(*** 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.
Here’s my initial try -the Bleeder.
This Blood Corpse looks a bit like someone failed to frame the photograph properly.
The AI picked up on the “blossom” part and the “walking torso” part, but didn’t put them together
Clootie – and as the first google hit is the original art, the AI based its image on Dave Allsop’sThe Death Tapper got ‘demon flea’ – two clear concepts for the AI to latch ontoThe Dementia Larva’s just an icky blobFor monsters that didn’t have much description like this Dream Tearer, the AI got creativeThe Drowner has a sort of Ophelia feel to it, which worksAnd these Feral Drowners are fantastic.Kooks. Aaaaag.The Man in a BarThe AI drew the malformed spawn of the Motherlode instead of the monster itself.There’s no description of the Mystery Man, but it still came up with a great image based on the traits I gave it.Sometimes, the AI gets hung up on one word. The Organ Grinder’s description mentions dentures, but it’s not supposed to be ALL teeth.A rather impressionistic take on Outsiders, but it works.These Ovvashi remind me of evil puppets.The PracticePractice Nurse – I should have edited the prompt for a single monster.This Residue Demon is just creepy as hellThe Shatterer came out looking quite well.The Sisterite ended up as pure GigerI really like the Sleep HagAnd here’s the rather creepy snuff golem
I failed my sanity check… what do I roll?
How many points do you want to spend?