I tried AI art generators and the results are delightful and terrifying

After reading an article recently about the emergence of AI art generators like Jasper Art and Dall-E-2, I decided to try two of them out for myself.

In some specific cases, they actually did do a pretty great job (I’ll get to those in a bit).

But let me tell you, some of the other results were pure nightmare fuel.

It may be that, as AI art generators increase in popularity and get more sophisticated, they’ll be able to consistently pop out useable content.

For now, the results are decidedly hit-and-miss.

Let me walk you through my first attempt at testing the systems.

Prepare to be delighted — and terrified!

The ugly

When you first sign on to sites like Jasper Art and Dall-E-2, they provide some examples of searches you can attempt with their art generators.

One example they give is “an avocado in an armchair” or like “a robot eating an apple in a cyberpunk future, digital art.”

Stuff like that.

To test out the systems, I tried a mix of just random stuff that popped into my head, as well as some theoretical art ideas for blog posts, children’s books, etc.

Let’s start with the stuff that really didn’t work.

The images with the little color bar at the bottom are from Dall-E-2, the ones without are Jasper Art.

Ryan Reynolds hockey, digital art

OK, you if you’re a hockey fan, you may have heard a few weeks ago that Canadian movie star/entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds was considering an ownership stake in the Ottawa Senators NHL team.

This was big in the news when I was trying out the tools, so I thought, “what if you could generate an image to illustrate a news article or opinion piece about Ryan Reynolds buying the Ottawa Senators?”

Well…

Yikes! What is even happening here?

Is Ryan Reynolds at all identifiable in this image? You could kind of see it if you knew what the search term I guess? It’s certainly not publishable on a piece of journalism.

Interesting artistic choice to give him four legs, too.

OK, the next image you can tell it’s supposed to be Ryan Reynolds, but there’s something that’s just … off.

This is like if Ryan Reynolds were in NHL 12 on Playstation 3. Just no emotion in the eyes.

A beautiful woman holding a giant Ethereum token

For this one, I thought, “I’m a sleazy dude writing an article about blockchain— what kind of image would grab some Crypto Bro’s attention?”

Yeargh! This is attention-grabbing for all the wrong reasons.

Some AI interpretations of gestures and limbs are straight out of a horror movie. It looks like this lady had been possessed by a demon of some sort.

Also, I don’t really know what she’s holding, but it’s definitely not an Ethereum token.

Whatever it is, it appears to be growing two fingers out of its right side.

Hm, this isn’t working. Lets try illustrating the cover of a romance novel instead.

A handsome man holding a giant bouquet of flowers

If this crossed your field of vision very quickly, you might not notice all the weird stuff in it.

First of all, it looks like the guy has been lost in the desert for weeks with those parched lips.

Also, one of the bouquets appears to be growing out of his arm.

OK, at this point I’m cutting bait on trying to generate photo-realistic images of human beings.

But what about cartoons! Maybe we could illustrate a children’s book using AI! What kind of a wacky situation should we try?

A family at the zoo but the family is in the cage, cartoon

These would be great if you were trying to terrify your child before bedtime, but that’s not usually the goal.

Maybe the “family in the cage” is too complex. Let’s try something a little more simple.

A young family hiking up a mountain, cartoon

I think maybe anything human-related is a big ask, but let’s try a couple more just to make sure.

A baby flying a WW2 Spitfire, digital art

Look, I said I wanted a baby flying a Spitfire, not the creepiest doll in history looking at one taking off.

A baby looking at stock charts, cartoon

This baby is not at all pleased about his portfolio’s performance.

OK, let’s get away from humans. Maybe we can cleanse our palatte with some cute animals!

A dog getting fired from his job on Wall Street, digital art

OK, I don’t hate this image, but the dog doesn’t seem all that upset about losing his position in the arbitrage department.

A dog and a cat driving a car, digital art

Did I ingest some drugs without knowing it?

The black cat appears to be eating a brain and there might be a white cat melting out of a half-dog in there too.

The white cat in the back seat is just chilling. He does not look concerned about what’s happening here at all.

