AI Elder Gods

Neural Network Is Frighteningly Good at Drawing Cthulhu

Do you dare to gaze upon the AI-generated eldritch horror?
Image: u/Mere-Thoughts via Reddit/Tony Tran

AI-generated images can result in some pretty fantastic creations — but who knew it could create frighteningly uncanny pictures of cosmic horrors?

Users on the subreddit /r/MediaSynthesis, a community dedicated to synthetic images and art, have been posting a series of Cthulhu and other “cosmic demons” that were created using AI. 

Here’s “Rise of Cthulhu“:

u/Mere-Thoughts via Reddit

Cthulhu’s Garden:

u/w0nk0 via Reddit

Cosmic Demon“:

u/Mere-Thoughts via Reddit

Some have even gotten political such as “Trump fights cthulhu“:

u/Tannon via Reddit

Elsewhere, users have even taken everyone’s favorite Elder God to church with “Cthulhu Mythos at the Last Supper“:

@goob via NightCafe

Many of the images were created using NightCafe, an algorithm that allows you to turn words into AI-generated art. More specifically, the platform leverages a text-to-image art creation algorithm known as VQGAN+CLIP that allows you to transform normal words into surreal images. 

Still, it begs the question: Why does AI create such good images of Cthulhu? 

Well, it makes sense when you think about it. Lovecraftian monsters are typified by inconceivable colors, surreal visages, and non-Euclidean shapes. It would make sense that a AI and neural networks — which typically comes up with some very trippy images — can create something close to that. 

Of course, we wanted to try it out for ourselves. With that, we present the first Futurism original AI art, “Cthulhu Trick-or-Treating“:

Starting price for the NFT is $1 million (that’s how that works, right?).

More on digital art: Instagram Threatens to Delete Artist’s Account for Selling NFTs of Cocaine

Tony Tran is a reporter for Futurism. His work has been seen in Playboy, HuffPost, Narratively, and wherever else fine writing is published. He lives in Chicago where he frequently plans tabletop gaming sessions for his friends. Follow him on Twitter.