The ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ hired an artist whose work looked like AI. How she did it is going viral

Forget AI replacing human artists—The Devil Wears Prada 2 just proved that human artists can replace AI.

The new movie, a long-awaited sequel to 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, sees the return of star Meryl Streep as iconic fashion editor Miranda Priestly. It begins with Priestly in a PR crisis, sparking a slew of online hate. That includes memes like an image of Priestly dressed as a fast food worker captioned, “Would you like lies with that?”

The image is only briefly on screen, and at first glance, many moviegoers assumed it was AI-generated. After all, on the internet of 2026, it most likely would be—an internet troll likely isn’t going out of their way to craft the image by hand.

But after The Devil Wears Prada 2 hit theaters on May 1, digital artist Alexis Franklin took to social media to set the record straight: She’s the one who created the artwork, not AI, at the request of director David Frankel.

On Instagram, Franklin posted the artwork along with a timelapse of her digital painting process. “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,” she wrote in the caption.

Franklin also shared her art on X, writing that her Instagram post had been “flooded with comments of relief that this gag in The Devil Wears Prada 2 was created by an actual human (me), so I figured I’d also post it here because I think these companies should get their flowers when they hire an artist.”

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A post shared by Alexis Franklin (@alexis_art)

‘People do crave real art’: Social media celebrates human artists

The story behind Franklin’s artwork quickly went viral, with her X post amassing 3.7 million views. Many users praised the Devil Wears Prada 2 team for staying true to the pro-artistry message of their film and hiring a human artist, even when using an AI-generated image would have made sense for the plot.

“This is genuinely one of the coolest things I’ve seen a movie do,” reads one viral response. “Would’ve been so easy to AI generate something for the movie but they held themselves to a higher standard which I really really respect.”

“People do crave real art and not AI slop and this is a proof,” wrote another user.

A third user said they hope other films will follow in The Devil Wears Prada 2’s footsteps when it comes to telling stories about AI. “There’s a reason that it always disappoints me to no end when people assume that the only way to portray AI in a movie is by actually using AI,” they wrote. “Clearly alternatives always exist.”

An accidental statement against AI

Though social media largely assumed Franklin’s art was intentionally replicating AI’s signature art style, she’s since clarified that any similarities to AI were totally coincidental.

In a series of follow-up posts on X, Franklin emphasized that she “was not told to mimic AI” and the aspects of her drawing people assumed were nods to AI, including the blurred lettering and font inconsistencies in the background, were just meant to be impressionistic.

“I was just hired to create a cheap meme and the context of the movie has everyone, understandably, thinking I was emulating AI,” Franklin wrote.

In an email to NBC News, Franklin said she understands where people’s suspicions come from, but that assuming human-made art is AI can have real, negative consequences for artists.

“This mass hypervigilance prevails because people don’t want to be fooled, leading them to see signs on the walls that aren’t really there or that have very simple, reasonable explanations,” she wrote. “And it’s hard to know what the solution is.”

“AI is so prevalent now, it feels like people have forgotten how it got that good—it studied us,” Franklin added. “The techniques it uses are ours!”

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