People Are Using AI to Turn Memes Into Videos and It’s Low Key Terrifying

Freaky!

Yeah 360

An AI video tool called Dream Machine, developed by the company Luma Labs, transforms still images into moving pictures. As it should, the internet quickly started using the AI to turn famous memes into videos — and a fair share of the results are nothing short of nightmare fuel.

Behold, for example, the first clip in this compilation of horrors, as shared to the subreddit r/aivideo. It’s an AI-zombified video created from the famous “disaster girl” meme, in which a young girl is seen giving the camera a smirking, chaotic look as a house burns behind her.

In the original meme, several firefighters are pictured in the background. In the AI’s version, these firefighters wriggle around, morphing and moving with a dreamlike sensibility as they pitter-patter about the disaster scene. One of them then approaches — but, horrifyingly, her face changes several times as she draws nearer. The AI then settles on the face of yet another young child, who then turns and runs toward the fire. (There’s also a very random man who suddenly appears in the side of the screen, and it looks sort of like the two girl characters actually morph together before sprinting into the flames.)

Then over on Twitter, there’s this AI-spun clip of the “distracted girlfriend” meme (a version of the infamous “distracted boyfriend” image.) In the AI’s retelling, the girlfriend’s head does a horror movie-esque 360 turn. There’s also something very haunting that happens with her hand.

The Fifth Beatle

While some of these AI clips might keep us up at night, other AI-animated images that gained traction online were decidedly more mundane. And in some cases, netizens wondered why someone would need to use AI in the first place.

“Burning down the Amazon to harness the magic of AI in order to finally find out what Captain Picard from Star Trek looked like,” one X user — referring to generative AI’s massive environmental footprint — quipped in response to someone using AI to animate a meme of the “Star Trek” franchise’s Captain Picard, even though the meme was originally taken from… a video.

We’re also a little obsessed with this AI animation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover art, which inexplicably adds a fifth band member to the iconic quartet.

Anyway. These are freaky as all get out, but we have to admit that they do make us laugh — as long as they’re not making us shudder in fear, of course. And on that note, we’ll leave you with another favorite: an animated “Zuckerberg is watching” meme, which we hope will live rent-free in your head like it is in ours.

More on generative AI: The CEO of Anthropic Has a Framed Picture of a Giant Robot Destroying a City on His Wall