AI Images: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

moving on finally tonight i want to talk about artificial intelligence or a.i it's a technology which despite posing a clear existential threat to humanity we currently manage to keep under our control using pictures of traffic lights but make no mistake once the machines learn how to recognize them we are all now i wanted to talk about ai because there is a new popular trend that you may have heard about it seems like everyone is talking about these websites that use artificial intelligence to generate images it's all because of a tool named dolly which comes from a startup named openai you type in a description of something you want to see and a computer creates realistic images to match the fun part is you can be really elaborate with your descriptions the system was trained with 650 million pictures and the results are some of the best we've seen from computers yet yeah ai image generators there are a number of them out there now like dali crayon and mid journey with each one you simply type in a text prompt and it will create images for you in around a minute so for instance you might type in let's say a roast beef superhero now what does that look like is it a superhero made of roast beef is it a superhero that saves roast beef is it both i have no idea but here's what meat journeys ai created based on that phrase and i have to say well played robot there's the fantastic roast beef superhero logo the mild-mannered roast beef hero with legs for arms and no lower body the headless roast beef hero holding a roast beef cane of justice and the helmet-wearing america-shaped cut of roast beef that appears to have taken a on the floor all four of those images are now my favorite roast beef superheroes marvel if you're watching there's phase five of the mcu right there it is genuinely fascinating not just to see images come to life in seconds but also to see how ai interprets these prompts poking around on mid journeys discord you'll discover things like this delightful frog bumblebee or judy dench fighting a centaur on the moon or what the program decided to do when fed the two-word prompt goose pilates which is i think we could all agree excellent you you can kill an afternoon searching to see what images others have requested which is what one member of our staff julia was doing when she made a fateful decision because she started putting in the names of various late-night hosts like james corden which brought back eight search results including james corden flies a plane and trial cam footage of james corden eating teeth and i know it can be hard to see him do that but there is one where he eats teeth with paul mccartney and it's actually very moving interestingly for most hosts there weren't a ton of results there were 14 for conan o'brien eight for colbert a three apiece for trevor noah and jimmy kimmel but here's where things got a little bit weird because then she put in my name and would you like to know how many results came back it's 493. and look on one level i get it i get it i do have a face that's already basically a boardwalk caricature i've got what carnival artists refer to as a real softball but nearly 500 results is a lot and it's not just the volume it's the specificity of the props there's john oliver in victorian era dress john oliver bursting out of a can of del monte green beans john oliver as an amoeba viewed through a microscope and john oliver commanding a hoard of elves to charge a potato all of these deserve to be in the louvre and at least one of them depicts an actual nightmare that i've had but there is one mid-journey user who's gone above and beyond a user by the name of post poop zoomies hello i won't pretend i loved saying those words but i think you'll agree that their ai creations are simply mind-blowing for instance there's john oliver as mona lisa which is striking though i believe maybe enough to be prosecuted as a felony in italy then there's john oliver is a perfect egg and john oliver is an egg with a bad attitude so don't mess with him or he will do to you what he did to humpty dumpty that's that's just one of many images where post poop zoomies seemingly tried to tell a whole story there's also john oliver at brunch with the girls and he's laughing because debbie told a funny joke which is remarkable because that's exactly what i look like when debbie does that or how about john oliver as a cowboy with a cowboy hat so large nobody has any respect for him which is really amazing because i could not tell you what size a cowboy hat has to be to instantly dissolve respect but that computer was able to calculate the dimensions perfectly and honestly bravo to you post poop zoomies i did have some questions about your process until i found this post from you which read simply i got high and blasted a million john olivers which definitely tracks but the true masterpiece on mid-journey is a long series of images i like to think of as the cabbage saga created by post-poop zoobees and another account margaret the story starts as all good stories do humbly with the image of john oliver is very confused in a cabbage field from there we move to john oliver growing cabbages in his apartment a hobby that evidently takes off for me given that we then see john oliver gives a ted talk on proper cabbage growth techniques which to be fair is still better than this real ted talk called how to tie your shoes then things start escalating because next we see john oliver throwing a cabbage and john oliver throwing a cabbage at a child for some reason and then in a big plot twist john oliver having dinner with a cabbage because he realizes maybe he'd judge them too soon that's a subtext that comes out of absolutely nowhere but it makes much more sense when you see john oliver looking lovingly at his cabbage having realized that he's falling in love followed by does john oliver love the cabbage yes yes he does and from there it's on to inevitably john oliver and the cabbage are getting married and interestingly interestingly it's at this point that the ai for the very first time seems to struggle with a prompt because that seems to be an image of me getting married to myself and the cabbage somehow being there as a witness but that's not what this story is about is it and i don't know what this computer is struggling to understand about the very simple concept of a man wanting to marry a cabbage it's not complicated computer this is why we're not letting you drive cars yet but the story is still not done and i have to warn you it takes something of a darker turn because the next thing we see is and this honestly made me gasp out loud oh no john oliver dreamed about being hungry and ate the cabbage in his sleep which is absolutely mortifying and understandably followed by john oliver crying into half a cabbage and john oliver will never be happy again his heart is broken but his stomach is full which is both tragic and somehow beautiful and if you're wondering what i did with the other half of the cabbage that is made clear by the final prompt which is simply john oliver pouring cabbage ashes into the ocean and what a journey we all just went on this story is a true testament to life's highs and lows showing how poetic lovely and weirdly full of cabbage life can be there's really only one thing that bothers me about all of this though and that is that wedding image because take a closer look at it right now the ai program nailed all of its other assignments but this image the key image in the whole story the pivot point to the tragedy that follows was somehow beyond its capabilities which seems like such a shame this story deserved better post poop zoomies deserved better as did margaret we all deserve better and that's when it hit me there's really only one way to remedy the fact that we were cheated out of that key wedding image and that is for me to provide it for you now but not not through graphics no that would be far too easy i'm thinking more of a full vibrant tableau that brings it that brings it all home so please come with me because i'm about to marry a cabbage [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you john take this cabbage to be your lawfully wedded spouse to have and to hold from this day forward in sickness and in health until death do you part i do steve and do you promise not to eat it in your sleep i'll try my very best but i think we both know what might well happen okay by the powers vested in me i now pronounce you man and cabbage you may kiss the cabbage [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] no no no no not again you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 4,610,880

Keywords:

Id: 3YNku5FKWjw

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Gorilla_hitting_keys]

Classic Last Week Tonight: The more expensive the set looks, the funnier the joke is.

[u/DANNYonPC]

I didnt expect a wholesome video about AI

I expected a story on how it broke democracy or other bad things

[u/bisonrbig]

What I was most definitely not expecting to see this morning: John Oliver marrying a cabbage officiated by Steve Buscemi.

[u/escape00000]

Did they just re-upload it or something?

[u/Rehd]

Million dollar flip book idea

[u/jmpman54]

This is gold