Somebody Trained An AI To Create Pokémon And They Look Like Eldritch Horrors

We all love a bit of Pokémon don’t we? As a Pokémon obsessed child (not changed in adulthood), the (at the time) 493 monsters just weren’t enough, so I loved browsing the internet for fan made Fakemon. I even attempted to create some of my own, which I will not be sharing here. Anyway, it turns out we don’t actually need people to do that anymore, as the robot uprising is upon us, leaving terrifying Fakemon in their wake.

Buzzfeed Data Scientist Max Woolf (u/minimaxir) has released chaos upon the r/pokemon subreddit. “I trained an AI on all the official Pokémon portraits and had it generate its own” he wrote, sharing 192 delightful abominations, which range from looking slightly wrong, to straight up nightmare fuel.

“The AI used here is a fine-tuned ruDALL-E on the official Pokémon images,” he explained in the thread. “The way the AI works is that it generates the images from the top to the right in 8x8 chunks. It samples the next chunk somewhat randomly so the image is consistent, with the fine-tuning process teaching the AI to better recognise chunks of a Pokémon.”

With the phrase “chunks of a Pokémon” being used, it’s unsurprising how disturbing some of these look. I mean, I don’t know what this one is supposed to resemble, but those crimson eyes are staring into my soul and I don’t like it.

Max Woolf (u/minimaxir)

“This is what I imagine Eldritch beings to look like,” commented Reddit user the-dandy-man. “At first glance, it seems normal, but if you look too long or too hard you can tell that nothing really makes sense and body parts aren’t where they should be, and it drives you a little crazy trying to make it make sense in your head.” Squidguy83 added: “Usually with this AI art you have to squint to confuse it for a real human product, but it’s getting really advanced! Technology is incredible!”

With almost 200 of these monstrosities created, it wouldn’t be out of the way to create a whole new game with these guys populating the Pokédex. Although, it’d probably be closer to a Pokémon horror game than anything else, which now I’m thinking about it, sounds really cool actually? Take note, Game Freak.

Topics: Pokemon, Nintendo, Game Freak