The viral ‘Harry Potter in Star Wars’ AI images are just the start of a global competition

By James On May 4, 2023

Since it’s May 4th, also called Star Wars Day in some sectors of the galaxy (because “May 4th will be with you”, you see), Star Wars memes and references are all over the internet these days. And so is a series of AI images that depict Harry Potter characters as Star Wars characters, featuring Jedi and Sith interpretations of Harry Potter and Voldemort, a Wookiee/Hagrid mashup, Severus Snape as a pointy-eared alien and more. These images, which are popping up on Twitter and TikTok, are often not properly credited, which is a shame, both for the sake of the creators and because knowing where they come from is an invitation to a massive gallery of fandom mashups. At the same time, these images really show the limitations of AI tools, and their tendency to repeat certain patterns.

These images come from Freelancer.com’s Harry Potter Reimagined contest, a global contest that specifically asked participants to use AI tools to generate images of Harry Potter characters in alternate environments. The Star Wars mashup images were submitted by Abderrahmane B., an Algerian artist and graphic designer who took second place in the competition. The winner, designer and web developer from Bangladesh Rabbi Aliput Harry Potter characters in it The living Dead, imagining themselves victims of a zombie apocalypse. (Or in Voldemort’s case, as a zombie.)

A six-panel image montage of AI portraits of Harry Potter characters in The Walking Dead: a very bloodied Harry and Ron Weasley (played by Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint) screaming; Severus Snape (played by Alan Rickman) in biker gear, who leads a biker gang; Voldemort as a zombie; Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) bloodied and hiding in a darkened school bus. These images were generated for Freelancer.com's global Harry Potter Reimagined contest.

In a press release announcing the winners, Freelancer. com communications manager Marko Zitko said the contest was designed to encourage the site’s freelancers to experiment with new AI art generation tools. “Our latest Fast 50 data shows that there is a growing demand for generative AI skills,” he said, “so we wanted to run a competition that would allow our freelancers to experiment with powerful AI tools and see how they can use them to generate things we’ve never seen or thought of before. In this case, we thought, what if Harry Potter was made into a movie as a completely different genre.”

A gallery of all submissions are publicly available online, and it makes for fun – if sometimes repetitive or deeply eerie – exploration. The contenders came from all over the world and fielded Harry Potter characters Aardman Studios style claymation, The Matrixa Clint Eastwood-esque westernthe D.C. Snyderverseeven Peaky Blinders. There is also a wide variety of anime-influenced designs, from a lake Nadia: The secret of blue water approximation of one chibi Dragon Ball Z pieceamid a lot of, a lot of, many others. In total, the competition received nearly 650 entries.

The results are worth exploring in part because they use a range of different AI tools and they clearly show the benefits and limitations of those tools. Many of these images have visual limitations and errors, especially when it comes to depicting mouths and hands. Others, in Midjourney’s signature photo-realistic style, are such literal, exact representations of Warner Bros.’ existing film versions of these characters that they barely feel like any artistic choices were made. And many of the images, coming from the same AI engines, don’t look distinctive or specific and tend to blur together.

Together they provide a current portrait of the state of AI, and how much it depends on copying existing artists (some of whom have filed class action lawsuits to protect their work from AI infringement), to detailed input to achieve a desired outcome, and to a specific, imaginative direction from the creator to generate something different from the images of everyone else exploring the same prompt. For example, British participant Nikki V. went in a different direction than everyone else by placing her Harry Potter characters in the world of The Hunger Games.

A grid of nine portraits of Harry Potter characters from the Warner Bros. movies (as played by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman, etc.) with arm tattoos, in leather armor, holding a bow and arrow, and standing outside in a forest, all in the style of the Hunger Games movies. This image was generated for Freelancer.com's Harry Potter Reimagined contest.

As with any art competition, there are some true gems in the gallery and some duds. Very few of them really offer a thoughtful alternate universe option that even the most hardcore fans would want to explore. Unlike one of the most popular AI art experiments on social media these days, the “What if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars” (or any other franchise film) fad, these aren’t really “What if?” prompts, they are just visual experiments and AI test cases. More than anything, they are a window into the minds of the designers currently playing with AI tools to see what those tools have to offer.