As we’ve discussed, one of my favorite things is to give a text- or image-generating AI a vague and/or ambiguous prompt, and just see what happens. The results are sometimes kind of horrifying, but here I’m going to post a bunch of results that aren’t especially horrifying, and that are sometimes lovely.
The prompt for all of these is basically just “a photograph”. And what I really want to do (and I am realizing that there are various services out there that would let me do it without much fuss) is make a nice coffee-table book of these, accompanied by text produced by like NovelAI. Just because it would be neat.
I continue having way too muchy fun making images with MidJourney (and NightCafe, and now somethings that I can’t quite show off yet).
I’m realizing that I’m a little weird, in that most people seem to be interested in just how exactly they can get the tool to produce an image that they’re thinking of, whereas I am almost entirely into typing somewhat random ambiguous stuff, and seeing what fun things the AI responds with.
For instance, here’s a snapshot of a whole bunch of images made using the prompt “one inside of another” with various seeds and switches and engine flows and things:
two dozen rather varied and ominous images
I love all of these (there were some I didn’t love, and I didn’t upscale those, so they aren’t here). The first two got me:
It seemed like there was really something going on there.
These two are with a slightly different engine flow than most of the others, but are no less wonderful:
What’s going on here? Is the AI showing wild creativity? Is it just starting in a basically random place due to the vague prompt, and then drifting into some weird random local minimum from there? Is that different from showing wild creativity?
Clearly there are lots of pictures of faces (especially women’s faces) and rooms with windows in the training set, so we get lots of those, that makes sense. But why do we get two different images that are (inter alia) the face of a person holding (and/or confronting) some semi-abstract sharp object? Why are there two faces which are split in half vertically, and one half striped / pixelated?
And what are these?
One thing is certainly inside of another. Is that a coincidence? Or is the AI “aware” of it in some sense?
I feel like I could swim in this stuff forever! That is what I thought at first about the GPT-3 stuff, though, and that wasn’t true. :) Still, if it’s just that I’m still in the initial flush of excitement, it’s a very fun flush.
Oh, and somewhat relatedly, here is a stealth announcement of a new graphic novel (or perhaps picture book) based on MidJourney images. This time I generated many many images from the same (small set of related) prompts, four at a time, and then tried to construct a story that would make sense with them. Note that this version is like 327MB for some reason, so click with care: Klara, Part 1.
I mentioned that a generous friend had offered to curate some of my MidJourney productions: well, here’s the official announcement! I’m all non-ironically delighted. Not only did Karima organize and create venues for some of my vast messy piles of images, she also created entire immersive experiences around some of the genres. Woot!
(“Dale Innis” is of course my secret Second Life avatar name, but don’t tell anyone!)
On August 1st, it all started with one prim, a texture and an idea for my 21st world On Kitely – Virtual Worlds, completely inspired by the enormous quantity of AI Art,
Dale Innis was producing.
Dale had been dabbling with AI Art programs for months and the results were interesting, at times creepy and unsettling… but this new program, *MidJourney, was absolutely amazing!! (more about the program at the end)
I was moved to create spaces and divide up his art into genres that could be enjoyed in immersive appropriate places. I am so happy he loved the idea and very much got into even building a few galleries, himself. All paths lead to somewhere..Pick one and see where it takes you:) Maybe hang out at a Hippie Campsite, see somePsychedelic Artand listen to The Youngbloods. *Disclaimer, an AI has never had a psychedelic experience….and its art…
My old Jehovah’s Witness friend, from all those Saturdays ago, stopped by this morning! He says he’s just started doing door-to-door work again since the Pandemic started. He had with him a young Asian man, as they do, always traveling in pairs to avoid temptation and all.
As well as catching up on life and all, and him showing me the latest jay doubleyou dot org interactive Bible teachings and stuff, we talked a little about religion and philosophy.
He talked about how Jehovah has a name (“Jehovah”) as well as various titles (“God”, “Father”, etc), just like people do. (I didn’t ask where the name came from, although I am curious.) He said that, as with humans, Jehovah has a name because Jehovah is a person. I asked what that meant, and it came down to the idea that Jehovah has “a personality”. I tried to ask whence this personality came, and whether Jehovah could have had a different personality, but that was apparently a bit too advanced.
They claimed that one of Jehovah’s personality traits is humility, and this … surprised me. Their evidence for this was two pieces of Bible verse, one which has nothing whatever to do with humility, and the other being Psalms 18:35, which the KJV renders as:
Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me great.
but the JW’s favorite translation, the New World Translation has as:
You give me your shield of salvation, Your right hand supports me, And your humility makes me great.
Given all of the contrary evidence, about being jealous and wrathful and “where were you when the foundations of the Earth were laid?”, I was not convinced of the humility thing, and we sort of dropped it.
(The Hebrew is apparently “עַנְוָה” (wheee, bidirectional text!), which is variously translated as either “gentleness” or “humility” or “meekness”, with suggestions of “mercy”; imho “gentleness” makes more sense here, as I don’t know by what mechanism God’s humility would lead to David’s greatness, whereas God being gentle and merciful (about David’s flaws) is a better candidate.)
Anyway :) what I really wanted to talk about was the thing I’ve alluded to before, the puzzle where, in the JW theory, once we (well, the good people!) are in the Paradise Earth, there is still free will, and there is still sin, at a presumably small but still non-zero rate, and as soon as the sinner sins in their heart (before they can hurt anyone else) they just cease to be.
(I wrote a microfiction on this theme here, and it’s also a plot element in the 2020 NaNoWriMo novel . Just by the way. :) )
“Those Born in Paradise”, made with MidJourney of course
My concern with this JW theory was that, given eternity and free will, everyone will sin eventually, and so the Paradise Earth (and even Heaven, assuming the 144,000 are also like this, I’m not sure) will slowly slowly ever so slowly empty out! Uh oh, right?
But in talking to my JW friend (who opined that at least people wouldn’t sin very often, even though as I pointed out Adam and Eve were in roughly the same circumstances and they sinned like two hours in), it turns out that there is still birth on Paradise Earth!
That had not occurred to me. He was quick to point out that there wouldn’t be enough birth to make the place overcrowded (perhaps that’s something that lesser doubters bring up?). I said that sure, I guess there’s just enough to make up for the rate of insta-zapped sinners! (I did not actually use the term “insta-zapped”.)
So that solves that puzzle. It does seem inevitable that eventually the only people will be people who were born in the Paradise Earth (or heaven?), and who therefore didn’t have to go through the whole “world dominated by Satan” phase, but only learn about it in History class or something.
Which seems kind of unfair to the rest of us! But there we are. As I say, some interesting stories to be written in that setting.
Neither my JW friend nor the younger person he was going door-to-door with seemed entirely comfortable with my theory, even though it’s the obvious consequences of their beliefs. I hope I didn’t disturb their faith at all, hee hee. (I like to think that there is some sort of warning next to my address in their list of people to visit, not to send anyone unsteady in their faith; it’s not very likely, but I like to think it anyway.)
All paths lead to somewhere..Pick one and see where it takes you:)
ceoln 