Artificial Intelligence Used to Create Latest Stabilization of Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Footage

A still image from the newly released video. *(Rowan Cheung / Twitter)*

Rowan Cheung, author of artificial intelligence (AI) newsletter The Rundown, posted a stabilized video of the famed Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot footage to Twitter on March 30th that he said was the product of AI.

"Experts used AI and computer vision to stabilize viral footage of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film from 1967," Cheung said.

The footage was originally shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin on October 20th, 1967, near Bluff Creek in Northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest.

Experts used AI and computer vision to stabilize viral footage of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film from 1967. pic.twitter.com/5b8NYpBQ31
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 30, 2023

While video experts have been using software like Adobe After Effects to stabilize the footage for over a decade, this represents the first known attempt to do so utilizing AI.

This latest iteration of the Patterson-Gimlin footage has people once again forming opinions on its validity and entrenching themselves as believers or debunkers.

Some viewers of the footage insist that the creature captured on camera is simply someone in a suit, while others, naturally, believe it to be a genuine bigfoot.

Very little has changed over the years in the debate regarding the film.

Since its introduction over 50 years ago, the film has remained a divisive subject in the cryptozoological community, with some—like famed cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans—arguing that the “bigfoot” is likely to be a person in a suit. Heuvelmans argued that the creature's hair-flow pattern was too uniform, the hair on its breasts was inconsistent with primate physiology, its buttocks were insufficiently separated, and its reaction to the presence of Patterson and Gimlin was too calm.

Other experts, like Esteban Sarmiento, a specialist in physical anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, were more favorable in their evaluations.

"I did find some inconsistencies in appearance and behavior that might suggest a fake ... but nothing that conclusively shows that this is the case," he wrote of the footage.

Patterson and Gimlin were said to have screened the film for Dale Sheets, head of the Documentary Film Department at Universal Studios, along with several technicians for the studio, after which they concluded that any suit capable of replicating the creature in the film would be incredibly expensive and difficult to produce.

Disney executive Ken Peterson conveyed a similar sentiment after watching the film, asserting that Disney’s technicians would be unable to replicate it.

Overall, the number of experts who have examined the evidence and found it to be intriguing is at least equal to the film's detractors, and all claims of proof that it was a person in a suit have since been debunked—leaving the film still unexplained.

For their part, both Patterson (now deceased) and Gimlin have consistently maintained that the film is genuine.

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