Everyone, Meet Loab – The Internet’s First Terrifying AI Cryptid

Mysteries and the internet have gone in hand since its usage was popularized in the mid to late 90s. Now as the use of artificial intelligence to create new and unique pieces of art has grown over the past few months, a new mystery has emerged and looks to be made from the stuff of nightmares.

In a lengthy Twitter thread, an AI art creator seemly has stumbled on a recurring and creepy image of a female humanoid now dubbed Loab. According to Twitter user, Supercompossite, the image originally came to life when they wanted to create an image of what an AI program would see as the opposite of legendary Holloween actor, Marlon Brando.

The word prompt used was ‘Brando::-1’ which in turn created an odd image of a logo depicting a skyline with the letters ‘DIGITA PNTICS’. The user became more curious and decided to see what would happen if he fed the same program a text prompt of the letters found in the skyline logo. What it returned were what the user claims as the first images of Loab.

I wondered: is the opposite of that logo, in turn, going to be a picture of Marlon Brando? I typed “DIGITA PNTICS skyline logo::-1” as a prompt. I received these off-putting images, all of the same devastated-looking older woman with defined triangles of rosacea(?) on her cheeks. pic.twitter.com/tnhBzWPHYf

— Supercomposite (@supercomposite) September 6, 2022

What was created was a distorted female humanoid figure who, upon first glance, can send chills up a viewer’s spine. According to Supercompisit’s thread, the story only gets stranger. The user decided to take another step forward by combining one of the images of the newly dubbed “Loab” with another made by a friend. The image used was one that depicted a glass tunnel surrounded by angels.

The new original work created by combining Loab with their friend’s own image seems to come from the mind of the late great H.R. Giger – for those unfamiliar, the creator of the Alien from the Alien movie franchise. As the user continued to use the Loab images, they claim that for some reason, the AI held on to a theme of odd, disturbing, and grotesque.

This could be seen in the thread as the user fed more images of Loab what was produced held to themes of the horrific. Though it’s unsure how true this story is, it wouldn’t be the first time an AI program was fed a prompt and produced unsettling imagery. A few months ago, the DALL-E program was prompted with what it considers the final selfie taken by humans on Earth. The results were quite disturbing, to say the least.

With AI-powered art tools becoming more and more popular, one has to wonder what could be created next, and how this could influence both the art world and the world of artificial intelligence.