Disney's embarrassing AI-generated Star Wars video of scrambled-up animals was the opening salvo in a year full of AI humiliation
2025 was the year of creative bankruptcy.
(Image credit: TED/Lucasfilm)
At a TED talk back in April, Lucasfilm senior vice president of creative innovation Rob Bredow presented a demonstration of what he called "a new era of technology." Across 50 years of legendary innovation in miniature design, practical effects, and computer animation, Lucasfilm and its miracle workers at Industrial Light & Magic have blazed the trail for visual effects in creative storytelling—and now Bredow was offering a glimpse at what wonders might come next.
That glimpse, created over two weeks by an ILM artist, was Star Wars: Field Guide: a two-minute fizzle reel of AI-generated blue lions, tentacled walruses, turtles with alligator heads, and zebra-stripe chimpanzees, all lazily spliced together from the shuffled bits of normal-ass animals. These "aliens" were less Star Wars than they were Barnum & Bailey. It felt like a singular embarrassment: Instead of showing its potential, generative AI just demonstrated how out of touch a major media force had become.
And then it kept happening.
The Artist-Driven Innovation Behind the Films We Love | Rob Bredow | TED - YouTube 
At the time, I wondered whether evoking the legacy of Lucasfilm just to declare creative bankruptcy had provoked enough disgusted responses to convince Disney to slow its roll on AI ventures. In the months since, however, it's clear that Star Wars: Field Guide wasn't a cautionary tale. It was a mission statement. Disney is boldly, firmly placing its hand on the hot stove.
Just two weeks after Star Wars: Field Guide debuted on the TED YouTube channel, Disney's AI-fueled debasement of the Star Wars universe continued in Fortnite, where a newly-added, AI-powered Darth Vader NPC was immediately tricked into saying slurs. Despite a brief detour to sue Midjourney for generating images using its copyrighted material, Disney still seems convinced that AI is a rake worth stepping on.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said in November that the corporation intended to to transform it into "an engagement engine" for Disney's theme parks, hotels, and cruises, before celebrating the "great opportunities in terms of our collection of data and our mining of data." Very cool!
