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The disagreement was not simply about whether the display looked convincing. It concerned consent, ownership, historical accuracy, and whether an authorized simulation can ever be equivalent to preserving a real person’s work.
What the Stan Lee Experience actually was
The activation was developed by Proto Hologram and Hyperreal with the involvement of the Stan Lee Universe brand and its rights representatives. Proto supplied a life-sized volumetric display: a physical screen-in-a-box that creates a three-dimensional-looking image, rather than a free-floating projection. Sessions reportedly lasted about 15–20 minutes and were sold for approximately $15–$20, depending on the session details.
Lee, who died at 95 in November 2018, was therefore not being “brought back” in a literal sense. The system generated responses through a digital persona assembled from archival appearances, recorded material and documented statements. Nevertheless, the attraction depended on visitors treating the avatar as a meaningful continuation of Stan Lee’s public identity.
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Ars Technica’s reporting describes the project and the criticism surrounding its debut. Proto’s own announcement is at Proto Hologram’s September 2025 newsletter.
Why organizers thought audiences would want it
A gateway into Marvel history
Chris DeMoulin, founder of L.A. Comic Con and chief executive of its parent company, described the avatar as a “portal” through which new and existing fans could ask about Marvel, its characters and Lee’s legacy. His stated hope was that younger visitors might become curious about the original comics after encountering the interactive character.
That is a different proposition from showing a celebrity clip. A visitor could ask a question and receive a newly generated answer, making the experience feel more like a conversation than an archive.
An extension of an existing convention experiment
Organizers had already used Proto’s technology for Boffo the Bear, a fictional character performed live through motion capture by actor Mark DeCarlo around 2019. In that model, a living performer drove an invented persona. The Stan Lee project was presented as the next step: using similar display hardware for a real person whose voice, face and public manner were already widely documented.
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That history helps explain the decision without resolving it. A live character performance and a posthumous identity recreation may share equipment, but they do not share the same consent and attribution questions.
A distinctive paid attraction
The convention also had clear experiential and commercial incentives. A life-sized conversational Lee offered a memorable ticketed attraction, publicity and a way to turn his long association with fan conventions into an on-site experience. DeMoulin described development spending as ranging from “tens of thousands into six figures,” an approximate self-reported figure rather than an audited budget.
The available coverage does not establish attendance, profitability, audience satisfaction or whether the activation continued after the convention. Commercial logic is evident; a definitive “cash grab” verdict is not.
Who approved and built it?
| Participant | Role described in public accounts |
|---|---|
| Chris DeMoulin | Founded L.A. Comic Con and championed the convention project. |
| Bob Sabouni | Associated with Stan Lee legacy programs and the Stan Lee Universe brand; reportedly gave conditional approval based on the quality of the result. |
| Proto Hologram | Provided the volumetric display, deployment environment and conversational-AI platform. |
| Hyperreal | Worked on the digital identity and celebrity persona. |
| Stan Lee Universe and rights representatives | Provided the commercial authorization and archival access described by the partners. |
Authorization by a brand or estate is not the same as proof that Lee personally approved this particular 2025 system before his death. The reporting establishes a partnership with rights holders; it does not establish contemporaneous personal consent for an interactive AI avatar.
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Proto describes its broader conversational-AI capabilities at its conversational-AI page and its spatial-computing approach at its spatial-computing page. Those pages describe product capabilities, not an independent audit of the Stan Lee deployment.
Why Stan Lee was an unusually tempting subject
Lee’s public persona was already part of his professional product. He appeared at conventions, addressed fans directly, repeated recognizable catchphrases and gave decades of interviews, panels and red-carpet appearances. That produced a large archive and a highly legible performance style.
Hyperreal and DeMoulin also said Lee had begun digitizing himself while alive with the idea of creating a digital double. That claim should be treated as an attributed statement, not as evidence that Lee approved this specific conversational system. A general interest in a digital likeness does not answer how a posthumous model should generate opinions, handle uncertainty or be used commercially.
How the system was supposed to work
- Display: Proto’s physical unit presented a life-sized visual representation. Proto identifies its Luma as an 86-inch volumetric display; the company’s product description is at Proto Luma.
- Identity: Hyperreal worked on a digital version of Lee’s appearance, voice and persona, according to partner statements and reporting.
- Source material: The companies said the system was grounded in years of public appearances and documented statements.
- Conversation: A language-model-based system generated answers rather than selecting only a fixed sequence of prerecorded lines.
