AI Art - Good prompts?

[Myr]

There is a lot of legal debate over AI art, mostly on how the Artificial Intelligence neural networks are trained.  (They get fed existing stuff whole and simulate things.)

I'm leaving the debate off to the side, as I have very little visual arts talents.

As a write, I draw inspiration from a lot of things, but often it is a picture or something like that.  AI art does allow for generating things like prompts.

For example, https://bing.com/create allows you to plug in parameters and generate something.  I put in "gay young adult men gothic horror" for this.  (hint: do not leave out "adult" or you get prohibited... AI likes generating inappropriate material if you leave out 'adult', I guess)

What are your thoughts on AI-generated art?

[Mancunian]

This looks interesting, I'll withhold any further comment until I've looked at it more. 

[Bill W]

It might be a great way to illustrate our stories, since I have no artistic talent at all.  

[Mancunian]

45 minutes ago, Bill W said:

It might be a great way to illustrate our stories, since I have no artistic talent at all.  

I agree, it certainly looks like it has the possibility to be a good and useful tool.

[Mikiesboy]

i've used it to make my own laptop wallpaper. It's fun, but it's not 'art', even when you tell it to make it look like an oil painting.  However, it could be useful and fun to make your own prompt pics, bring your 'adult' characters to life so to speak, or places even.  It's worth trying for some inspiration.

[Zombie]

3 hours ago, Myr said:

AI art does allow for generating things like prompts… I put in "gay young adult men gothic horror" for this.  (hint: do not leave out "adult" or you get prohibited...

What are your thoughts on AI-generated art?

well that’s interesting

I tried this using your search criteria “gay young adult men gothic horror“ and got prohibited 

So I tried again using the same words but swapping around the word order for “gay” and it worked! (but the images are much less hot🔥than yours )

Seems that the AI algorithm really does not like upfront “gay”

 

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Zombie

[Mancunian]

@Zombie I had similar results and like you, I persevered and liked the results. Now I have a few nice pics to use for the title characters in the story that I'm currently writing. Thank you @Myr for bringing this to our attention.

[Zombie]

Interesting also that the AI algorithm seems to ‘understand’ stereotypical gay male pairings in @Myr’s 4 images, providing a decent choice of pairings to match various story narratives

Personally I find (clockwise from top left) #1 (top+bottom) and #3 (versatile)🔥, followed by #4. But it’s horses for courses

Maybe in its spare time the AI’s busy reading up on blog posts like this…

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/top-scientists-get-to-the-bottom-of-gay-male-sex-role-preferences/

[Myr]

Since it is Halloween season, I will say Tuesday's genre deep dive is Paranormal and I added an appropriate bit if AI art in there. The gothic horror image in the original post was part of the experiment for Tuesday's  post. 

 

[Backwoods Boy]

For someone who never got past stick figures, this holds marvelous potential  

[raven1]

Thanks for this blog entry Myr.  I tried it and made a few discoveries myself.  "In love" gave me the boot, so I changed to "boyfriends" and got some excellent examples, except for one picture of a heterosexual couple.  The pictures were very realistic both in the people and the backgrounds.  I had a good time playing with this and may use it for some of my poetry chapters.  Thanks!

[raven1]

Just to let everyone know that AIs are not ready to take over the world.  I got this image for a description of two brothers.

[W_L]

Just an FYI, I began playing with AI prompted covers as well. That's how I created my current cover for "Of Pride and Power"

Here's 4 covers that were honorable mentions, if readers prefer these over the one I have as cover, I'm open minded:

[Backwoods Boy]

Having played with the tool for a while now, to return briefly to the title question - "AI Art - Good Prompts?" - I would say, yes, given something sufficiently general and thought provoking.  Most of the examples in this thread are (deliberately) focused on a specific genre, theme, etc.  The most successful prompts on GA have been the more general ones, in my opinion.  The tool's mistakes - such as  @raven1's two brothers with the extra head - might be the most thought-provoking for the purposes of a prompt. 🤔

As to the observations about failures, note the wording of the message: "Unsafe Image Content Detected".  And a later phrase: "...we detected unsafe content in the images...".  It's the AI art generator that's on trial here, not the user.  I put in an apparently innocuous request, and it resulted in failure.  Requests with clear potential for misinterpretation produce failure one time and success the next.  And if you read the content policy, anything that could possibly offend any society that exists or ever existed on the face of the earth is included.  Pity the poor AI generator trying to interpret your phrase while producing politically-correct material.  It's just a toddler at this point.  Hopefully it's learning from its failures. 

[Krista]

You have to be more specific with AI, otherwise, if you have more than one "character" or object, you get errors, or mirrored images. I went through nine-ish attempts, and at least this AI struggled with making organically different looking people within the same image. Unless, I detailed exactly what I wanted. Dark haired young adult man, embracing a blond young adult woman - for example. I tried, Two men, walking along a beach, holding hands. The dudes looked like twins, it was a bit unnerving. I found out fast that I needed to try harder and be way more clear.

