Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be

A trend going on on TikTok, Pinterest and other platforms of the like is posting images with certain aesthetics made by AI. Think vibrant (imaginative or realistic) interior designs, landscapes, or even virtual influencers, as well as images with the distinctive look & feel of iconic historic eras, such as the 80s and 90s.

Now one particular trend I saw catching on recently, are images recreating an insight in the office life of those eras. Some of these images are quite good and I had to swipe a little to confirm they were indeed created by AI.

Browsing through the comments on such posts reveals that a great part of its audience is often not even aware that these are AI - if not specifically stated by OP. In fact, sometimes they even carry a caption as if it was real footage (”1983 NYC office life”).

One of my favourite things to do is looking at beautiful things, and imaginative (AI) images are certainly among that. I do create them myself as well.

But I can’t help but wonder:

🙏 Is it purely a way of honouring those iconic times?

👎 Or are they sort of diluting the ‘real’ records and, with that, our true sense of what life was like back then?

🤙 Or do we romanticize the past anyway, and is this a lovely tool to deepen those feelings (and the data they work with were great but probably curated to begin with)?

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And for fun, here’s a couple characters that never existed in the 80s