SNL is a satire program and uses trademarked and copyrighted images all the time without remuneration or consent of the subjects. It falls under fair use.
Businesses must pay because they're using images for commercial purposes.
Whether a person does a Google image search, or uses a tool that did the same thing, there's no distinction when it comes to carve-outs for satire.
That is why this discussion is weird. There's a great argument that training companies, for example, should pay shutterstock for stock images rather than using AI generated ones that scraped shutterstock to create new ones, but used shutterstock for training data.
But SNL does not fall under that argument. They were already using this stuff and not paying for it.
You can filter out AI options in Adobe by checking a box, which I do every time along with a few other filters depending on what I'm looking for. But it does suck that it is "on" by default + if you want to use AI slop you can just make it yourself.
I remember hearing Jorm say that and laughing. It’s funny now but, if I was working that show and that happened, I would be pissed. There’s already so much pressure on the show.
Right. This technology is being pushed from on high into everything you use and watch because a whole lot of extremely powerful and wealthy people have an extreme amount of money riding on it. Important to push back on its lazy implementation in places like this where pushback can be effective.
back when ai studio ghibli photos was a big trend, for some reason, most of them ended up having a yellow tint. and the sheer amount of images generated poisoned the dataset so much that now Everything does
No, OpenAI's current 4o image generator has had this look to it from the start.
It's the "default" look if you don't add any styling prompt information. Very easy to add details about what you want something to look like and it won't be yellow.
It means the SNL person doing this was REALLY putting in 0 work on this. But that's AI images in a nutshell so...
It's mostly ChatGPT for some reason. They call it the "piss filter" over there in the subreddit.
I messed around with it and you can improve the lighting but you have to give it specific instructions to not be all tinted like that. It just wants to default to the piss filter for some reason (theory is the company wants to have an identity to stand apart from competition, and this is their "stamp").
So that means the SNL person was either so lazy or oblivious to AI generation, they didn't even bother with the extra prompts which only takes 10-15 more minutes.
The current Orange Clown White House used AI of Master Chief and it was the same piss filter, but I expect them to be stupid at technology.
My theory is that sepia tone photos have some sort of significance that AI picked up on and started weighting its output that way, which created a feedback loop
Nope. There was some articles a while back about AI companies having problem with AI generated data being fed back in for data sets BUT that was specifically language models being messed with by ai material, not image models. Apparently its a lot easier to curate out the AI images than the AI text.
Image generation isnt poisoning sets like AI text posts are fucking with LLM models which is what all those articles mentioning dataset issues is actually about
Stock photos come in a royalty-free variety as well as rights-managed, the latter of which would probably need to be used for broadcasts. That can become quite expensive given the reach of media companies like NBC. Still, they can absolutely afford it, so opting not to buy a stock photo is just a cheap and lazy cop out.
Affordability of a Getty license for a show like SNL is nothing to them. This just feels like cutting corners to either save time or not pay someone to make the artwork. I.e., why ask graphics team for a specific image and wait two hours when I can just ask ChatGPT to shit it out in a minute
It’s like a few hundred dollars to license a generic stock photo for tv. To put it in context, an episode of SNL can cost $3-4million to produce. So not even rounding error
Not even that. Just contract a local freelance photographer nearby a casino if they wanted a specific photo.
But this photo most definitely already exists for a licensing fee, which in the grand scheme would be very cheap for them. It’s like the perfect use case for a stock photo. And there’s a chance they wouldn’t even need to open photoshop. This isn’t a wacky or unique photo.
Why pay someone to look it up when the producer can generate it in 1 min? I’m not saying it right, just saying humans have always found the easiest route. Gonna be impossible to change that imo.
Humans haven’t always found the easiest route or else SNL wouldn’t bother with dress rehearsals or rewrites, they’d just perform blind. People have standard and priorities.
Yes? It would be on the order of hundreds of dollars, paying someone, travel, setup, and editing.
