<
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/kermit-ai-generated-home-screen/679757/>
"First, I want to apologize. My Kermit the Frog post was not entirely sincere.
This particular post of mine has been viewed more than 10 million times, which
is far more than I expected. But I did expect something. Social networks have
never been the realm of good faith or authenticity; trolls and other engagement
baiters have been able to engineer their own virality for years and years,
simply by correctly predicting what large numbers of people will respond to.
Donald Trump’s TikToks don’t happen by accident; nor did Kamala Harris’s
embrace of “brain rot” videos. Each campaign is constructing media that it
believes can travel in algorithmic feeds. That’s also what I did when I put
together my post, which featured a couple dozen AI-generated images of Kermit
the Frog.
Allow me to explain. Last weekend—delirious from a lack of sleep and hoping
that my screaming toddler would soon settle down in his crib—I was tapping
around on my phone in a kind of fried stupor. My mind struggled to latch on to
anything. Each of the apps on my home screen seemed to promise only more
boredom. I was the sort of trapped that many parents of young children might
recognize: A demand for attention could come at any moment, so I couldn’t lose
myself in a book or a bike ride. But I was looking for a diversion.
Then I had an idea. I decided that it would be fun to use Bing Image Creator,
based on OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, to help me replace each app icon on my
iPhone’s home screen with a thematically appropriate image of the world’s
greatest muppet. (Why? You’d have to ask my psychiatrist.) Instead of the basic
Gmail icon, I contrived an image of Kermit buried under a massive pile of
envelopes. Instead of the basic green phone icon, Kerm chatting on a yellow
landline.
The final product was an absurd, borderline-deranged home-screen grid of 24
bespoke frogs. The creation of each one required a series of specific prompts
from me. There was Calculator Kermit and Photos Kermit. Authenticator Kermit
was dressed like a police officer and wielded a massive baton. My job complete,
I took a screenshot and sent it to a friend, who replied, “Damon I truly truly
fear for you.” About halfway through the project, I had developed an inkling
that her message seemed to confirm: People on the internet would probably
respond to this. I could use my Kermits to go viral.
Everyone loves Kermit, of course, and that could only help me. But just as
important was the fact that I had made the images using generative AI, a
hyper-polarizing technology with passionate boosters and passionate critics. My
content would have to appeal to both groups in order to go as far as possible.
So I tried to walk a middle path. I typed an ambiguously worded post that
nonetheless contained a sharp opinion that people could react to: “People will
be like, ‘generative AI has no practical use case,’ but I did just use it to
replace every app icon on my home screen with images of Kermit, soooo.” Then I
embedded the before and after images of my home screen, and published
simultaneously on X and Threads."
Via
Garbage Day: Trump is weird
https://www.garbageday.email/p/trump-weird
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
