Artificial intelligence: English recreates historic selfies – 03/04/2023 – Tech

British filmmaker Duncan Thomsen has taken social media by storm with ultra-realistic selfies of historic moments, such as Napoleon at the War of Waterloo and Cleopatra at a dinner party. The portraits were made with the aid of artificial intelligence, on the Midjourney platform.

Thomsen published, on the 27th, the images on the Midjourney Discord channel, before other users released the pictures on social networks.

The images originally posted on Discord have been deleted by the British. There was only one thanks from Thomsen for the compliments. On the 26th, he had posted an AI-generated selfie of Abraham Lincoln celebrating a victory.

The computer-generated photographs demonstrate the characteristic smiles of selfies. The distortion of the faces caused by the proximity of the lens and the high brightness characteristic of the front cameras also appear in the final result.

In an interview with the British newspaper Daily Mail, Thomsen states that it took months to develop the ideal formulation of the request to artificial intelligence, which technicians call a prompt. Only with the right technique, he could achieve the result he was looking for. “The secret is in the absolute description.”

On Midjourney’s Discord chat platform channel, you can find other video editor tips: “Turn off functions like ‘unreal engine’, ‘8k’ and others. Select ‘style first’ at the top of the prompt. Do not use commas”.

He also claims that a series of brightness adjustment commands make images look more original.

Some errors typical of AI-generated portraits, however, persist. Characters have more than five fingers or extra teeth, like Queen Elizabeth 1st.

Ultra-realistic art created with Midjourney has drawn attention last week after being at the center of a wave of misinformation. Images of Pope Francis with an inflatable jacket, Trump being arrested and Macron at demonstrations went viral as if they were real.

On the other hand, Thomsen told the DailyMail that he hopes that works like his are used in the classroom to bring children from other historical contexts closer together. He claims that the aesthetic similarity of the images can generate a connection with the current generation.

The film editor is used to dealing with historical themes, since he edits documentaries for the BBC, in his work as a freelancer.