Celebrating the Sky

What happens if you type "eclipse" into the prompt box of an AI artwork generator?

At first, the results are wonky. Lots of pictures of general moon-related celestial events, often with bright colors and mountainous backgrounds.

Moreover, many of these images also contain versions of reality that could not exist. For example, the "eclipse" might be in front of the clouds, closer to the viewer than the clouds. This makes it an event that is happening inside the atmosphere, not up in outer space.

(As a fantasy author, I must point out that this is actually totally fine in many imagined worlds.)

These images tell us something about what artificial intelligence "thinks" an eclipse is.

First: the AI bot does not understand what an "eclipse" actually is, exactly.

Second: the AI bot prioritizes what looks "pretty" compared to what is realistic.

But here's the kicker: we made this bot. Us. Humans.

If you search "eclipse" in a search engine's image tab, then you will find many illustrations of the same sort. Because the artificial intelligence was trained on human data, its imagination is our imagination.

And human beings love beautiful things.

I find that I adore these AI generated images for this very reason. The same reason that human beings find things like eclipses amazing. After all, there is no real reason to pay attention to an eclipse. Nothing changes about the Earth, you get a few minutes of dim sun, and then everything moves on.

But an eclipse is beautiful, and that is reason enough to celebrate the sky.

And so in homage to the eclipse of April 8, 2024, I have made this batch of AI images for everyone to enjoy.