There is a good amount of population convinced that artificial intelligence will either replace us all, or even worse, take over the world. But when I see things like this, it gives me comfort that we still have a little bit of a grace period for AI to be perfected and work out the kinks.
Technology has always been intended to make our lives easier, and with the introduction of AI, all you have to do is give it a simple command and watch it go to work.
That’s exactly what Mississippi State Football did when it came time to put together their SEC conference schedule release, and the interesting result is proof that though artificial intelligence is impressive already, it still has a ways to go.
It appears that the “Hail State” social media account was going for a parody of The Office, and the video begins with another employee asking Mississippi State’s graphic designer John Swinney how the 2024 SEC opponent release graphic is coming along.
With the premise being that this question came as a surprise to him, Swinney panics, and looking into the camera says:
“Oh boy, I’m gonna have to use AI for this.”
The rest of the video goes through the process of using artificial intelligence to create opposing teams’ graphics for the SEC schedule release poster. Things start out relatively mundane at first, but things get a little disturbing a couple of tries in.
Swinney starts with the home SEC opponents, starting with Arkansas. The artificial intelligence does a decent job with their mascot, bringing to life a disproportional maroon colored razorback (woo pig sooie) with the legs of a padded-up football player. At least it got the color and the pig right.
The graphic designer then types in “Home: Florida” which creates an odd looking blue and orange gator. Again, props to AI, because it got the school colors and the mascot correct. It ends up going three for three with the next one being a Missouri Tiger (even though it’s appearance is pretty odd as well).
Then things really go off the rails with the rest of them. To save some time, I’ll quickly go through the remaining creations in the list below:
-The Texas A&M Aggies isn’t even close. The figure that pops up for it is a hand doing a thumbs up with legs.
-Ole Miss ends up being a weird looking shark, when their official mascot is supposed to be a “rebel.”
-Tennessee just shows up as an orange (as in the fruit), which looks a lot closer to Syracuse’s mascot. It did pull off the checkerboard pants though.
-It sort of gets back on track with Texas, revealing an orange Longhorn C0w with suspenders (nice aesthetic touch).
-The AI finishes up with the Georgia Bulldogs, which turns out okay, despite it appearing to not have any pants like the rest of them do.
The hilarious video can be seen below, which shows the 2024 SEC opponents graphic in its entirety at the end:
“We turned to the emerging powers of AI for our 2024 SEC opponent release. The results were… interesting.”
And if you wanted to take a little bit longer of a look at the graphic poster, the nightmarish artificial intelligence produced image can be studied below:
More info: https://t.co/PhFb9so8HT pic.twitter.com/zaDrbuZtaI
ā Mississippi State Football (@HailStateFB) June 15, 2023
AI, if you are listening/reading (and I know you are), you aren’t taking over just yet.
I’ll give you credit though, this did give me a pretty good laugh…
