A bizarre new AI app has gone viral, so we flooded it with metal icons. The results will haunt your dreams

AI generated images of Slipknot and Babymetal

(Image credit: Hugging Face)

Our Twitter feeds, once needlessly punctuated by those ubiquitous green and black tiled Wordle scores, have gradually been replaced by something altogether more terrifying: the fevered results of an AI image generator.

Thanks – if that's the right word – to the algorithm wizards at Hugging Face, "DALL·E mini is an AI model that generates images from any prompt you give". The app has gone viral, prompting social media to be flooded with images taken from its users' wildest dreams, but resulting in the stuff of sweaty, hallucinatory nightmares. This is what happens when you let technology get out of control, basically.

So, in the name of fearless investigative journalism, we gave the app a number of innocuous scenarios featuring some of our favourite metal icons. We even went out of our way to make these imagined situations as harmless as possible. Korn hanging out in a field of corn? How quaint! Babymetal doing a spot of wholesome reading? What could possibly go wrong? Slipknot eating ice creams? Surely that'd be funny, at least! Sadly, things went slightly awry.

We actually tried a longer list of candidates, too, but the resulting images were either confusing or simply too disturbing for the human brain to handle. But, we felt it important to present the results that did make the grade, regardless of the consequences. With that in mind, here's everything we ended up with.

The following images the DALL·E app coughed up were interesting, if glitchy, abstract nightmares appeal to your better nature.

Sleep well.

1. Korn in a cornfield

2. Lzzy Hale having a BBQ

An AI generated image of Lzzy Hale hosting a BBQ — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

3. Dani Filth buying vegetables

AI Dani Filth — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

4. Gene Simmons drinking milk

AI Gene Simmons — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

5. Babymetal reading a book

AI Babymetal — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

6. Slipknot eating ice cream

AI Slipknot — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

7. Rob Halford petting a cat

AI Rob Halford — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

8. System of a Down shouting at noodles

AI System of a Down/Serj Tankian — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

9. Glenn Danzig on a beach

Glenn Danzig on the beach — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

10. Fred Durst on a rollercoaster

AI Fred Durst — (Image credit: Hugging Face)

Artists

Born in 1976 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Simon Young has been a music journalist for over twenty-six years. His fanzine, Hit A Guy With Glasses, enjoyed a one-issue run before he secured a job at Kerrang! in 1999. His writing has also appeared in Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog, and Planet Rock. His first book, So Much For The 30 Year Plan: Therapy? — The Authorised Biography is available via Jawbone Press.