Can movie fans become threat actors?

Fan culture has always been a net positive for entertainment brands. It’s free marketing, and helps drive the buzz around new releases. But generative AI has started to change that dynamic – because what was once fan art is now synthetic media that can rival a studio’s own output.

Over on the podcast, Dan Meacham (VP of Information Security at Legendary Entertainment) told us: 

“A lot of it really comes down to education…you don’t want to spoil a surprise on any movie before it comes out.”

That spoiler problem has moved from fan speculation into a new wave of AI-generated materials that can ruin a movie for everyone who hasn’t seen it. And for media companies, that comes with very real financial and reputational risk. 

The AI-generated trailer problem

We didn’t know this before that conversation with Meacham – but trailers are now appearing online for films that don’t exist yet. 

“We started seeing trailers for our next movie showing up on social media…we hadn’t even started principal photography.”

And the culprit was AI. Fans stitched together assets from previous films, trained models on storylines, and generated entirely new promotional content:

“They fed all that in and did an amazing job…creating 30 seconds of little clips here and there that they were able to string together into a full-blown movie trailer.”

If we look at this from a technical perspective, it’s impressive. But from a security and brand perspective, it’s a problem. Studios suddenly face a new category of ‘grey zone’ content – not stolen, but not authorised either.

Creativity vs control

This is complicated, because a lot of this activity is not malicious – it comes from genuine enthusiasm. 

“You want to let the fans have the experience to create their own content…to share the excitement of the fandom that they’re in.”

But there’s a tipping point: 

“When they start to monetise that or when it starts creating confusion…it becomes an issue.”

It’s the confusion that’s the real risk. If audiences can’t distinguish between official and AI-generated content, brand integrity erodes. And manipulated content can cross ethical lines – from inappropriate storylines to political misuse.

“You don’t want to have a character…assault another character or a political figure…because then that creates chaos all over the place.”

Beyond standard IP protection, this is reputation management in an era of synthetic media. 

The enforcement dilemma

Stopping this kind of content isn’t straightforward. Traditional takedown approaches struggle with scale, and AI tools themselves are inconsistent.

Meacham shared an ironic example: even when using licensed assets internally, AI safeguards can block legitimate use – yet the same systems can be bypassed with prompt tweaks.

That leaves studios navigating a fragmented enforcement landscape:

• Platforms hosting the content
• AI vendors enabling creation
• Communities amplifying distribution

“We have to push the accountability back onto the providers. These things have to be off limits.”

To their credit, we’re seeing many AI vendors start to respond to this – motivated as much by legal risk as ethics. “A lot of the vendors…don’t want to lose the relationship they have with the industry,” Meacham noted, “or to be sued.” 

But enforcement is still reactive. By the time content is flagged, it’s often already viral.

The new threat model: enthusiastic insiders

We think the most interesting shift here is conceptual – something for cybersecurity practitioners to ponder over. Because these aren’t traditional attackers – they’re fans. They read the books and understand the lore, and they care deeply about the franchise. That enthusiasm itself makes their outputs convincing, and harder to detect. 

In cybersecurity terms, they resemble insiders more than outsiders:

• Deep contextual knowledge
• Access to publicly available assets
• High motivation, low friction tools

The result is a new hybrid risk category: AI superfans, or enthusiastic insiders. 

To mitigate this, media companies have to treat fan-generated AI content as a brand risk, not just an IP issue. They need to invest in detection (watermarking, forensic tagging) alongside takedowns, and work proactively with AI vendors to define the guardrails for protected IP. 

Generative AI has changed who gets to make content. So for studios, the challenge now is preserving authenticity in a world where the fans can generate the next trailer before production even begins.