Persons are asking AI to recreate the identical picture time and again, with every iteration drifting additional and farther from the unique.
The outcomes are typically amusing, typically unsettling. In some instances, the pictures utterly shape-shift into loopy summary types. In others, facial options are wildly exaggerated.
One of the crucial viral pictures is of actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson replicated a staggering 101 occasions.
anyone on Reddit informed ChatGPT to copy 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 picture, subsequent variations noticed Johnson’s options morph and deform, ultimately turning 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.” development. 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 skilled and the way they encode and reconstruct pictures.
When an AI is requested to recreate a picture, it doesn’t merely copy and paste the unique pixels. As an alternative, it breaks the picture down into a posh set of options and patterns, which it then tries to reassemble primarily based on its understanding of what the picture ought to appear like.
Nevertheless, 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 surprising outcomes.
It’s a bit like taking part in a visible sport of “phone” or “whispers,” the place every message you whisper to the following particular person introduces new options.
Nevertheless, AI’s aberrations may additionally reveal one thing concerning the biases and assumptions baked into these fashions. For instance, some pictures appear to magnify facial options or create a hotter, extra orange-tinted coloration palette.
Customers additionally seen that eyebrows develop 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 pictures and thus are extra widespread within the coaching knowledge.
Actually, although, we do not know what’s occurring contained in the immense “black field” that’s in the present day’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 era.
Developments involving AI, like we just lately noticed with AI motion figures, have just lately 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, nevertheless it’s a great level.