Minimal demands are also better as I tried: Horses running in Snow, on a farm.  - The AI made the attempt to include everything, but the only image that looked natural, was the image with the fewest horses. Even then, two of them were running headlong into a fence, because the "Farms" generated with the horses, weren't in line with the horses themselves. So you may want to limit it to, Three horses running in the snow with a farm landscape, backdrop, or whatever - for example.

---

If you're good at photoshop or editing, you can fix AI generated images simply enough. That is also the draw of it. It is quick, and easily fixed. More advanced AI tools allows you to do quick edits on the spot, then generate hundreds of images with the small change you want. Which makes it a lot easier to create your perfect image faster. It takes away the waiting time a team of Digital artists and concept artists. That is also why my enthusiasm for it wanes immediately. It also cannot create by itself, it is a function of what we have already supplied it. There is no 100% organically created AI image out there. Neat toy, but not something I really like. 

Edited October 24, 2023 by Krista

[Krista]

I was attempting to make Jackson and Luke from my story, and out of all the images these are the two that I liked most. The first image they're way too old looking, late college, instead of late high school. The second one, the brunette dude's hair is blurry and his fingers look strange, as they're not placed at the angle where it would cut off the tips of them in the image, but their ages are closer to the characters.. and I really like the 'Luke' in the second image. They both look very 90s Abercrombie Ad-ish.. lmao. My results for Elias and Ridley were far less productive... but it is fun to do. I personally would caution against using AI-generated stuff for writing, such as these, as with my own writing, I don't specifically iron out my characters down to their last freckle, I let readers picture the characters however they want to, I just guide them slightly, but the rest is up to them. I personally don't see Luke or Jackson in either of these images. 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Krista

[Zombie]

10 hours ago, Backwoods Boy said:

if you read the content policy, anything that could possibly offend any society that exists or ever existed on the face of the earth is included

good point - human ‘controls’ imposed on ‘AI’ to enforce a particular value set

It’s the same with ChatGPT where, playing around with it some months back, I provided information + asked it questions (knowing the answer) and it denied the statement (the facts are in the public domain) as if a human instruction set / censor algorithm (its ‘Content Policy’) had overridden / prevented it from giving a correct response.  I then gave it specific + much more detailed facts and it then retracted its initial denial and provided the answer it should have given in the first place…

That’s a real worry, when increasingly people are going to be relying on AI for unbiased and accurate information in order to assist decision-making.  Not so much with images, though, where at worst the results may just be disappointing / unusable 

[W_L]

9 hours ago, Krista said:

I was attempting to make Jackson and Luke from my story, and out of all the images these are the two that I liked most. The first image they're way too old looking, late college, instead of late high school. The second one, the brunette dude's hair is blurry and his fingers look strange, as they're not placed at the angle where it would cut off the tips of them in the image, but their ages are closer to the characters.. and I really like the 'Luke' in the second image. They both look very 90s Abercrombie Ad-ish.. lmao. My results for Elias and Ridley were far less productive... but it is fun to do. I personally would caution against using AI-generated stuff for writing, such as these, as with my own writing, I don't specifically iron out my characters down to their last freckle, I let readers picture the characters however they want to, I just guide them slightly, but the rest is up to them. I personally don't see Luke or Jackson in either of these images. 

Krista have you tried illustrations, I spent a weekend playing to create some AI art for battle in chapter 12, it was fun. 

I don't know how readers will react as I saved them on my blog future dated entry for extra content, but it's another way of using AI images

[Myr]

So Bing has switched to Dall-E3 for its image creator. I typed in

Quote

a realistic metallic blue colored dragon attacking a large gothic castle at night with a brilliant moon

All four images were pretty cool...

Certainly enough to inspire some stories...

[Backwoods Boy]

I've been spending too much time with this toy.  Mine are tending towards "rural", as one might expect.  Here's one that might make a prompt, including the minor AI-induced physical defect.

Tip:  The application is best used late at night when demand is down.

[W_L]

18 minutes ago, Backwoods Boy said:

I've been spending too much time with this toy.  Mine are tending towards "rural", as one might expect.  Here's one that might make a prompt, including the minor AI-induced physical defect.

Tip:  The application is best used late at night when demand is down.

Neat:

I just did this one, definitely has a few stories to tell. Will they or Won't they hold each other's hands already  

[Krista]

I am seeing a repeated theme of this AI not really knowing what to do with Hands/fingers/toes... lol. For example, I wanted a "Phoenix" depicted as a woman with red hair. She is gorgeous, I love the picture over all, even with the addition of the phoenix itself that matches her. But that hand....if it was balled into a gentle looking fist resting on her chest - which is what the AI was going for, it would have been perfect. 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Krista

[Myr]

 

That hand looks kind of creepy like a hand/foot hybrid

[Ron]

5 hours ago, Myr said:

That hand looks kind of creepy like a hand/foot hybrid

If you think that’s bad what’s going on with the phoenix’s feet?!

[Backwoods Boy]

37 minutes ago, Ron said:

If you think that’s bad what’s going on with the phoenix’s feet?!

Quite.  I produced a Raven on a Native-American's shoulder that had that same foot disease.  I agree with @Krista on the hands/fingers/toes issue - and it seems to extend to other species.