Advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly becoming more and more accessible to people. Now people are testing AI-supported tools such as Dall-E or Stable Diffusion to generate artworks in seconds. These software tools employ textual prompts from the user and create pictures ranging from the absurd (an Indian bride in astronaut gear) to the plausible (elderly people in fashionable clothes). A Twitter thread is going viral showing AI reimagining of what some of the most powerful rulers in Indian history would have looked like. The thread shows portraits of 21 rulers such as Bindusara, Prithviraj Chauhan, Ashoka, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Ranjit Singh, Shah Jahan and Sikandar Lodi. In the comments, many people noted that almost all portraits had features like sharp noses and that there were rarely any differences in their complexion even though the rulers were from geographically diverse places. People also wrote that many Mughal rulers who had mixed ethnicity were portrayed with mongoloid features only. 2/ Bindusara pic.twitter.com/CXxaWWLnuB — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 6/ Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj pic.twitter.com/lDX88I0JdW — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 9/ Sham Singh Attariwala pic.twitter.com/mot5Gq4B46 — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 14/ Muhammad bin Tughluq pic.twitter.com/BtlCRbFEpq — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 16/ BABUR pic.twitter.com/hGQGKQrgk4 — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 21/ Bahadur Shah Zafar pic.twitter.com/iMIg53eRtJ — Madhav Kohli (@mvdhav) January 26, 2023 Wrote a Twitter user, “Shah Jahan’s father was 1/2 ethnically indian and his mother was fully ethnically Indian. He would have looked quite a lot more like a Rajput than this picture. Jahangir as well, his mother was ethnically Indian. Back to the drawing board”. Earlier this month, a Twitter user sparked a similar debate online with AI-generated portraits of Indian brides and grooms. Many netizens then argued that AI had picked the most stereotypical traits of Indian communities and highlighted them.
