I hate AI

Something is creeping into the Internet and it really irritates me. I guess hate is too much but it’s annoying.

I just saw a short video where a white meringue turns into tiny polar bears and peaches start wriggling about, then a large lobster changes into something alien and a white and yellow parrot sits happily in a frying pan where an egg is being fried.

The images all look perfectly realistic, and if you didn’t know you could imagine they were real, but I see a grotesque version of reality, like Heironymous Bosch has returned from the past and has created his AI vision of the Garden of Earthly delights.

AI can be very disturbing and it’s getting everywhere. It’s like looking at someones hallucination. A strange trip into a distorted mind. I want it to stop. Human imagination can be simple or warped, but AI? It’s just too fake for me, for some reason I can recognise it and I don’t like being tricked.

An AI filter business

Come up with a crazy business idea.

I’m getting irritated about seeing silly AI spoofs coming up on my social media feed. Most of them are about aliens or apocalyptic situations. Or non scientific ideas wrapped up in fakery to mislead people so my idea ™ (©) for a business would be an app to block them. Just press the button for a small charge and all fake AI and CGI would be removed from your feed, I think it might be an award winning idea.

My art and friends art.

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

My digital drawing of an apple

I’ve accumulated a lot of physical and digital art over a lifetime of being an artist. A lot of it is still in my house. I would set up a shop to clear some of it so it could go to good homes. I’m sure friends would do the same.

I realise people like to be clutter free, and now AI is creeping in they could press a few buttons and make something. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a creation made by a human that suits your taste and is created with love and attention? Go on, give an artist a try.

Short

How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?

AI portrait by a friend…

It’s like me but not. My friend gave me glorious hair, a wry smile, intelligent eyes. I think I’ve been Vikingized!

In reality, I’m short fattish and hairy. Given to grumpy faces. My forehead is not wrinkled but I have a down turned mouth. And skin? I have enough blemishes such as moles, that I could qualify as a witch! I’d like to shrink further not vertically, but horizontally. My body let’s me down physically, shaking and twisting, uneven and unsteady.

But the outside doesn’t count, it’s what is in your mind that matters.

Fed up of AI

I keep seeing images of things that are clearly done with AI, people with scrambled faces or 6 fingers. I love astronomy, but sometimes the pictures can’t be real. There are videos of the moon being hit by a massive asteroid and disintegrating, or photos purporting to be close ups of black holes. At best these are using AI for artistic licence or an impression of what something looks like. But at worst they are meant to fool you. Maybe to confuse or to scam? I’m glad there is an option now for people to label their posts as AI generated. But do you think the scammers would use labels? I doubt it.

What’s also annoying is that websites use algorithms, if you like this you might want to look at something similar. But the new group isn’t necessarily well managed and then the garbage sneaks through.

So beware of what you see and try and fact check if you can. Don’t be fooled or scammed.

Raining again

The rain came down in a torrent this evening, it was drumming on the roof so hard it drowned out the radio in the kitchen. I was just about to go out and I stood and waited for it to blow over.

I had watched a short video on my phone earlier. It was supposed to show a cloud burst over a desert, but it looked wrong, something like a waterfall but with waves and eddys and tiers a bit like a chandelier. People’s reactions were incredulous.

I then saw the caption at the bottom “generated with AI”. The rain I experienced was real, not AI. I don’t mind that people are creating images, I do it a lot myself, and it’s good watching a film where someone has used CGI to create spaceships, or add landscapes, or alter how people look. But AI seems alien, creepy, like it knows the rules but does not know how to follow them? It sometimes adds extra fingers or distorts faces.

In the end I prefer reality.

Play using photodirector

I started drawing circles, then decided to run it through several iterations of photodirector using it’s AI style button and adding a background of butterflies, then sending it through the AI texturiser again. I think it makes a quite gentle image, I like the colours, enhanced in the Clarendon Instagram filter. I do enjoy experimenting.

Knowledge?

What do you think gets better with age?

Thinking about this question is a challenge. As I age I know I’m not getting physically better, but I hope and believe that I have better knowledge now than I did in the past. I try and keep up to speed with many things. I would say I’m a generalist, not an expert. My brain cannot take all of that information in, but I can try.

I think you always need to be willing to learn. Why not? Why be afraid of finding things out? It makes life more interesting.

For instance, the images that The James Webb telescope is taking of the universe really interest me. Our eye on the universe has got so much better in recent years. Then knowledge about chemistry might help us reduce or stop some of the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming? Changes in computing and AI might help with human health?

And knowledge should be something we all seek. Having knowledge can give us a personal key to what is going on in the world. Avoiding fake news and fake facts. Being wary of things that are too good to be true (They probably are). There is a lot to sift through. But I think its worth seeking out true knowledge.

Four horses

I am feeling a bit uncreative so I decided to collage my horse drawing from a few days ago. If you can create digitally it allows you the freedom to make something new.

Recently a photographer entered a competition with a piece called something like ‘the electrician’? It was a black and white photo of two women, one behind the other, one had hands on the others shoulders. The photo looked old fashioned and a little bit weird. The photographer refused the prize because the image had been created by an AI, the faces were not real people but had been built up from features by the AI a bit like an identikit photo. It’s called machine learning.

On a similar vein an image of ex president Trump appeared recently apparently marching at the head of a massive crowd of people in New York but if you zoom in the people behind are ‘constructed’ by an AI and their faces are very distorted.

What I’m trying to say is that digital art created by humans is not the same as AI. The difference is hard to pin down. But if a person has control of it does that count as art. I’m sure there is much controversy to come? In the meantime I will continue to digitally draw and manipulate with human control.

Shocked

The one on the left is me, the one on the right is the FaceApp thing that is doing the rounds. It’s an android Google app and it uses AI to seamlessly alter your photos. I had a look at me if I was male, older, younger, but I didn’t like them. They were interesting but they didn’t feel true. The only one I kept was the picture on the right hand side (feminine), not sure how that makes me feel. I’m a bit more warty and moley than the world thinks I should be? Ultimately we are all wearing a cover if flesh, but it’s what’s in our minds that counts…