This AI Wes Anderson version of The Simpsons is all wrong

While mass access to AI art generation is still relatively new, we've already seen more than enough AI-generated parodies of Wes Anderson to last a lifetime. Wes Anderson's Lord of the Rings, The Shining, The Avengers... name any film or series, and someone's probably had an AI model generate a Wes Anderson-fied version of it. 

The latest proposal made with one of the best AI art generators imagines what a live-action version of The Simpsons might look like if Wes Anderson directed it. Only it looks nothing like either The Simpsons or Wes Anderson.

The movie really nobody was asking for in the hopefully not so near future - Live action Simpson movie directed by Wes Anderson from r/midjourney

Social media's favourite film director to imitate, parody and desecrate must be getting fed up. One can imagine he might have been initially touched by the 'accidentally Wes Anderson' trend on Instagram, but by the time we reached TikTok videos and AI-generated work claiming to be in his style, he must have started wondering if there's a way he can prohibit people from using his name.

Posting on Reddit, Quills86 says they used ChatGPT to write the prompts and Midjourney to generate the imagery for a Wes Anderson adaptation of The Simpsons. But like many similar parodies, any resemblance to the work of the American filmmaker is reduced to the use of certain actors, saturated colours and a lot of listless staring at the camera, as if that's what makes Anderson's style. The outfits are garish and the shots feel completely vacant. The resemblance to The Simpsons is also fairly tenuous.

We've seen some bizarre AI Simpsons generations before. Early experiments were amusing – impressive even, since they demonstrated a powerful new technology. But now that the novelty of AI art generators is starting to wear off, and the pastiches have quickly become tired. There has been serious talk of a live-action adaptation of The Simpsons in the past, or at least an offshoot based on a minor character. I just studios don't get any ideas from AI pastiches.

See our pick of the best AI art tutorials if you're wondering how to use the new generative AI tools.