Since the franchise is set in the distant future, one might expect Star Trek to make some definitive, sweeping statements about the use of AI. However, various series and films present this technology as a double-edged sword. In Star Trek, AI powers ship computers and holodecks, and helps bring everyone's favorite android officer, Data, to life. But AI is also responsible for numerous existential threats to the galaxy, including everything from evil androids like Lore to weapons of mass destruction like Planet Killer and Control. Ultimately, Star Trek is very cagey about this technology, presenting it as both a game-changer and a life-stealer.
In the real world, the benefits of AI far outweigh the harm. Sure, it can help you write emails and create images, but it's also used by large corporations to skimp on quality and deliver cheap crap to paying clients, just so some rich executive doesn't have to pay poor, overworked creatives. Now, Star Trek has officially become part of the problem. Recently, Paramount apparently used AI to create a William Shatner thumbnail for Paramount+, resulting in the dumbest image in Star Trek history. Sadly, this is the inevitable future of the franchise: a studio that shoddies even on the most basic creative tasks just to please a quietly dying fandom.
Meet Captain Kirk, the AI pilot in Slop.
This story begins with the worst streaming service in history: Paramount+. Like all streaming platforms, it offers thumbnails for various movies. Usually, these are just a still from the film. For example, if you scroll down to «Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country» , you can see an image of James Doohan frozen in his most detached gaze. If you scroll to «Star Trek III: The Search for Spock» , you can see that weird guy with the melted face that Dr. McCoy is trying to give a ride to. However, when fans recently scrolled to «Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan» , they saw an incredibly ugly image of William Shatner that was apparently created by artificial intelligence.
In the image, Shatner looks at the camera with a rather calm expression. He is wearing a suit and tie, which looks completely absurd. Admiral Kirk not only never wears this suit in «The Wrath of Khan» , but the only time he wore anything like that was in a striped gangster suit in the episode "A Piece of the Action"« original series . The most striking thing about this Paramount+ image is the strange red glow around one of Shatner's eyes. It all looks surreal, reminiscent of what would happen if the Borg decided to assimilate Don Draper.
Garbage in, garbage out.
So, what happened here? On Bluesky, Ryan Estrada seems to have solved the mystery. The image of Shatner's face is mostly taken from film "The Wrath of Khan"« . This is the scene where Kirk undergoes a retinal scan before accessing classified information about Project Genesis. In the film, it's a close-up of Kirk's face, with his chin and almost everything above his eyes cropped out. The shot looks good in the film, but as a thumbnail for a streaming service, it would look terrible. Estrada's theory (which I certainly agree with) is that Paramount fed the film's image into a generative AI and asked it to augment the rest of his body.
However, the AI took many liberties with Shatner's character. It actually messed up the actor's hairline (something only God could do before), turning Kirk into a sleek Wall Street broker. For reasons completely unknown, he was dressed in a business suit, which made the image instantly It even looked out of place as a Star Trek miniature. The weirdest thing is that it didn't remove the red light from the targeting reticle, making Kirk look like he has the galaxy's worst case of red eye (maybe the waste disposal department was lazy). But as awful as that is, the worst thing about this AI hack is its incredible laziness.
Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Star Trek«
With Star Trek celebrating its 60th anniversary, Paramount is hoping to revive the entire franchise with a brand-new film. But why would anyone want to see a film from the same creatively incompetent people who had to use AI to create the damn cover? These executives are the guardians of the coolest sci-fi franchise ever created, but they were too lazy to just grab a suitable screenshot from «The Wrath of Khan» . Unfortunately, this AI failure is a testament to what Star Trek has become: a lazy hack job created by even lazier creative minds who hope you're too stupid to notice how bad the franchise has become.
Clearly they are wrong, and Paramount is about to learn a very bitter lesson: the only thing they can't Created with AI, these are fans who actually care about Star Trek!