Logline
During the cadets’ first training mission on an abandoned ship, they encounter a dangerous new enemy. As our cadets fight for survival, Nahla must risk everything to save them by seeking help from an unexpected, untrustworthy, source.
Written by: Kenneth Lin & Kiley Rosseter
Directed by: Larry Teng


I am a lot more annoyed at an official Trek production using AI slop comic book art that I probably should be.
That aside, this episode didn’t do much for me. I like SFA when it’s about Academy cadets doing school stuff. I really could not care less about Captain Ake’s tragic backstory, or Nus Braka.
The comic is not “AI generated”. One of my friends reached out to the VFX supervisor for the show on Mastodon and they said the art department drew and colored it.
I think it’s also important for us to fact check things before assuming. I know “AI generated content” is being used a lot but there are designers and artists that are very much against its use.
I follow Brian Tatosky on mastodon as well, and he says, “as far as I know” it was drawn and coloured by the art department. That is not a confirmation one way or the other.
But I went through and screenshot every image that was on screen of the comic pages. I would believe the art department mocked up the cover, but you cannot convince me the interior pages shown weren’t shat out of an LLM.
I’m with you. It seems at least in part it was AI. The shoulder is shadowed but the sunglasses are giving off a (double?) glint?
I’m really not seeing any obvious AI tells. It looks to me like it was drawn and inked traditionally, and then someone dropped in the little flares to up the cheese factor (and maybe give a little reference to JJ). I may be wrong, it’s getting hard to tell these days, but to me it just looks like someone trying to emulate a very typical comic book style.
OK, I’ve seen the images in the other thread now, and I’m seeing much more convincing evidence of AI generation there.
Like, everything about these arms looks wrong: https://imgur.com/DiRNxEY
And these shadows are just nonsense: https://imgur.com/TMZY25V
Honestly, I’m personally not too bothered if a background prop you’re not supposed to get a good look at is made with AI, but I’m also not going to argue with anyone who takes a real hard line on the subject.