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1 year ago
18
Anyone who's been on the internet for a while will recognise the 'distracted boyfriend' meme.
And now AI is bringing this classic piece of internet history to life in a whole new way.
X (formerly Twitter) users have shared their creepy animations of the iconic meme created using a variety of AI animation tools.
The creators have even created different alternative endings for the meme, letting us imagine what might have happened after that moment.
However, not everyone is happy with the innovation as some concerned commenters joke that 'nobody asked for this'.
Memes have entered the AI era as X users use generative video tools to convert classic memes into short animations
X user @fofrAI shared the first of the AI-generated memes, which they created using Stability AI's Stable Video tool.
This model allows users to transform word prompts and still images into short videos of between two and five seconds.
The original meme showed a still image of a boyfriend looking back over his shoulder at a passing woman while his girlfriend watches in anger.
In this extended animation, the boyfriend turns fully away from his partner and appears to begin walking after the woman in red.
On X, commenters shared their amazement with the AI-generated clip.
'Memes are getting an AI upgrade', one social media user wrote.
'What a time to be alive!' added one excited commenter.
Meanwhile, another joked that 'after all these years, we can finally find out what happened to the couple.'
On X (formerly Twitter) social media users shared their amazement with the animation calling this an 'AI upgrade' for memes
However, it wasn't long before other X users took it a step further, animating alternative endings for the meme.
In a reply to the original post, X user @burconsult posted a second video with the comment: 'Never mind...'.
In the newly edited video, the woman in red appears to turn back and angrily looks at the staring boyfriend who quickly looks away.
The X user quickly followed this up with yet another AI-animated version of the meme saying: 'I don't know anymore'.
In this AI-generated video, the girlfriend appears to back away from her unfaithful boyfriend with a look of disgust on her face.
In a separate post, @burconsult explained that they used the Runway generative AI to convert the still images into short animated clips.
On X, many users were impressed with the innovation and the post sparked a flurry of animated versions of classic memes.
Some even inserted the original meme into the new animated format to show how people were now leaving the original still images behind.
However, not everyone was impressed with the AI's creations with some social media users joking that AI had gone too far.
'Okay AI needs to be stopped', joked one X user, while another added: 'Nobody asked for this'.
Meanwhile one commenter simply wrote: 'This is very creepy'.
Not everyone was impressed with AI-generated videos as many X users joked that this was an example of AI going too far
Several commenters also pointed out a few of the creepy and unusual elements created by the AI animation process.
While the videos initially look somewhat realistic from afar, closer inspection reveals that the facial features distort bizarrely throughout.
In the original post, X users noticed that the face of the woman in red becomes strangely warped as she gets closer to the virtual camera.
One commenter wrote: 'The red one turns into some kind of goblin'.
'I love how the woman in red started to face morph into some creature at the end', another commenter wrote.
Commenters also pointed out how clothing, facial hair, people, and cars seemed to appear and disappear at random throughout the video.
In the video featuring the woman in red turning to face the boyfriend, X users noticed how the woman appears to grow a cardigan as she turned.
'The clothes on the lady on the left just...grow', one commenter wrote.
Some commenters pointed out that the AI animation techniques left a number of strange and often creepy artefacts in the video
One X user uncovered the original set of stock images where the meme was taken from and found a tumultuous tale of love and betrayal
This is not, however, the first time that the distracted boyfriend meme has been at the centre of a Twitter storm.
Previously, Twitter user Andrew J Abernathy discovered that the original photo came from a series of stock images which depicted the couple in various relationship scenarios.
Abernathy strung these photos together into a hilarious story of love and betrayal which went viral over social media.
In one stock image, the couple are shown holding a baby together which Andrew shared with the comment: 'That man is a deadbeat and you knew it! Now look what happened.'
It was later reported that the original photo had been taken by a 45-year-old photographer from Barcelona called Antonio Guillem who had no idea his stock images had become a meme.
A Tumbler blog called Meme Documentation has traced the original use of the stock image as a meme to January 30 2017 when it was posted on a Turkish Prog Rock meme page.
