In the past week we have witnessed a new wave of furore surrounding generative imaging systems powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Where we saw a series of portraits that sought to illustrate what The Simpsons would look like if they were real people.
He small great detail here is that half of humanity knows perfectly the detail and outline of the design of these characters. Where the collective conclusion is practically unanimous: the characters are ugly.
His aesthetic is twisted, bizarre, anthropomorphic but part of a world with particular anatomical rules that give each member of the city of Springfield a unique style. So Artificial Intelligence creates a particular problem: The Simpsons’ portrayals as real people are too aesthetic.
Each of the portraits that have been generated with the help of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion has the quality of meeting high aesthetic standards, as well as photorealistic lighting and almost cinematic details.
This sum of factors is an obvious problem in particular cases like this and it would be interesting to reflect a little on the future implications of all this.
The problem of Artificial Intelligence recreating The Simpsons too handsome
As we already mentioned, it all started when Reddit user u/Crows_HeadIC published a series of characters from The Simpsons recreated using Artificial Intelligence from midjourney. There was Homer, Marge and Bart, even Smithers and Willy.
The result of the portraits is impressive at first glance, but a little attention to detail in the images was enough to conclude that there were some things that did not add up. Particularly with the personality of the characters.
The ages don’t add up, the physiques are too fit and, in general, they are too handsome. And this perfectly illustrates a real and current problem with this type of image generators using Artificial Intelligence. They have very high aesthetic parameters.
In other words, it seems that Midjourney is incapable of creating ugly people, and the best examples of this are the portraits of series like The Simpsons or South Park.
With these types of visual references the result of the portraits should be visually unattractive, oblivious of toned bodies and immaculate skin.
But at the moment it seems that Artificial Intelligence systems simply cannot create such images.
It is something curious and even almost cute in the present 2023. But in the long term it could be a problem if it becomes the new standard.