Innovative imaginations of U.S. presidents sporting some extreme hairstyles have left the internet in stitches.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cam Harless, 34, who lives in Florida, has put a fun spin on pictures of historical and well-known figures in a Twitter thread featuring all 46 U.S. presidents with mullets.
Harless created the pictures using popular artificial intelligence program Midjourney. From Thomas Jefferson with flowing locks and orange-tinted sunglasses to Bill Clinton rocking the style famously representing business up front and party in the back.
"I love making AI art," Harless told Newsweek. "Often I think of a prompt, create the image and choose the one that makes me laugh the most to present on Twitter and have people try and guess my prompt.
"The idea of Biden with a mullet made me laugh, so I tried to make one with him and Trump together and that led to the whole list of presidents."
This isn't the first time presidents have been given a dose of AI magic. Last year, social media users utilized heritage site MyHeritage's AI Time Machine tool to create visuals of famous politicians as Vikings, pirates and cowboys.
Other examples of image AI include the app NewProfilePic that allowed people to create painting-style versions of their favorite images and TikTok's version of the AI time machine.
Similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, Midjourney entered open beta on July 12, 2022. Led by David Holz, the program allows users to create artwork using Discord bot commands.
In 2022, Midjourney was used to create the front cover for an issue of British magazine The Economist.
The AI creates images from textual descriptions. For example, a user could ask the program to: "/imagine a unicorn surfing over a dolphin" and Midjourney would begin generating the image.
The Twitter thread quickly gained traction as users delighted in seeing the historical American figures with a whole new look.
Starting with Joe Biden (viewed 4.2 million times) and finishing with George Washington, people have been re-tweeting and sharing the thread with friends and followers.
"All of them are in a single thread," Harless said. "I kind of wish I could tweak some here and there, but when the thread started popping, I wanted to create them all as quickly as I could."
They weren't all easy to get right, either. Harless explained that he had more than a few tries at some of them.
"Some were harder than others," he said. "The ones with mullets were the hardest to get right."
Twitter users shared their reactions following the viral post. User @Whitney_Hotep said: "And in conclusion I'll just say, it is clear our presidents would be far superior with mullets."
While @JerseyTodd said: "I don't want to retweet everything, but I had no idea that I was missing out on 'Presidents with Mullets.'"
"I didn't expect the vitality of it, but I love it," Harless said. "This, for some reason, hits a weird and wonderful balance of absurdism and mass appeal that I didn't predict at all."
View the full thread of U.S. presidents with mullets on Twitter here.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Alice Gibbs is a Newsweek Senior Internet Trends & Culture Reporter based in the U.K. For the last two years ... Read more
