The Dark Side of AI Creativity: Loab’s Impact on the Internet

Artificial Intelligence has generated a wide variety of images that have become immensely popular on the internet. The internet is full of numerous tools and applications that are widely accessible to users, allowing them to create any type of image by simply typing phrases or text. The rest of the work is taken care of by AI text-to-image generators. Moreover, in the recent past, in September 2022, an image depicting a corpse-like figure emerged all over the internet, invading various social media platforms.

The entire internet community was introduced to the AI-generated “woman” called “Loab” on September 6, 2022. However, users started bashing her and called her “a queer icon,” “demon,” “creepy,” “the first cryptid of latent space,” and many more. Users claimed the picture as “haunts every image she touches.”

The image was of a woman generated with the help of Artificial Intelligence. It was first discovered by a Swedish musician, Supercomposite. Supercomposite, on his Twitter handle, had been posting pictures of the woman on his Twitter, presently X.

Supercomposite’s tweet read, “I discovered this woman, who I call Loab, in April. The AI reproduced her more easily than most celebrities. Her presence is persistent, and she haunts every image she touches. CW: Take a seat. This is a true horror story and veers sharply macabre.”

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🧵: I discovered this woman, who I call Loab, in April. The AI reproduced her more easily than most celebrities. Her presence is persistent, and she haunts every image she touches. CW: Take a seat. This is a true horror story, and veers sharply macabre. pic.twitter.com/gmUlf6mZtk

— steph maj swanson (@supercomposite) September 6, 2022

According to internet community users, the image was created when Artificial Intelligence was decided to be thrown out from the system. A series of numerous negatively weighted prompts given to AI tools and applications have given birth to the image of Loab; hence, she was born. As per AI terminologies, a “negatively weighted prompt” orders AI to “create an image that is opposite of the prompt.”

Who/What is Loab?

Loab is a fictional character created by a singer, writer, and artist, Steph Maj Swanson (Twitter ID: Supercomposite). Swanson claimed to create the image for the first time in April 2022 with the help of a text-to-image AI model. In a Twitter thread, he clearly described how he created the image.

CNET describes Loab as “an amalgamation of human features in the shape of an older woman generated by an AI tool. It does not exist in reality and was created by Supercomposite using image prompts.” However, until now, the name of the AI tool or application that Supercomposite used is not known.”

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