AI: We can't make it go away. We can't make everybody stop talking about it. We can't even hope to keep it from invading every aspect of our lives. When we try to discuss it intelligently, its advocates come at us with clueless promises and a lot of incomprehensible jargon. So we might as well make the best of a bad situation and. . .

. . .make mock of it. Catcalls and playground insults. Yer mama was a washing machine and daddy didn't sleep all night. (If you get that joke you're old and probably come from the Carolinas.)

You may have noticed that the Post Team have been experimenting with AI art for months now. Caiman Raptor Elk, Tavaron, and I have been using AI to generate illustrations for our ongoing stories. Results are mixed: so far, we've learned that AI art generators:

• Have limited imaginations.
• Can be startlingly literal.
• Are vague as to human arms, legs, fingers, and toes: how many, where placed, how long they should be, etc.

To the last complaint I would add: also angels' wings. The protagonist of my novella is an angel. Ori's wings should NOT be growing out of chest, head, or anywhere else but the back. They should certainly not be floating around in the vague vicinity of said angel.

The last couple of weeks, I've used Microsoft Designer to generate montages for the Editorial page, and this week I've branched out to letting it format a couple of posters for me. Let's be fair: Microsoft Designer is in beta and I'm one of the lucky users who get to test it. So I'm testing it. It's making me annoyed this morning, though. Let me show you why.

MS Designer said, 'Describe the design you'd like to create.'

I wrote, 'A 1960s antiwar poster featuring these flowers.' I included the photo of the flower.

The reason for the request was that I'd wanted to use the famous poster – the one that was on the walls of half the dorm¹ rooms in America in 1970, the one with the sketchy sunflower and the slogan, 'War is not healthy for children and other living things.' I hasten to add that I found the poster, even at that time, somewhat twee, even though I agreed with the sentiment. I was not entirely surprised, therefore, even though I was disgusted, to learn that the poster was still under copyright and being traded by art galleries. Hypocritical hippies.

No problem, I thought. I'll just let MS Designer make me a similar poster using my own flowers. Here is what it made first.

Yuck, I said. That is unoriginal. It's a bad use of space. Worst of all, it is almost, but not quite, exactly not what I asked for.

It replied, Keep trying different variations, such as "An Insta Story Ad for beach houses in a summery style."

This is reminding me of something, I thought, and typed in, 'An Instagram post,' (why not?), 'about how war is bad for nature and innocent children using this photo.' I got this back.

Go and stick your head in a pig, I muttered. I used the program to change the wording. I fiddled with the font and found a suitable one under 'fun'. I removed the coloured box behind the text, changed the text size, and fought with the program until I had moved the text around as much as it would let me. This is what I had now.

I moved over to my 'baby photoshop' tool that I use for cropping, enhancing, and generally fussing with Post pictures (not yours, FWR). I came up with this.

Better, I thought. I decided to give it one more try and stuck it in my movie-making program. I managed to get this out of it using filters.

Once again, Miss Lindquist was right: you pays your money and you takes your choice. Also: the 'intelligence' part of Artificial Intelligence is vastly overrated. What we want here is a tool. We want usable, manageable choices. We don't want the silly AI to do the choosing for us. It doesn't know what we want. It tries to force-choice us into limited menus. Give us more choice and more control and we'll love you. Otherwise, go and stick your head, etc.

Hey, musicians, you think you're safe? Google is getting volunteers to beta test their new music-generating AI. Now, ALL genres of music can fit into an elevator. You know, the kind with the Genuine People Personalities.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

29.05.23 Front Page

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