The internet loves a good horror story, and so does Hollywood. We've already seen creepypastas like Slender Man, Ben Drowned, and Momo all get their own movie adaptations. Syfy released four seasons of Channel Zero which was an anthology of creepypastas, while season 3 of American Horror Stories had an episode based on The Backrooms.
As artificial intelligence continues to gain prominence, it's easier than ever to create your own creepypasta, with someone writing a creepypasta in ChatGPT and it coming to life sounding like one of its own.
Sounding like a modern creepypasta, one artist claims to have found the terrifying face of a woman who's haunting the internet. What's even worse is that AI apparently created her all on its own.
First appearing in April 2022, Loab (pronounced 'lobe') can be traced back to an X user called Supercomposite. Steph Maj Swanson is a Sweden-based artist who was reportedly messing around with text-to-image generators and trying out negative prompts. If you use a negative prompt, machine learning algorithms are supposed to find the exact opposite of it.
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When testing out the prompt 'Brando::-1', Swanson assumed she’d get the opposite of Marlon Brando. Instead, it was a bizarre skyline logo with lettering that spelled out 'DIGITA PNTICS.'
Taking this prompt, Swanson then tried to find the opposite of the logo, which is how Loab was born.
Posting on X, she explained: "I received these off-putting images, all of the same devastated-looking older woman with defined triangles of rosacea(?) on her cheeks."
Instead of leaving Loab in the depths of the internet, Swanson inadvertently brought her to life by sharing her story with the world.
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Things got even creepier when Swanson combined Loab with a friend's artwork that depicted a Wes Anderson-inspired glass tunnel surrounded by angels. Something about Loab pulls images to the horrifying, and no matter what prompt Swanson entered, Loab kept reappearing in increasingly macabre ways. Some were so gruesome, she decided not to publicly share them.
Swanson added an ominous disclaimer: "I was ripping Loab apart and putting her back together. She is an emergent island in the latent space that we don't know how to locate with text queries. She finds everyone sooner or later. You just have to know where to look."
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AI has come a long way from Alan Turing's pioneering work in the 1950s, with Loab being dubbed the world's first 'AI art cryptid.' Most worryingly, Swanson says Loab 'haunts every image that she touches,' and as obscure as the prompts get, you can still tell it's her under there.
From Loab merged with Kirby to Loab celebrating Pride, every image takes her in an unnerving direction. With her own Wikipedia page, it's surely only a matter of time until Loab gets a movie adaptation. Momo will never see her coming.