Furious Steve Irwin fans have lashed out after a social media user posted a ‘ghoulish’ AI-generated clip of the late Crocodile Hunter interacting with his daughter Bindi.
An X user recently posted a series of AI clips to the platform, in which a living celebrity interacted with a dead one, to highlight the abilities of a new chatbot called Grok-2.
One short clip captured an AI-generated Steve Irwin smiling alongside his daughter Bindi, 26, as she looks now.
The models of Steve and Bindi have a wax-like eerie effect in the images, with neither looking quite like their real life counterparts.
Steve’s face is much chubbier than it was in real life while Bindi’s facial features have been completely smoothed over, giving her the appearance of a porcelain doll.
This unsettling effect is commonly referred to as the uncanny valley and AI images will often have distinct ‘tells’ to show they are not a genuine photo.
Furious Steve Irwin fans have lashed out after a social media user posted a ‘ghoulish’ AI-generated clip of the late Crocodile Hunter interacting with his adult Bindi. Pictured
Bindi was just eight years old when Steve tragically died in 2006, after being pierced in the chest by a stingray off the coast of Queensland and so he never knew his daughter as an adult.
Upset Irwin fans quickly commented on the post to slam the user over their actions.
‘This is genuinely f***ed up. I think you should take a hard look at yourself for putting this into the world,’ one furious user sniped.
‘These are real human beings, who have suffered real human tragedies. Not toys for you to play dolls with,’ a second user added.
‘Absolutely f***ing ghoulish,’ a third user chipped in and another wrote: ‘Extremely disrespectful and distasteful.’
This is the latest episode in a series of controversies over the use of AI to generate celebrity images without their consent.
Earlier this month, The Block host Scott Cam publicly lashed out after AI images of him spruiking a weight loss product was used without his knowledge.
Steve ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin died age 44 off the coast of Queensland on 4 September 2006, after being pierced in the chest by a stingray while filming a nature documentary.
An X user recently posted a series of AI clips to the platform, in which a living celebrity interacted with a dead one, to highlight the abilities of a new chatbot called Grok-2
The models of Steve and Bindi have a wax-like eerie effect in the photos, with neither looking quite like their real life counterparts. Pictured: Steve and Terri Irwin with their children Bindi and Robert in 2003
Bindi was six years old when he tragically passed, while her brother Robert was three months shy of his third birthday.
His legacy, however, lives on through his family, who have continued his mission of wildlife conservation and advocacy.
It was Steve’s father, Bob, 85, who built the iconic Queensland zoo from the ground up in 1970 and passed it on to his late son and his wife Terri in 1992.
In his lifetime, Steve promoted wildlife conservation with his own hit TV show, The Crocodile Hunter.
His family have carried on his legacy with their own blockbuster wildlife reality series Crikey! It’s the Irwins.
The series debuted in 2018 and can still be seen on the Animal Planet network.
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