- Show-floor control: A human moderator repeated questions into a microphone to reduce convention noise and help keep prompts within scope.
The technical record is incomplete. The companies have not publicly detailed the exact model, retrieval pipeline, fine-tuning method, evaluation set or uncertainty protocol. It is therefore inaccurate to describe every answer as a verbatim Lee quotation. “Based on archival material” can mean that the system uses evidence to shape newly generated language; it does not prove that each response was assembled only from authenticated sentences.
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What safeguards organizers claimed
- Grounding in Lee’s public statements and appearances.
- Testing with “hundreds and hundreds” of questions.
- Human moderation of audience prompts.
- Topic restrictions focused on Marvel and Lee-related subjects.
- An ability, in principle, to say that the avatar did not know something.
- A stated prohibition on unrelated product advertising.
- Review and tuning by people who knew Lee or had worked with him.
- Authorization from the relevant rights holders.
These are organizer or partner claims, not the findings of an independent review. Public coverage does not provide a benchmark for factual accuracy, a complete test transcript, a measured hallucination rate, a prompt-injection assessment or a third-party judgment about whether the avatar faithfully represented Lee’s views.
Why the backlash was about more than visual quality
Many critics objected to the premise before they could be persuaded by technical polish. Their concerns included:
- A dead person’s likeness and voice were being used in a paid attraction.
- The system could produce statements Lee never made.
- Visitors might mistake generated answers for Lee’s actual opinions.
- Mourning and cultural memory could be converted into a branded product.
- Estate authorization might settle an ownership question without settling the ethical one.
- A simulation could blur the difference between preserving a person’s work and manufacturing new performances in that person’s identity.
The strongest objection is not that AI can make mistakes. It is that even a technically accurate and legally authorized system may still be objectionable because it manufactures posthumous speech in a dead person’s persona.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The interactive bright line
| Format | What audiences receive | Distinctive concern |
|---|---|---|
| Documentary clip | Lee’s recorded words | Editing, context and rights |
| Museum display | Curated historical material | Interpretation and commercialization |
| Animatronic or scripted figure | Predetermined lines | Tastefulness and attribution |
| Prerecorded hologram | A fixed performance | Likeness and posthumous use |
| Interactive AI avatar | New responses in Lee’s persona | Simulated speech, accuracy, consent and accountability |
Interactivity is what makes the attraction engaging and what raises the stakes. A fixed recording cannot unexpectedly answer a question about a subject Lee never addressed. A generative avatar can, even when its designers impose boundaries.
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What a credible version would need to demonstrate
- Clear disclosure: Visitors should be told prominently that the figure is an AI-generated simulation, not Stan Lee.
- Traceable answers: Responses should identify relevant recordings, interviews or texts where possible, while distinguishing quotations from generated interpretation.
- Bounded uncertainty: The system should visibly decline questions outside its evidence and subject limits.
- Independent testing: Organizers should publish representative transcripts, accuracy results, adversarial tests and known failure cases.
- Commercial limits: Political messages, unrelated endorsements and advertising should require separately disclosed authorization.
- Correction and retirement: Rights holders should be able to update, suspend or permanently remove the persona.
- Archival value: The experience should direct visitors to Lee’s actual comics, interviews and recordings rather than substitute for them.
These standards would not eliminate the consent debate, but they would make the project easier to evaluate as an interpretive exhibit instead of asking visitors to accept assurances about an opaque system.
Alternatives LA Comic Con could have chosen
The conversational hologram was not technologically inevitable. A convention could have offered a narrated archival exhibit, a scripted holographic presentation, a human moderator using verified quotations, an interactive database labeled as a historical tool, or a fictional guide inspired by comic-book culture without using Lee’s identity. Each option would sacrifice some novelty while reducing the risk of false attribution and generated posthumous speech.
The real test of the experiment
Attendance, publicity or a convincing likeness would not by themselves show that the project succeeded. The meaningful test is whether visitors understood the boundary between a simulation and a person, whether answers stayed within an evidence-based scope, and whether the experience sent people toward Lee’s real work.
LA Comic Con’s organizers saw a respectful fan gateway and a logical extension of an existing holographic experiment. Critics saw a product whose legitimacy depended on confusing generated performance with authentic identity. Both reactions follow from the same fact: the attraction was interactive. It did not merely preserve what Stan Lee said. It invited a machine to say something new while wearing his voice.
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