Pretty much every online lurker knows the image: A man gawks at a passing woman making the kind of “How you doin’?” face that would make Joey Tribbiani blush. Ever since it landed in 2017, the “ distracted boyfriend ” meme, which took that stock photo and projected scenarios onto it, has been seared into the internet’s collective consciousness. Now, artificial intelligence is rendering the memory of that viral moment fuzzy, along with the memories of dozens of other memes.
Often called “ time traveler ” videos, particularly on TikTok , the AI-generated clips currently bouncing around the internet take well-known memes and add context that wasn’t there before. In some cases, they “interrupt” the action; sometimes they include a haunting specter. In the “distracted boyfriend” animation, which was posted on X (formerly known as Twitter ) last month, the boyfriend is seen turning around and following the girl walking in the opposite direction while his girlfriend stands nearby.
The clip was made using Luma Dream Machine , an AI model that takes source images and text prompts and creates high-quality, realistic videos. Within days of its release , social media users started to borrow images and frames from recognizable memes to create visuals that test Dream Machine’s generation abilities. The results proved that while the AI model isn’t flawless, it does have the ability to rewrite internet history by altering the web’s most enduring images.
As Dre.