GTA San Andreas brought to life with uncanny AI-generated characters

A Reddit user used multiple tools to build AI-generated versions of GTA San Andreas characters like CJ, Big Smoke, and Tenpenny.

Suffice it to say, discourse about AI-generated art won’t soon come to an end. But when removed from topics concerning legalities, academics, and commercial gain, there does exist some fun to be had with the technology.

Last year, for example, a randomized Pokemon generator known as Fakemon went viral online, allowing fans of the brand to conjure up all kinds of pocket monsters.

One Grand Theft Auto fan used AI generation to determine what beloved San Andreas characters would look like if they existed in the real world.

AI-generated characters breathe new life into GTA San Andreas

On the StableDiffusion subreddit, a user named AaronGNP shared the results of their Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-inspired AI creations.

The Redditor said they used ControlNet, Img2Img, and RealisticVision to turn pixelated characters like CJ, Big Smoke, and Ryder into nearly real-looking people. As seen below, the results are uncanny.

Upon explaining the “basic process” in a subsequent post, AaronGNP noted that they used images from GTA San Andreas’ Fandom wiki to create AI-generated versions of the various characters.

The Redditor loaded each image into ControlNet and Img2Img, then utilized augmentations from a post featured on RealisticVision for their prompts.

These are intriguing results, to say the least, and quite uncanny. For one, rapper Eazy-E’s influence on the character design for Ryder is even more apparent now.

As time goes on, it will be interesting to see which other classic game characters get the realistic, AI-generated treatment.