AI shaming is quickly becoming an online phenomenon that brands need to be aware of. But it seems that even big names that have already been AI shamed haven’t yet learned their lesson.
In our roundup of the biggest AI art controversies of 2024, we mentioned various brands that faced backlashes on social media because of their use of AI-generated imagery. Netflix was one of them. And less than a week into 2025, the streaming giant has been caught out again.
Last year, Netflix faced an AI controversy when it was called out for using what appeared to be AI-upscaled images in a true crime documentary. Later in the year, it was criticised for using AI to expand artwork for Arcane Season 2. On that occasion, it removed the offending poster.
Those incidents should have given the streaming platform a taster of how viewers feel about generative AI, but now it’s dropped an even more egregious example, apparently using fully fledged AI image generation for the thumbnail for a long-running Korean cookery show.
Chef & My Fridge, also known as Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, sees chefs help celebrities cook up a dish with whatever’s in their fridge. A new season of the show drops on 12 January, but there’s something very strange about that refrigerator.
As well as having that soft AI look, the suspect image also includes some strange telltale AI hallucinations that are an immediate giveaway. Look more closely at that enormous fridge, and you’ll see that there appear to be handles on the wrong side of the doors. These appear to serve no purpose and would make it impossible to close the thing. There are also a couple of piles of plates stacked in the fridge as if it were a cupboard (do people cool their plates in Korea?)
It does seems likely that the image was made using an AI image generator. Does it matter? For Netflix, producing AI-generated key art will be cheaper and quicker, and most viewers may not pay close enough attention to thumbnails to notice.
Nevertheless, that generic AI style looks cheap and lazy, especially when Netflix didn’t even both to correct the mistakes. That doesn’t exactly bode well for the show being promoted. Also, some people have such strong feelings about AI art that its use could harm Netflix’s reputation.
