AI is insinuating itself into many online visual tools, pushing relentlessly past the high-tech world into more "mundane" applications. (Some may already have heard its parallel incursion into pop music, where the vocals from classic rock bands such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys are being appropriated and trained algorithmically to create "new," previously non-existent works.

HERE is another variant of that: still images/screen captures from films are put through AI filtering programs and altered into images that mimic the visual tonality of film noir. YouTuber Booker Byrd is dallying with AI in such a manner, and the above link shows what happens when a set of images from Tarantino's PULP FICTION are morphed to intersect with the past.

I find it arresting, but more than a little creepy in how it alters and somehow seems to undermine the humanity in many of the faces it's applied to. I've played around with a few AI-driven visual smoothing tools that have emerged in the past several years, with a lesser but still somewhat similar result. There seems to be a threshold where the smoothing process goes one step too far--and, to my eye at least, there's a noticeable amount of that in these altered PULP FICTION images.

It is artfully presented, though the music seems a bit out of place for what it purports to being aiming for--which leaves us in a timewarp from which we may not be able to escape...

Feel free to share your impressions!