Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

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.

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

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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.