A poster titled “Slaves,” depicting a black man wearing a brown cowboy hat and leather suspenders on top of a cream-colored shirt with the words “Disney Pixar presents” and “Based on a true story” written on it, recently surfaced online and did the rounds across all social media platforms.
The controversial poster also had the text “Not this” written at the center, followed by a skull emoji. At the same time, the background also showed several other black men and women dressed similarly, standing upright.
The poster was deemed offensive as many netizens thought that Disney was about to release a film on slavery. However, the Disney ‘Slaves’ movie poster floating on the internet is not real and was not unveiled by the production company.
Instead, it was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and is part of the latest Disney Pixar AI meme trend.
According to FilmSchool.AI, the Disney Pixar AI meme trend kicked off in May 2023 when an AI-generated poster of iconic rapper Notorious B.I.G. surfaced online, making netizens believe that the production company was making an animated film about him. It even had the title ‘Wallace’ and the text “Something Big is coming to the theaters, May 24, 2024,” written on it.
After a four-month hiatus, the meme trend officially resumed at the end of September, and since then, numerous offensive and controversial fake posters under Disney Pixar’s name have come up, including an AI-generated poster of the infamous adult video Two Girls One Cup. It was so convincing that it made people believe that Disney was making a movie on it.
One of the most notorious AI-generated posters that began circulating in late October was the one titled ‘Caust’ portraying animated Adolf Hitler, once again fooling social media users into thinking that Disney Pixar was planning to make a movie on the German dictator and the Holocaust.
Since then, many other AI-generated posters have emerged online, including the ones titled ‘One Jar,’ ‘Stuffed,’ ‘Trail Blazers,’ ‘Teeth,’ ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Jojo’s,’ ‘John Wick,’ and more.
While some of these were solely meant for entertainment purposes, soon, several insensitive and offensive ones started doing the rounds. For instance, the ‘Haust’ poster featuring Hitler, or ‘Twin’ poster based on the 9/11 terror attacks, and ‘Finding Osama,’ based on the Al Qaeda leader.
The latest addition to the controversial Disney Pixar AI meme trend is the ‘Slaves’ poster, which has gained traction on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While the poster is more accurate than the previously viral ‘Caust’ one, the text “Not this” appearing at the center with a skull emoji proves that the image is a deepfake.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that inspired by the trend, Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator, which is powered by the DALL-E 3 AI technology, has launched a “How To” tutorial section where anyone can create fake “Pixar-style posters.”
According to the independent blog Pirates & Princesses, the trend is somewhat similar to what Channel Awesome artist Lindsay Ellis, or “The Nostalgia Chick,” did when she made a parody poster of Anne Frank for one of the episodes of her show.
Despite the ongoing controversy, so far, Disney has not issued any statement. It also remains unknown whether it has taken any legal steps to put an end to the trend.