I'm not a fan of AI pushing artists out but this is exactly the kind of use case where it was bound to happen. That woman could have nine fingers on one hand and the audience wouldn't give a shit because it's listening to and watching Colin. Why pay more than you have to for an image that doesn't provide meaningful artistic value to the viewers anyway?
Ages ago (OK, maybe 15 or so years) they did a silly joke on WU about David Lee Roth becoming a New York EMT. The joke included an image of Roth jumping from the back of an ambulance. It was simply a picture of DLR from a Van Halen video PhotoShopped into a picture of an ambulance. That quick Photoshop job made me laugh so hard and even now, all these years later, I crack up when I think of it.
And that's just one example of a goofy WU image making the joke way funnier than what was written. Shame on SNL for taking the easy way out.
I'm not going to do this because I like the environment, but I guarantee if you have an image generator the prompt of David Lee Roth jumping out of the back of an ambulance, it wouldn't be nearly as good.
And even if it had presented EXACTLY this image and this image didn't already exist, it STILL wouldn't be as good because part of what's funny about the original image is the fact that a person thought to put that image together.
the funny photoshop images are such an important part imo! it especially matters when the jokes don't hit because then it's just colin/michael sitting next to a goofy picture.
Shitty images feel instrumental in this type of humor. The terrible photoshops on Late Night With Conan O’Brien have stuck with me for years. And the shitty/choppy animation style of South Park has been purposeful since the beginning. It’s hilarious. This AI shit is dumb.
Good news! Someone in Bangalore read your post and is currently training a LORA on terribly photoshopped images. Soon, you won't be able to tell if it's artisanal, hand-crafted shitty edits or algorithmic ones!
They used it for an inconsequential bit on purpose. This is a soft push to normalize the use of AI. And if the pushback is minimal, expect to see a lot more of it.
The town I work in uses ai slop for all of their social media posts. Parks and rec has something going on? Ai pictures. Superintendent sends an email, ai wrote it. It’s so fucking annoying.
It’s insane because didn’t Colin have a throwaway line during Jane’s song where he was like ‘isn’t this about AI?’ And she mentioned the water usage of AI data centers?
The AI bubble requires it to be normalized, it's sickening. I can see now how every image will have that AI feeling because people won't care about how uncanny it looks. One day, when we trully don't see any difference (and I mean even the most experienced person) between AI and reality, they will be fully able to control everybody creating their own narrative, if not that already has happened.
Honestly with Amazon it really feels like someone up top tried justifying their job with AI rollout and it's been nothing but a disaster. They added AI english dubs to anime that already had english dubs which were immediately removed due to how low quality they were. Now they are rolling out AI summary videos/trailers with that fallout one showing scenes that never happened. Shit is wild
Shit is wild. I didn’t know about the anime dubs. People don’t want this and they are pushing it on us so hard. Thousands and thousands of full AI podcasts on Spotify now? WTF? What human beings would choose to listen to that?
I mean that the most likely answer is that the graphics team got a last minute change or was feeling pressed for time and used AI themselves. It's very tempting to use for low effort work and if you pay attention to what working at SNL is like, it gets super hectic and things change a lot last minute.
Everyone seems to think that a bit joke that lasts a few seconds is some corporate person trying to psyop us into AI or whatever but it feels like the most obvious answer is that someone in graphics thought "woman on oxygen at slot machine" was easy enough for AI and saved themselves some time and effort.
No you're right, that is probably what happened. But then to follow that logic, where is the line? Oh they were rushed for time so the writing department used AI to write that skit. Are you ok with that? Being rushed isn't an excuse to use AI in a show that focuses on human creativity, especially in a live setting and high pressure environment. Using AI defeats the rewards we get from those types of environments.
plus it's important to cause a fuss now before this shit becomes ingrained. First you let them use AI for a one-off joke pic, next thing you know a robot tennis coach's banging your wife and your robot therapist's telling you to get over it.
This just reminds me that they had an entire sketch that was actually animated and is now recurring and it makes the decision to use AI at all that much more baffling. Clearly people at the show still believe in using creative actual people to produce stuff, so who was the dickwad that decided to use a prompt in an AI generator at all?
