Let there be (ring) light.
A British film editor is making a splash through the use of AI to assume famous historical figures like Jesus, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII taking selfies.
“The results are hilarious and everybody I’ve shared my work with cannot imagine how realistic the photos look.” – Duncan Thomsen, 53 told SWNS.
He said he uses Midjourney’s AI software through the Discord app, which responds to user-set prompts and commands to generate images by referencing billions of images online.
Thomsen recreated scenes from the Battle of Waterloo, the court of Cleopatra and the Last Supper.
The development process could be lengthy because the AI tells users to say exactly what it must do and requires “absolute description,” Thomsen explained.
Thomsen believes the technology is so accurate that it might be used to show history in schools, calling it “time travel with no time machine.”
“You can ask AI to be historically accurate, after which it may well apply to anything, anywhere, in all places – that is the fantastic thing about it,” he told SWNS.
“I even have an eye fixed for image in my day job and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some really great people,” he said.
“It allowed me to check all the pieces I’ve been working on and explore my imagination without limits, and that is the result.”
Thomsen’s project comes as tech industry leaders are calling for an “immediate pause” in training advanced AI systems for not less than six months.
But AI expert Eliezer Yudkowsky says the proposed moratorium doesn’t go far enough.
“Many researchers imbued with these issues, including myself, expect that the almost definitely final result of constructing a superhuman intelligent AI under conditions just like today is that literally everyone on Earth will die.” wrote in op-ed published this week by Time.
“Not like in ‘perhaps some distant likelihood,’ but in ‘it’s an obvious thing that will occur.’
This week alone, it was reported that an AI chatbot allegedly convinced a Belgian man to commit suicide.
