Images generated on Mickey-1928, background illustration 233474509 © Mustafaferhatbeksen | Dreamstime.com
Public domain Mickey Mouse is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get. Having escaped the shackles of Disney’s copyright protection on January 1, the beloved character has leaped from the sketchbook and right into the uncanny valley. The latest to reimagine the icon is Mickey-1928, an artificial intelligence model that’s turning classic cartoons into a kaleidoscope of inadvertently quirky creations.
Developed by digital humanities researcher Pierre-Carl Langlais, Mickey-1928 is a specialized version of Stable Diffusion XL, fine-tuned using 96 stills from the 1928 public domain Mickey Mouse cartoons such as Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy, and The Gallopin’ Gaucho. The goal is to generate new images of Mickey, Minnie, and Pete that stay true to their original 1928 designs, ensuring that any new creations remain within the public domain and can be used freely.
The amazing @Dorialexander has released a new AI model called Mickey-1928.
Now that version 1 of Mickey Mouse is in the public domain, the AI can generate pictures of Mickey, Minnie and Pete from 1928.
Model: https://t.co/yDgpF2BBgA pic.twitter.com/aZD1cxpd6A
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) January 1, 2024
For added color, as it stands, not everything about Mickey can be moused around with. Only the 1928 variation can be recreated without requiring permission or licensing fees, and subsequent evolutions are still safeguarded by Disney.
The generated visuals from Mickey-1928 can be guided by user inputs, allowing for some control over the outcome.
This project opens up a world of creative possibilities, allowing anyone to use the model to generate their own Mickey Mouse images without worrying about getting chased by the House of Mouse. With that said, as Mickey-1928 was trained on a relatively small dataset of stills, the quality and accuracy of the images it produces can vastly vary. The results often turn out to be quite bizarre, akin to images from a fever dream.
Mickey-1928 now getting into animation! Thanks a lot @flngr for this glimpse into the future of Mickey and generative culture. https://t.co/z0CXlWoyhx pic.twitter.com/Guj9TPAloc
— Alexander Doria (@Dorialexander) January 4, 2024
Happy New Year!! pic.twitter.com/BZXEkkbfL2
— Dennis Yang (@sinned) January 1, 2024
While the current quality is tied to the limitations of the initial training data, improvements are expected as higher-definition versions of the cartoons become available for training. Experiment with the tool yourself here.
did some playing around with the 1928 Mickey AI on HuggingFace and created some silly generations
most of them are Mickey walking down the city street or a sidewalk pic.twitter.com/O1b46xcKy7
— OssieTheOstrich (@ossietheostrich) January 7, 2024
Mickey with #BTC pic.twitter.com/UquVAD6r5J
— ⚡LibertyCoiner21 (@LibertyCoiner21) January 2, 2024
[via Ars Technica and Hugging Face, images via various sources]
by rrollins
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