Joe Rogan has witnessed some bizarre things in his life—UFC knockouts, psychedelic trips, Elon Musk discussing the end of humanity—but nothing prepared him for what his daughter casually pulled up on her phone. This was not a viral TikTok craze or a news headline. It was personal. It was strange. And it fundamentally changed how the UFC commentator, who had been skeptical of AI for years, thought about the technology. In his words, this moment was more than just extraordinary. It was “nuts.”
On episode #2320 of The Joe Rogan Experience, the UFC commentator told comedian Tom Segura how his daughter took a typical photograph, tossed it into an AI filter, and the image literally sprang to life. “She could take photographs, and then she throws them through this filter, and then they’re dancing around and moving,” Rogan said, clearly and visibly surprised. “You’re like, ‘This is nuts.’”
What surprised him the most? There was no special camera setup or motion capture suit—just a phone, a photo, and some AI magic that made the entire experience feel like a futuristic hallucination. It is worth noting that Rogan, who has long raised concerns about AI’s rapid evolution, seems spooked by the ease of it all. “All you need is a photograph,” he added.
“And especially if you choose to have effects in it—like some sort of psychedelic f—– weird things—where things morph and change. It could all be done with AI now.” The JRE host saw it all as more than just a cool app or visual gimmick. It was an indication that artificial intelligence had quietly and utterly changed the laws of what is possible with media.
And this isn’t just Rogan being dramatic. The technology he described is real and readily available. AI tools such as OpenAI’s Sora, Runway’s Gen-2, and Fliki can already convert static photos into dynamic, animated videos. These technologies use advanced deep learning models to map face movements, mimic lighting, and even add voiceovers and music, all without requiring any technical knowledge.
MMA: UFC 274 – Weigh Ins, May 6, 2022 Phoenix, Arizona, USA UFC announcer Joe Rogan during weigh ins for UFC 274 at the Arizona Federal Theatre. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports, 06.05.2022 15:26:32, 18218606, NPStrans, UFC, Joe Rogan, MMA PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xMarkxJ.xRebilasx 18218606
What used to take teams of video editors days to make may now be completed in minutes by a teenager using a smartphone. It’s not science fiction; it’s subscription-based software. Joe Rogan, who has spent years sitting across from AI researchers, warning about the risks of this technology, was taken aback not only by how advanced it has become. It was about how effortlessly accessible it had become. When world-changing power fits in your pocket and your child casually remixes reality for fun, it’s no longer a conversation about the future. It’s already arrived. However, it isn’t the first time that the JRE host has had his mind blown by tech.
Joe Rogan gets amazed by Google’s ‘Biggest Breakthrough’
Long before his daughter inadvertently shattered his understanding of reality with a phone app, Joe Rogan had already undergone a full-fledged existential digital crisis—this time thanks to Google. What started as a debate about quantum computing suddenly devolved into something much more profound: the multiverse, the boundaries of human perception, and what the JRE host himself described as “probably the biggest technological breakthrough in human history.”
On JRE episode #2243, sitting across from Julian Lennon, Joe Rogan couldn’t contain his excitement as he discussed Google’s latest quantum processor, Willow. “It’s insane,” he said, leaning toward the idea as if he was still trying to get his head around it. “Here’s where it gets really weird: the way it was explained to me is that quantum computers pull answers from different universes simultaneously. They don’t even completely understand how this is working.”
For a man who has covered everything from alien abductions to near-death experiences on his podcast, this event stood out as genuinely unsettling—and fascinating. But it wasn’t simply the hypothesis that alarmed Rogan. It was a scale. “You could write the numbers all out, but your brain isn’t capable of fully grasping what’s going on,” he explained.
That type of sentence used to appear in science fiction literature. Google executives are now dropping it in multibillion-dollar boardrooms. Willow solved a problem in less than five minutes, which would take today’s supercomputers ten septillion years. For the JRE host, this wasn’t just future talk; it was proof that we’re currently living in a new era. But what do you think? Has AI already reached its peak? Let us know in the comments.
The post “This Is Nuts”: Joe Rogan Gets Blown Away as Daughter Shows Eerie Advancements of AI appeared first on EssentiallySports.
