At this point it feels like a giant ‘duh’ moment to realize that AI is only as perfect as the people that created it and to be fair, humans aren’t perfect, which is what the effort of turning headshots into cartoons kind of proves since a lot of those that have been given this treatment look absolutely goofy or disturbing on a level that descends towards nightmare level. As you can see above, Leonardo DiCaprio ends up looking like a rather hairy version of his former self, and in fact, it almost looks like he’s about to turn into the Wolfman. A picture of Robert De Niro is also available for viewing on a few sites and his cartoon makeover almost makes him look like a demented version of Martin Scorsese. Hey, they’ve worked together long enough, maybe it makes sense that they’d start looking alike. The point is that the AI isn’t perfect when it comes to certain actions and this proves it since the attempt is interesting, to say the least, and horrifying to say the most without being too rude about it. The whole idea of creating a cartoon version of people can vary since sometimes it’s done to mock and ridicule, other times it’s done to pay homage to someone, and at other times it’s just for sheer entertainment and can be taken a number of different ways.
With the advancements in technology over the years, it’s been more than evident that entertainment has benefited from this in a big way since the old school animation process has given away to the hi-tech methods that have taken over and continued to be perfected. It’s easy to say that some of these advances have been extremely popular since watching what is essentially a three-dimensional cartoon was unheard of decades ago, but the truth is that the effect doesn’t always come off that great, though a lot of it depends on the design. Giving AI the responsibility of creating animated characters might sound all well and good and it would be impressive if it was able to create the kind of material that has already impressed a great many people. But if what we’re seeing above is any indication of what would happen when putting AI in charge of character creation for animated movies and series then it’s likely that there are a few kinks to be worked out. It’s not the worst that it could be, but it definitely needs a bit of fine-tuning to really create the look that people are hoping for.
Even those that oversee the process of creation when it comes to animated characters don’t always get it right, as the movie Sonic the Hedgehog would attest to since the first version of the beloved character was enough to make fans react in such a negative fashion that the process was redone and Sonic was returned to the cartoonish style that people had expected in the first place. But turning the AI loose and allowing this to happen obviously wasn’t bound to give a perfect example that everyone could get behind. It might be interesting to see what could happen in another decade or two since things are continually being improved and the technology that goes into such efforts is always being tweaked in order to make it work better, more efficiently, and to a degree that human interaction might not be as necessary at one point. One has to wonder why some people come out looking even better as cartoons though than others, especially when the reverse is true when looking at reality. There’s likely a very technical reason for this and it would take a short amount of time to explain but also require an understanding of how the process works, which would take much longer since there are many that would grasp the idea, but many others that would look at it and say ‘huh?’ since the average understanding of the process that takes normal pictures and turns them into cartoonish representations is likely to stump quite a few of us, myself included.
The point here is that AI is still swiftly becoming a popular idea among society since once up and running it can perform many wonders that the programmers of said machines decide to punch in, but it’s not quite at the stage where perfection has been attained. If it ever does get there, and that’s a big ‘if’, then it might be that humans won’t be needed as much when it comes to the process of making cartoons. Of course, that’s kind of an extreme and possibly paranoid view, but a lot of people might actually understand it since AI is still a rather unknown and uncertain commodity that some people don’t fully trust. But then, maybe we’ve seen too many movies.
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