For the uninitiated, The Day Today was a 1994 BBC2 comedy series parodying contemporary news coverage, a programme that has remained resident in the collective consciousness of all British comedy fans ever since. A TV adaptation of Radio 4 series On The Hour, The Day Today would provide terrestrial TV debuts for Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, amongst others.

One regular part of the series — alongside pitch-perfect spoofs of news, current affairs, soaps, fly-on-the-wall documentaries, MTV Europe, CNN, public information films, archive television and pre-empting The Office by seven years — were ‘a look at tomorrow’s headlines’ — a smattering of nonsensical headlines purportedly from early editions of the following morning’s newspapers. A little bit of dark whimsy to see us into the end credits, many of which would lodge themselves into cranial crannies of viewers for years to come.

Back in 2021 (remember that? When we thought things were as bad as they could get? Bless our naive little hearts), I wrote a Medium post where I challenged AI image bot Pixray to create images for Tomorrow’s Headlines from The Day Today. The results were… mixed. So, in a bit of a break from writing about old BBC programmes I’ve mostly never seen, let’s recreate that experiment by setting six different AI bots against each other, and see who can create the best visual interpretation of Chris Morris brain wrongs.

THE COMPETITORS:

• Deep AI’S Text To Image AI Image Generator API
• Hotpot’s AI Art Maker
• Computer Vision Explorer’s Text To Image Generator
• Pixray Text to Image
• Dall.E Mini
• Nightcafe

So, with everyone on the starting grid, let’s go!

WARNING: Maybe don’t read the rest of the entry whilst eating.

---

EPISODE ONE: Main News Attack

HEADLINE ONE: “Aristocrat’s Dung Saves Village From Flood.” — Daily Mail

See why I warned you about not eating? Here are the top three results for that less-than-tantalising morsel.

1st Place: PIXRAY

There was always going to be dung, but at least here you can tell it’s especially aristocratic. See the velvet chair and finery in the background? That’s going the extra mile. Plus, the dung is visibly blocking off the flood. Top marks.

2nd Place: NIGHTCAFE

3rd Place: HOTPOT

There’s definitely a man trying to save something using a dung-like substance. And, without being too course, we’ve not way of proving it isn’t from an aristo’s arse.

---

HEADLINE TWO: “Drowned Italian Wins Eurovision.” — Today

1st Place: NIGHTCAFE

A clear winner, despite the Eurovision angle not being obvious. At least the singer is drowning, which is a sentence that I admit is very wrong out of context.

2nd Place: PIXRAY

A close second, thanks to looking a bit more like the Eurovision stage, and an Italian flag being present. But that’s not drowning. They’re barely even damp.

3rd Place: HOTPOT

A low bar, because most of these results were rubbish. But this does look most like someone who’d be representing Italy at Eurovision, so bronze medal.

SPECIAL MENTION: COMPUTER VISION EXPLORER

I mean, what the actual fuck?

---

HEADLINE THREE: “Lord Mayor’s Pirhouette in Fire Chief Decapitation” — Daily Express

1st Place: HOTPOT

Basically nailing the story had it ran on P1 of the London Illustrated News, there.

2nd Place: DEEP AI

That IS very much the face of a man who’d just seen that happen.

3rd Place: PIXRAY

That definitely does look disturbing enough to warrant a front page headline, in fairness.

---

HEADLINE THREE: “Robin Cock” – The Sun

1st Place: PIXRAY

Phew.

2nd Place: DEEP AI

Phew.

3rd Place: DALL.E MINI

PHEW. Safe to say some of them ignore particular key words.

HEADLINE FOUR: “‘Feel My Nose and Put My Specs There’, Roars Drunken Major”

1st Place: PIXRAY

A disappointing haul again, but at least Pixray managed to incorporate all the key elements.

2nd Place: CRAIYON…

…which appears to be the new name for Dall.E Mini. It’s basically the same, anyway. And it brought out a series of disturbing images for the query, some of which are definitely not suitable for human consumption. Here’s one of them, which should brighten your day if you were wondering what Andrew Collins would look like in a Bo Selecta mask.

3rd Place: HOTPOT

Key elements incorporated: just the glasses, sadly. But, y’know, thin gruel, take what you can get etc.

---

Yeah, that’s all anyone needs to see for now. So, at the end of episode one, and going by five points for a first place, three for second, one for third, here are the standings.

ALL TO PLAY FOR.

J/K, Pixray’s probably going to win at this rate. Next round of hot AI bot action this time next week.