Individuals are asking AI to recreate the identical picture again and again, with every iteration drifting additional and farther from the unique.
The outcomes are typically amusing, typically unsettling. In some circumstances, the photographs utterly shape-shift into loopy summary varieties. In others, facial options are wildly exaggerated.
One of the crucial viral photographs is of actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson replicated a staggering 101 occasions.
any individual on Reddit informed ChatGPT to duplicate a picture of The Rock with out altering something 100 occasions over pic.twitter.com/IcRgmWHCWK
— Kristi Yamaguccimane (@TheWapplehouse) Could 3, 2025
Whereas the primary few iterations carefully resembled the unique photograph, subsequent variations noticed Johnson’s options morph and warp, finally changing into completely summary.
ChatGPT prompted to “create the precise reproduction of this picture, don’t change a factor” 74 occasions pic.twitter.com/u6E8aVThy2
— web corridor of fame (@InternetH0F) Could 1, 2025
I attempted the “Create the precise reproduction of this picture, don’t change a factor.” pattern. pic.twitter.com/xcAcsvBRJp
— Rish Agarwal (@rish404) April 30, 2025
So what’s happening underneath the hood? It’s primarily a results of how AI fashions are educated and the way they encode and reconstruct photographs.
When an AI is requested to recreate a picture, it doesn’t merely copy and paste the unique pixels. As a substitute, it breaks the picture down into a fancy set of options and patterns, which it then tries to reassemble primarily based on its understanding of what the picture ought to appear like.
Nonetheless, this course of is inherently imperfect and introduces small errors or deviations every time. Because the picture is repeatedly fed again into the AI, these deviations compound, resulting in more and more distorted or sudden outcomes.
It’s a bit like enjoying a visible sport of “phone” or “whispers,” the place every message you whisper to the following particular person introduces new options.
Nonetheless, AI’s aberrations may additionally reveal one thing concerning the biases and assumptions baked into these fashions. For instance, some photographs appear to magnify facial options or create a hotter, extra orange-tinted shade palette.
Customers additionally observed that eyebrows change into extremely exaggerated – virtually painted on within the model of social media filters. As for the orange tint, some speculate that hotter tints are most popular in images and thus are extra widespread within the coaching information.
Actually, although, we don’t know what’s occurring contained in the immense “black field” that’s at present’s largest frontier fashions.
However within the meantime, social media customers appear to be having loads of enjoyable with the surreal, usually disturbing outcomes of repeated recursive AI picture technology.
Developments involving AI, like we not too long ago noticed with AI motion figures, have not too long ago taken off on social media, with hundreds of individuals getting concerned throughout X, Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram.
One quipped, “I drained the ocean replicating my picture 100 occasions.” To not be a buzzkill, but it surely’s level.
