There is a type of dystopia where most the citizens are happy and believe their dystopia is an utopia. If it’s literature then the rebel gets subsumed or brainwashed, or in the sci-fi world a lone rebel fights back and brings the system crashing down. The result is presumably that the ignorant masses can now live in a miserable but newly aware state. So is the Ai revolution taking us to Big Brother? The press and pundits would love this to be true. Or do we already live in a dystopia and Ai will open our eyes to the fact?
I suspect the answer is both of the above. We love opposites, they are easy, black and white good and evil, binaries are beautiful. However we live in a world of ever changing greys where a bad act can have a good result and a good one can pave that path to hell.
Ai has already changed our appreciation of images. many now view any image with suspicion. This is maybe a good thing, illusory images have always been used to tell lies. To sell religious myth and to gild the reputations of the powerful. This is only one side of the mirror though. They have also been used to tell stories of beauty and delight, of poetry and wisdom. Most of the deluge of images produced by Ai have amost no story to tell. Some are interesting and striking but they are few and far between. After a while you recognise all the different types of image. The Robots, monsters, heroes and heroines are all cut from the same cloth.
On the other side of the coin there are those who are obsessed with what they imagine to be realism. They mean photographic of course, the goal is an image that is indistinguishable from a genuine photo. What you do after this goal is achieved is unclear. I have no interest in the fake photos… advertisers however are rubbing their hands at the thought of no model or photographic fees. Hollywood is also preparing to jump in. With Ai you will very soon be able to make films with dead actors. John Wayne may ride across the prairie again, Marylyn Monroe might star in a sci-fi flick. Their joy will be short lived though. If the present arc of advancement continues you won’t need a studio, actors, writers or any of the enormous crews. You will suggest a story, pick your actors and an hour or so later your movie will be ready to watch. If you think it will be terrible, think again, the models will be trained on all the greatest movies. The Ai ones may not be Oscar winners but they will be more watchable than most of the trash released in a year.
For now though I was happy to play with this new toy. I tried mixing styles and subjects… not so easy as they need to be balanced. I found different ways of getting what I wanted rather than what the Ai gave me. I also made videos of my discoveries which became strangely popular for basic screeen captures with me gabbing in the background. Here’s a few of the more deranged images I made.
It is very good at baroque madness. The hard bit is controlling the composition and getting things in places you wish. This was done with a hand drawn depth map.
This is an example of the more unstructured random output. For this I input a series of conflicting images. Baroque buildings and paintings mixed with fractals I’ll put a few of the images below and you can try to work out what influences they had!
I even remade one of my old illustrations… I got increased finish but less charm.
It is very good at the generic. So horror, sci-fi and of course Steampunk.
Then there are the Ai people, they don’t come in very many varieties. The girls are sexy and the guys are musclebound.
The above demonstrates a point in my earlier post. There is no personal style in the Ai world. One thing I wanted to manage was an equivalent of my pen and ink style. So far this has been impossible… I don’t know whether to feel pleased or frustrated! Below is as near as I got.
I think that is enough about Ai for now. I might return to it as changes are happening at breakneck speed.
