Engineer With Doctorate In Computer Vision Creates AI To Race-swap 'The Little Mermaid' Upon Release, Fueling Further Controversy Around The Remake
Last Friday, the Disney YouTube channel uploaded the first teaser trailer for its remake of The Little Mermaid, featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel. Following the controversy and debate that's swirled around the film for over a year between supporters and detractors of the casting decision, one man attempted to nullify the contention, which wound up only further fueling the flame war.
Three days since the trailer dropped, the Islamic meme maker Dr. Walid Ph.D., also known as @TenGazillionIQ on Twitter, posted a short video showing three seconds of the trailer with an AI recreation that made Bailey's Ariel appear to be a white ginger side-by-side with the original and the claim that his AI could do it for the entire movie upon release in 24 hours.
This video and the claim naturally evoked an intense response on Twitter, with many of the original threads being deleted within hours despite several still being active.
I hope someone reposts the entire clip of AI white Ariel. That’s hilarious. #TheLittleMermaid pic.twitter.com/e0OXAukAzr
— Yalda Boath (@Yalda_Boath) September 13, 2022
Gotta be honest, I figured our dystopian future would include horrors like deepfake revenge porn and AI bot catfishing, but I was not expecting "using AI to whitewash diverse movie characters."I regret the error and I promise to be even more pessimistic going forward. pic.twitter.com/2cZi1fBfaB
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) September 13, 2022
As expected, the concept of race-swapping the live-action Ariel depiction was not warmly received by many, and it was swiftly attacked online, as well by people who were making memes of the movie following the trailer.
As a continuation of the original controversy that started with the movie casting choice back in July 2019, more memes that perpetuated racial stereotypes but through the lens of Ariel and The Little Mermaid were posted, and this AI was considered to be the final extension of this thought process by some, with many calling the execution and AI as a whole racially divisive.
There is no “deeper meaning” or misunderstanding as to why people hate Halle Bailey’s Ariel, whitewash her with AI, and dislike the trailer 7x the amount of likes. It’s just racism. It’s a constant in online fan communities. The people being racist know what they’re doing and why
— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge) September 13, 2022
We teach about the inherent bias of AI and data sets in our Cyberlaw seminar but this is just intentional racism to remove a black actress because people are angry Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 13, 2022
That weird, racist account that was promoting the "my AI made Ariel white again" flex got suspended. pic.twitter.com/AxSaSIyCFw
— Tomes of the Untold (@Untold_Tomes) September 13, 2022
During the social media fallout and in-fighting, there was one Twitter user who perhaps saw a potential use for such technology. While it's apparent that AI in this instance is being used in a controversial manner, the further advancement of the technology was prospective to some for future creative endeavors, especially memes.
Using AI to turn Ariel white is racist and bad, obviously, but the technological advancement brings me closer to my dream cut of 12 Angry Men where every actor is Danny DeVito so I'm not sure how to feel
— RednBlackSalamander (@9mmballpoint) September 13, 2022
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jacob BLackburn
My only opinion on this is that I continue to hate the lazy Live Action "Remakes" to justify putting the movie in theatres once again and garnering attention. Both for its shamelessness and for its vapidness.
SSmotzer
Why spend all that time and effort on something as insignificant as a character's skin color? Did no one else see the set design, or the costumes, or the visual effects… or lack there of? This movie looks like ass, but I guess if it's a white ass that makes everything better huh?
KozaChain
Reject colored sound films; embrace black & white silent films.
Timey16
As I said in the main threat:
Disney race swapping to polish a turd behind "muh representation" is a problem.
But if you think you just made the movie better by removing minorities, what gives? It's still the same shit movie with the same shit plot! So how is it suddenly "better" hmm?
suckerpunch
If Disney has the money to translate a movie into a 100 different languages, then they have the money and technology to race swap the actor.
Görktürks are furries
regardless of your opinion on the matter, you gotta admit, he did a pretty good job technically speaking.
Colon 3 MF
Going full dystopian pessimism mode, Disney 100% knows what they're doing. They know it'll piss off many people, but also make a lot of people happy making it very controversial and thus get the word out. Yes, it's a Disney movie so people will hear about it regardless and it would've made bank regardless, but it just reminds people of Disney and thus serves as easy advertisement. Granted, this happens all the time already.
Timey16
It's an established marketing strategy which is EXTREMELY effective. They are actively fishing for outrage which they can then show as "look at all these bigots" and then a ton of people watch the movie/buy the product to "prove them wrong".
Because the actual number of people being outraged is rather tiny and social media tends to make this seem more significant than it actually is. In general only a minority of people that say they will boycott something actually will boycott it. Because they are either too much sheep to a certain brand and it will buy it anyways or they never planned to buy it in the first place. The additional sales by people trying to "prove them wrong" though? Pretty significant.
Most dislikes are probably because people are tired of the live action remakes in general.
Iso
Disney: Race swaps a classic white character for a black one.
Wow, so empowering.
Some guy with a neural net: Swaps her back.
Nooo, you can't just preserve the original format, reeeeeeee!
Torche
The Star Trek series have ALL had diverse casts since the 70s!! Deep Space Nine had a black captain as a LEAD, a middle eastern Doctor and audiences supported it for SEVEN seasons (176 episodes!). I'm white and my favorite characters growing up were Geordi Laforge and Benjamin Sisko. I even had their action figures. I also loved the black Power Ranger and this is early 90s we're talking about. I truly, wholeheartedly didn't care about skin color… but now it's ALL people seem to talk about.
You've got black parents posting videos of their kids who are all happy and yelling: "FINALLY SHE'S BLACK!!"… So, your WHOLE identity, personality and sense of self-worth is tied to the fact that you're black? What kind of lesson is that? and then you say that skin color doesn't matter? How would we react to a white child seeing a white character and saying: "Yay! She's white!!"…
In my opinion, Hollywood already HAD the perfect formula for diversity in the eighties and nineties. Nearly everything that came out was diverse. It was just fun, omnipresent and no one talked about it. We all just had a good time. From Star Trek, Lethal Weapon, Predator, to Blade, Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the countless Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson films.
Now, you make a mermaid black and it's some kind of Nobel Prize worthy feat…
DirkDiggums
The guy who created this is a known memer and he's Muslim so you can't play "muh racism" on it, it's just a shitpost meant to trigger people.
Also, leftists should be pissed at "diverse casting" because it is just multi-billion dollar corpos pandering to the left while robbing them blind and making shareholders rich. The culture wars over this kind of shit is what is killing a real economic leftist movement, concentrate on what's really important not some shitty live remake disney movie.
Chewybunny
Muslims aren't a race.
brawnhilda
Oh you absolutely can play "muh racism" on it; look up "horizontal oppression" and "white passing", my dude.
Sumarios
They're not, but a lot of "progressives" still treat them like one when it's convenient.
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mr.fox
Who the fuck cares about the skin colour of fictional characters?
My brother in the prophet Mohammed, mermaids aren't even real.