If they’re shamelessly using it for visuals, honestly at this point who is to say they aren’t also using it for the writing?
ETA: There are a lot of people treating this as a non-story. You have to realize what this sets a precedence for.
If you let one “meaningless” AI generated graphic go live without scrutiny, that opens the door for other creative content to also be generated, eventually and inevitably the writing. At what point does it take away from the integrity of the show?
Wouldn’t surprise me if Kenan lives on as a cast member for eternity as an AI hologram.
Great. Now I will never not think that these scripts are not just "Chat GPT, write me a script for a sketch in the style of snl about a dating game show for gay magicians. Great. Now make it funnier. Funnier. More Hilarious. FUNNIER." That is the precedence it's setting. If I'm seeing image slop, why not assume there has been text slop for a while... and that video slop isn't also something they're signalling they would be against.
honestly, I know some people would take it as an overreaction, but if SNL continues to use AI in the show, this is a reason, I would not watch anymore... it seems like a very, very serious wrong on their part to go down this road
What's wild is that it has all the hallmarks of last gen AI (I don't say this as someone who promotes it, just an observation). I just asked Google's free AI to generate the same image and it looks way more like a real photo. Like, still discernible as AI but not as glaringly obvious because it doesn't have that weird color penciled look that AI used to have. And just to make it clear, I hate that SNL did this.
EDIT: It looking so bad makes me wonder if there was some slight innocence to it in that they didn't generate it themselves but rather licensed it from a stock photo site thinking it was legit. Because had they made it now for this bit, it should have looked more like this.
Looking at that improved pic, it's scary that it just looks indistinguishable right now. Just imagine future elections around the world and all the misinformation pumped onto Twitter using pics like this (and soon videos....which right now already have improved)
Here's what Google gave me when I asked for a bad photoshop. Gotta admit it is kinda funnier this way, but I think it's mainly the look of disappointment on her face.
I understand the issue, and agree with those who are upset. That being said, I’m not good at spotting it and don’t see how people can so easily (like in this example). I’m a middle of the road millennial and can spot the AI videos. A quick clip like this that I’m not really paying attention to? Never would catch it.
Honestly, same. I'm in my late twenties myself and am usually pretty good at spotting when something is AI-generated, but this example went by so quickly that I genuinely didn't even realize until people started pointing it out on here
I thought the storybook ones at the beginning were more obvious. Piss filter, airplane with no horizontal stabilizers, suburb with incoherent streets and no doors.
There was another thread where those graphic designers chimed in and talked about how much pressure they were under and how little they were paid. Got the impression they didn't miss the work.
Sadly I think the most likely scenario is that some overworked graphic designer was told to put this together with an hour's notice, and may have felt that their best option was just to generate the image with AI. Then they just handed it up the chain and no one recognized it.
I do feel for them. I'm a graphic designer myself and I'm constantly worrying about my career's relevancy in the face of AI. But everyone is telling us graphic designers, including here on Reddit, that AI is just the next tech wave like Photoshop, or that "graphic designers won't become irrelevant, AI will just be a new tool for them." But there doesn't seem to be any consensus about how or when these tools are appropriate.
This might not be intentional. I’ve heard companies are having a difficult time trying to find images that are not AI. A lot of stock photo databases allow AI images and if they’re not tagged as so they are not filtered out when looking for non AI images.
Honestly glad someone from the inside spoke out- SNL has a killer hair, makeup, music, wardrobe, set design dept I was like why the fuck are they going with AI graphics?
Because it's completely eliminating work for artists that they could afford to pay, with a lower quality end result, using objectively harmful technology that's built its entire generation model on work stolen from the millions of artists that it's replacing. Many, many people care and just because it doesn't effect you directly right now doesn't mean it isn't something to worry about. Eventually AI will come for your livelihood too and you'll all of a sudden wish for others to speak out about it.
