I swear, the craziness that pops so seemingly randomly across my synapses sometimes...
For whatever reason, this afternoon I found myself thinking of Andy Kaufman, the "song and dance man" who entertained millions with his unique shticks. Sadly, Kaufman passed away in 1984 at the much-too-young age of 35.
Or did he?
Andy Kaufman's sense of humor was notoriously eclectic, to put it mildly. And among other things there were a few times when he did state a desire to fake his own death. It would have been the biggest joke of his life, to make everyone believe he had passed only to show up ten or twenty or... maybe forty years later.
Now, I do not believe that Kaufman really faked his death. His family has testified many times that he did indeed pass on in May of 1984. There is no disputing that. And yet, this is Andy Kaufman we're talking about here...
So the idea hit that maybe I could use artificial intelligence to create an image of what Kaufman would look like today, had he pulled off the ultimate prank and disappeared without a trace. He would be 77 years old now, which is certainly within the realm of possibility for a person who successfully falls of the map in the mid-Eighties.
Here's the first rendering that I had generated, from ChatGPT:
ChatGPT went into some detail about what Kaufman's features would be like more than forty years later. Comparisons were made with Steve Martin and Albert Brooks.
I guess, it kinda looks like Kaufman after four decades since his "disappearance", one way or another. But I wanted to see what other AIs would deliver. So I opened up Google's Gemini.
Here is where things started getting interesting. This is what Gemini returned with when I submitted my prompt. Click to enlarge:
Google Gemini had to think about it extra hard, then it gave up and declared that it's having technical problems... and further adds that this the same kind of thing that Andy Kaufman would have done!
Undeterred, I changed up the language of my query. And this time Gemini produced something.
Here it is:
Holy cow, it looks just like a senior-ized Andy Kaufman! He's got the right features, the mad-man sparkle in his eyes...
The image has a few telltale signs of it being created by artificial intelligence. But otherwise that really could be a pic of Kaufman circa 2026. Just... wow.
Well now, maybe we should pass this pic around. And start asking people "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?" Maybe Kaufman himself will find this post. If so, it's time Andy. You've had your joke. But the world needs you now, more than ever. Come back to us and make us smile and laugh again. The world is ready for you, in ways you can't imagine.
