An official promotional video for Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming sci-fi thriller “The End of Oak Street” has been met by significant online backlash over its usage of AI-generated animation.
The advertisement is a partnership between the film studio and dog-owner social media app DogPack. DogPack produces “The Dogbone Podcast,” a scripted podcast that employs AI-generated animation and vocals to stage conversations between canines about “what a dog actually thinks about things and what people don’t know.”
The “End of Oak Street” promotional video was posted Friday to Warner Bros. Discovery’s and DogPack’s Facebook channels, as well as to DogPack’s Instagram account with the studio tagged. The advertisement stages a conversation between two dog podcast hosts and Starbuck, a dog in the film’s narrative owned by characters played by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.
In addition to the DogPack video, Warner Bros. also shared an AI-generated video of dinosaurs attacking civilians to promote “Oak Street” on its official Warner Bros. Malaysia account.
The most prominent responses to the advertisement on Instagram have been negative, with some top comments calling the video a “huge f**k up” and that it “actually damaged the odds I will be seeing” the film. While the video was not shared on official channels on X, Threads or TikTok, it has been received criticism on those platforms via reuploads by other users, including by outlet Nexus Point News.
Notably, the video’s Facebook post has seen a more positive response, with one user writing “this is the best use of AI.”
The use of AI has remained a topic of existential gravity among creatives in the entertainment industry, while studios continue to develop partnerships centered around the technology. While AI usage has become more prominent in filmmaking over recent years, it is extremely rare for a studio to so openly employ AI-generated visuals in their materials, including marketing.
Representatives for Warner Bros. Discovery and “End of Oak Street” director David Robert Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with Business Insider last year, DogPack co-founder Dov Punski commented on the company’s success with “The Dogbone Podcast,” saying that, “People don’t like to feel like they’re being tricked … This is obviously not real. We’re not trying to trick anyone, we’re just trying to give people entertainment.”
“The End of Oak Street” opens Friday. The film carries a reported $85 million production budget.
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