(*** As a warning before you read on – some of these images are quite disturbing. They’re all entirely computer-generated, but still… they’re uncanny. ***)
I’ve been keeping an eye on neural nets and automated generation of content, in the manner of a fisherman keeping an eye on a storm front full of robot sharks. (I heartily recommend https://www.aiweirdness.com by the way, especially posts like A 10,000 Year Warning or Sea Shanty Surrealism). There’s a new toy to play with in the form of Art Machine.
In my experience, AI art isn’t that great yet at giving you specific scenes. Here’s “The sailing ship Demeter crashing on the shore of Whitby during a fierce thunderstorm in 1894.”
It’s got the elements – the storm, the waves, the sailing ship – but can’t figure out composition. Maybe, if I spent ages fiddling with the prompt, I’d get a more coherent image.
What it’s absolutely marvellous at, though, is creating things that should not be. So, I spent a nightmarish morning feeding in descriptive text from the Book of Unremitting Horror, and seeing what squirmed through the Membrane and out onto my screen.
I failed my sanity check… what do I roll?
How many points do you want to spend?