Goth Chick News: This Is Seriously Incredible (and Kind of Disturbing)
I am very much a newbie to the world of artificial intelligence (AI), but I’m finding it infinitely fascinating. Like most people, I started with ChatGPT and then started playing around with Bard and other competitors. The possibilities are mind-bending and frightening in nearly equal measure, but I have started incorporating it into my work life, albeit slowly. I even tried asking ChatGPT to write a GCN article, but thankfully you’d notice the difference between it and me, or at least until AI gets a better sense of humor.
The latest thing I’ve been digging into is AI interpreting images. For instance, there is an AI tool called Midjourney which creates images from text prompts. For a basic plan of $96 per year, you purchase time on Midjourney’s powerful Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to interpret and process your text prompts. In response to your prompts (i.e. “New York in the summer”), Midjourney creates four graphic interpretations of what it thinks you asked it for. You can then zero in on the image closest to your liking, and perfect/enhance it further.
A digital artist by the name of Dan Ruse (Facebook, Instagram) has done some incredible work using MidJourney and in particular, his collection called Goth Land was brought to my attention. Ruse imagines what an amusement park like Disney World would look like if the goth community was the target audience, and the results are not only realistic, but a spot-on interpretation of such a place if it really existed.
Another digital artist by the name of Dolly Cypher (Facebook, TikTok) created a closer look at an actual goth amusement park she called Lucifer’s Playground. Though Cypher tags the Midjourney software in some of her posts, there doesn’t appear to be any other connection between her and Ruse. However, it does look like Cypher created the park where Ruse’s goth guests could be hanging out, so maybe he was an inspiration.
Regardless, it’s fun and creepy all at once. Though AI seems to have a very good grasp on what human beings look like, you may have read that (at least for now) hands are the dead giveaway on deep-fake people. Take a close look at the pictures where human hands are included and you’ll see AI seems to get confused about what the real thing looks like.
As I am deep into playing the new Hogwarts Legacy game for the PC, I can only long for the day when gaming graphics are this realistic.
So, what do you think? Is AI cool, or are we one step closer to Skynet…?
I think we’re one step closer to Skynet, or its metaphorical equivalent.
JM, you’re always welcome in the underground bunker that is the GCN offices at Black Gate…
i happen to bow down to our AI overlords and welcome the day
did you see the anime a youtube channel made using AI? they have the short itself then a longer making of video, i will link the short, it is really well done and interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVT3WUa-48Y
Dante, very interesting indeed if this was all made by AI. But if I was a writer currently on strike, I’m not sure this would worry me much. Still…early days…
Cool images. Great article. But I’m avoiding AI for as long as possible. I’ve seen Ex Machina, an intelligent, thought-provoking film, and I just watched M3GAN: as I said on Black Gate Porch – it’s a well-done sci-fi/horror film that was pretty lightweight. Sort of Frankenstein Meets Terminator and Child’s Play. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, story-wise. Not a film I’d ever revisit.
JoeB, I’m on the fence, but I don’t think there is any avoiding it. The toothpaste is well out of the tube…
Sorry I don’t like the art work, it hs the flavour of cut and paste, the skin lack real texture and the woman carrying has five fingers as well as a thumb. We don’t have to have Skynet, it will only come when people become to lazy to create themselves. Surely the joy of writing, painting, modelling comes from the fact you made something from your own AI (Brain) and tools (fingers). Long live people.