Dubai: How would football trophies look they were designed using Artificial Intelligence (AI)? A curious graphic designer from Romania asked AI to redesign popular football trophies, and the result has gone viral. Netizens are saying football trophies have never looked this good.
Speaking to Gulf News, the 25-year-old graphic designer, Cosmin Becheanu, said he was only playing with an AI software, when he decided to put in some instructions to redesign some football trophies.
“It was a simple experiment. I am a graphic designer, I have been doing this for almost nine years, but I've always wanted to discover other areas of designing, including modern technology. These series in AI came from pure pastime. Indeed, I was not the first to introduce this trend of AI in sports; I saw other graphic designers who used this technology to design sports equipment and other products from their imagination. My greatest experience as a graphic designer was, of course, in sports.
"In the past, I have collaborated as a graphic designer with the Romanian Football League: SuperLiga, the Romanian National Basketball League, the Gaz Metan Medias football team (now defunct), the CSM Oradea basketball club, the CS Dinamo Bucharest hanbal club, The Association of Supporters of the Ajax Amsterdam club - AFCA.NL and the football club FC Olt Slatina," he said.
Becheanu redesigned eight trophies, including UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League, UEFA Europa League, Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) World Cup, Ligue 1, and Bundesliga. On January 22, he posted the designs on his Instagram account.
This week, Becheanu’s designs were reposted by a Twitter page, @Football__Tweet, which shares football-related posts.
The tweet with the caption: “Someone asked AI to redesign football trophies, and this was the result,” had over 2 million views in less than 24 hours.
Tweeps loved the designs and said that football trophies have never looked so good. Many particularly pointed out Europa League as the best trophy.
Talking about the process of creating the designs, Cosmin said: “I discovered this not too long ago. In principle, it is not a very complicated process, but it needs patience and creativity. Practically, there are several ways through which you can reach certain results. Either through a command in which several descriptions are strung until the AI can generate something extremely creative, or everything can start from a real image, and the AI upgrades it with other descriptions that you introduce next to that image later. The result depends a lot on the expectations of the one who orders the image. There are times when you can generate up to 200 images till you find the one that you are most satisfied with.”
“I have an advantage of being a graphic designer, I can use programs like Photoshop in which I can add logos, change colors, and lights, adjust faces, body parts, and so on. So, I consider it a somewhat more complex process than many may expect,” he added.
Becheanu said he used a platform called Midjourney. “It is a platform that is hosted on Discord, a VoIP and instant messaging social platform usually used by gamers. Of course, to be able to generate things, you must choose one of the subscriptions. I use Midjourney to create or reimagine sci-fi situations for fun.”
The designer who always wanted his designs to be recognised, never expected that it would happen with AI images. He says he was surprised and delighted when he saw his images go viral. “It is impressive to see how quickly we can process an image from our imagination and be able to share it with the world," he said.
“I never thought that this series would go viral. I did it completely as a game, to see how this AI platform works. When I woke up and saw that on TikTok the collage of images was trending with the trophies exceeding 2.8 million views and from 51 followers, I had reached almost 7,000. I thought I was dreaming. Then all the important sports pages on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter asked my permission to repost the images on their pages. It was an extraordinary feeling. I never thought it would impress so many people.”
He believes that these images can someday replace existing trophies. “In the future, just as cars have been upgraded, as phones have changed, even some trophies have had changes applied. So, it is very possible, depending on the trends, to see some of these make the competitions even more attractive.”
Out of his designs, he thinks that the UEFA Europa League and Copa America trophies would be sensational if they are made into actual trophies.
