The beauty of a good album cover is that it can perfectly encapsulate the mood of a dozen or so songs in a single image or illustration — and that’s a difficult feat when you only have a square-sized canvas to work with. In order to depict the world that an album takes place in, musicians and their designated team of photographers, stylists, and/or graphic designers spend weeks or even months pouring all of their blood, sweat and tears into designing the perfect album cover that will sit on your shelf or favourite streaming service.
However, leave it to the tech bros across the Internet to imply they know artists’ work better than those artists do. With Photoshop’s new generative fill tool — which uses artificial intelligence to generate an expanded section of a piece of work — pro-AI knuckledraggers across Twitter are revealing the ExPaNdEd EdItIoNs of some of music’s most iconic album covers. But why?
A typical album cover is usually a square-shaped vignette of the artist doing or creating something iconic enough to stick in a listener’s brain. Case in point: SZA’s SOS, which sees the titular R&B artist sitting on a diving board attached to a yacht in front of a deep, blue sea. It’s melancholy and isolating, paralleling the themes on the record, and that’s it. Expanding that album cover either gives you more blue ocean — which is already exemplified on the album cover — or, as demonstrated above, a completely different tone with SZA watching people splash around in the sea. What’s beyond the bounds of the square? Nothing, and that’s the point.
This trend of expanding album covers with AI is pointless, and exemplifies two things. One, it demonstrates music fans overstepping the boundaries of their favourite artists. In other words, fans are positioning themselves as making better/cooler/more interesting art with the album cover their favourite artists spent a ton of energy developing. Two, it shows just how bleak the AI revolution has really gotten — no one is really creating anything new, they’re just lazily expanding what already exists.
Donda becomes a black box
Kanye West’s “Donda” album cover expanded with AI pic.twitter.com/qSfpMrdDz4
— redead🪐(i love my gf) (@sH0rttyyyy) June 1, 2023
The Beatles becomes a white box
Ever wonder what the rest of the Beatles’ White Album looks like? Using the power of AI, I filled out the background. There is no limit to this amazing technology. pic.twitter.com/jdiqtdYf9D
— Dan Ozzi (@danozzi) May 30, 2023
The other rooms in the R Plus Seven cover are empty…of course
I used AI to extend the R Plus Seven album cover backwards, now you can finally see what’s in all the other rooms! technology is incredible 🤯🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/r88Akg3OzT
— jet’s key🪩✨ (@jetskitosway) May 31, 2023
Does it really matter that Michael Jackson is laying on a piano?
I see we’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel of use cases for generative AI art here, having hurdled past ‘Greek philosophers as particularly dull superheroes’ or whatever to ‘imagine you could use MS paint autofill but for enlarging album art for no particular reason’ pic.twitter.com/euIxlxK7tc
— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) May 31, 2023
Weezer doesn’t even have feet
Expanding famous album covers using AI. 🪄
1. Weezer – Blue Album pic.twitter.com/qQsomzzrsC
— xiu_shoegaze (@xiu_shoegaze) May 30, 2023
Abbey Road is a street…fascinating…
The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover redone with photoshop AI beta #photoshop #photoshopgenerativefill #art #design #ia #adobe #creative #tuto #editing #photoshoptutorial #photoshoptutorial2023 #ai #photoshopai #AbbeyRoad #thebeatles #beatles pic.twitter.com/ufzkVoGSzR
— zast (@zast57) May 29, 2023
Just kidding, Abbey Road is actually the site of the apocalypse
I used Photoshop’s AI Generative Fill to show the background of the Abbey Road album cover. pic.twitter.com/epLkFphfSt
— Casey Jack (@Casey_Jacked) May 30, 2023
No, actually, Abbey Road is actually in space now
AI completion of an iconic album cover: https://t.co/FD7QmOzmuU pic.twitter.com/UO4bl3cqLs
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) May 31, 2023
The artist picked the album cover photo for a reason…I promise you they took a bunch during the photoshoot
Having AI imagine what “the rest of an album cover would look like” is the kind of thing you do when you think a photoshoot entails taking a single picture. https://t.co/GQixkRYWRj pic.twitter.com/wGuFCheozM
— colette arrand (@colettearrand) May 30, 2023
A pattern of shapes turns into an even larger pattern of shapes
I expanded the album cover of tally hall’s good and evil using ai pic.twitter.com/ymgYJNdLnj
— spicybeen (@spicybeen) June 1, 2023
WOAH! Another black box!
i used AI to extend the album cover of parachutes by coldplay pic.twitter.com/V1np3Ilmse
— nyaKona 🇲🇾 (@nyaKona_) June 2, 2023
Exactly as Metallica intended it
AI completion of an iconic album cover: https://t.co/0hjFRHWbmn pic.twitter.com/zkGxCDmOBm
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) May 31, 2023
Frank Ocean in a shower on the cover of blond transforms into…Frank Ocean in a slightly larger shower
blond album cover extended w/ AI pic.twitter.com/REviAEP6ep
— will o’brien🕊 (@willobri) May 29, 2023