Riches to rags.
Mind Journey
An artificial intelligence artist has imagined what famous figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos would look like if they lived in slums — and honestly, the images go kind of hard.
In an Instagram post aptly-captioned "slumdog millionaires," spotted by Mashable SEA, India-based artist Gokul Pillai used AI image generator Midjourney to create a series of strikingly realistic-looking images of everyone from Donald Trump and Warren Buffett to Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The images are, it's worth noting, reliant on stereotypes about the kind of conditions poor people live in, as if they were plucked straight out of the 2008 smash hit movie "Slumdog Millionaire."
Alternate Universe
These riches-to-rags images come after a spate of AI-generated images showed all kinds of uncanny scenarios, from phony shots of Trump being arrested, to that weirdly-believable one of Pope Francis looking hella swagged out in a crisp white puffer coat.
Beyond making an arguably on-the-nose statement about wealth and poverty, these images are also a little ironic because they depict a number of billionaires who are actively invested in AI.
In fact, all figures depicted in the series have, in some way or another, touched the AI industry, though both Gates and Musk have issued warnings about the technology despite being invested in it.
Whether the artist deliberately chose billionaires who have made significant investments in AI or it's just something most billionaires are into these days is unclear. But one thing's for sure: it's a fascinating glimpse at an alternate reality in which the richest men in the world struggle to make ends meet.
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