Knott's pulls T-shirt after criticism

Jacob, ask yourself, in what world would a corporation intentionally design and sell a racist stereotype on a tshirt? This obviously was not intentional. And no, I don't think most people in 2026 see a cartoon monkey and immediately equate it with blackface. Now, you could ask "Shouldn't this company understand that there are people like me who are overly sensitive about monkey's and not make shirts like this?" But to assume they hurt you on purpose is assigning intent without facts. They are pleading ignorance, apologizing and remedying the situation. That should be sufficient.

I think that if you've been doing months of research on 1930s cartoons in the United States while designing a haunted house, you should recognize a pretty famous example of Sambo. I assume AI was used to generate the image used for the t-shirt and then was not sufficiently vetted before being put on sale. I don't think I ever said it was done intentionally or with malice.

But the t-shirt did feature a racist caricature and yes, I would have appreciated them taking ownership of whatever flawed process led to this t-shirt being put on sale. That's it. A "we screwed up, here's how we're going to avoid this screw up in the future" would have sufficed for me.

But thank you for delivering the phrase, "overly sensitive about monkey's" to us. You've got it all figured out.

@AngryDuck Was your comment intentionally or unintentionally racist? Either way, you need to do some quiet contemplation.

Here's the thing: The object of being a designer isn't only "making something look cool." There are things like function and the placement of the work in cultural and historical context. AI doesn't do that. So of course, AI is going to look at the backlog of 1920s and 30s cartoon imagery and pull what's there without considering the context. Six Flags needed at least someone with that expertise to look over these images. Or ya know, stop using AI.

This isn't a question of racism or even design, this is a question of what else Jacob was expecting from Knott's. They removed the shirts that they made by accident. What else do you expect? and how on earth was my comment racist? racist towards who?

I think it might be a bit unfair to drag Six Flags over the coals because they were unwilling to provide a statement to prove the original hypothesis. Frankly, while their response doesn't admit to using AI, it certainly doesn't deny it, which in turn would support the original hypothesis.

We all know how this goes.

1. Company debuts product.
2. Someone notes that it is offensive.
3. Angry mob gets indignant.
4. Company investigates the issue and announces generic apology.
5. Angry mob works up a lather when they're insulted by the generic response.
6. Company realizes product might actually be offensive and starts backpedaling.
7. Unsatiated angry mob demands retribution.
8. Company understands furor will not go away and pulls the product and issues more direct apology with actions to prevent a repeat.
9. Angry mob either calms down when it becomes clear that it was an honest mistake, or starts boycotts and drawing wide attention to the situation.

Steps 8 and 9 repeat until the angry mob runs out of energy (or is satisfied with the company's actions) or the company goes out of business (or otherwise abandons the line of products).

The issue here is that we're not just talking about an offensive image/product, but also a perceived offensive process that led to the creation of the image/product. So while the release of offensive imagery is an "easy" fix, the explanation for why that release occurred is not. Whatever Six Flags says will not fully satisfy the angry mob, so they'll end up stuck between steps 8 and 9 in perpetuity. If Six Flags openly admits they're using AI for merch design, they know they'll get massacred worse than just pulling the offensive item and issuing a generic apology, so we need to understand that. Continuing to press a company that clearly doesn't want to admit to using AI even though it's becoming increasing common within the industry (Disney has openly announced their use of the technology), isn't going to change their public stance.

Six Flags has already been getting flak for using AI on merch before this incident occurred, so now the egg is really on their face, and I think we might need to trust that they now understand tighter supervision and more rigorous lines of approval are needed for AI-produced merch. Trying to beat the dead horse here isn't going to change anything. I actually think it's better to expose these obviously AI-produced products (as some industry sites already do) to educate consumers what they are supporting when they purchase certain merchandise.

The biggest problem is the lowest common denominator aspect of our society where far too many people don't care or lack the ability to distinguish AI slop from something created by human hands. At some point, AI slop won't be very sloppy, and it will take some seriously keen eyes and awareness of the production process to distinguish human-created work from what has been created by AI. When that happens, I fear for artists and designers.

Yikes! I actually fully agree with Russell's contribution. Now I'm scared.

Russel was a bit more eloquent than myself. For the record, I do not support generative AI being used in the creative fields, and would not knowingly purchase a tee shirt that used AI. I also do believe that it is a company's responsibility to not accidentally offend their customer base, including being aware of cultural stereotypes etc. That said, the merchandise with the offending imagery was pulled, so I don't see the issue here. But then, I'm not one to buy Haunt tees anyway, so maybe I don't see the problem because I have no skin in the game.

There needs to be some kind of label to distinguish real designs from AI ones. Something on the tag of the shirt maybe.

