"The first episode, which is three and a half minutes long, sees George Washington raise a new flag over Prospect Hill, in defiance of King George III. It is the moment, according to the video's description, that rebellion becomes resolve. And if that dollop of ChatGPT-sounding sloganeering terrifies the life out of you, wait until you actually watch the thing. It is, as you might expect, as ugly as sin."
"It's the sort of thing that looks like it was shooting for photorealism, but then either chickened out or blew up along the way. In the very first shot, King George's hair looks like someone melted down and hardened a plastic badger. And this is a shame because, like so much generative AI at the moment, an awful lot of the episode consists of shots where we see the characters from behind."
"Because, good lord, the faces. Since the revolutionary war was largely initiated by older men, On This Day is filled with the wrinkled almost-faces of several well-known figures. And it is truly disconcerting to see, not only because they all have the uncanny dead eyes of people ripped out of The Polar Express, but because the wrinkles keep shifting in colour and depth. It's an effect that makes"
Time's YouTube channel hosts On This Day 1776, a short-video series depicting the American Revolutionary War. The production was handled by Darren Aronofsky's Primordial Soup and used generative AI to create the visuals. The opening episode portrays George Washington raising a new flag at Prospect Hill, framed as a turning point from rebellion to resolve. The visual approach aims for photorealism but often fails, producing plasticky hair, awkward compositing, and many rear-facing shots that hide facial flaws. AI-rendered faces display dead, uncanny eyes and shifting wrinkles in colour and depth, creating disconcerting, unstable imagery that undermines emotional impact.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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