The more I look at this, the weirder it is and the more confused I am.
Just the other day I wrote about the LEGO Guinness set that was clearly AI generated slop. (More anon.) And now Facebook serves me this…
Yes, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is coming this December. There will, no doubt, be all sorts of anniversary products including LEGO sets.
Take, for example, this set. Minifigs of (most of) the Fellowship. The gate of Moria. The pillars of the Argonath. The eye of Sauron. Mount Doom and Barad-dur. A Nazgul astride a fell beast overhead.
Oh, and Battersea Power Station.
“I will take it! I will take it! I will take the Ring to Battersea Power Station, though I do not know the way.”
Mount Doom sits atop in. The eye of Sauron is fixed upon it. And there are its distinctive four smoke towers, the distinctive facade.
I simply do not remember Battersea Power Station in Peter Jackson’s films. Maybe it’s a commentary on the industrialization of the world after the Third Age, which is in keeping with Tolkien’s themes of the passing of a more natural time. I can make that argument.
But I don’t understand why it’s there. I don’t understand.
I don’t.
Unless…
A Pink Floyd set, recreating the covers to multiple albums, including The Division Bell, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Animals, the latter which featured Battersea Power Station.
The two sets, Lord of the Rings and Pink Floyd, have similar designs and bases… and also Battersea Power Station. It’s clear to me that this is an AI prompt issue. The Pink Floyd set was generated first from a prompt, and then the Lord of the Rings prompt was modified from it. The AI kept the Battersea Power Station, changing up the brick color in the smokestacks, because it was a good structure on which to fix everything else, and the person who did these didn’t notice.
AI slop. Gotta love it. /snark
Facebook also wants me to know about another Guinness set.
Like the previous set, I love everything about this. The Facebook ad, which I screenshotted but adds nothing of import, says it has 1280 pieces. If this were real, I would enjoy this.
But I can find no sign of any official Guinness set, LEGO or LEGO-like.
It’s a phantom. A lovely, tempting phantom. But still a phantom.