AI Tried to Make Harry Potter Into Anime and Failed Hilariously
Was it AI or just a dreadful filter?
AI is everywhere these days. It’s hard to avoid it in any part of life, and it was only a matter of time before we saw it making inroads into the entertainment industry.
But when a bunch of AI pros/enthusiasts tried to turn Harry Potter into an anime, it’s hard to imagine how it could have gone much worse.
It’s what fans want
Possibly the worst part of this story is that the Harry Potter anime is something fans of JK Rowling’s work have actually been asking for in recent years. On the face of it, the images look ok. Certainly, they reflect what you’d imagine Harry Potter anime to look like.
Each of the characters is identifiable and the images have the classic anime look (which is very similar to 70s cartoon Battle of the Planets – or is it just me who sees that?)
Not quite there yet
But there’s a problem. Because Harry Potter manga would work, what with it being based on still images. Anime, of course, requires characters to move. And for AI to replicate the character’s movements, it has to learn how movement works in anime. And it clearly can’t do that yet.
This attempt (and I’m calling it here, this was not done by pros) hasn’t so much created Harry Potter anime so much as it’s used a filter to create anime from the characters. The result of this poor attempt is that every character’s mouth moves in a way that makes it look like they’ve had a tooth out and the anesthetic is still wearing off.
They couldn’t even get the faces right
The character’s facial features also change as the footage moves between frames giving the whole thing a sort of otherworldly aesthetic that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Beatles video from their ‘experimental’ stage.
In fact, for a technology that is at the forefront of innovation, this particular use of AI has a very 70s appearance altogether. So much so, that it’s actually not even as good as Battle of the Planets from 1978.
No doubt the day will come when AI is able to produce Harry Potter anime. But for the time being, it has a lot of learning to do. So, maybe we just wait for the live-action TV show of Harry Potter for now.
Source: Reddit.