AI creates what 'average person' looks like in each US state and sparks outrage
Topics: Reddit, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Viral
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Reddit/NeutronicTachyon
Topics: Reddit, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Viral
In today's instalment of 'mad Artificial Intelligence stories', we have some US states, a prompt of 'the average person', and a whole lot of outrage.
AI has been around for a long time, but recently people have really been putting the technology to the test to see what creations it can come up with.
We've had famous cartoons come to life and some alarmingly realistic food pictures, but now it's time to see what the technology makes of 'the average person'.
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We should really all know by know that there's no such thing as the 'average person', but there are stereotypes, fashion trends and local traditions, and its these factors that seem to have inspired AI when it came to creating images of the 'average' human from a specific US state.
In a post on the Reddit thread r/midjourney, a Redditor shared a series of AI-generated images from a variety of states, along with the caption: "the most stereotypical person in [state name]."
The caption presumably represented the prompt they'd given to the AI program before letting it do it's thing, with the chosen states including Texas, California, Colorado, Florida, Oregon and Maine.
And the results of the prompt are interesting, to say the least. Where to begin?
Kicking things off with Texas, we have a man dressed in some 'cowboy'-style attire, including a large cowboy hat, a brown shirt tucked into blue jeans and a wide belt buckle.
It's all flower-power in California, where the AI human has long hair blowing in the breeze, big sunglasses and a floral shirt.
While in Colorado it's a different kind of plant getting all the attention, with a woman perched on what looks to be a mountaintop packed with marijuana plants.
She's wearing a green hoodie and headband, with what looks to be a smoking joint in her hand.
I'm not sure how many people hike up weed mountains to get a hit in Colorado, but okay.
Next let's head to Florida, where a man with a long white beard stands on a road with long blue shorts, a baggy pink shirt and a sunhat, before moving to Oregan, where we're greeted by a woman with short greyish-blue hair.
And things take a dramatic turn as we head to Maine; a city known for its lobster.
To represent this, our AI man stands with a hat featuring an actual lobster on his head.
Again, I'm not sure how 'average' that is, but I've never been to Maine myself.
The AI-generated images have sparked mixed responses after being shared online, with one outraged Reddit user claiming the original poster 'clearly used unflattering prompts for the red states'.
Another unimpressed viewer commented: "Hi. Maine here. Can you not put dead lobsters all over everything? K thx."
The creations have left many people intrigued, though, with a lot of comments calling for more AI-generated images from even more states.