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Paramount+ used AI to make the ugliest Star Trek thumbnail ever

Lawrence Bonk· ·2 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 41 views
#star trek#ai#entertainment#media#technology
Paramount+ used AI to make the ugliest Star Trek thumbnail ever
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Paramount+ has generated controversy by using AI to create a thumbnail for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that features Captain Kirk in a business suit, which he never wears in the film. The decision to use generative AI for this image has drawn criticism from fans and observers alike. This incident raises concerns about the future of the Star Trek franchise under Paramount's management.

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Original publisherEngadget
Canonical URLhttps://www.engadget.com/2183719/paramount-used-ai-to-make-the-ugliest-star-trek-thumbnail-ever/
Publication timeFri, 29 May 2026 16:03:51 +0000
Retrieval time2026-05-29T16:10:02.721Z
Last seen2026-05-29T16:10:02.721Z
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

News AI Paramount+ used AI to make the ugliest Star Trek thumbnail ever They Khan’t get away with that. By Lawrence Bonk May 29, 2026 12:03 pm EST Paramount/Ryan Estrada 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.

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