For about a week, a new trend has risen in popularity in the TikTok community.
From the start, TikTok was a platform where creativity bloomed, and the current craze for “80s AI yearbook photos” trend has gone an extra step in taking nostalgia to unprecedented levels. Generative AI has made it possible for people once more to go to a decade associated with neon lights, perm, and large jackets. Even more, for people to experience fashion trends that they were never a part of.
The app that enables its users to do this is called Epik. They charge their users $5 dollars to create 60 yearbook pictures that are delivered in 24 hours, or $10 dollars if they want express delivery in 2 hours. So far almost every video that has been posted about the process of making the photos shows a queue of 1.000+ which goes to show that this is likely to be extremely profitable for the creators of this AI/app.
Generative AI continues to prove its ability in producing engaging and entertainment-rich experiences. In a matter of minutes, these sophisticated AI algorithms take a picture of your face and flawlessly put it into ‘80s yearbook photo frames that contain typical hair-cuts, fashionable styles and environment typical for this period. This is not just an ordinary filter, but rather a kind of time machine for photographing oneself.
This is in line with some of the major points we have made while studying this course. This highlights the possibility of using AI for purposes of entertainment and creativity. As a result, generative AI is not only about data analysis, but it can also become a means of artistic expression, converting ordinary selfies into notable creations of digital art.
This TikTok trend makes us think about the future of Generative AI in entertainment. Are we going to witness other movements where AI is used to revive ancient periods in time by methods that will be invented in the future? What implications could this have on our perceptions of nostalgia and cultural references?
To sum up, TikTok’s ‘80s yearbook photo trend is an enjoyable take on the use of AI in creating entertaining, but nostalgia driven content. This is an important message for our time. It means technology connects us both with the past and present so that we can investigate and appreciate different aspects of history.
It is an interesting topic you share here. It is hard to fathom how rapid trends can cause thousands of people to do the exact same, which will cause even more users to see, which will increase the trend even more! Your elaboration on how AI can serve users in a positive way makes it sound really fun. But what are your thoughts about AI advancing faster than we can control it? The thousands of varying user inputs make the generative AI functionalities even better than they already are, but what happens with al this this data? It would be interesting to see a second blog diving into the consequences faced by using all these AI functionalities.