Tag Archives: AI

The Wizard of AI

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Carve out 20 minutes of your day and watch the excellent 99% AI-generated video essay ‘The Wizard of AI,’ Created by Alan Warburton and commissioned by Data as Culture at the Open Data Institute.

AI Tools Used:

Trust me, you will thank me for watching this.

Bard Versus The New Bing

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Invites to test Bard and the New Bing arrived within 24 hours of each other. The Bard invite arrived first, and I must admit to being underwhelmed. Bard was boring. I had heard the rumors that Google’s secret AI was leaps and bounds ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, convincing at least one engineer of sentience. However, the experience was largely dull.

What is the purpose of Bard?

What is the purpose of Bard?

As alterative to regular search, Bard does not immediately offer up a convincing reason to stick with its services. The results take a little longer to generate and do not contain URLs. When searching for places to eat in Chicago, I had to independently Google Bard’s text results. Bard suggested two excellent options that met my criteria, but then suggested options that made little sense. I can see one potential future here, and that is in Augmented Reality, where Bard is a competitor to Alexa – vocalizing responses to my spoken requests. But this is only going to have value if Bard can demonstrate accuracy and link to actual resources on the internet.

Welcome To The New Bing

Welcome To The New Bing

New Bing is something else. It took a few clicks to access the new Bing (started up in Safari, did not like being in the Microsoft Edge Dev, but worked like a dream in the regular Edge) and it felt like I was in Las Vegas, which is both good and bad.

Conversational Style

Conversational Style

I was impressed that the new Bing (NuBing?) suggested a choice of conversational style: Creative, Balanced, or Precise. Somewhat ironically, I found myself Googling how to try the new features.

Kitten and Dinosaur

Kitten and Dinosaur

AI image generation (Image Creator) is baked into chat and initially works surprisingly fast and well. I was unable to get a widescreen image even though Bing told me it could change the aspect ratio of the results, and my request for a “dinosaur riding a kitten” was churned out as a kitten riding a dinosaur. But it did it fast. On a day where ChatGPT was up and down (and lacking historical chats) this was particularly impressive. Subtly, Bing was counting up to a limit of 15 with each image request. With only a few credits left, I asked for an image of a kitten dressed as Judge Dredd. Bing Binged itself with a search of Wikipedia and spat out some acceptable results.

Judge Kitten

Judge Kitten

I have no idea if these search results are being piped into the image prompt, but I like to think they are.

So, I will definitely be using the New Bing. Bard, not so much.

Sorry

For kicks, here are some of the images that Bing was able to create.

A steampunk armadillo

A steampunk armadillo

Kitten and Dinosaur 1

Kitten and Dinosaur 1

Kitten and Dinosaur 2

Kitten and Dinosaur 2

Kitten and Dinosaur 3

Kitten and Dinosaur 3

An image of James Moore (who works at DePaul University) riding on the back of a kitten

An image of James Moore (who works at DePaul University) riding on the back of a kitten

That Was Unexpected…

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ChatGPT

ChatGPT. Wednesday 15th March, 2023

Like many others, I have been exploring the new and improved ChatGPT. This response was unexpected. To check that the LLM was not hallucinating, I ran a couple of quick Google queries:

Scientists discover new species of monkey in Amazon rainforest” – National Geographic (March 15, 2023

Nope

Nope: “It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search”

“Stocks rise on positive economic data and company earnings reports” – CNN Business (March 15, 2023)

Nope

Nope: No results found for “Stocks rise on positive economic data and company earnings reports” – CNN Business (March 15, 2023).

(and it looks like stocks actually fell)

“World leaders gather for climate summit in Paris” – BBC News (March 14, 2023)

Nope

Nope: No results found for “World leaders gather for climate summit in Paris” – BBC News (March 14, 2023).

“NASA launches new mission to study Jupiter’s moons” – Space.com (March 12, 2023)

Nope

Nope: No results found for “NASA launches new mission to study Jupiter’s moons” – Space.com (March 12, 2023).

However, The Guardian reports that the “European Space Agency’s Juice probe launches next month, flying closer to icy moons – including Ganymede, the solar system’s largest – than ever before.” So this was a good guess.

“Apple announces new iPhone with advanced AI features” – The Verge (March 10, 2023)

Nope

Nope: No results found for “Apple announces new iPhone with advanced AI features” – The Verge (March 10, 2023).

However, The Verge happily reports that a there is a new yellow iPhone.

