We’re sure AI will be used to cure cancer or solve climate change any day now. In the meantime, its adherents are mostly using the astonishingly expensive tech to churn out loads of slop.
It doesn’t get any more embarrassing than one of the latest trend making waves through AI circles. With the release of Google’s new video generating AI Nano Banana Pro, dorky nerds the world over are using the AI tool to make it look like they’re chummy with loads of cool and famous people — a perfect encapsulation of their desperation to be accepted by the artists they love, and the culture at large.
One video generated by a man purporting to be a filmmaker shows himself walking around an increasingly incomprehensible film set taking selfies with AI lookalikes of Hollywood celebrities ranging from Will Smith to Jack Nicholson to Tom Hardy to Uma Thurman to Clint Eastwood to Marlon Brando.
In another celebrity selfie video, a man walks around a greenscreen room and meets up with famous actors dressed up as “Dragon Ball Z” characters. Ever desire to see epic stuff like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Majin Buu, Brad Pitt as Goku, or Timothée Chalamet as Trunks? Better yet, with you standing next to them, arm around their shoulders? Well, there you have it.
Google officially released Nano Banana Pro for its Gemini chatbot last month, and fans quickly noticed that it was absolutely stellar at generating fake smartphone photos, including faces. Soon, someone made a post showing how they were able to generate eerily life-like selfies with celebrities and the prompts they used, and it quickly went viral on Reddit and Twitter.
Another post, titled “I met many celebs,” is some of the most upvoted content on the Gemini subreddit. It isn’t always received well, though. A now-deleted stab at the selfie trend was shouted down by commenters calling it “weird” and “creepy” — so not even some AI obsessives are on board with fabricating reality and stealing people’s faces without permission.
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