AI Reimagined Avengers As Villains and You Should See What It Did to Groot
Despite his size, Groot, you might argue, always looked a little too friendly.
Sure, you'd like to think that having a humanoid tree creature alongside you in battle – or arriving to rescue you- would give you confidence. But maybe not so much if it's juxtaposed with a sort of gentle smile.
But when AI reimagined the Avengers and villains, Groot was suddenly a whole different animal.
Many of the Avengers are pretty much as you'd expect them to be. Hulk is, let's face it, a pretty grizzly-looking good guy.
Give him a darker touch and a slightly more menacing face and you've got yourself a bona fide bad guy that would strike fear into the hearts of any Avenger.
Captain America was another given the classic darker shade to his outfit that instantly marked him as having transferred to the other side.
It's like when Hulk Hogan swapped his trademark yellow and red for the black of the NWO and we all knew exactly what it meant for his character.
Others that took on a similar transformation were Iron Man, Spiderman, Thor, Falcon and Black Panther. All of them were reimagined by AI in a way that most of us would have probably expected them to be.
Groot, though, became a far more menacing beast altogether. A skeletal tree-like figure with flames behind him (he ain't afraid of no fire) and a face that exudes evil intent.
Captain America (whose AI version also sported different coloured eyes for added effect) and Starlord (perhaps the most dramatic transformation other than Groot) became characters you could see changing sides as part of their character arc.
Groot, on the other hand (and let's throw Hulk and Thor into this same category), was far from transferring to fight for good.
But both Thor and Hulk are characters who, had they been introduced to us as villains in their original look, we wouldn't have questioned it.
Groot could never have passed as a villain. Or at least, if he did it would be as something like the best-forgotten Absorbaloff played by Peter Kay in Dr. Who.
But you could never pass off the AI version of Groot as a comic villain. In fact, there is a real sense that this randomly generated character could have a place in the MCU.
And if the BBC are interested, there's also hope that AI might be able to come up with a far better version of the Absorbaloff for Ncuti Gatwa to take on.