"New" fan-made House of the Dragon trailer uses AI voices, footage from Game of Thrones

Back in early December, HBO dropped a teaser trailer for the second season of House of the Dragon, its Game of Thrones prequel show. Rhaenyra Targaryen, Alicent Hightower, and all of those dragons will be back, and they'll all be trying to kill each other. It should be a good time:

Then, at the end of January, the YouTube channel Screen Culture dropped what it called a "New Trailer" for "House of the Dragon Season 2." This trailer incorporates a lot of footage from HBO's legitimate trailer, but it also includes some cutaways to moments from the final season of Game of Thrones, and appears to use AI to put words in the mouth of actors Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) and Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy). Watch below and see if you can spot the additions:

Oh, and the thumbnail for the "new" trailer appears to take an image of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) from the season 1 finale of Game of Thrones — the episode where she rises naked from the smoldering remains of a pyre and shows off her newborn baby dragons, an iconic TV moment — and overlays Emma D'Arcy's face on it, which seems...well, let's talk about what the trailer added before we discussing the ethics involved.

In the official HBO trailer, Rhaenyra Targaryen doesn't have any lines. The Screen Culture trailer gives her some. "I was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms, and by the memory of my son, I will do it," she says, referring to her son Luke, who was killed in the House of the Dragon season 1 finale. "If they want war, I will bring them war."

Rhaenyra gets another line later in the trailer: "I didn't want it to come to this, but I have no choice. They have to pay. The dance of the dragons has begun." The Dance of the Dragons is the name given to the internecine conflict we will see play out in the remaining seasons of House of the Dragon. But in George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, it's never suggested that anyone actually called it that while it was happening; it seemed like a flowery name given to the war by historians long after it was over. That's one of the many clues that something in this trailer is off.

The Screen Culture trailer also gives a little monologue to Alicent Hightower: "Mistakes have been made since Viserys died, and now, the war is coming," she is made to say. "It will not be easy, and many will die. And the victor will at last make it to the Iron Throne."

Oddly, this parrots some lines from the actual trailer, which are split between Alicent and her father Otto Hightower. Otto opens the real trailer by saying, "Errors were made in the hours King Viserys' death." And Alicent chimes in with, "The war will be fought. Many will die. And the victor will eventually ascend the throne."

So this is curious, no? Why did Screen Culture make this trailer? In the description, it calls the video a "concept" and talks a bit about the inspiration behind it, but in my opinion, it doesn't make sufficiently clear that this is not an official trailer released by HBO, but a remix that uses AI to make the characters say things they don't say in the actual show. After all, the title is "House of the Dragon Season 2 | New Trailer | Max," and the whole thing looks and sounds pretty realistic unless you're very familiar with the original trailer and with the final season of Game of Thrones; notice it splices in a couple of quick shots from Daenerys Targaryen's bombing run of King's Landing in "The Bells."

Is this misleading or unethical? Please, talk amongst yourselves.

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