photographer uses AI imagery tool to design cameras as unusual pop-culture medleys

mathieu stern uses AI to create playful camera mashups

Leaning into the DALL-E artificial intelligence image generator trend, Mathieu Stern has developed a series of camera designs as playful pop-culture mashups. Drawing from historical figures, superheroes, and iconic films, the photographer provided the AI tool with short text inputs and received a collection of fascinating and extremely diverse designs that are unfortunately not real. The results include a camera made for Pharaohs, a film camera that looks like R2-D2, as well as a Nintendo and Polaroid collaboration.

a film camera made for Pharaohs

all images courtesy of Mathieu Stern

a camera that looks like…

For this imaginative endeavor, Mathieu Stern (see more here) experimented with the new artificial intelligence imagery tool called DALL-E 2, also known as the ‘Picasso of AI’. The latest version of the system, which was released earlier in 2022, uses creative text prompts as its input and produces even more realistic and accurate images with high resolution. Stern descriptions mention ‘a medium format camera that looks like’, followed by character names from Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or the Marvel universe. Other descriptions imagine unexpected combinations, such as a Polaroid camera made of marble and wood, or a Polaroid x Nintendo blend.

Mathiew Stern shares most of these imaginative creations on his social media platforms, while he has also published a YouTube video detailing how he uses the new technology. Some of the results look so appealing that Stern is calling on designers to join him and help him realize them. ‘If anyone wants to help me design the Marty McFly camera in 3D, it would look super cool as a 3D-printed decorative piece,’ he writes on an Instagram post.

a medium format camera that looks like R2-D2