Graphics showing fictional scenes from the TV series “Breaking Bad” in an anime style are shown on TikTok. No artist drew the pictures, they come from an artificial intelligence.
There is currently a hype about artificial intelligence (AI), which was mainly triggered by ChatGPT, which can generate amazingly human-looking texts and has a more or less suitable answer to almost every question.
But AIs who try their hand at painting or graphic design are also very popular. Pictures are currently being celebrated on TikTok that show scenes from “Breaking Bad” in the style of an anime. It was posted by the user Cyborgism, who has previously published similar AI experiments. Among other things, he had animals portrayed as Japanese samurai.
Whether Cyborgism itself can draw more than stick figures doesn’t matter. For the implementation of his “works” he uses the AI Midjourney, which specializes in comics. Like her anime portrayal of Walter White aka “Heisenberg”, Jesse Pinkerton
In fact, the results are mixed. Midjourney seems to be able to transform young characters like Jesse (Aaron Paul) much better than older protagonists like Walter (Bryan Cranston) or Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks).
Even if there is a resemblance, the animes do not reflect the characters. Sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), for example, looks like a guy who played high school football, and diabolical fast-food mobster Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) like one of his disaffected employees.
Anyone who would like to try out what is possible with Midjourney can do so with a beta access. You can start 25 trials for free, with communication going through a Discord chat server. That means you interact with bots. You start with a description and then you can gradually refine the first four images obtained.