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02nd Feb 2022

Popular cartoon characters brought to life using AI are scarily accurate

Danny Jones

We’d only just got over that ‘realistic’ Homer – and now this?

An artist by the name of Hidreley Dião has created a number of AI cartoon characters using nothing but the power of computing and his creativity and they are so accurate it’s actually a bit scary.

As posted to his Instagram, @hidreley and later contributed to Bored Panda magazine, Dião used Photoshop and three mobile, AI-based applications – FaceApp, Gradiente and Remini – to create these genuinely stunning digital impressions.

Here are just a few and – we must admit – they are so impressive you would easily be forgiven if you were to mistake any of these for pictures of real people:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZchU4CKRdB/

It’s the Moe one for us – in fact, all The Simpsons ones are equal parts amazing and creepy.

As you can see while scrolling through his collection of cartoon creations, while some could deceive you into thinking they were nothing more than a present-day selfie, the highly exaggerated and caricatured nature of some of the artist’s chosen subjects result in some truly uncanny and horrific pictures. Like this one:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZXduEyJgYC/

Reflecting on Bored Panda, the Brazilian artist said that, in the case of The Simpsons characters, he thought the “drawing style would be very hard to emulate on ‘real life’ terms” – hence that Homer one – however, as he soon found out, “they are actually very easy to recognise.”

It isn’t just AI cartoon characters Hidreley is creating either, he’s even turned his hand to creating modern-day impressions of famous historical figures – like Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, artist Frida Kahlo, composer Frédéric Chopin, Roman emperor Caligula and many more.

We got this one almost instantly:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CYv_JwRLVDQ/

Just goes to show the sheer power of artificial intelligence algorithms.

This isn’t the only mind-blowing bit of machine-learning magic in recent times. Just last month, China managed to develop an AI prosecutor that can charge people with 97 per cent accuracy – and in November, scientists in America designed a new batch of living robots that can reproduce.

Crazy times we live in. We’re sure there are more than a few sci-fi films warning us against this kind of stuff but if the technology singularity is indeed on the horizon anyway, we might as well enjoy a bit of fun in the meantime.

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