Better Luck than Chuck and the AI Witch Hunts

I'm a huge horror fan (see my Halloween site, The Numbers, and Spoooky.biz). So, when I saw a trailer for a Horror game show a few weeks ago, I immediately knew I wanted to watch it when it premiered on YouTube this past Thursday, September 24th, 2026. 

It's called Better Luck than Chuck, and as Bloody Disgusting describes it:

Hosted by The Widow (Alexis Allotta), the self-proclaimed “Wittiest Witch of the Midwest,” and her sarcastic undead husband Charlie (Adam Michaels), Better Luck Than Chuck combines horror knowledge, outrageous comedy, and nostalgic game show fun into a one-of-a-kind competition. Each episode features horror superfans battling through inventive “cate-GORY” challenges inspired by the films, monsters, and moments that have defined the genre.

It's right up my alley! I watched the premiere and loved it. I was shouting answers at my computer and "Aaaaah!"-ing at trivia I'd never heard before. And the Widow and Charlie were great—a lovely combo of cheesy, funny, and spooky.

I'm not on Reddit a ton, but I do frequent the Dead Meat subreddit, and occasionally peruse the Horror subreddit ('Dreadit'). I didn't see the show's premiere posted there, so I figured I'd share it. I shared the YouTube link (here's the actual post on Reddit), and the video's thumbnail is what appeared in the thread:

As you can see in the screenshot, it had a cold reception ("0" upvotes, which really likely means many downvotes). I didn't post it for likes; I truly don't care about that. I posted it because I thought it was fantastic, and the kind of thing the Horrer nerds of Dreadit would dig! 

Why such a cold reception for a friggin Horror trivia game show on the Horror subreddit? The thumbnail. A couple of commenters very quickly dismissed it as AI-generated. 

My first reaction was to second-guess it—wait, was that thumbnail AI-generated? I can see how it might appear that way—it's a stylized illustration of the hosts, with the show title and contestants in the background. And while I use AI-powered tools for development, mostly at my job, I'm also super wary of it, and especially critical of its use in art (and yeah, I consider movies and TV, even YouTube TV, as art). 

So I did a little digging and found this post on the show's official Instagram from way back on March 21, 2025, revealing their new poster, designed by a guy who goes by the handle @Samhain1992. The caption read, in part:

BIG NEWS! Better Luck Than Chuck is having its WORLD PREMIERE at SeriesFest in Denver this May! To celebrate, we wanted to unveil our official poster, designed by the insanely talented @samhain1992. Congrats to our ENTIRE cast and crew!

Okay, so designed by doesn't necessarily mean AI wasn't used, but if you scroll through his account, you'll find an incredible amount of really awesome horror-related illustrations going back over a decade, and they're all very consistently in a similar, distinct style—including art that predates the first publicly available AI art-generation tools by about five years.

For me, that was enough proof. The show credited someone with creating the artwork, and that person has a very long track record of creating art in that very distinct style, going back long before AI tools were even available. He's even got a video showing his process, which is really cool.

So I shared this insight back in that Reddit thread, and one of the original AI-accusers was a reasonable person and figured it was probably safe to assume that AI wasn't used. Other detractors in the thread, however, just doubled down. 

I should acknowledge that a handful of commenters on Reddit is obviously not enough proof to say that this is a widespread issue, and Reddit is pretty well known for attracting a lot of trolls and shitposters. Fair. But this actually isn't the first time I've gotten in a back-and-forth on Reddit over whether something was AI-generated or not, and being someone critical of AI, I find myself assuming things are AI-generated all the time now. And I hate it! Like, I hate the AI-generated BS too, but I also hate that my brain is now trained to second-guess everything I see. It's draining. 

So I messaged the show's Instagram account, sharing the thread, really as a courtesy to say, hey—I watched the show and love it, and it's clear to me that your artwork was created by a human, but it's getting accused of being AI-generated on the Horror subreddit, and I just thought you should be aware.

And surprisingly, Meredith Tummillo, one of the co-creators of the show, replied to me herself. She was really disheartened to hear folks were lumping it in with AI slop because she and a really talented team of people have worked really hard, for years, to make this fun idea for a trivia game show for Horror nerds, a reality. And damn, I sympathize with that so much. 

To me, the antidote to mindless AI slop is real art, made by real people. And here we have exactly that—a whole team full of talented, creative humans, making something that, as far as I'm aware, didn't exist before, and making it with heart, and in a spirit of fun and community. And, at least by some, it gets thrown in with the very pile of shit its existence is a remedy to.

That really sucks.

I'm sure the negative response to the post on Reddit has had virtually no impact on the show's reception, and as of this posting, the first episode has over 100k views, which seems pretty great! But it also seems very possible to me that a positive reception that would boost the show's visibility on one of the biggest forums of Horror nerds online (boasting 1.4 million weekly visitors) could do quite a bit of good for it too.

So it really bums me out. And if anyone in that thread had just watched the show, or the aftershow interview with the creators, they'd see something that so clearly comes from a team of creative people who very much love the genre and the community, and objectively are part of the effort that is not only good for the Horror community, but the made by humans, not AI movement.

The challenge we face

There's a certain number of people who are undiscerning, and frankly don't care whether a movie or show was partially or fully made by AI. I don't really know how to make someone care. But we're talking about the people who care. As frustrated as I was by Reddit user FrayKento's swiftness to haphazardly throw someone under the bus, I appreciate that they seemingly care about the use of AI in a creative field. I do too. It's those people, the people who already care, who are now faced with a new challenge: continuing to care while being burdened with another level of effort to ensure they aren't alienating people who are actually doing good!

This also bums me out. It also sucks. It sucks that FrayKento couldn't just click on the dang video and watch the amazing game show that was probably made just for them, without first needing to question whether the thing they are looking at was made with AI. Instead, if you care, you have to question whether a thing was made with AI, then track down a reference to the artist who supposedly created it, and then do some digging to figure out if that artist is likely using AI or not. That's a lot to ask of anyone.

What we can do about it

At this moment, the way I'm thinking about how to handle this conundrum is this:

For creators: it might feel annoying, and it might feel pedantic or even performative, but go above and beyond to make it clear that you aren't using AI to create your creative thing, whatever it is. Show process photos and videos. Maybe show them regularly. Just state it outright on your profiles and website. Be proud of it, and make it hard for anyone to mistake what you're doing for slop.

For conscious consumers: first—consider the source. Is the creative work you're questioning made by some huge company, or ultimately only made to try to sell you something? Yeah, maybe it was AI-generated, and even if so, like, who cares? It's kinda bogus anyway because it's just trying to sell you something. Was the thing made by an independent artist or a small company? Unless it is stated outright, or totally obvious (clear artifacts/glitches), give 'em the benefit of the doubt first, and if it's something you're genuinely interested in but you're unsure, do some due diligence. It's annoying, but spend a little extra time to see if you can find out from a little internet sleuthing. Heck, you may even be able to hear directly from the creator. And in the meantime, don't trash it. And if you do some digging and are able to determine it was AI-generated, but the creator is being deceptive about it, by all means, call it out!

In conclusion?

I don't know, man. I was just bummed, and I've seen this pattern pop up a few times now, and I'm just trying to make sense of it. 

I'm worried that people are missing out on good, real art because they've been conditioned to assume everything was generated. And I'm worried that too much of this is going to turn people off from putting the effort in to create real things. Why spend all this effort to make something if everyone is just going to assume it was generated anyway?

All I know is we need to support artists of any kind who make work without using AI. If you care about this at all, just be conscious of it and try to lift up more than you tear down. And please keep making cool shit with your hands and your brains.