists! Can you imagine how much good publicity that would have gotten them? [contains quote...

bsky.app

Kyle (@ussburritotruck.bsky.social)

'Starfleet Academy' using AI slop for the comic book depicted rather prominently on screen in episode six has me really perturbed. I'm sure it was a cost cutting measure as opposed to hiring an artist to bang out some quick pages, but it looks terrible.

bsky.app

 

[Mudd]

Well, if they did it'll be a mild embarrassment to them in upcoming interviews.

It's hardly a particularly egregious use of the tools, especially given the amount of post-generation work that looks to have been done on the images - if they even are generative AI to begin with. One or more production artists got paid somewhere along the way.

BTW, whether they even could "hire fan artists" to produce work on commission would depend on whatever relevant guild rules are in place either here or in Canada.

 

[tenmei]

Do we need a entire thread when its already been covered in the 1x06 thread?

The hairstyles are inconsistent, and the uniform design varies from panel to panel. ...Blue has a mandarin collar in one random panel, they have a pointed-at-the-waist uniform top sometimes and not others, and sometimes they have the extra stitching across the shoulders from the JJ version.

I would absolutely bet it's at least partially Ai generated.
Let's see if an artist name ever surfaces. (Specifically listed as the art being drawn by, not just one who worked on it in general, because there's obviously some human work done on it. Someone went in and added a small flare to all the deltas for some reason.)

I noticed all of those as well, but kinda put them in the category of mistakes a human artist might do as well, especially if they’re in a hurry and use different reference material. But yeah, the sheer variety on the uniforms and hairstyles could also be an indicator for the us of AI. There are definitively signs it was done by a person, too, though. AI wouldn’t flip the same character or background illustration to use as three different panels, for example.

Like you I would be curious to learn who was responsible for the comic book.

I wouldn’t be too sure about any of that. Even if AI was employed, I doubt it would just randomly put sunglasses on one of the characters. I’m pretty certain this was done deliberately as some sort of inside gag. (Either prompted to give him glasses or drawn that way.) But I wouldn’t take the glasses alone as an indication that it must necessarily be AI. As @Mudd noted, even if they used AI this most certainly would have gone through a process of being polished by a human artist. The face of what seems to be the captain character appears to be decently consistent from panel to panel, which is something AI tends to get wrong, too. I wonder if they used photos of a production member as reference for the face (either for a human artist or AI). If you look closely you’ll also notice that the control panels on the bridge (?) use the same kind of future LCARS design as they used on set. So they certainly didn’t just prompt an AI to generate some generic “Star Trek comic”. At least some thought and work went into this.


I wonder if they are somehow setting up Pickford saving the day in the season finale or something like that. Would be kinda in keeping with the idea that they are individuals, each one with their own strengths and weaknesses, which seems to be kind of the theme of the show. I for one would enjoy Pickford getting her moment in the limelight.

 

[Mudd]

Do we need a entire thread when its already been covered in the 1x06 thread?

IMO it doesn't hurt to separate this from the episode topic. People feel strongly enough about it that it could overwhelm or distract from other discussion.

 

[Michael]

There has been some discussion about this already in the episode review thread in the posts following this one here.

Personally I’m not as convinced as some seem to be that AI has been used. The only indications I can see that AI might have been used are:

• In the first panel the sun’s round shape seems to continue in front of the rock formations, almost making it look like they are transparent. This strikes me as a mistake a human artist likely wouldn’t make.
• In the final panel the knuckles on the hand make it look like the character has more than five fingers. Then again, it’s not super clear and this is the kind of mistake a human artist might make as well.

But other than those I don’t really think it’s evident. None of the posts you’re linking seem to offer any additional tells that it is AI-generated. And the stuff you are mentioning, and that others have mentioned as well in the other thread, doesn’t really seem conclusive in my estimation:

• The fact that the uniforms are varyingly in the style of the original series, the Kelvin Universe movies or Strange New Worlds is in itself not an indicator for AI use, and there’s several explanations that don’t involve AI. Unless we somehow think AI is only capable of producing images of characters wearing those uniforms, which is of course not the case.
• I looked closely at all hands in all the illustrations and while some of them don’t look very good, I don’t really see anything that would let me think they must be AI-generated. There’s for example no case where there are clearly more fingers than there should be.
• The facial expressions being limited is not a known bug of AI-generated images, as far as I know.
• The speech bubbles are very likely added by a human. Not impossible to do for AI, but just impractical. Both the panel layout and the lettering seems to have been added by a human artist who’s just not a trained comic illustrator.
• One poster has noted that the hairstyles are not consistent. This could be something that happens when you use AI, but it’s also something human artist do.
• Another poster thinks the fact that in one panel a character is wearing sunglasses is an indicator for AI use, which doesn’t follow for me.

There’s actually also some evidence that would point against the usage of AI. Like some character illustrations and backgrounds being reused repeatedly throughout the pages. If they’d used AI, why would they rather copy elements instead of just generating new ones?

So yeah, I think we can reasonably conclude that the illustrations are just not very good. But that does of course not mean the must have been generated. I think it’s more likely that someone in the show’s art department got the job of throwing together a few pages that might pass as a comic book if you only see quick flashes of it. They probably didn’t hire a trained comic book artist, but instead created something by themselves. I don’t think it’s impossible or even totally improbable that they did use AI, but I just don’t think it’s very evident just from looking at it.

And what also personally rubs me the wrong way as an artist working as a graphic designer for 15 years is how people seem to have this knee-jerk reaction that something must be AI, with the evidence often merely amounting to “I don’t think it looks perfect”. We’ve reached a point where something looking off in an illustration automatically lets people assume it’s AI, when humans were fully capable of producing subpar art for literally thousands of years. It’s so disheartening as a creative person to see genuinely good creative work and artists being subjected to irrational witch hunts in comments sections, just because suddenly everything must be “AI slop”.