That's an ideal request VelocicoasterFan, but ultimately impractical. The first complication would be where the line is drawn in AI's contribution to a design. Does it have to be 100% to carry the label, or would a label be applied to any part of a design created by AI, even if it's just a small image included on a larger drawing? Then there is the stigma that comes with AI, and the likelihood that parks would be shooting themselves in the foot by openly advertising merchandise created by AI - people will probably deliberately avoid labeled merch even if it was good. Even for guests who are adamantly opposed to AI, ignorance is bliss, but a label openly disclosing it use in a design, no matter how small or insignificant, will lose the sale even if the design is as good or better than a human design.

I am a music composer working in the commercial media space, and I think there is nuance with the "AI" conversation that needs to be recognized. First of all, generative AI and AI/machine learning tools are different things, but the lines are still blurry. So much of the history of creative work in the commercial space is about tools automating things that aren't critical to the creative process so that the creative humans involved can focus more on their central work, which is coming up with new and interesting stuff. The next generation of composers, animators, directors, and designers will figure out ways to use AI strategically to expand, not replace, their own creative visions.

There have been amazing tools over the last few years, and ones currently being developed, that aren't going anywhere. In music, for instance, AI-assisted mixing technologies, automated file-prep, etc. There is also the common practice of using pre-recorded libraries of orchestra sounds and programming them to sound like a live orchestra rather than recording a full orchestra.

But there is a difference when using the fake libraries, just as there is a difference when using an AI prompt. It's a difference in sound and feel, for the audience and the creative team, but it's also a difference in process. The engagement with different creative stakeholders in the creative process is something that generates the best product. As AI-generated "slop" becomes more and more common, we will see this more clearly. It's not that AI-generated content can't be good, it can. But someone, or some group of people, have to work to make it so. It takes a creative vision, and a sense for what is genuinely good and new and fits the vision. Otherwise, AI is like a "yes man" to a single lazy prompt-writer. It does what is asked and it doesn't know or care if it's any good.

As a society, I see us getting much better at appreciating this human level, and yes, I believe we will come up with some way to prove that something is made "by hand". Having said that, I am not sure that AI won't at some point become discerning and creative in the ways we consider to be "human." At that point we are at a major philosophical reckoning. I don't believe we are there yet, but we may be closer than we think.

As for AI slop and merch, I think it's here to stay. Creating merch is usually the work of designers separate from the original content creators. Their jobs are almost certainly at risk, unless they can get good at writing prompts. As consumers we need to keep calling out problematic AI-generated designs when we see them, but I don't for a minute believe that that makes AI tools disappear.

I think there are some reasonable options on how to make an "AI label" work out. If the design has over 50% AI imagery, then it needs a label on the tag that says so. It might not be incredibly practical to enforce, but I have no idea how they enforce the other parts of a shirt tag anyway, so it might be able to work given time and effort.

And yeah, actually, parks should be "shooting themselves in the foot" if they have to rely on AI for design work. They should have to reap the consequences.

I think that's an extreme view VelocicoasterFan, and Jonah offers an account of AI being used in the creative fields. Frankly, I don't think most people know how much AI permeates their lives already, and if we're going to start slapping labels on t-shirts because a marketing team had AI modify or touch up some in-house art or pulled some AI generated images to create a integrated design, then we might as well put those labels on EVERYTHING.

We may not like it, but AI is used everywhere, and simply putting tags on everything that AI touches, we need to understand how to recognize it, why it's being used, and what safeguards are in place to protect the integrity of any human-generated work product. We all need to go back and read some Isaac Asimov.

"While AI can inadvertently replicate human biases, it is also being trained to recognize and eliminate them. Developers use safety classifiers and alignment protocols to explicitly teach AI models not to generate harmful or stereotypical imagery. As these models evolve, they become better equipped to act as safeguards rather than liabilities." -- Google AI (when asked to defend AI)

I'm just going to go back to the loop Russell brought up. It's simply not true that, no matter what the company says, people will be mad. If Six Flags apologized for the shirt, revealed the design approval process, and laid out a plan to prevent these issues in the future (like hiring designers with cultural competency, which is REALLY not hard), many people would respect that.

Instead, we get a sorry, a shrug, and the shirt is pulled. Look at what is happening with Target right now with the minstrel costume. They apologized, didn't outline any ways to prevent it, and shortly after, people found Nazi costumes on the site. And the minstrel costume is not even the first time these companies have been in trouble for selling items depicting racist or insensitive stereotypes!

Apologizing is not enough. These companies need to say exactly how they are preventing future issues. Six Flags is avoiding that angle, as some of you noted, because it gets into a more complicated conversation about AI. To that I say, make the bed, sleep in it.