A 'Devil Wears Prada 2' meme that viewers thought was AI slop was actually made by a human

Artificial intelligenceA 'Devil Wears Prada 2' meme that viewers thought was AI slop was actually made by a human“I was trying to make it look artificial, but emulating AI was not on my mind,” Alexis Franklin, the artist commissioned to draw it, told NBC News.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00 body:has(.jw-flag-floating) .article-hero__container, body:has(.jw-flag-floating) .article-hero__media-holder, body:has(.jw-flag-floating) #content { z-index: auto; } Add NBC News to Google'The Devil Wears Prada 2' Is on Track to Outperform the Original01:01Get more newsLiveonShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 3, 2026, 6:04 PM EDTBy Angela YangWhat some viewers thought was an AI-generated meme in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” was actually drawn by a human artist.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The highly anticipated sequel to the 2006 classic dominated the box office this weekend as its original cast returned to the story of the fictional magazine “Runway” 20 years later.One clip from the new film shows a slew of internet memes disparaging editor-in-chief Miranda Priestley, played by Meryl Streep, including one of Priestley as a fast-food worker, with the text: “Would you like some lies with that?”The meme, which was on screen for only a brief moment, looked to many audience members as an intentional depiction of AI slop, part of the film’s satirization of the modern state of media.But when the artist who drew it, Alexis Franklin, shared online that the image was hand-painted, many viewers expressed their surprise and excitement that the meme, despite its appearance, wasn’t AI-generated at all.“Absolutely no disrespect to Queen Meryl, but this is something I would’ve painted in my free time, so when they asked me to do this it was nothing but fun,” Franklin wrote in an Instagram post. She said that “The Devil Wears Prada” director David Frankel asked to commission her for the piec...