“Where to start with this one.”
Icy Dip
What if the Titanic never sank — and Rose and Jack decided to go for a frosty dip in the Atlantic to take a selfie?
A new AI-generated image that’s making its rounds on social media has us completely mystified. The almost-photorealistic image shows the pair as they were portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in James Cameron’s 1997 epic “Titanic,” having an intimate photo opp.
The image has plenty of the hallmarks of an AI-generated image, from the filtered-looking smooth skin to the excessive number of smoke stacks adorning the Titanic (the real ship only had four, not six). Needless to say, smartphones weren’t a thing 111 years ago, either.
But perhaps most glaring of all is that the Titanic hasn’t actually sunk in the image, suggesting that Jack and Rose intentionally chose to plunge into the icy waters for a selfie opportunity.
“Why are they in the water if the boat still floats?” one user on the Titanic subreddit suggested.
“Where to start with this one,” another user wrote.
Jack, There’s a Bot
The image was also being used by Facebook accounts to take potshots at a younger generation (although it’s not entirely clear which).
“If the Titanic happened today,” was the most prevalent caption accompanying the many repostings of the odd image. That’s characteristic of the annoyingly persistent boomer memes complaining about how younger folks have become obsessed with their phones. What year is it, people?
“They had to use AI to joke about technology being bad,” one user on the boomershumor subreddit pointed out.
While this particular meme was unlikely to fool anybody into thinking it’s real, the advent of AI image generators has flooded social media with almost photorealistic posts that are far more likely to convince out-of-the-loop users.
As 404 Media reported earlier this week, people are using “image-to-image” AI generators to riff on real photographs, resulting in an endless stream of posts being used to pad out feeds and generate comments.
It’s a dangerous trend, especially as these tools are able to produce more and more convincing imagery, further eroding the trust we have in the content we encounter online.
Some of these AI-generated memes may be real stinkers, like this rendition of Jack and Rose going for an icy dip — but the same tech could be used for far more nefarious purposes as well, like spreading misinformation or scamming people.
More on AI image generators: Image Database Powering Google’s AI Contains Explicit Images of Children
