Google has a new AI-generated profile picture on X, and it’s as creepy as you’d expect

Summary

• Google Bard is working to narrow the gap with ChatGPT by integrating features such as Imagen 2 image generation.
• Bard helps with logical reasoning, general facts, math problems, and has recently upgraded its backend to Google Gemini.
• In celebration of these milestones, Google changed its profile picture to an AI-generated image, resembling a surrealist painting, which could be a reference to its rival DALL-E.

Though it’s long been a focus, artificial intelligence research has sat squarely in Google’s crosshairs since early 2023 when ChatGPT garnered attention. Google’s homegrown rival, Bard, was announced shortly afterward, but it is still catching up, with the newest addition being support for image creation to lock horns with DALL-E integration on ChatGPT. To mark this milestone, Google has also changed its profile picture on X to an AI-generated image, which could be an indirect reference to its rival DALL-E, but is rather creepy as a result.

Bard helped Google stay up to speed with Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and other AIs in the fray. Bard can help with logical reasoning, general facts, math problems, and so much more. Late last year, Google added integrations with its other products like Maps, Google Docs, etc. However, Google’s AI-powered image generation efforts remained separate, in the form of the Imagen 2, and more recently, ImageFX. Meanwhile, rival OpenAI joined forces with DALL-E, originally created solely for AI-powered visualization, to integrate it into ChatGPT.

This week, Google Bard caught up with Imagen 2-powered image generation on Bard, which is also powered by the Gemini Pro model now. To celebrate this feat, Google dropped a subtle hint, changing its profile picture on most of its social media accounts such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). The new image features Google’s big G logo in a surrealistic art style, dripping like melted candle wax would.

In fact, you could say the new profile picture bears a striking semblance to one of the most iconic surrealist paintings — The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali. The art piece from 1931 features a coastline in the distance, and melting clocks strewn across the landscape. Google’s profile picture features a remarkably similar coastline and “melting” elements, although the image has all the telltale signs of AI’s involvement. More importantly, Dali’s name is similar to Google Imagen 2’s rival DALL-E, which has been named after the artist, and Pixar’s animated WALL-E movie.

While Imagen 2 is available with Bard already, Google’s AI efforts seem strewn all over the place like a child’s maiden attempts at building Lego models. For instance, Bard is separate from Assistant with Bard, which makes the AI easier to access through voice commands. That said, Google is also planning a rebrand for everything Bard to Gemini, the core AI model used to power Bard. As for image generation, Imagen 2 just became user-accessible, but the ImageFX utility is still a closed experiment.

We can’t wait to see what Google is able to achieve after it gets a sure footing in the AI landscape. For now, we have one creepy profile picture to stare at, and a new image generator to play around with.