I Used An AI Bot To Generate Images For The Day Today’s Newspaper Headlines. Here Are The Results.
For the uninitiated, The Day Today was a 1994 BBC2 comedy series parodying contemporary news coverage, a programme that has remained resident in the collective consciousness of all British comedy fans ever since. A TV adaptation of Radio 4 series On The Hour, The Day Today would provide terrestrial TV debuts for Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, amongst others.
One regular part of the series — alongside pitch-perfect spoofs of news, current affairs, soaps, fly-on-the-wall documentaries, MTV Europe, CNN, public information films, archive television and pre-empting The Office by seven years — were ‘a look at tomorrow’s headlines’ — a smattering of nonsensical headlines purportedly from early editions of the following morning’s newspapers. A little bit of dark whimsy to see us into the end credits, many of which would lodge themselves into cranial crannies of viewers for years to come.
Meanwhile, back in The End Times (or 2021 if you prefer), Pixray is a lovely little web project (via Github) that attempts to turn anything you type into a text field into a neural network-generated image. Often with no little success:
So, it was a little bit too tempting to see what Pixray would make of make of sentences that only had a fleeting resemblance to coherence a little over 27 years ago. And that’s what I did. I posted the results on Twitter, but here’s an omnibus edition of those pictures, all in one place.
WARNING: Maybe don’t read the rest of the entry whilst eating.
EPISODE ONE: Main News Attack
“Aristocrat’s Dung Saves Village From Flood.” — Daily Mail
Yep, Pixray does what we’ve asked for here. It’s a village. There’s a flood going on. There’s an approximation of a human dressed in kind of aristocratic robes. And there is very much dung present.
“Drowned Italian Wins Eurovision.” — Today
Another good one. That definitely looks like a Eurovision stage, it’s flooded (and there’s a rat going for a swim), and while it’s hard to determine the nationality of the drownee, they may very well be Italian.
“Lord Mayor’s Pirhouette in Fire Chief Decapitation” — Daily Express
Well, a lot to unpack there. Should probably be grateful it’s only a picture and not a video.
“Robin Cock” — The Sun
Ever keen to uncover the BRUTAL TRUTH BEHIND THE HEADLINES, I did indeed type this into Pixray. It generated an image. I looked at the image. And I may never be the same again. No, I’m not going to share it. You’re welcome.
“‘Feel My Nose and Put My Specs There’, Roars Drunken Major” — Daily Star
Remember that bit about it being a bad idea to be eating while looking at these? Last warning. Leave now.
EPISODE TWO: The Big Report
“Arafat ablaze in kerosene oyster hell” — The Daily Telegraph
Well, not going to argue with that. Impressive work, Pixray.
“Peter Collins is not a man.” — Today
The result — well, I don’t know who Peter Collins is (or was), but the generated image suggests they’re Irish. (Of course, Peter Collins could just still be a boy.)
“‘Eating turkey at Christmas is like nailing an egg to the cross’ says Bishop.” — The Catholic Herald.
Your guess is as good as mine, here.
“Russia elects Cobweb.” — The New Zealand Prendergast
One of the most memorable headlines, and an image that works brilliantly. Top marks.
EPISODE THREE: Meganews
“‘You Could Blow Notes Across The Hole In His Head’ says Sinatra doc” — Today
A lot of appearances for long-forgotten tabloid Today, aren’t there? This image, well, might not look too much like Sinatra, but you certainly can’t deny that it’s Something Stupid. A-ha-ha-oh.
“‘Boiled Dog could do Maths’, claims experimenter.” — The Herald Tribune.
Yikes, eh? But what an image this generates. Top marks for the maths, but a few points taken away for the inclusion of a frankly unsettling sausage.
“Elastic song strangles Hucknall.” — The European
If only, eh 90s pop kids? Interesting to see that the AI has picked out pretty much what Hucknall looks like now, I assume. BONUS FACT: Mick Hucknall is one of a tiny handful of genuine celebrities to appear in an Alan Partridge vehicle (at the end of Knowing Me, Knowing Yule).
“Portillo’s face felt like guts says girl” — The Independent
Again. Your dinner. Look away. Immediately. What’s that dog doing there?
EPISODE FOUR: Stretchcast
No newspaper headlines in the episode.
But! We do have a summary of the weather from head meteorologist Sylvester Stewart.
And here’s what we get from that.
EPISODE FIVE: Magnifevent
“Plastic Surgeon Arrested With Stash of Stolen Mouths” — Daily Express.
Impressive and disturbing work from the neural network, there.
“Police chief crushes lizard with whistle.” — Hull Aphrodite
That poor, poor lizard.
“Child Made of Paint Wins By-Election” — Daily Mail
A good day for children!
“Crazed Wolves in store a bad mistake admit Mothercare.” — The Times and The Sun
A bad day for children.
(Note how this is the only screencap where you can see the printed headline pasted into a genuine newspaper. Shows how good a job the props team did on the front pages — as any keen-eyed viewer will know, when TV usually attempts to ‘do’ fictional newspaper front pages, they don’t look remotely convincing.)
EPISODE SIX: “Newsatrolysis” / “Factgasm”
“Bank of England recovers from swollen chairman unusualness” — The Independent
A head one to decipher, to be sure. Here’s the result.
“Simon Rattle lost in cress” — The Telegraph
Again, not sure if Simon Rattle is even real, but he’s certainly lost in this cress.
“Lassoed Bat Wins Booker.” — Daily Mail
Another difficult one to decipher, especially as the word ‘Booker’ would be hard for machine learning to understand in context. Here’s the result:
“Fleetwood Mac buried in Dog Avalanche” — Daily Mirror.
AI bot — you’ve redeemed yourself. 9/10.
“Old Woman killed by Little Glass Planet” — Today
To round things off, a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in Doctor Who. That poor lady.
In all, a good showing by the lad Pixray — here’s where it lives if you want to do your own creations/nightmare fuel: https://t.co/DHecohScpW. All the Day Today headlines are within this post in text form, so if anyone wants to try and generate the same using the tool’s Pixel or Tile modes, copy-paste away.
In summary though, those were the headlines. And by God, you now probably wish they weren’t.