Messing About With AI: Part 3

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Today’s poetry snippet is “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll. I pasted the first two verses into each of the AI image generators:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

I was honestly expecting an error message, but DALL-E presented me with four options. Of these four, two are pretty decent:

Jabberwocky - 1

Jabberwocky – 1

Jabberwocky - 2

Jabberwocky – 2

Jabberwocky - 3

Jabberwocky – 3

Jabberwocky - 4

Jabberwocky – 4

DiffusionBee was unhappy with the volume of text pasted into the app, so I deleted “and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!” and hoped for the best. And here, DiffusionBee did not disappoint:

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

I decided to play around with the settings and discovered that DiffusionBee could generate multiple images. I went with four, and waited four times as long (but it was worth it):

Jabberwocky - 1

Jabberwocky – 1

Jabberwocky - 2

Jabberwocky – 2

Jabberwocky - 3

Jabberwocky – 3

Jabberwocky - 4

Jabberwocky – 4

And then I added the “By Wes Anderson” style:

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson - 1

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson – 1

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson - 2

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson – 2

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson - 3

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson – 3

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson - 4

Jabberwocky Wes Anderson – 4

Not sure if this really matched his aesthetic, but these looked suitably glorious. Amongst the many clickable styles that DiffusionBee proffered was “by H.R. Giger,” so I gave that a go too:

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger - 1

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger – 1

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger - 2

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger – 2

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger - 3

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger – 3

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger - 4

Jabberwocky H. R. Giger – 4

I could have spent the rest of the day just messing about with the various clickable styles, but instead quickly popped over to Craiyon to see how they dealt with nonsense poems:

Craiyon

Craiyon

Again Craiyon churned out sterling work, but DiffusionBee was the clear winner today.

Just as I was about to finish for the day, I realized that I could use the original published artist (John Tenniel) as the style. Without commentary, here is how AI responded:

DALL-E 1

DALL-E 1

DALL-E 2

DALL-E 2

DALL-E 3

DALL-E 3

DALL-E 4

DALL-E 4

Jabberwocky John Tenniel - 1

Jabberwocky John Tenniel – 1

Jabberwocky John Tenniel - 2

Jabberwocky John Tenniel – 2

Jabberwocky John Tenniel - 3

Jabberwocky John Tenniel – 3

Jabberwocky John Tenniel - 4

Jabberwocky John Tenniel – 4

Craiyon

Craiyon

Messing About With AI: Part 2

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Going with some Dylan Thomas today. Thought the opening lines of “Do not go gentle into that good night” might be worth a go:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

DALL-E generated 4 options again:

Do not go gentle into that good night - 1

Do not go gentle into that good night – 1

Do not go gentle into that good night - 2

Do not go gentle into that good night – 2

Do not go gentle into that good night - 3

Do not go gentle into that good night – 3

Do not go gentle into that good night - 4

Do not go gentle into that good night – 4

DiffusionBee threw up what looked like a Norse word cloud:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night

Unimpressed with this, I added a “by Banksy” style modifier to see if this created something more visually arresting. I guess it did. Messing about with styles (drawing, visual, pen, carving and etching, camera, color, emotions, style of an artist or community, CGI software, and CGI rendering) is where I may have to add more direction.

Banksy Style

Banksy Style

So, I added a bunch of modifying styles. I then learned that DiffusionBee limits the number of text characters for the prompt. After removing a few, I ended up with this (Angry, Melancholic, Oil Paint, Dramatic, Surrealist):

Angry, Melancholic, Oil Paint, Dramatic, Surrealist

Again, Craiyon gets appropriately angsty. Will have to try something more placid tomorrow:

Craiyon

Craiyon

Messing About With AI: Part 1

Internet, Technology, , , , , , , ,

I signed up and/or downloaded several AI image-generating services recently. For kicks, I have started to post poetry and descriptions from classic novels to see what the results are. I started the process using one of the most celebrated poems ever: Catullus 85:

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.

There are many English translations and interpretations, so I went with Wikipedia:

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.
I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured

It looks like this request may not follow our content policy.

It looks like this request may not follow our content policy.

So, I posted this into DALL-E. The word “torture” was flagged as not appropriate, so I went with Google’s stock translation (which was accepted):

I hate and I love. Wherefore I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I feel it being done and I am tormented.

DALL-E generated 4 options:

Catullus 85 - 1

Catullus 85 – 1

Catullus 85 – 2

Catullus 85 – 3

Catullus 85 – 4

Options one and two are cheerfully banal, but three and four have a slight spark. Option three is my winner. And DiffusionBee seems to follow the same tack, generating this one image from the original text (no issues, it seems, with the word torture):

Catullus 85 - DiffusionBee

Catullus 85 – DiffusionBee

Craiyon‘s output definitely felt more teenage angsty. Their AI obvious has the machine soul of a poet:

Catullus 85 - Craiyon

Catullus 85 – Craiyon

Will try again tomorrow with something completely different.