The Future of Sktebarding, Skatboarding, and other AI Disasters.

Up to this point I’ve avoided posting any AI generated skateboarding content. While researching some pics a reader sent in (anyone ever hear of a Jordy brand skateboard?) my image search came up with some bizarre AI generated skateboards on the stock art site Freepik that were too good/bad to ignore. It looks like someone dumped a bunch of skateboard images that were generated by AI, which is fine and dandy for a generic image, but they must not have proofed these. It turns out the only thing AI is worse at generating than human hands is skateboard trucks, and the spelling of the word “skateboard.”

Witness the glory of the “Sktebard,” “Skatboard,” “Ratebord,” “Skatebboard,” and last but not least, the “Ska Board” which really should have been checkered, or had a handle so you could pick-it-up, pick-it-up, pick-it-up. These bards are [SIC] ! The watermarks have been left intact, but I’m not sure you can actually copyright an AI generated image, the consensus is US copyright law does not apply.

As I was about to hit publish I went back to see if should link to the individual elements and lo and behold, they multiplied! I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something on the back end of the site that generated more images based on recent searches. Here’s another skteboard, a SKOARD BARD (must be Scandinavian), a skatesboard, a skteboar, another skatesboard (two make them skatesboards…) and something that looks dangerously close to skatard! Lots of interesting mounting choices happening in this round.

Freepik is leaning heavily into AI, but who knows if these images will remain available long term. They need to be preserved, just as all the horrible (and horrifying) poorly conceived images with mangled, devolved human hands.