AI Reveals What Toy Story Could Look Like In Real Life & It's Creepy

Buzz Lightyear might've been all for going to infinity and beyond, but an AI video reveals that there are some areas that "Toy Story" absolutely does not need to venture into. On YouTube, @MultiverseWizard, who sent Pokémon back to the 1950s, has given "Toy Story" the same treatment. It has the same creepy inconsistent effect many of these videos have — only this time with a Mr. Potato Head that should really qualify for false advertising.

With its brass background music and old-timey voice-over, no character keeps the same look. The trailer resembles what "Toy Story" might appear to be while under the influence. Woody (who looks like Taylor Sheridan), Buzz, and the gang are constantly changing their appearance, looking like totally different characters that do away with their iconic iterations. While it might be a little disheartening for some that this staple of CGI animation has been pushed through the AI machine, Pixar has already applied the technology into their film "Elemental," and it didn't burn them as bad as you think.

In a film that is already using well-established computer generated imagery to get its story across, there's an even greater bit of irony considering that "Elemental" proved to be Pixar's most technically challenging movie. To overcome these obstacles, the studio used AI to bring fire into this fantasy world. According to Wired, Pixar got help from technical supervisor Paul Kanyuk to fan the flames just right for Ember and the other fire people. A version of the artificial intelligence method called "Neural Style Transfer" allowed the animation team to work with a fire effect that was working on its own, leaving them to handle the finer details.

Kanyuk explained that, "many of us didn't do machine learning until it started becoming prevalent recently, so we've kind of learned on the job." Jeremie Talbot, who worked as co-character supervisor on the project admitted that, "once you apply a style transfer to naturalistic fire, you can actually start to direct its style and start to bring the artist's hand into something that is otherwise not touchable." Director Peter Sohn spoke about the change in tactics, adding, "It's this coming together of left brain and right brain, and using technology as a tool to help express emotions and in turn we can connect to tech, versus it feeling like some cold new thing." What do you know? We might be able to go beyond, after all.

To read more about the animation powerhouse, check out the untold truth of Pixar.