Darren Aronofsky's AI Madness

It came to my attention recently that noted freak director Darren Aronofsky has made some short films from crunched up AI-generated scenes for TIME Magazine's YouTube channel. They concern snippets of early American history, and look a little something like this:

Okay, eww. What's going on here?

In the first one, January 1: The Flag, we see sexy old legend George Washington raise the Continental Union Flag (or the Grand Union Flag, if you like) at Prospect Hill in what was then Charlestown, Boston, to the shock and awe of onlookers.

The first (unofficial) flag of the United States. In all its AI glory.

This seems to spook and hurt the British, possibly because the British Forces in the area were at this time surrounded, but interestingly, the reaction of stilled dismay that the film attempts to show (all emotions are sort of blunted and still in these AI renderings, it's like watching the facial skin of a corpse shift slightly underwater and calling that an expression) is less interesting than the one documented by George Washington in a letter to Joseph Reed on the 4th of January:

"We are at length favored with the sight of his majesty's most gracious speech breathing sentiments of tenderness and compassion for his deluded American subjects; the speech I send you (a volume of them was sent out by the Boston gentry), and farcical enough we gave great joy to them without knowing or intending it, for on that day (the 2d) which gave being to our new army; but before the proclamation came to hand we hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies. But behold it was received at Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech had made upon us, and as a signal of submission.
By this time I presume they begin to think it strange that we have not made a formal surrender of our lines."

                - via Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America,                                    by George Henry Preble.

Those British buffoons interpreted this sign of reverence for the thirteen colonies as a compliment to the king. Incredible.

Of course, they figured out quickly enough what this flag-raising was really all about - America slay, Britain nay - but isn't this reaction so much funnier, and even a better patriotic story, than its straightforward alternative? I'm struck by the flattening of a genuinely interesting historical moment, with its odd little false assumption, and George Washington's sneering, delighted mockery of that, washed away so we can instead watch AI's limp version of the beginnings of a frown on an old man.

My favourite moment, in any case, is the delivery of the line, "stripes... thirteen of them" at about 2:42. There is a slight Disney villain quality to it that I enjoy, provided to us by, not AI, but a real voice actor. Thank you to that man.