Studios that deploy AI-generated imagery and then describe it as a placeholder are making a legal calculation, not an aesthetic one. The move acknowledges the image existed in the work long enough to be seen — while denying it was ever intended to be permanent. Courts evaluating willful infringement will ask whether the distinction matters when the image served its function regardless of intent. The Bluesky exchange around one such incident captured the structural problem precisely: the two most plausible explanations are a deliberate evasion strategy or a production pipeline…