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Lionsgate recently faced significant backlash after releasing a marketing trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film, Megalopolis, which contained fabricated endorsements. The promotional material included quotes attributed to renowned film critics that supposedly trashed Coppola’s past masterpieces, such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. It was later discovered that these reviews were entirely artificial and had never been written by the critics in question.

What happened

The controversy emerged when viewers and journalists realized that the negative quotes featured in the trailer did not exist in the historical record. Investigations revealed that the quotes were generated using AI, likely through tools such as ChatGPT. The marketing consultant responsible for the trailer, Eddie Egan, had used these AI-generated fabrications to suggest that Coppola’s revered work had been met with initial criticism, attempting to draw a parallel to the polarized reception of his new film.

Lionsgate stated that the inclusion of these fake quotes was an error resulting from a failure in their internal vetting and fact-checking processes. The studio emphasized that it was not their intention to deceive the public or fabricate reviews. Upon learning that the quotes were illegitimate—and in some cases directly contradicted the actual positive sentiments expressed by the critics at the time—Lionsgate pulled the trailer on a Wednesday. The studio issued a formal apology to the affected critics, Francis Ford Coppola, and American Zoetrope, acknowledging the incident as an inexcusable error. The situation sparked broader concerns within the industry regarding the ethical implications of using generative AI in creative marketing and the potential for such tools to erode public trust.