Google is working with an AI Meme generator for GBOARD and that’s horrible

As a proud gene zer, I like Memes quite a bit, so when I found out that Google is working on an AI-driven Meme generator for GBOARD, I was excited to try it. The feature promises to take a guide text, choose a basic image and write an appropriate caption for it. Although current AI is still only glorified autocorrect, it seems good enough that it should be able to generate memes just fine. Unfortunately, in reality, the end product is directly terrible.

Thanks to a source in Google, Android Authority was able to explore one in the development version of the function.

Google’s idea of ​​what a meme should be

The idea behind “Meme Studio” (as it is called internally on Google) is to let users create memes in a simple way. There are two options available – the first is “Custom”, which allows you to choose a basic image and write your own captions.

There is a choice of hundreds (if not thousands) base images, as well as an option to upload your own. It seems that Google has somehow automated the process of finding and noticing these base images.

After selecting a basic image, it is brought in to the editor. It is quite rudimentary, only allowing movement, rotating and scaling of text, as well as adding extra captions. The font and color of the text cannot be changed. When you are done, you can save your creation in the Gboard collection, or send it (which also stores it).

The much more interesting option is to “generate”, where you ask AI to select the base image and generate the captions based on a topic. There are a few suggestions to choose from and a field to write one from scratch. The feature is the server side, which requires an internet connection.

After selecting a topic, the request will be processed. What is exciting is that the loading spinner does not resemble any current material you components and may be part of “BC25” or “BlueCip 25”, a potential update to the material you. We have also seen it referred to as “Expressive design. “

Finally, you will be presented with several options. After selecting one, you are taken to the same editor as before, except with an alternative to regenerate the caption.

The function has obviously advanced security measures and filters in place, to avoid explicit or offensive content. Unfortunately, many innocent requests are also trapped in the filter, resulting in no results being generated.

Yes no

The quality of the memes generated by the tool is at best questionable. As a young person who spends about 3 hours on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), I am familiar with the culture and humor in my generation, and it is definitely not so. I feel that the only way this can be used is to make ironically bad memes, but that’s it. The filtering also makes it difficult to actually create anything interesting, and the lack of alternatives in the editor also does not help. Memes always develops, and these days they often play with the format or make meta -changes. Being limited to a font and format basically makes it impossible for this feature to be useful.

I guess Google has mostly created this feature for older people, but I feel it’s not even so great for that purpose. The base image chosen by AI rarely makes any sense in the context of the caption; It often seems completely random. The quality of the generated captions is mediocre at best. It is worth remembering that this is an early version of the feature, so it can still improve – if the Meme studio ever launches at all.

Below is a random selection of memes I generated while testing the feature. I hope it makes you laugh (it won’t).

Hopefully, Google will improve the quality of this feature before it is considering launching it. At this time we do not know when it is meant to arrive.