Warner Bros. Pulls ‘Supergirl’ Featurette After Fans Discover AI-Generated Concept Art for Lobo

Warner Bros. and DC Studios have spent the past few years working hard to sell fans on James Gunn’s rebuilt DC Universe, leaning heavily on comic-accurate casting and fan-service moments to win back trust after years of shaky DCEU output. This week, that carefully built goodwill took a genuine hit from an unexpected source.

‘Supergirl,’ the second live-action film in Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU, already had a rough theatrical run behind it, closing out its box office life with a disappointing $125.8 million domestic total, making it the lowest-grossing DC film since 2004’s ‘Catwoman.’ With the movie now heading toward digital release and a September 8 physical media debut, Warner Bros. released a behind-the-scenes featurette meant to build renewed goodwill around the film’s production.

Instead, the roughly six-minute video, titled “Jason Momoa as Lobo,” sparked immediate backlash after fans noticed director Craig Gillespie showing Momoa what appeared to be AI-generated concept art while discussing the design of his character, the intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo. The footage showed Gillespie clicking through a series of AI-generated images depicting different visual directions for Momoa’s Lobo, rather than traditional hand-drawn concept art from human illustrators.

The backlash spread quickly enough that Warner Bros. Discovery pulled the video from its official YouTube channel entirely, though as of this writing, neither Gillespie, Gunn, nor the studio has issued any public comment addressing the footage or the decision to remove it.

Much of the criticism online centered on the fact that Lobo has existed in DC Comics since 1983, created by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen, meaning the studio had access to more than four decades of official comic book artwork and illustrations it could have drawn from instead. Fans and industry watchers pointed out that turning to generative AI for a character with such a deep visual history felt like an unnecessary and avoidable choice, with one widely shared social media reaction calling the decision baffling given how much existing reference material already existed.

The controversy is notable given that concept artists and illustrators have separately been credited with designing Momoa’s on-screen Lobo look, including previously published official concept art attributed to DC cover artist Rudy Ao. That raises questions about exactly how the AI-generated material shown in the deleted featurette factored into the film’s actual final creative decisions, though the footage itself appeared to frame it as part of the design conversation between Gillespie and Momoa.

Some reporting has also suggested that AI tools may extend beyond this single featurette, with insiders indicating similar practices could be in use within the writers’ room for Gunn’s upcoming ‘Man of Tomorrow,’ though that claim remains unconfirmed by the studio itself.

The timing couldn’t be much worse for DC Studios, given the featurette’s removal came just days ahead of ‘Lanterns’ premiering on HBO Max, a series Gunn and Safran have been positioning as a crown jewel of their current television slate. Coupled with ‘Supergirl’s’ underwhelming box office performance and now this AI controversy, the studio faces a mounting set of public relations challenges just as it tries to rebuild confidence in its broader DCU strategy.

For a franchise built around honoring decades of beloved comic book history, using AI-generated imagery to help design one of DC’s most visually distinctive characters has struck many fans as a genuine misstep, regardless of how the tool actually factored into the film’s final creative choices.

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