AI Art Dump #1
My readers request—and they receive! Revealing Alice in Wonderland, Murder Chickens, Trash Monsters, and more.
by H.C. Southwark
In my experimentation with AI generated art, I decided to spread the love around and ask my readers what their imaginations could conjure for the rest of us. I have selected the best results here for everyone to enjoy!
Because AI art is a wonky, unknowable Schrodinger's cat of a thing, some of these were more difficult to generate than others. 🙂
"A monster made
of human trash"
— Anna L.
This one was just too fun to pass up on, so I tried to come up with what I was envisioning: a literal trash monster, a being made of human refuse. However, most attempts just revealed a monster with trash clinging to its fur:
Then there were versions which didn't seem to follow the prompt all that closely.
Cool monster, but definitely not made of trash. The prompt words "monster made of trash" seem to have been distilled down to just "monster" and "trash," with "made of" going on vacation.
I need to up this game...
This is the best example I ended up with. I found that it seemed acceptably... trash-based? In this picture, I imagined the monster to be a kind of mold that is growing out of the trash, so even though it is not directly made of the trash, it nonetheless was a step above "monster with trash in its fur."
"Kitten riding a unicorn! :)"
— J. Mem.
Hard not to love kittens riding unicorns, it's such a sugary sweet image. My temptation was to immediately go dark by making the kitten and unicorn somehow goth or Tim Burton-esque.
But turns out the AI art generator had the same idea, but with more subtlety, because it kept producing body horror looking hybrid things:
The next image below is another good example... I'm pretty sure that's a hoof, so rather than a kitten riding a unicorn, they seem to have been fused together into a semi-rabbit like monster.
Me: "Hello AI, I would like a kitten riding a unicorn."
AI: "Best I can do is an odd llama rabbit thing."
The lack of kitten above is just unacceptable, but the extra kitten below is a little much:
Now, here's the thing: instead of a double kitten, that could be a unicorn. Technically nobody has seen one, so maybe they really do look like goat rabbit things made of cotton candy. With feathers.
Or it could be a cat hugging a pinata. It's possible.
I ended up plugging this one into another program and attempted to use the "inpainting" technique to make a horn on the forehead of the horse. No bueno. I just got ruffled mane bangs, over and over. The horse looked like Fabio, I swear. Eventually I gave up. Maybe I'll hammer at this again someday.
UPDATE: I finally got it! *celebration*
"A witch on a unicycle going to patrol her black forest."
— James H.
Surprisingly difficult to get the AI program to spit out a unicycle, because apparently bicycles are just better. Got some great atmospheric stuff happening almost immediately, though:
Sometimes the program did listen and put out a solitary wheeled unicycle, just as intended. Also it sometimes read "witch" as somehow being masculine. Well okay then.
Played with enough, I could end up with intriguing wispy ones like this, where there is partly some kind of broomstick going on somewhere in the image (here it's in the wheel).
Also the occasional surprise featured not just unicycles, but magical unicycles. Because of course a witch would enspell her unicycle. So would you, if you could. 🙂
This ended up being the best of the lot. I think the swirly lava thing behind her head is clearly a magic spell, as another is bouncing behind her. The handlebars are still a bit too "bike" and not unicycle, but at least there's just one wheel.
Her snazzy clothing and winning smile make me want to tell a story about her. In some ways, that's the major pro to AI art—it seems in many cases to spur creativity.
"A murder chicken fighting a trash panda."
— K.G.
I'm decently certain that this incredibly meme-able request actually translates to "velociraptor vs raccoon," but I couldn't resist trying the original language rendition first:
I think the only way there's murder or fighting in this picture is if the chicken is somehow proposing to the... ferret(?) thing... and the ferret is saying "no."
Although clearly not what is actually desired from the picture, I rather like the bizarre double nature of the ferret thing. It's got a clear griffin vibe that makes it fun to look at.
After this, however, I moved on to trying to just prompt "velociraptor vs raccoon."
"Uh... which of us is the velociraptor?"
"Now which of us is the raccoon?"
...Godzilla has entered the chat?
Eventually I ended up with something like this, which I rather like actually. Took a lot of inpainting to get here, though I think the final rendition is worth it.
The size comparison works to either get the general idea of the size of the velociraptor (which was about that of a chicken in real life), or otherwise shows us a GIANT raccoon. Your choice!
"The Alice in Wonderland unbirthday scene, only they are playing cards instead of sipping tea."
— S.W.
This one was fun enough to become a minor obsession. I struggled at first to make it see beyond Alice herself, because my first prompts weighted her heavily, and I often ended up with just her and the rabbit.
Often, the AI generator wanted to "Disney-ify" Alice, giving her the blue dress. I'm uncertain if this is because Disney's work was included in the AI's training data, or if it was because the AI is following the same design rules that made Disney choose a blue dress in the first place: the dash of blue really makes her "pop" in the image.
Eventually I got tired of trying to fight having just Alice and the rabbit at the tea party, so I tried emphasizing the Mad Hatter much more. This resulted in an explosion of Mad Hatter solo images.
This one is rather likeable, even if he is a bit too Johnny Depp for my taste.
Other examples ended up being rather... Batman-y. There were ones who looked like the comic book version of the Mad Hatter Batman villain, and then some of them went rather like the Joker. The same prompt often produced both effects at once.
After tweaking the prompt to emphasize Alice a bit more, trying to get her back into the pictures, I discovered that AI's propensity to combine keywords actually ended up creating a fusion Alice-Hatter hybrid. These were amazing and wonderful to look at.
Eventually, the AI began to take the hint that Alice and the Mad Hatter were two different people, but it continued for some time to insist that the Hatter was female and Alice had taken her fashion advice. These were some of my favorite images I've been generating all week.
Of course, the AI does listen—if you beat some sense into it. I ended up getting the initial prompt image at last: Alice, the Hatter, and playing cards. No rabbit, though by that point I was sick of him (the AI started combining the rabbit and Alice, too... she started dressing like a playboy bunny).
Even then, however, the AI continued to surprise. I'm not sure where these glasses came from but I find myself loving the idea. So here's a bonus image!
I'm looking forward to seeing what my readers will come up with next! 🙂
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