Awkward Prom Pics, with Robots

Would high school have been cooler with robots? Not necessarily

Let’s face it: the teen years are awkward for nearly everyone. We look back on some of the things we did, and said, and wore, and inwardly cringe. So it’s hardly surprising that artifacts from that era of our lives—from diaries to photos—can make us feel the sting of shame. Unless, of course, we’re looking at someone else’s artifacts, in which case we can laugh and enjoy the cringe.

Is there any more cringeworthy artifact of the teen years than the prom photo? Here we (or they) are, all dolled up in an attempt to look our best, and often we only end up looking vaguely ridiculous—awkward, self-conscious, decked out in ludicrous suits or over-the-top dresses, sporting once-stylish hairstyles that now seem deeply unflattering at best. The things we thought made us look cool invariably look, in retrospect, kind of silly.

Poking around the Midjourney subreddit a few days ago, I saw that someone had used the AI art tool to generate some spectacularly awkward—and all-too-real-looking—prom pics. So I decided to make some of my own—but with a little AI twist: Mine would contain robots, which have become the go-to visual representation of AI (aside from weird pics of glowing artificial brains and the like).

So if you ever wondered if your teen life would have been cooler with robots we can now answer that question with a simple no. Prom pics with robots are as awkward as prom pics without them. So enjoy this sampling of prom pics from the (virtual) 1970s to (virtual) today.