 

[Michael]

IMO it doesn't hurt to separate this from the episode topic. People feel strongly enough about it that it could overwhelm or distract from other discussion.

Agreed. I’m fine with this being its own topic.

 

[Tosk]

If there's no Ai being used here I'll eat one of my hats.

 

[tenmei]

• Another poster thinks the fact that in one panel a character is wearing sunglasses is an indicator for AI use, which doesn’t follow for me.

In another panel, another character seems to be using some sort of binoculars so I would be happy saying the character is using polarised glasses due to the apparent solar flare.

 

[Mudd]

Unfortunately, several viewers have observed oddities in the comic book pages which suggest an A.I. algorithm was used as a budget-saving measure. Firstly, that's not a 31st century uniform style! And then observe Captain Chi's hands in some frames. Or the very limited facial expressions. Also, the abysmal lettering of the speech bubbles and caption boxes. Did these images come as output from using the Kelvin movies as input?

BTW, this sort of online "detective work" is quickly verging on delusional self-congratulation. What you're identifying as AI "tells" has more to do with amateurish and careless use of tools than anything else.

 

[Michael]

BTW, this sort of online "detective work" is quickly verging on delusional self-congratulation. What you're identifying as AI "tells" has more to do with amateurish and careless use of tools than anything else.

Exactly. It’s really unfortunate that we’ve reached a point where so many people apparently pass this kind of judgment based on “vibes”.

 

[Enterprise1701]

What makes me very confused is if the inaccurate uniforms courtesy of TOS styling was meant to lean into the bright hope / propaganda debate between B'Avi and Caleb, then why on Earth do the uniform collars / undershirts look like they came from the Kelvin movies, complete with lens flares?

 

[tenmei]

What makes me very confused is if the inaccurate uniforms courtesy of TOS styling was meant to lean into the bright hope / propaganda debate between B'Avi and Caleb, then why on Earth do the uniform collars / undershirts look like they came from the Kelvin movies, complete with lens flares?

As has been posted elsewhere, the uniforms in Last Starship resemble the TOS ones, so not entirelt unreasonable. So Im not seeing an issue in them being interpeted as Kelvin-esque

 

[Michael]

What makes me very confused is if the inaccurate uniforms courtesy of TOS styling was meant to lean into the bright hope / propaganda debate between B'Avi and Caleb, then why on Earth do the uniform collars / undershirts look like they came from the Kelvin movies, complete with lens flares?

It’s my theory that during production they changed how old the ship was supposed to be. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if at some point they meant for it to be a 900 year old TOS-era ship, which might have even made more sense, considering they used the Strange New Worlds bridge set and a ship model with a bridge module from that era. But then they added the idea of the Burn era singularity drive and made it a much younger ship.

The comic book graphics were part of the on-set screen graphics and not an element they added as an effect after the shooting in post. This means they had to be ready for when they were shooting and couldn’t be changed at a certain point. This might explain why the comic characters wear the anachronistic uniforms.

 

[Mudd]

What makes me very confused is if the inaccurate uniforms courtesy of TOS styling was meant to lean into the bright hope / propaganda debate between B'Avi and Caleb, then why on Earth do the uniform collars / undershirts look like they came from the Kelvin movies, complete with lens flares?

Because art doesn't match your expectations doesn't mean it's AI. Human artists make more idiosyncratic decisions about how to depict a scene than computers do. It's part of being actually creative, which generative AI is not.

 

[Enterprise1701]

As has been posted elsewhere, the uniforms in Last Starship resemble the TOS ones, so not entirelt unreasonable. So Im not seeing an issue in them being interpeted as Kelvin-esque

The inclusion of lens flares, though, make me especially suspicious the imagery was the output of being generated from Kelvin input.

 

[Michael]

^ Those lens flares especially look like added elements to me, to be honest. They don’t fit the style of the drawings and wouldn’t really fit the TOS style uniforms either. To me they look like something an artist from the art department added in Photoshop because it looked cool.

---

I will say this, whether this “comic book” was made using AI (and in some form it might very well have been) or created by a human artist, I think it’s a shame they didn’t put more love into it, or even collaborated with an actual comics publisher or artist. It’s worth pointing out that it absolutely serves the intended function in the episode and I’m sure it will inspire many fan artists to create their own version of the “Tales from the Frontier” comic series. But still, they could have gone the extra mile and created a comic that would pass muster on closer inspection. This “comic” is unfortunately a little sloppy, AI or no AI.

 

[Mudd]

Apropos of nothing, if I submit a simple prompt like "a page of a star trek comic set in the 31st century" into a free image generator i get something like this:



You have to fight like hell to get most models to spit out anything other than anime.

 

[tenmei]

Apropos of nothing, if I submit a simple prompt like "a page of a star trek comic set in the 31st century" into a free image generator i get something like this:

View attachment 52122

You have to fight like hell to get most models to spit out anything other than anime.

Star Trek: Yamato?

 

[firehawk12]

I think you can get models to put out something that resembles the IDW style anyway.

It never occurred to me to consider it was AI though because I assumed it was an actual tie in.

 

[Mudd]

I think you can get models to put out something that resembles the IDW style anyway.

It never occurred to me to consider it was AI though because I assumed it was an actual tie in.

Nice. What's your prompt and model, if you don't mind the question.

I've gotten some good output from generative AI, but it takes more guidance and iterations than I put into my example. Or blind luck.