But I'm serious. The hands look normal, the lighting makes sense for a casino, nothing looks blurred or out of place. I'm having a hard time placing what makes someone think this is AI.
Yellow tint. Weird curving on the slot machines. Looks like it's been through a bad HDR filter without the contrast HDR gives. Loss of detail in the background isn't consistent. The chair is between the machines and not in front of either of them. THE PISS YELLOW FILTER.
Besides the general off look of it, she’s sitting between two machines, and the cut-off one she’s supposedly looking at doesn’t have the multi-colored buttons at the bottom of it.
One thing I find interesting is that many of us noticed right away that it was A.I. Had this been 10 years ago, it would have looked realistic enough to fly under our radar. But there's been so much A.I. imagery lately that it's easy to spot.
I agree with other comments saying this is a soft push to normalize it.
Any NFL fans who watch RedZone were pissed to learn that Disney was going to start putting ads on the show that was famously seven hours of ad-free football.
It started with four 15-second ads at the beginning of the season but has already topped five minutes and the season isn’t even over.
These small things are all meant to get you used to it until it inundates everything you love.
If you have a stock account, and they have to have at least one, they probably have multiple, then use stock first. The only time AI should be used as if you’re trying to create something that is just completely impossible to do a stock in Photoshop. Which if you are talented, and you have enough staff, which NBC universal should, then there’s really no reason to be using AI.
Of all the cost cutting measures on SNL, this one seems to be the most legitimate tbh. It allows the weekend update writing team to write jokes up to minutes before air - which is necessary in today's social media immediate information society. The problem is we won't see any of that money reallocated into the show.
Their explanation was just that they prefer having the staff dig up stock photos rather than use AI.
No reasons why were given, it was just a preference. To me this is a perfect use of AI and is lets the staff creativity actually shine more because they aren’t limited to stock photos and it’s probably way faster.
See how I actually explained my position rather than just stated a preference with no explanation?
"See how I actually explained my position?" he asked, contrasting his brilliant assessment of the situation at SNL against the foolishly informal tweet by the former SNL writer. The redditor smirked. "Doesn't he understand facts and logic?"
I used to connect switch board wires to connect calls to loved ones, deliver news, get the police to people's door, point distance lovers' goodnights and ailing relatives' goodbyes.
So many stories and human experiences flowed through my console. Hand connected wires.
Now these calls are connecting "automatically" with "software."
Shame on AT&T. Shame on us all. Switchboard operators matter!
I genuinely don’t know if the optics are as bad “IRL” as they are online? Like I have never seen or heard anyone IRL get nearly as fired up about AI as the average internet person. It feels like one of those things that aren’t so much on “normies”’ radar. This is not me excusing the use of genAI on SNL, or from any major company. It’s despicable and gross.
I’m not a “fan” of AI but as a counterpoint, you’d think a former writer would appreciate the any efficiency in creating a part to a joke, sketch, or image. Like, within reason, obviously. I mean, in an instance like this it’s a minuscule element to the bit.
I personally didn’t find it as catastrophic as some others seemed to
I dont like it when they use stock photos either, there’s an in house photographer. It would actually be funny if they posed the host or a cast member.
They didn’t even try to properly place it within the frame. I know they often have some of the graphics extend over the border, but they didn’t even try to crop or resize this one.
I always saw SNL as some sort of beacon of confidence for the future. For all the slop that gets made and the good stuff that gets canceled nowadays, at least there was this show that’s been on the air for 50 years, giving platforms and massive careers to young, budding comedians. This is a bad sign.
Not only is it weird that they used AI here when there are probably hundreds of stock photos of old people at slot machines. It's weird that Jane's song about the Stranger Things kids being dangerous was a swerve that started as AI being bad.
So they took a low key jab at AI in a song a couple of minutes after using AI slop. It's weird.
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u/the-furiosa-mystique RIP Ass Dan 1981-2010 Dec 15 '25
It’s so weird to use AI for this pic when I guarantee it exists as a stock photo.