A.I. Art for December

I'm still having too much fun with A.I. art, so I'm sharing more of my adventures with you. (See previous posts here and here.) This is my A.I. art for December.

NOTE: I used MidJourney (MJ), DALL-E (D-E), and NightCafé (NC) for the images. “Prompts” are the description you input into the AI service to tell it what you want. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Word Choice and Order in AI Art

In my recent experience, creating images with A.I. art is like learning a new language, where nuance and metaphor rule in surprising ways. Ask for a “photo of a cozy holiday scene at home” and you'll get Western and northern European-influenced concepts. These are also likely influenced by the fact that this is December. I'll be very interested to see what I get when I try the same prompt in spring or summer.

Source: MJ	Source: NC	Source: D-E

Giving the AI a location sometimes helps, but sometimes doesn't. (“photo of a cozy holiday scene at home in Australia”)

Source: MJ (Australians invite the local fauna inside for special occasions)	Source: NC (Australians are a fur-loving people)	Source: D-E (Australians make moose antlers out of felt and light them up)

Oblique and Obscure: Stunning or WTF

When I hit upon an unlikely phrase that works or provides an unexpected but delightful result, I will often try them again right away to get more variations. A.I.s learn from new input, user ratings, and experience, so if I try the same prompt in a month, it won't be the same. Like the song says, we may never pass this way again*.

Source: MJ (Prompt: black and white cartoon multiple spaceships and planets line art coloring page, details, coloring book, no black fill, white background)	Source: NC (Prompt: far-future spaceship interior control room bridge, bright inside, full spectrum lighting, hundreds of LED lights, red and green, 8 k, unreal engine, art by moebius and artgerm and jeff brown)	Source: D-E (Prompt: a starship whale chimera, digital art)

I discovered by accident that MidJourney understands emoticons. Therefore, I tried it with the three services I use the most. The results are sometimes better than the words… and sometimes not. The prompt for all three is ” scifi movie poster 🚀 🐾 💙 🪐 “. Note that no A.I. does well with words, even if you spell them out, use quotes, etc.

Source: MJ (The cat looks quite peeved about the ferrets running loose)	Source: NC (The only service that added people to the image)	Source: D-E (All the DALL-E images looked more post-apocalyptic than scifi)

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*The A.I. art services take poetry (or in this case, a song lyric), but only MidJourney is serious about it. Here is what each did with the 1973 Seals and Croft lyric and song title, “We May Never Pass This Way Again.”

Source: MJ (I guess the portal is one way…)	Source: NC (Night Cafe is high on hallucinogens.)	Source: D-E (DALL-E is more literal, but probably drunk.)