Like many, I had movie posters on my wall throughout my teenage and young adult years. To this day, I still have a Labyrinth poster up in my bedroom. But I probably wouldn’t if it looked like the uncanny movie posters artificial intelligence creates. Based on the art project Robomojo, it seems AI makes everything too much like post-apocalyptic nightmare fuel for me to want it staring down from my wall. But these AI-generated movie posters are certainly fun to scroll through!
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen movie posters created by AI. But Robomojo’s addition of the credits and taglines sets these apart. Leaving that familiarity in place highlights how oddly different AI works. From Star Trek to Star Wars, everything is just a bit off.
Robomojo is a project by the artist Vincenzi and uses AI programs DALL-E 2 and Midjourney. He shared a bit about the process. “I’ll initially prompt it using just the film’s title to see what it generates, and the results unexpectedly open the story into a vivid alternative universe, which appeals to me. I wanted to know how the cold mind of a computer would envision these cultural touchstones. Art was traditionally seen as the last bastion of humanity in the face of technological progress, so it’s an interesting challenge to retain a sense of that humanity over this next chapter.”
Admittedly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a crazy prompt to begin with. But even Batman ends up weirder than Tim Burton could make it. The Robomojo site has dozens more.
The AI movie posters cover every genre, including romantic comedies. Who knew Sleepless in Seattle is actually an alien horror movie? Or that the devil literally wears Prada. And Steel Magnolias looks more like a Terminator sequel than some of the actual movies in the series. The Papyrus-like font on Avatar‘s AI poster ends up looking perfectly normal in comparison to the updated art.
There’s amazing skill involved in using artificial intelligence to create such effective art. It certainly got us talking!
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.