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I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

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Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#191

Post by egypturnash »

boredtofears wrote: post #190
egypturnash wrote: post #177

God it’s so fucking depressing to see all you techies debating whether or not the skill I have dedicated my life to getting good enough at to earn a quiet, modest living with should be automated away or not. And insisting that surely your jobs are too special and complex for this to ever happen to you. At least I can take solace in the fact that for now these things aren’t gonna be taking a bite out of the furry art…

Wait until the world becomes oversaturated with AI generated imagery and then make a killing when people realize that real artists can actually produce something original.

I can only hope that this doesn’t happen after it has become impossible for young artists to make enough money with almost-pro work to be able to get in enough practice to become pros worth paying for. Finding your particular creative voice is a long process; the Internet opened up a lot of opportunities for people to do that.

I also hope this oversaturation doesn’t happen while I’m still alive, or that it happens as quickly as people became obsessed with Mandelbrot sets. You saw them everywhere and then suddenly they weren’t cool any more, and it always feels faintly embarrassing to see one used when you go back to look at something from that era.

I’m fifty years old and I doubt the people making these AI art tools are gonna send a single penny towards supporting and/or retraining the artists they displace, even the ones whose names constantly show up in the lists of things to type into the text box to get a better image.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#192

Post by aantix »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #109

>"While the role of the artist isn’t going away soon, the role of stock image sites might disappear. " Not, yet. While it's cheap relative to stock images, it's time consuming to generate exactly what you want. Prices for stock images will collapse for the common quick to use images but the price for the specialized high end images will hold their value or even increase in value. Those historical and such images will…

Here's a vast catalog of Dall-E images and the prompts used to generate them. https://www.krea.ai/

Oh, and if you generate an image with Dall-E and there's a face that is distorted, you can use this tool to restore the facial features. https://arc.tencent.com/en/ai-demos/faceRestoration

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#193

Post by sgtFloyd »

akamaka wrote: post #9

Am I one of the few people who finds these generated pictures really bad? They often have weird and unsettling details when you look closely. I mean, it’s an incredible achievement in AI that we can generate images at this level, but I don’t want them shown to me on a daily basis while I’m reading blogs.

I sunk ~20 hours and $100 playing with DALL-E since last week and I've had a very different experience. Sure--my first dozen attempts with the engine gave bad results, but once I learned to "speak its language" it got easier to generate highly-polished images. The most realistic results come by appending things like "realistic photograph, 4k, in the style of a fashion magazine" to prompts. I suppose any style would work, as long as the body of source material in that style is (mostly) high-quality.

Here's a couple examples I produced with just a little trial and error. FWIW I have an engineering background and zero design experience.

"Frida Kahlo crossed with Julia Child, 4k realistic, expressive photo, hdr" https://labs.openai.com/s/hvFClrAMCXN6zwqJUJwsmYSB

"John Lennon crossed with Paul McCartney, 4k photograph" https://labs.openai.com/s/lb7qw07tdvRPZ9nmkrCmU0RA

Maybe they're not perfect, but I'm impressed as hell. Exploring what's possible by wording prompts differently feels very much like using a search engine for the first time. Give it a year. This technology is going places.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#194

Post by Vanit »

Rodeoclash wrote: post #115
Kranar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the images to be incredible, but it's very unsettling when you focus on certain details like hands, feet, and eyes. The hands and feet that it draws are almost always mangled, and while it does a good job of drawing an individual eye, it doesn't seem to draw two eyes in a well coordinated manner, either one eye is bigger than the other, or there is something weirdly unsymmetrical about the eyes that makes the…

I have a great example of this: "Jesus takes a selfie" - https://imgur.com/a/togE2ko I'm pretty sure this snap was three days after the resurrection.

Pretty much the definition of uncanny valley.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#195

Post by personalidea »

greggh wrote: post #139
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me out. What's a "prompt engineer?" It seems like a very good title for the way we will be using AIs in the future. Many of these AIs will need just the right prompt (question?) to get the info we need. I like the title.

People selling their prompts on PromptBase.com might think of themselves as prompt engineers...

