Someone used AI to create a South Park deepfake and it’s extremely unsettling
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, South Park
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Comedy Central / YouTube/demonflyingfox
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, South Park
With the rise of artificial intelligence becoming a daunting prospect to many, the image of a Terminator-like future has become a permanent fixture in some people's minds.
Of course, AI has also allowed us to look further into more silly matters as well.
Think the moment AI was able to create what the 'average person' looks like in each US state - something that sparked a lot of outrage.
But I imagine not a lot of people would immediately think of using AI to create a realistic Eric Cartman - but someone last year did just that. Watch it here:
Advert
To be honest, I think a lot of us could have never imagined these iconic characters look like they could come right out of the screen at us - but here were are.
And I mean, these South Park AI characters are giving serious weird vibes.
The video was created by YouTuber demonflyingfox, who showed his followers what's possible through the use of AI.
One Reddit user shared a snippet of the clip with the caption: "Someone used AI to create a South Park deepfake - I love it!"
And many other people seemed to love it too, with the clip receiving praise for how 'spot on' some of the characters were to their animation counterparts.
While the clip is undeniably impressive and absolutely nailed some of the cartoon's main characters, some viewers were a little bit freaked out by it.
One Reddit user noted: "The blinking is very unsettling for some reason", while another replied: 'Its because it's not natural, you can definitely tell it's not a real person'.
A lot of people seemed to have an issue with the blinking, as one person said: "The blinks are uncanny valley." And another described them as 'creepy' and asked: "why so much blinking."
Also in 2023, scientists tried to replicate human emotions on the face of a robot and it gave everyone the heebie-jeebies.
However, the facial movements seemingly aren't quite there yet as one X viewer hilariously described that the grimaces as reminding them of 'the UK emotions of being absolutely off ya bonk'.
I suppose we won't have to worry about that robot potentially going haywire anytime soon.
But it's something that has always been on our minds.
Perhaps one of the first on-screen examples of AI being absolutely terrifying was in 1984 film, The Terminator.
Though Arnold Schwarzenegger's iconic character was designed to be just that, it isn't hard to imagine what a possible future could look like if robots managed to gain sentience.