Two baby cows drinking milk, digital art

These baby cows look very angry. Back away slowly.

The bad

Some images that come out of these AI machines are downright terrifying, but others are just plain bad.

Aliens landing in Washington, D.C., digital art

Definitely not fooling anyone with that disguise.

“Excuse me, can you point me to the Metro?”

These guys are just like “ugh, tourists.”

We’re still struggling with humanoid forms, but let’s take one more crack at the sci-fi realm.

A giant robot in front of the pyramids in Egypt, digital art

Fantasy topics aren’t really working either.

Could we maybe use AI to illustrate business articles?

The Microsoft logo hanging in the Louvre

“Hey, like my new computer? It’s a GENUINE Miccoft!”

The Facebook logo

I suppose Eccolok could be a cybersecurity company of some kind or something?

The Las Vegas Strip, digital art

OK, this is actually almost passable as abstract art, but the moment we up the degree of difficulty, everything goes off the rails.

A wooly mammoth walking down the Las Vegas Strip, digital art

This looks like a Hunter S. Thompson hallucination, to be honest.

A dog and a cat sharing a pizza, cartoon

The cat in the following image also appears to be having a hallucination of some sort.

Interesting mix of artistic styles here.

There’s an old Simpsons episode where Krusty loses the rights to play Itchy & Scratchy on his show, so he has to licence “Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite!” That’s what the above image reminds me of.

The good

The AI art generators definitely struggle in some areas, but they are not irredeemable.

As you can tell from the last few, we’re getting a bit closer to useable content. While not all attempts at the “cat and dog sharing a pizza” image worked, there are some that are almost passable.

I definitely found more success when I started asking for “oil painting” and “acrylic painting” when inputting ideas.

OK, the cat’s eyes are a bit creepy, but the dog is kind of adorable if you ask me. He’s very excited about taking a bite of that delicious pizza!

This one is OK too … the dog’s eye just needs to be fixed:

A labradoodle holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Not bad! You could definitely see something like this in a modern children’s book if it were polished up a bit.

This dog looks like it’s doing something to the tower and it ain’t holding it up.

But the dog is pretty cute — again, this is bordering on something you might see in a newer book for kids.

Let’s try something else cute.

A baby cheetah dancing, oil painting

This is very adorable if you overlook the fact that it looks like the cheetah is wearing a thong bikini.

A penguin eating an ice cream cone, digital art

A dog and cat holding hands at the movies, digital art

If I told you this was early concept art for a Pixar movie, would you believe me?

OK, things are really starting to improve now. Let’s go from Pixar to pixel art.

A small island with a palm tree in the middle of the ocean, pixel art

Pretty basic, but definitely useable in some situations!

A fighter jet on a teal blue sky

So you can see there’s definitely some potential here. The simpler the idea and the type of art, the better hit rate you’re going to get.

A lot of US dollars on a neon pink background, digital art

I write a lot about the negative health effects of drinking alcohol and caffeine, so I tried to come up with some ideas about the drugs’ toxicity.

A skeleton drinking a glass of wine, one-line drawing

A man drinking coffee but it looks like poison

OK, that actually looks pretty cool. Scary! I wish it were scary enough to keep me from from drinking too much coffee, but that’s a work in progress. Could also work as a 1990s punk band album cover.

Hey, remember our friend Ryan Reynolds?

I think we added too much of an element of complexity before with the hockey thing.

In addition, as I mentioned a bit higher up, I seemed to get a lot better results when I started asking for “oil painting” and “acrylic painting.”

See if you can identify the following gentleman:

Wow! Definitely passable as caricature art of Brad Pitt

Finally, let’s look at AI’s interpretation of more classical art.

A handsome novelist working on his book in Paris, oil painting

In summary

To be completely honest, I thought I was going to try these AI image generators and then write a story absolutely ripping them for how bad they were.

It was shaping up that way too, when I first started out.

But as I played around with the tools, I started being pleasantly surprised from time-to-time.

Dall-E-2 in particular started to really impress me.

While I think we’re still a ways away from these tools spitting out useable content every time you input something, there’s definitely a great deal of potential there.

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