Russia announces its 'sixth-generation' fighter with an image created with Twitter's AI

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin's regime announced a piece of news related to military aviation that is giving rise to many jokes.

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In a message posted on its official English-language Twitter channel on January 5, Russia Today (RT), one of the propaganda outlets of the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti, made the following announcement:

Russia advances sixth-generation fighter development — Sukhoi

"It must have a power plant with significantly improved characteristics: very low specific consumption and high thrust," the head of Sukhoi’s Design Bureau told TASS.

The most striking thing about this announcement is that RT included this image in its message:

It is normal that in the development process of a new fighter plane artistic representations are used, with which aeronautical companies usually show how the main lines of the new plane would be once it has been built. What is new in this case is that RT has used an image generated by Grok, the artificial intelligence of Twitter. In fact, the image includes the logo that Grok puts in the lower right corner of the images it generates:

That explains why the plane RT showed has an asymmetrical fuselage, non-Russian insignia (AI apps often get confused with emblems), and the tailpipes of an old MiG-29. As expected, RT's post is generating all kinds of humorous comments.

In Grok it is relatively easy to create images like this. This is how Grok sees a possible Spanish sixth generation fighter. At least, in this case, Grok has managed to make something similar to the Spanish roundels. Here is another Spanish sixth generation fighter generated by Grok, which seems to have problems when making images of aircraft with symmetrical fuselages.

I asked Grok for a sixth-generation fighter for Poland and this is what he showed me. A rehash of MiG-29, FA-50 and F-16, three fighter models used by the Polish Air Force.

While we're at it, I've asked Grok for a sixth-generation fighter from Estonia, a country whose tiny air force doesn't even have fighters. This wouldn't even be a stealth aircraft, but it doesn't look bad.

If Sukhoi engineers use Grok to design their new fighter (all to come), the result may end up being even more entertaining than RT's message.