Despicable Me 4 Super Bowl Spot Reveals The True 'Intelligence' Behind AI
Artificial intelligence is doing incredible things these days. It's providing lucrative work for some lawyers, and getting other lawyers into big trouble. AI can generate an image of just about anything you can imagine ... though the results are sometimes disturbing on account of the AI not knowing how many teeth people should have in their mouth, or how many fingers they should have on their hand, or how humans eat food.
That's the subject of the Super Bowl spot for "Despicable Me 4," which reveals that all of these AI images are secretly the work of the Minions, Gru's army of little yellow henchmen, who are prized for their loyalty if not necessarily for their intelligence. The pull-out reveal of countless Minions sitting at banks of computers responding to the requests of bored and/or stoned people around the world brings to mind the infinite monkey theorem: that a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters would eventually, given an infinite amount of time, produce the entire works of Shakespeare. (And presumably also an overwhelming amount of monkey poop.)
It's an appropriate reference, given that the infinite monkey theorem is frequently brought up in debates over just how intelligent the current generation of AI actually is. For those not familiar with "Despicable Me" lore, the Minions are not artificial intelligence, but rather evolved organically in much the same way that humans did. In fact, the Minions actually evolved millions of years before humans, and initially had to be henchmen to the dinosaurs.
The Gru family gets bigger in Despicable Me 4
The first trailer for "Despicable Me 4" dropped recently and outlined a family-centered storyline in which Gru, his wife, his three adopted daughters, and his new son Gru Jr. get up to some despicable shenanigans together. Here's the official synopsis:
Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith, and Agnes welcome a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad. Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal and his girlfriend Valentina, and the family is forced to go on the run.
The Super Bowl spot's "comic royalty" image of two fancy boys sitting for an intimate portrait features AI-generated (or possibly human-generated and then Photoshopped to add AI quirks) versions of Steve Carell, who returns once again to voice former supervillain Felonious Gru, and Will Ferrell, who joins the cast in "Despicable Me 4" as Maxime de Mal, the escaped supervillain with a grudge.
Will the Gru family save the day before the robot apocalypse? Let's hope so, or we've only got a few months left before the machines take over. "Despicable Me 4" lands in theaters on July 3, 2024.