Make sure to check PromptOverflow.com if you get stuck.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#196

Post by nluken »

egypturnash wrote: post #177

God it’s so fucking depressing to see all you techies debating whether or not the skill I have dedicated my life to getting good enough at to earn a quiet, modest living with should be automated away or not. And insisting that surely your jobs are too special and complex for this to ever happen to you. At least I can take solace in the fact that for now these things aren’t gonna be taking a bite out of the furry art…

> insisting that surely your jobs are too special and complex for this to ever happen to you

This insistence bugs the crap out of me, and shows just how arrogant tech-types (and even more so, business-types) can be. The late David Graeber noted this attitude, and while he's talking about investors/entrepreneurs/financiers, it could equally apply to the cocky software engineers I've met over the years:

"It's possible for futurologists to imagine robots relpacing sports editors, sociologists, or real estate agents, for example, yet I have yet to see one suggest that the basic functions that capitalists are supposed to perform, which mainly consist of figuring out the optimal way to invest resources in order to answer current or potential consumer demand, could possibly be performed by a machine. Why not?"

I optimistically believe that art will never be automated away like software engineering has the potential to be. The human creative element is so core to what art is that replacing it with a machine misses the point entirely, even if a machine could fully replicate an aesthetic.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#197

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

OliverGilan wrote: post #165
throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The images just need to get across a vibe I can't speak for everyone, but with my own experience of reading (at least partially) a dozen or two technical articles almost every day for many years, pointless media is a hallmark of low quality. these days, I just immediately bail with Ctrl+W as soon as I encounter a twitter-pop-culture meme/gif in the header or anywhere near the top. sure, it does mean I skip the 5 out…

I use image thumbnails for my blog posts as well but they don't even show up in the article. Instead when the article is linked to on twitter or a message the thumbnail will show up. That's to say that this is pretty awesome and very valuable for a blog even if not used for cringy pop-gif stuff in the article.

but if that thumbnail is from an AI-generated image, it has no value.

tech blogs don't need to follow the same practices as clickbait farms. the audience is very different

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#199

Post by phire »

throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #132
brundolf wrote: post #103

Honestly, this is an awesome use of DALL-E and I'll probably start doing the same for my blog It's perfect because: - The images just need to get across a vibe, they don't need to be perfect - It's a low-value enough use of images that you'd probably never commission a human artist to do them; instead you'd either use stock photos, or skip having images completely - The nature of header images for a tech blog tends t…

>The images just need to get across a vibe I can't speak for everyone, but with my own experience of reading (at least partially) a dozen or two technical articles almost every day for many years, pointless media is a hallmark of low quality. these days, I just immediately bail with Ctrl+W as soon as I encounter a twitter-pop-culture meme/gif in the header or anywhere near the top. sure, it does mean I skip the 5 out…

You are probably right about meme/gifs (or xkcd comics) anywhere near the top indicating a low-quality post. Though they are fine if you can get a few pages in before finding memes/comics. Meme style gifs below the fold... probably not.

But we are talking here about headers with abstract "art". They are more there for style and "vibe".

Placing a Meme/gif/comic comic above the fold seems to indicate the author was unconfident about the actual content hooking the reader, and they decided to try and hook them with humour or recognisable memes instead. Which is a bad sign in itself.

All that custom abstract art in the header really tells you is the author cares about style/vibe. Which I'd argue is not a bad sign in itself; though perhaps it's a warning sign to quickly check other things, like does the style/vibe match the content you are expecting? Is this just low-effort content to attract newsletter signups?

It's also annoying when the header takes up more than half the screen. Especially more than half of a desktop screen. Phones are somewhat excusable. But I'm not sure there is a correlation between that and bad articles. Caring about style is not the same thing as being good at style.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#200

Post by pigtailgirl »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #109

>"While the role of the artist isn’t going away soon, the role of stock image sites might disappear. " Not, yet. While it's cheap relative to stock images, it's time consuming to generate exactly what you want. Prices for stock images will collapse for the common quick to use images but the price for the specialized high end images will hold their value or even increase in value. Those historical and such images will…

-- I agree with you - however it's not that time consuming to get what you want - it's pretty easy once you get used to DALL-E - so far there isn't anything I've not been able to get on a couple tries (granted after spending ~$30 learning the prompt system)- however once you're used to it - it's fairly easy - I agree that the market for very custom work will go through the roof - but "I need a burger" or "I need an American looking hot dog" eeeek!!! =) --

https://i.imgur.com/32Cq2M3.png

https://i.imgur.com/UAlAzfl.png

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