Popular Hannigram Artist Draws Criticism for A.I. Kiss

Hannibal Fandom Artist TheSeaVoices Faces Backlash From Fans Opposed to Artificial Intelligence in Art Spaces

On August 14th of 2025, a popular artist in the Hannibal fandom drew a small amount of criticism for a post they shared featuring a small looped video developed by X’s (Twitter’s) “MechaHitler” Artificial Intelligence (AI) called Grok. Their post began with “A gift from a robot x” and was tagged with AI before it featured a six second clip of Hugh Dancy’s character Will and Mads Mikkelsen’s character Hannibal kissing as an extrapolation from a scene from the show itself. Shockingly, the backlash isn’t all that pronounced, featuring just a handful of quote retweets and a few replies, though TheSeaVoices hasn’t done themselves any favors in their replies to those who’ve expressed disappointment.

Most criticism of AI stems from concerns that LLMs and image-production models have often been trained by utilizing copyrighted materials without compensation for the creators or artists, essentially producing what many call a “plagiarism machine” that cannot survive on its own without stealing and rehashing derivatives of authentic work. Other concerns are focused around the environmental impact of AI data centers and how they contribute to widening energy and water crises as we move into an uncertain climate future. Grok in particular has faced plenty of bad press for having been hijacked by the morally bankrupt Elon Musk with the intent to make it less trustworthy (not that it ever really was) and more uh…white power. For these reasons along with others, many artists and writers and other creators have shied away from any generative AI models, creations, or even people who use the “plagiarism machine” as it simply doesn’t align with their personal ethics.

TheSeaVoices is known for their uniquely stylized art and contributions to fandoms in the form of artwork made for fanfictions on Ao3, providing exceptional illustrations for popular stories such as Overcoming by purefoysgirl. TheSeaVoices has been around for long enough that it’s evident that their talent and skills as an artist long predate AI, but their full embrace of AI’s usage has caused a bit of a disappointment amid long-time supporters.

X user @cheeze_toastie quote retweeted (QRT’d): “Issues with AI for the art community aside, it is bad for the environment and grok specifically is poisoning a black community in Memphis. You are currently participating in that” with a screengrab of a piece of an article detailing the effects of Musk’s AI supercomputer facility named “Colossus” which is, at current, contributing to pollution in an already high-pollution area populated by low-income Black residents. Another user claimed that no matter what someone’s stance on generative AI was, they thought it was disrespectful to Hugh Dancy who participated in the SAG-AFTRA strikes against GenAI in film and videogames. Utilizing Dancy’s likeness to create a somewhat realistic-looking altered image could raise some interesting ethical questions, especially if the actor was anti-AI in the first place. Another, more outspoken podcast profile, @HannibalPod, QRT’d the post in order to bring attention to their accusation that TheSeaVoices has also, in the past, expressed support for Israel in their genocidal actions against Palestinians in Gaza. This latter accusation has not been confirmed as of the time of writing.

Response to these criticisms has been interesting. In an effort to “Mister Gotcha” those concerned about the environment, TheSeaVoices argued that they all ought to simply become Luddites and forgo the internet altogether if they want to “signal their huge juicy virtues,” completely ignoring that the usage of AI is what drives up AI investment numbers and contributes to future industry growth even if the AI is…bad. Utilizing the internet or even mild assistive AI (such as a spell checker) isn’t directly contributing to the sheer massive scale of environmental impact that AI is producing and certainly can’t be pinpointed to impact upon particular neighborhoods the way Colossus (and in turn, Grok) can. Not that TheSeaVoices would care much about Memphis Black communities—they live in England. American health isn’t exactly on the top of their list of priorities. When confronted with the fact that Hugh Dancy had be part of the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the response was that the protests were about the “misuse” of AI, thus implying that fandom or creative content doesn’t “count” in this regard as it is unlikely to result in a loss of pay for professional actors, creators, etc. and is instead just a “fun” thing to do in ones’ spare time. TheSeaVoices has even equated the backlash as “censorship” and “harassment,” but has yet to prove that either of those things are actually happening, as both do have actual definitions and requirements as descriptors. Blocking is…not harassment. Neither is it censorship. Making one or even two or even three comments on a post, especially if engaged in a back-and-forth, is not harassment. People expressing disappointment in certain actions are not trying to police anybody, they’re just outwardly expressing that the usage of AI has saddened them—hence why they used the block button which is not at all childish and is, in fact, the adult manner of handling things.

In the “end” (or so it stands as of now), TheSeaVoices has tweeted, “Too much complete thickery and cruelty on this platform. I tried reasoning with the swarm ..that mistake is on me”[sic] and while that’s a very relatable sentiment when it comes to X, it’s proven to be a bit of a hard sell though they have suggested in separate tweets that there have been some fandom friends who’ve gone out of their way to DM support. AI, as an online force, has certainly caused some dust-ups across the internet both in and out of fandoms, truly proving that one person’s most-loathed element of modern living in this hellscape of an Earth is another person’s fun thing to play with on a weekend.