I laughed at this image of England players as Queen, but it reveals AI's biggest problem
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/ian-dean · Creative Bloq
Share this article
0
Join the conversation
Follow us
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Newsletter
Subscribe to our newsletter
This image of England's football stars reimagined as Queen popped into my social feed, and I couldn’t help but smile, which is impressive because my online default is ‘who asked for this?’
With England vs Argentina just hours away as I write this, this depiction of Harry Kane with Freddie Mercury's iconic moustache, Jude Bellingham borrowing Brian May's bouncing curls – the whole thing posed like a long-lost publicity shot from the late '70s – just felt perfect. It's daft, it's brilliantly made, it makes me want We Are the Champions to replace the navel-gazing Wonderwall, but ultimately it's exactly the kind of image that ends up being shared millions of times because everyone gets the joke in a split second.
Then, of course, I realised it was all just an AI gambit to get my attention, probably to sell me a drop-shipped hair curler, moustache wax, or pre-worn Queen vest. That, and more importantly, I've seen this image a hundred times before, not literally, if I had, I might need to talk to someone professionally, but the idea behind it – footballers as rock stars, politicians as Pixar characters, movie casts painted by Rembrandt, The Avengers directed by Wes Anderson – the internet has become one endless parade of ‘what if this looked like that?’, and generative AI has become frighteningly good at giving us the answers.
I don't think that's a bad thing, as some of these images are genuinely clever and essentially take an idea you'd probably never have bothered to make in Photoshop, because it would have taken an afternoon, six YouTube tutorials, and the inevitable moment when you accidentally flattened every layer. And it would never quite look this good, and AI, unlike you and me, doesn’t give a hoot about copyrights. AI made something funny in 30 seconds, and someone popped it into Facebook, X, Instagram and let it run free (I have no idea who made it or why).
Giving some credit here, knowing what references to mash together is often more important than pressing the generate button, someone had the idea that, sure, Harry Kane would look perfect as Freddie Mercury, tash, vest and all.
You may like
The National Portrait Gallery is hosting AI portraits: how should artists respond?
ChatGPT Images 2.0 has people declaring the death of graphic design... again
How an 'AI' Monet painting fooled 7M people
But it also says something about where AI is right now. The biggest wins for image generators almost always come from borrowing existing cultural icons and imagery, whether it's Queen, Studio Ghibli, LEGO, The Simpsons or famous Renaissance paintings. They're visual languages we all understand and can latch onto in social seconds, so the AI gets an easy head start, and we get the instant hit of recognition that makes us stop scrolling, smirk, and share.
That's why this image of England as Queen works so well: it isn't because Queen's clothes were particularly outrageous (they were), or because Freddie Mercury had a great moustache (he does), but it works because Queen are one of those bands whose look has become part of pop culture itself. You don't need to own The Works on vinyl; you just need to recognise one moustache and enough hair to insulate a loft, the poses, the styling, the attitude. AI isn't creating a new visual language here; it's remaking one we've all known for decades.
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Sign up to Creative Bloq's daily newsletter, which brings you the latest news and inspiration from the worlds of art, design and technology.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors
Maybe that's the thing I've noticed most over the last couple of years as AI images have begun to dominate ads, marketing, branding and more. AI has become incredibly good at remixing culture, but it hasn't given us much that's genuinely new, and in many ways its most creative peak was when it was failing – spaghetti-fingered Will Smith – and in doing so created a unique new visual design out of its flaws. Where AI is now feels like the world's greatest covers band; it’s ironically Maiden and Fake That, nailing every classic song, but never quite writing the hits themselves.
However, these models weren't really built to invent culture from scratch, as they're trained on the culture we've already made. Of course they're going to lean on familiar ideas, and if anything, they're reflecting us back at ourselves. We click on England as Queen because we know Queen, Harry Kane, and Jude Bellingham. We share Ghibli because we grew up with Ghibli. We reward nostalgia every single day; in fact, the overriding trend right now is sentimentality for retro games, Disney remakes and vintage music, and the algorithms know it. Apparently we're all one ‘remember this?" away from smashing the Like button with the enthusiasm of a lab rat discovering the cheese dispenser. Even tonight’s England vs Argentina game is funnelled through remembering 1986’s Hand of God, 1996’s ‘It’s Coming Home’ and 1966’s England win.
Which makes me wonder if the limitation isn't AI at all and maybe it's us. Perhaps we've become so obsessed with recognising references that we've forgotten how exciting it is to see something we've never seen before. Original ideas are harder to grasp; they don't come with decades of emotional baggage attached, and they need time to settle, to become part of the culture. That's difficult when social media rewards the joke you understand immediately and people scroll to the next one.
So yes, England as Queen made me smile, and I've happily shared it with friends who just replied “weird”. I just hope that, somewhere along the line, we stop asking AI to recreate yesterday's icons and start asking it to help us imagine tomorrow's instead. Because if generative AI is going to become a genuinely creative tool, as many artists and designers are starting to say, it can't spend forever playing the greatest hits and needs to help artists write some new ones.