9news
@9news·551K subscribers·83.5K videos
AI-generated ‘butter busts’ at Minnesota State Fair
Posted
September 1, 2026
Views
347
Likes
1
Comments
1
Engagement
0.58%
September 1, 2026
347
1
1
0.58%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
0:42Now PlayingFor generations, Minnesota State Fair visitors have watched Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her court have their likenesses carved into butter. On Saturday, some fairgoers got the chance to see what they might look like in butter, too, with a little help from artificial intelligence.
The University of Minnesota’s Data Science and AI Hub offered visitors the chance to create 3D-printed plastic “butter busts” of themselves as part of an effort to get people talking about AI.
“It was my idea to have butter sculptures,” said Hayley Borck, managing director of the university’s Data Science and AI Hub. “I thought it was just really silly. It’s one of my favorite things to do at the fair.”
The process starts with three photos of a participant. Borck said those images are sent to Google’s Gemini AI model to generate an image that can then be processed by Meshy AI.
“They create a 3D-printable file with the full profile,” Borck said. “And then we send that to the printer.”
The result is a small, butter-inspired plastic bust visitors can take home.
But the novelty is also meant to serve a larger purpose.
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
