Sometimes, you just need to LOL at some "mpreg" celebs, like Travis Kelce. The more advanced AI gets, somehow the stupider stuff makes us laugh more.
Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images; iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
What is it about a slightly crummy AI-generated video of Donald Trump and Joe Biden discussing hardcore bands that is incredibly hilarious, while Apple's new AI forced-whimsy "Genmoji" just … isn't?
The more advanced generative AI gets, somehow … the stupider stuff makes us laugh more. Interesting, no?
Almost exactly a year ago, Max Read wrote about how AI is good for "funposting" (I imagine this term started as something not appropriate for a family newspaper). Read looked at some of the early AI things that had delighted us: the pope in a puffer coat and Will Smith eating spaghetti. Those things were so amusing because they had the right placement on a matrix of human stupidity vs. machine intelligence: making the smart machine do something very stupid.
These "high human stupidity/high machine intelligence" jokes are the sweet spot, although there is also room for "high human stupidity/low machine intelligence" jokes, too. The best recent example of this would be the bad Google AI search result answers that went viral, telling people to eat 1-2 rocks per day or put glue in their pizza.
A year is a long time in AI, and I was curious if Read's analysis of what made for a funny AI joke had significantly changed. Will Smith eating spaghetti, for example, is no longer weird and uncanny — it actually looks decent now.
The fact that generative AI is much "better" than a year ago, however, hasn't stopped AI from being funny. In fact, it's made it easier to do stupid, silly things.
This explains why recently, my Instagram keeps serving me viral videos of pregnant male celebrities, like this:
(I highly recommend you also play the video to listen to the AI-generated song.)
Wombo AI started in 2021 making consumer-facing apps that generated silly, memey, social media-ready images.
Their current app, Celeb Shot (which will be renamed Wombo soon) specializes in letting you add your own face to various photos with celebrities, or doing other things like making you look like a baby or have huge muscles.
Wombo's founder, Ben-Zion Benkhin, told me that they had stumbled into this new virality.
He came across an image of Snape pregnant and was inspired to try something new (male pregnancy, or "mpreg," in fan fiction is a fairly common trope — Snape in particular for some reason). "We're always experimenting with shit and trying to make stuff go viral," Benkhin said.
Indeed, they saw a big increase in shares on the Instagram and TikTok posts with these mpreg videos — which led to more downloads of their app. Making silly stupid stuff is good for business. (An update of the app that will allow users to put a photo of themselves proudly cradling a pregnant Trump or Drake will be out soon.)
I'm not sure what "mpreg Travis Kelce is going viral" means for the future — of AI or humanity. I do think that some of this stupid stuff is a coping mechanism for the more scary parts of AI. Sure, AI might kill us all one day, but at least we had some good memes.
