Meet Loab, the AI Art Woman Haunting the Internet

AI can make art now. Tools like Dall-E Mini, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion allow users to write a prompt for the artificial intelligence program to interpret into an image. Within a few minutes, an idea for a picture can appear on a computer screen. The AI uses an algorithm to generate images based on real art created by human beings. Twitter user Supercomposite used such a program when creating “Loab,” the face of a woman who “haunts every image she touches.”

An AI-Generated Horror Story

The introduction of AI art has led to a heated debate about the effects of this new technology on artists. For instance, in September, a photo generated by Midjourney won a Colorado art competition. [1] Plus, the algorithm used in these tools rely on real art, which opens a can of worms of ethical issues and copyright infringements. Although Dall-E came with a warning that the model may replace artists, photographers, photo editors, and designers, this hasn’t come true as of yet. But it’s too early to tell if AI will lead to a dystopia of displaced artists. [2]

However, AI art has already created a horror story. Fans of creepypasta (horror legends shared around the Internet) have a new spooky subject: Loab. Musician and artist Supercomposite inadvertently created Loab after writing a negative prompt, which tells the AI tool to make something the opposite of the prompt. Of course, this welcomes much curiosity. What is the opposite of something, like a face, according to AI? Feet? The back of the head? Or something entirely nonhuman? That is up for the program’s coding to determine. 

Supercomposite experimented with this negative input, using the prompt “Brando::-1,” to see what the AI would decide was the opposite of Marlon Brando, an actor famous for The Godfather. Surprisingly, the AI gave her a vague image of a skyline with the words “DIGITA PNTICS” written across it. Supercomposite then used this image (“DIGITA PNTICS skyline logo::-1”) as a negative prompt; perhaps the AI would decide its opposite is Marlon Brando and come full circle. [3]

Instead, the AI gave her a picture of a woman with long hair and high cheekbones. Supercomposite called it “Loab” since some of the generated images included text that seemed to spell that name. Supercomposite submitted the prompt several times, and the AI continued to provide the image of an older woman with a haunted look.

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What Makes Loab Scary?

But here is the creepiest part. Supercomposite prompted the AI to create other images using Loab as the base. So the AI produced many images of Loab, each one more gory and disturbing than the last. Supercomposite wrote on Twitter that Loab “haunts every image she touches” as the AI chooses to match her image with only gruesome and macabre scenarios. It’s unusual that a prompt would yield such consistent results. 

Supercomposite speculates on why this might be the case. “I guess because she is very far away from a lot of concepts and so it’s hard to get out of her little spooky area in latent space. The cultural question, of why the data put this woman way out there at the edge of the latent space, near gory horror imagery, is another thing to think about,” she said. 

It’s impossible to trace the AI’s “train of thought,” but these results may say something about the algorithm programmed into it. Critics ask the question of why the AI art generator associated the original Loab, the face of a potentially real older woman, with horrific imagery. One user accused Supercomposite of “stigmatizing disability,” and another user noted how this association may be a reflection of how our society mistreats and villainizes those who are considered unattractive. 

Supercomposite supports the criticism of the AI. “Clearly it’s made an association it shouldn’t have,” she states. “…I also think some people are being very stupid and making fun of how Loab looks in the first pictures, like that’s the horror show. That’s not the point at all, and it bums me out. She looks like an average person to me, just really sad.” [4]

“She finds everyone sooner or later.”

Many Twitter users enjoy the creepypasta-like nature of the story; however, some are more skeptical of the authenticity of the story. For one thing, Supercomposite doesn’t reveal which AI generator she used since she did “not want to advertise” it and “start some kind of viral trend of people making gory stuff with the tools I’ve used.” People also question the prompts Supercomposite used, since they were not all disclosed. Perhaps the prompts told the AI to produce specifically scary imagery. It’s also possible that the AI produced more tame and cheerful images, but Supercomposite didn’t add them to the Twitter thread.

However, the creator denies tampering with the results. “It’s a creepypasta since I embellished the creepiness but the process and the phenomena are totally accurately described in my thread,” Supercomposite said to CNET.  However, if someone wanted to recreated Loab with the same prompt, they couldn’t because “the software has changed so that the exact same technique is not possible, but you can work around it.” And people have, and Supercomposite has been retweeting their Loab-like images. [5]

“She finds everyone sooner or later,” Supercomposite wrote on Twitter. “You just have to know where to look.”

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