Guess that AI celebrity: Shoddy Goods 008
Hey, it's time for another Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about the stuff people buy, sell, and make. I'm Jason Toon and I absolutely wrecked my search history looking for the most egregious examples of AI-generated unauthorized celebrity merchandise (you're welcome). As usual, online marketplaces did not fail to disappoint…
Fake AI-generated images of famous people are ruining everything from politics to news to sex. They've infested ecommerce, too. One the one hand, of course they are. On the other hand, why bother? It's not like selling an AI-generated likeness of a famous person is any more legally defensible than just swiping a photo and reselling that. Eventually the soulless content grinders are bound to catch on and stop wasting the effort. So let's "enjoy" this Golden Age while it lasts, with this AI-spawned gallery of misbegotten megastars and inhuman icons.
After some struggle, I decided not to encourage this by linking to the product pages. But I assure you every one was available on Temu, Etsy, Amazon, eBay, or Redbubble at the time of writing. And they all included the alleged subject's name in the product title. I've put the names under the images, so if you want to try to guess who they purport to be, scroll slowly. If you want to preserve your sanity, scroll fast, or not at all. You've been warned.
Finally, an answer to the question "What if Forrest Gump were played by an emaciated, dead-eyed psychopath instead of Tom Hanks?"
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If the idea of a "Pixar-style Michael Jackson" (seller's words) seems inappropriate, given all the sordid allegations, this proves the reality is even worse.
"Looks like we need to rush out some Kamala Harris stickers."
"You got it. Kamala means 'lotus flower' in Sanskrit, right?"
"If you say so. You need a picture of her?"
"Nah, I'll just wing it. And I'll show her four times so everybody can see that we really, really know what she looks like."
The vacant stare, the foaming at the mouth... call an ambulance! Somebody with a very slight resemblance to Taylor Swift is OD'ing!
I guess I can tell that's Robert Downey Jr., which makes this print not so much a "who is this?" as "who would ever buy this?"
Ah, yes, Bob Marley, famous for his green sunglasses, vacuous grin, and goatee that overlaps his bottom lip.
You know, they have this thing called Google where you can see tons of pictures of what Beyoncé actually looks like.
Which of the Beatles is which? Trick question: they're all all of them at the same time!
OK, I think you've had enough. Most of these are obviously AI, from the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley. It's possible that some others are just bad human-generated art of the non-artificial variety. Who knows? There goes AI, undermining the foundations of objective truth again.
In this divided world, maybe the one political thing we can all agree on is that AI does not have any idea at all what Kamala Harris looks like. Seen any good AI celebrity fails out there? If you’re a member, you can try your hand at making some all new abominations in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat!
- Dave
Oh, and if you're just getting hip to the Shoddy Goods scene, check out some of our greatest hits: