‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Secretly Hired a Human Artist to Paint Its Viral AI Meme, and the Internet Has Feelings About It
When ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ hit theaters, most audiences assumed a quick-cut meme of Miranda Priestley depicted as a fast-food worker was yet another piece of AI-generated slop.
It was not. The image was hand-painted by professional illustrator Alexis Franklin, and the revelation set off a surprisingly emotional wave of responses online that says just as much about the current state of creative labor as it does about the film itself.
The sequel opens with Runway Magazine in hot water following a disastrous editorial decision, which sends the internet into a frenzy of memes and mockery targeting editor-in-chief Miranda Priestley.
One of those in-film posts depicts Streep’s character as a fast-food employee, complete with the caption “Would you like some lies with that?” The meme appeared on screen for only a brief moment, but it looked convincing enough that many audience members read it as an intentional depiction of AI slop, woven into the film’s broader satire of modern media.
On the day of the film’s release, Franklin shared on Instagram that she was the one who created the image, alongside a time-lapse video of her painting process. Franklin, writing on Instagram, said the commission was “nothing but fun” and offered no apologies for making the fictional queen of fashion look a little rough around the edges.
Speaking to NBC News, Franklin clarified that while she was going for a deliberate plastic quality in the image, mimicking AI was never part of her intention, adding that she aimed for a look reminiscent of the photoshopped meme aesthetic of the early 2010s.
Franklin later posted on X that she had been “flooded with comments of relief” from fans grateful the meme was made by a real person, and used the moment to advocate for productions to credit and celebrate the artists they commission. The response was warm, but it also carried an unmistakable undercurrent of exhaustion. One fan summed it up bluntly, writing that “the bar is truly in hell” when simply choosing a human artist over a generative AI tool is enough to earn applause.
Franklin has also had to contend with a stranger side effect of the viral moment. Despite sharing a full time-lapse of her process and having a public portfolio of work predating the rise of AI image tools, she has faced accusations that the painting was not actually hers. She addressed the phenomenon directly, writing that people’s mass hypervigilance around AI has reached a point where “regular human micro-errors” in artwork are being flagged as evidence of artificial generation, and that the solution remains unclear.
The decision has quickly become symbolic of the film’s larger themes, which center on media industries straining under the weight of automation, algorithmic culture, and the slow death of print. There is a certain irony in the fact that a movie about a fashion magazine fighting for relevance in a digital age quietly made its most talked-about creative statement through a single hand-painted image that most people assumed a machine had produced.
‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ opened to a massive $77 million domestically and over $233 million worldwide in its debut weekend, with Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci all returning alongside a new cast that includes Lady Gaga, Lucy Liu, and Kenneth Branagh. The film is clearly connecting with audiences, but this particular conversation suggests it may be resonating for reasons its marketing never quite anticipated.
Have something to add? Let us know in the comments.
