Imaging AI models have been around for a while. But now, they’re getting too good, terribly good, in fact. Look at these pictures of people who don’t exist. It will give you goosebumps.
Since DALL-E, an OpenAI text message-based AI image generator, was unveiled in January 2021, the possibilities of what artificial intelligence is capable of have increased exponentially. Over the past year, we’ve seen multiple platforms emerge that can create stunning art with text prompts in simple language. And while they started with random images that vaguely matched the text message, today they can create frighteningly accurate images that exactly match the caption. So what happens when a user requests images of “people at a party”? The answer is super-realistic AI-drawn images of humans that look terrifyingly real, but never existed in real life.
While you can see one such example above, it’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to what some of the AI platforms can do. Let’s take an example from Midjourney. The company has an AI art generating platform that is currently in beta. But you can already create art that closely matches the message. A Twitter user who calls himself mileszim has posted some of the images on the platform, and the results are scary.
AI Generates Eerily Realistic Images of Women
If you look closely at the pictures, they actually look like they were taken with a Polaroid camera at a real party. But in reality, neither the party exists nor the people who are in it. All have been imagined by Midjourney AI. Twitter user mileszim said while posting the images: “Midjourney is getting insanely powerful, none of these are real photos, and none of the people in them exist.”
Check the tweet below.
And it becomes clearer the more you look at the pictures. While they look like normal humans having fun, closer inspection highlights why they’re so chilling to watch. If you look at the women, you will notice that there are too many teeth and too much skin that is too shiny. And if you’ve noticed both, maybe you’ll also notice the slightly off-center neck, the tattoos without details, and finer details that make them look inhuman.
But if this is what an AI can do with just a year of self-learning, it will be scary to imagine what it could do five years from now. In particular, many experts have spoken about concerns around deepfakes with AI-generated art becoming more common in today’s world.