John Oliver tells his audience about images of him on Midjourney. (Source: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

John Oliver Pokes Fun at Midjourney, Dall-E as Images of the Host Proliferate

An AI graphics creation algorithm called Midjourney has been generating the same kind of Dall-E art pieces for public users, with one exception–talk show hosts like John Oliver are included in many of the renderings. Ironically, Oliver included the two companies in his broadcast explaining how the AI art algorithms work in creating images from whatever the user types in.

“Oliver and his staff experimented with Midjourney, a different imaging app headquartered in San Francisco, by asking it to create images of a “roast beef superhero.” But the real fun began when a staffer searched the archives of images for prompts that included the names of late night show hosts. James Corden had eight search results (including the bizarre “trail cam footage of James Corden eating teeth”), Conan O’Brien appeared 14 times, Stephen Colbert had eight hits, and Trevor Noah and Jimmy Kimmel each came up three times.”

The tongue-in-cheek article has fun with the fact that Oliver was the object of obsession by one woman who kept asking AI to create different scenarios involving the talk show host.

“Oliver on the other hand appeared in 493 images, ranging from ‘John Oliver in Victorian era dress’ to ‘John Oliver busting out of a can of Del Monte green beans.’ It turns out that many of the images come from two users, one simply named Margaret who created an elaborate series showing Oliver interacting with a cabbage in some quite unique ways.”

The cabbage depictions had a surreal storyline that the article described with an undertone of quiet hilarity:

“In Margaret’s personal John Oliver-verse, the TV host ends up getting married to the cabbage. Then the image series ends in disaster as Oliver has a dream about being hungry and accidentally eats the cabbage in his sleep (the images are as awkward as you imagine).”

Seeflection.com must express admiration for the humor displayed in this spare article.

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