’90s yearbook AI-generated selfies are the internet’s new obsession
Users appear in the photos with a typical appearance of the time. The simulation is paid, but the app has millions of downloads.
After cinematic shifts in the style of directors like Wes Anderson, or other tropes that have spread, such as lists of the sexiest men in each country, there is no longer any doubt. AI is a good way to imagine the future, but it also allows nostalgic people to look into the past.
The newest trend is associated with the popular school yearbooks, a typical tradition in the United States. In these books, young people write letters to each other and leave eternal images of themselves throughout the school year. For this reason, it is very common to find photos of celebrities at this stage of their lives, before they became anonymous.
On social media, there are thousands of people using apps Like Epik for example, To create images that could be taken from a student yearbook, but in 90s style. Some join because they live in countries where such albums do not exist (very common in high schools and high schools in the US), while many others are simply fascinated by the aesthetics of that decade.
Since this style of photo began spreading across social media feeds in early September, the tool has become the most popular app in the App Store. Although it’s free, you have to pay to get these nostalgic images. Especially for those who actually studied in a North American school at this time.
For example, one Pink fan page mimicked what the singer would have looked like in a hypothetical yearbook from the 1990s, and in the photos the artist known for her short, shaved hair appears with all kinds of hairstyles of the time, from long and curly. Threads to the bangs we’d never associate with a “so what” performer.
However, anyone can try it. When you open Epik, you can select the AI Yearbook option and choose from various options, from the “Standard” for €5.99 (with images created within 24 hours) to the Express version for €9.99 (which takes just 2 hours). ). In both cases, 60 results are generated based on 8 to 12 images uploaded by the user.
“Most athletic student,” “best dressed,” or “most intelligent” are some of the photo categories obtained. As we saw in these yearbooks, where the titles were often accompanied by sentences and pictures of the students. But be careful, the app immediately warns you: “The results obtained through artificial intelligence may not be satisfactory.”
Click on the gallery to see more photos shared by app users.
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The new internet obsession.