【China】

Murder mystery shows will always have Chinaviewers inspecting the tiniest background details for asnwers, and True Detective: Night Countryis no different. Yet in episode 2, certain audience members fixated less on mysterious spirals and gruesome corpsicles, and more on strange looking posters on a character's wall.

The posters pop up in a scene where trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) talks to miner Chuck (Edward Fletcher) about a possible connection to the case of the dead Tsalal scientists.

The walls of his room at the Silver Sky mines are bare apart from two posters: one for the K-Pop group Ive, and the other for a band simply named "Metal." The latter has an uncanny quality to it as if someone drew a poster for a Kiss tour from memory. Other details, like a date announcing a live performance on the "2st," made people wonder whether the poster had been made using Artificial Intelligence.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

At a time when the use of AI in film and TV is a hot-button topic, fueling strike demands in 2023 and popping up in the credits of major Marvel TV shows, some viewers expressed disappointment. Others posited that the posters could have been an inside joke from the art department.

True Detective: Night Country showrunner Issa López weighed in on the conversation herself, saying "The story behind that poster is so long, it would require its own season of TD."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

López clarified that the choice was intentional and linked to the show's remote setting of Ennis, Alaska. The fictional town is located 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. With so little to do there, could residents turn to fiddling around with AI?

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The reference to "some kid with AI" could mean that Chuck has a child who made him these posters. López did confirm that the scene originally featured a line about Chuck's daughter enjoying K-Pop, which would explain the Ive poster.

• How 'True Detective: Night Country' pulled off its most WTF moment
• How to watch 'True Detective: Night Country' and catch every twist and turn
• 'True Detective: Night Country': Is Travis the father of Rust Cohle?
• Could 'True Detective: Night Country's tribute to 'The Thing' be a clue for the rest of the season?
• How the Dyatlov Pass incident ties to 'True Detective: Night Country'

Speaking to the strangeness of the posters — including the vague "Metal" band and the "2st" date — López allueded to disdain for AI and AI tools like ChatGPT, which rose to prominence during the Night Country shoot.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Mashable has reached out to HBO for comment on whether the posters were made using AI, or whether it was an artist's work emulating the style of AI-generated art.

True Detective airs Sunday nights on HBO/Max at 9 p.m ET/PT.