ESPN Evaluating AI Promos After Tony Parker Backlash
is evaluating whether to keep using AI-generated promotional portraits after a tony parker image drawn from Game 1 of the NBA Finals drew online backlash. The network used AI tools to create several live portraits during Wednesday’s broadcast, then faced questions about whether the experiment should continue in Game 2.
Tony Parker portrait
An spokesperson said the network used AI to create the Tony Parker image and two other moving portraits during the broadcast. described the promotion as an experiment, built to bring iconic playoff images to life.
The Parker portrait aired before an ad break at the 6:50 minute mark of the third quarter. It showed Parker seated on the Spurs logo at center court, surrounded in confetti, and wagging his left pointer finger. The image was based on a photo taken after his Spurs team won the 2003 NBA championship.
Bill Russell image
also showed an altered Bill Russell image during the same game, at the 8:03 mark of the second quarter. The broadcast version was a color photo with marginal movement from Russell and the basketball, based on a black-and-white Getty Images photo of Russell taking a hook shot during the 1960 NBA Finals.
The Parker promo was widely mocked on social media, which put the network’s broader use of AI under sharper scrutiny. The response has reached beyond one image, because used the same approach on multiple portraits in the same game.
and AI
The timing also lands in the middle of a wider push around AI-generated graphics in sports. Disney agreed to invest $1 billion into OpenAI in December, a deal that was supposed to include iconic characters like Mickey Mouse and Cinderella in Sora, OpenAI’s video generation tool, before the deal collapsed and ended in March when OpenAI shuttered Sora due to rising costs.
Caitlin Clark also drew attention to the issue last month after she spotted an AI image of herself posted on the Indiana Fever’s Instagram account. For, the immediate question is narrower: whether the same AI portraits appear again in Game 2 after the backlash to Parker’s image.
