They Khan’t get away with that.
Paramount+ looks to have used generative AI to whip up a thumbnail for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, according to a report by Kotaku. The image shows Captain Kirk, as played by William Shatner, dressed in a business suit. Kirk never dons a business suit in Wrath of Khan, or any other time throughout Shatner's decades of portraying the character. He did rock a flannel shirt and jeans once during a visit to 1930s Earth.
Paramount+ wanted to use the image on the left as a poster for the wrath of Khan, so they used everyone's least favorite technology to generate the rest of the image.
I've watched every episode of Star Trek across a dozen shows and I'm not even sure business suits exist in that far-flung future, aside from an occasional appearance on the Holodeck. There's no money, so not much need for business.
That leaves us asking why Paramount+ and its little AI buddy decided to plop Starfleet's most iconic captain in a button-up shirt and tie. We don't know exactly what happened, but artist Ryan Estrada has an idea. He noted that the actual image of Kirk is from Wrath of Khan, pulled from a scene in which the captain is getting a retinal scan to access a computer file. It's not a particularly exciting scene, and he's wearing a Starfleet uniform.
Estrada speculates that Paramount+ got attached to that image of Kirk getting a retinal scan and wanted to highlight it further by making it a thumbnail. However, the image from the film is a close-up of Shatner's face, so generative AI was used to place Kirk's head inside of a fake body and put that body in a business suit. His hair also looks very fake and weird as the original frame cuts off at his forehead. Long live AI slop Kirk.
Kotaku has confirmed that the thumbnail is still on the streaming platform, as have folks throughout the internet. Paramount owner David Ellison recently told CNBC that the company is "using technology to transform every single aspect of this business." If that thumbnail is a harbinger of things to come, Trek fans should likely start stocking up on Blu-Rays.
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, it hurts to see the property controlled by modern Paramount. The company has pretty much ended the franchise for the time being, after cancelling the surprisingly stellar Starfleet Academy and stopping production on Strange New Worlds.