Image-generating AI’s picture of “Final Fantasy VII Cloud” is so wrong, yet so right

22:13 cherishe 0 Comments

Simultaneously looks exactly and nothing like the Final Fantasy hero.

Perhaps there’s no greater sign of Final Fantasy VII’s success than the way no one really seems to think it’s weird that the main character’s name is Cloud. That wasn’t always the case, as initially some people assumed that the character’s name, rendered as “Kuraudo” in the Japanese version of the game, was meant to be “Claude,” seeing as how, you know, that’s an actual male name, as opposed to an atmospheric phenomenon of floating water vaper.

But nope, when it came time for an official Latin alphabet rendering, Square said his name was Cloud. And yeah, at the time it seemed weird, but the weirdness got washed away as fans played, and fell in love with, an industry-changing masterpiece of a game. Flash forward to the present day, and while some people may still crack jokes about the character’s personality or visual design, no one really snickers at his name, since “Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud” is a connection of words we’ve all gotten very used to hearing over the last 25 years.

So when Japanese Twitter user @DracoGideon user asked an online AI program to generate an image of “FF7 Cloud,” you’d think it’d come back with some pretty polished pictures of the swordsman, considering how many online example there are for it to use as references. And yes, the result he got back from AI program Midjourney will instantly have fans saying “Yep, that sure is a Final Fantasy VII Cloud,” even if the picture looks shockingly different from any of the character’s in-game models or official illustrations.

“I entered ‘FF7 Cloud,’ and it spat back a full-force gag picture,” tweets @DracoGideon.

So what happened? Well, in simplified terms, online AI image generators are sort of like a high-tech version of asking “What image comes to mind when you hear the words…” The program then scans the Internet for connections between those words and images, attempts to find common characteristics between examples, and then tries to use those similarities as the building blocks to create a new image.

Apparently Midjourney was able to isolate Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud, versus the other members of the game’s cast, with no problems. It looks like it got confused, though, when it also realized that there are non-Final Fantasy clouds too, and eventually decided to cover both bases by fusing a fluffy cumulus cloud with a spikey Cloud hairstyle.

▼ A second result

Commenters have reacted with:

“Yep, that’s Cloud-y, alright.”
“Betting that when it rains, that cloud drops Meteors.”
“Those Jenova cells are really something, aren’t they?”
“Looks more like a Chocobo cloud to me.”
“Man, that AI has a GREAT sense of humor.”

Midjourney actually seems to have a bit of a thing for creating images of clouds, which might explain why it leaned so heavily on the cloud-in-the-sky aspect instead of the Cloud-in-Final-Fantasy side of the interpretation.

In the program’s defense, though, the image it gave @DracoGideon does have a dramatic, fantasy-feeling atmosphere to it, and one commenter proved it actually doesn’t look half-bad with the Final Fantasy VII logo pasted over it.

And really, after seeing it, there’s no way we can say that isn’t a picture of a Final Fantasy VII C/cloud.

Source: Twitter/@DracoGideon
Featured image: Twitter/@DracoGideon
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