The thing that bugs me the most about AI is that it's never someone making something wholly original. Often, what I find is that the things that go viral or the things people want to show you at parties are just rip-offs or direct imitations of other people.
These were all just my speculations, but now a new study that analyzed 5 million Midjourney prompts revealed who AI users are copying, and what it says about our visual echo chamber.
Let's dive in.
Which Directors Are We Stealing From With AI?
If you've spent any time on social media, you've seen the "What if [insert IP here] was a Wes Anderson film?" video or the Ghibli-fied version of your favorite franchise or friends.
People are using AI to just regurgitate the same things over and over again, and then are surprised when the rest of us call it slop.
Well, this trend actually pushed the team at Kapwing to find out which directors people were trying to imitate them ost online.
They researched the number of times 897 popular keywords—from Frank Lloyd Wright to Star Wars—have been used in Midjourney prompts. In total, they analyzed 4,929,594 prompts to see who and what we're replicating the most.
For us filmmakers, the results are both fascinating and deeply unsurprising.
The AI Most-Prompted Directors
The most-prompted movie director is, of course, Wes Anderson, clocking in at a whopping 92,378 prompts.
I think this came from that trend, but people also love just completely stealing his meticulous and calculated style. Unfortunately, because he has a hyper-specific pastel-colored aesthetic, it is basically a perfect prompt in itself. It’s a complete visual language that AI can replicate with ease.
Here's a chart with the other most prompted below.
Credit: Kapwing
I think these numbers are pretty interesting. They're all auteurs who have distinct visual styles, and then a famous DP, who has their own signature as well.
Again, these are people just being lazy and wanting things easy and fast.
This is the top ten, but Emmanuel Lubezki also made the top 20 (#15 with 5,298 prompts). This shows that users are getting specific, not just with the vibe of a director, but with the light of a DP.
The rest of the list is filled with the usual suspects of visual masters: Tarantino, Fincher, Spielberg, and George Lucas.
Check it out below.
- Wes Anderson 92,3782
- Tim Burton 57,0003
- Roger Deakins 22,2974
- Christopher Nolan 22,2465
- Ridley Scott 20,1096
- Guillermo del Toro 19,7557
- Stanley Kubrick 16,7588
- Denis Villeneuve 15,4629
- David Lynch 13,96010
- Jim Henson 11,10211
- Quentin Tarantino 10,67712
- David Fincher 8,94213
- Zack Snyder 6,71514
- Alejandro Jodorowsky 6,395
- Emmanuel Lubezki 5,298
- Steven Spielberg 4,941
- Terrence Malick 4,697
- Wong Kar-wai 4,631
- Terry Gilliam 4,631
- George Lucas 4,456
The Bigger Picture: Who Else Are We Copying?
While Wes Anderson rules the film world, he’s not the most-prompted artist overall. That title belongs to Art Nouveau poster designer Alphonse Mucha, who appeared in an astounding 230,794 prompts.
Credit: Kapwing
This, combined with the other top artists (Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Gustav Klimt), shows a clear trend toward classical, ornate, and painterly styles.
I'm unsure if that's for posters or people just ripping stuff off for their own walls.
The study also covered a few other categories:
- Most-Prompted Franchise: Star Wars (160,495)
- Most-Prompted Anime: Akira (53,333)
- Most-Prompted Architect: Zaha Hadid (63,103)
- Most-Prompted City: New York (156,598)
- Most-Prompted Fast-Food Chain: McDonald’s (18,318), which was used more than twice as much as #2, Starbucks.
Are We Just Creating An Echo Chamber?
This study shows us our collective visual shorthand. When we want "sci-fi," we default to Star Wars or Akira. When we want "quirky," we default to Wes Anderson.
So, what happens if we want to create something wholly unique?
Well, we just don't anymore.
And that's so freaking sad.
Because AI can only steal what's already been done, we're not making any new voices or ideas or visuals or even any new artists.
AI is merely regurgitating what has been done in this echo chamber.
Summing It Up
The AI genie is out of the bottle. I don't know if it is inevitable that we will have to use it, but certainly some people will.
This data shows us what the "default settings" of our collective imagination look like. The real creative work, as always, starts by moving past them.
Challenge yourself to be interesting and original; that's what will make your work stand out.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
