Sunday 3 November 2024

(AI) Okay, that one's really quite striking

This is from Gemini, Google's AI – the one that was called Bard in earlier versions. I neglected to save the actual picture, so the best I can do is the above screenshot. Clicking the pic will give you a much better quality version. The prompt I provided cuts off just before the end, so for that reason and for clarity, here it is in full: 

Draw a recruiting poster for the Wonderbolts, featuring Rainbow Dash performing aerobatics. Use a very exciting and dramatic style, and use an unusual camera angle. Do not feature any machinery. 

That last bit was because an earlier attempt gave me Rainbow flying a plane. Off lighting and somewhat clichéd look notwithstanding, this one's much more suitable – and if only Gemini could spell "Wonderbolts" it could have been better still!

10 comments:

  1. AI really is the future of art, as much as I hate to admit it. The quality, variety, and creativity of mainstream art will decline because the people who are powerful enough to dictate the required use have none of the ability to know the difference between artistic brilliance and imitative mediocrity. It will certainly have a lot of flash, though.

    Artists will still be around, and most commercial ones will be regulated to fixing the irregularities of the mindless AI works. Like the a pair of airplane wings sticking out behind Dash's own, or the spelling.

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    1. if AI is the future of art, then we as a society neither have nor, I would say, deserve, a future

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    2. I defer to iisaw's much greater knowledge of these fields,¹ but I don't think we get a choice. In the end, if you ask a company to pick one from "superb and original, but it'll cost you" and "generic and imperfect, but it just about does the job and it's really cheap" then most are going to take the latter nearly every time. Real art will still be there I'm sure, but AI isn't going away, ever.

      ¹ Not to mention greater observational skills, given I didn't even notice the plane wings at Dash's back first time... one of very many reasons I'm not an art professional!

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    3. PP,
      It looks pretty bleak on a number of fronts, but there can be alternatives for people that want them badly enough. The problem right now is finding a direction that's away from our global Omelas.

      Logan,
      Yep, the whole AI generative art movement is driven, top-down, by corporate interests. And there's an argument to be made that everything significant in our lives is under the same pressure. Only a general economic crash will change the course we're on.

      Honestly, I'm looking back on the days when we, as fans, traded xeroxed 'zines and the resulting "black and white explosion" in comics with a lot of fondness.

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    4. I might as well point out something else: you asked for Dash to be performing acrobatics, but got a fairly static pose. This isn't uncommon because AI doesn't understand bodies or how they work, it's just imitating chunks of images. Dynamic figure poses or action are very hard for it to grok... so far.

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    5. @iisaw Oh Tartarus, that Omelas story. Definitely in the "once read, never forgotten, even if you'd like to" class.

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  2. Replies
    1. Honestly, it's amazing that it got that close. Too bad it wasn't Wonderballs or Wonderboils

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    2. It's about the least worst I've seen it manage with text. Probably just luck – this was my first attempt with that prompt.

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    3. I will give the AI guys credit for constantly trying to improve the systems.

      BTW, here you go: https://ibb.co/6ZwVRbk

      If you need me, I'll be sitting on the street corner with a cardboard sign in my lap reading: WILL FIX AI FOR FOOD.

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