Neural Networks Dream in AI

Hey! This is a sideblog for @cadmusfly for presenting images synthesised with various neural network AI image generators. It began with a program called Disco Diffusion, though has since branched out to others such as Midjourney, Dall E and Stable Diffusion.

Disco Diffusion AI Art Prompt: “a beautiful painting of a pirate ship on a vivid sunlit ocean by Ivan Aivazovsky, J. M. W. Turner and Lisa Frank, naval, regency, trending on artstation, gay color scheme”

Neural Network AI image synthesis is a method of programmatically generating novel images based on text prompts such as the above. Because of OpenAI's research of the CLIP neural networks and techniques, Dall E opening up to the public via the waitlist and open source work on Disco Diffusion and Stable Diffusion, neural network image generation has become more accessible to the general public as the technology improves.

At the same time, this does pose interesting and tricky questions as to the nature of art, the role of the user in relation to neural network generated images, capitalism's response to emerging technologies that cause concern to existing industries, the biases of the trained datasets and many more.

I like to think of myself as a director of the neural network AI and a curator of the images I choose to present, but your mileage may vary! While most images are generated solely with text prompts, sometimes I do use my own drawings and art as input and canvas for the generator to edit, and sometimes I edit the generated images afterwards.

This blog primarily started with the use of Disco Diffusion (tag here), which is a free open source technique hosted on a "notebook" in Google Colaboratory Notebooks. Images usually take about 15 to 30 minutes to generate, based on the resolution and other factors.

This is an indepth guide on how to use Disco Diffusion

While this is an extremely basic guide that I wrote on how to use Disco Diffusion for non-tech savvy friends

Other image synthesizers include:

Midjourney, Discord based and geared towards artistic images with an interesting gritty texture

Dall E, the famous and most funded one, website based and best at coherent, well structured images

Stable Diffusion, open source and almost as powerful as Dall E

Neural network image synthesis often struggles with prompts of humans and animals, with Disco Diffusion prone to surreal body horror. The other generators are better, but in any case my generations of people are tagged with #dreams of people.

Due to my interest in Age of Sail media and the history of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, I mostly generate pictures of sailing ships and resplendent rainbow gay boats, but I'm quite interested in experimenting and playing around with what I can find!

I'm not an expert by any means on neural networks or neural network image generation, but do feel free to ask questions or submit ideas, and I hope you enjoy looking at these interesting pictures!

Tag list

Informative thread by ai_curio on how AI Art is generated

Analysis of the Neural Network AI Generators I Have Used

Thoughts on how neural network AI image synthesis works and some thoughts on ethics

A link to Are We Art Yet? a discord and collective for ethical AI art creation

The Captain's Dream, an AI Art Comic illustrating the words of 1800s naval novelist Captain Marryat

Under the cut is how I went from

drawing to

streetlights like butterfly wings

brushstrokes, impressionist, pulled, scraped and scratched, loose handling of paint, visible brush strokes, oil painting of the city lights at night

mandelbrot raven

generated by @philpax using neural network generator midjourney in an iterative collaborative process with me using previously generated images and previous prompts with the above prompt as the final step

full body illustration, art nouveau anime glitchcore dithered, side view, a slender white unicorn, deer body, goat, emaciated, sharp, malevolent, fragile, beautiful, slender cloven goat hooves, lion tail

This is a poem about Napoleon. This is a poem where the poet wishes to be Napoleon, and if he cannot be Napoleon then he would like to meet him, shake his hand and perhaps ask him what it's all for. If Napoleon can't answer, maybe he could point them in the direction of someone who has the answers. Like God or Jesus Christ, maybe they know why we have to live and die again and again and again. This is a poem about death. It isn't a very good one, but it is trying its best. It wants to claw its way out of the dirt that buries it, and when it does, it will march on Paris with an army of ghosts and dead people behind it. They will hang the rich and the powerful from lampposts and no one will be safe as their heads fall into baskets. And then the world will be free! The poet doesn't believe this. He knows that this won't happen because there are too many people who don't want it to happen. There are too many people who think that they deserve to rule over everyone else, and those people aren't going to give up their power without a fight. But that doesn't mean that you should just roll over and let them trample all over you either! No, you need to stand up for yourself and refuse to be oppressed by those bastards! You need to fight back against the system that keeps you down! You get the idea... This is not a good poem, but at least it has some damn fine intentions behind it. And maybe someday those intentions might become reality - even if only in the minds of those who read such things.

as generated using a large language model (mistral 7B) finetuned on years of my creative, academic and poetic writing

using the bolded text (This is a poem about Napoleon.) as a prompt, expecting to get a poem but not quite

Dᴇᴀᴛʜ Bʏ Dᴀɴᴅᴇʟɪᴏɴꜱ!!!!

rough mspaint pixel art flat 80s anime enlighpsychedelic painting collage algoriabsurd cutout elengfelicglowing dataviz miro , dragon with long, flowing mane and elegant wings emerging from a tv screen, with pink, teal, purple, black, blue, mint green and turquoise hues in the background, low detail no shading, energy flickering from a computer screen

rough mspaint pixel art flat 80s anime enlighpsychedelic painting collage algoriabsurd cutout elengfelicglowing dataviz miro mixed media pasted napoleonic hussar cavalry charge vibrant illustration hardwell futuristic anime genocifractures refreshaqua landscapes elengfelicglowing rampant infureleases gouache psychedelic opus silhouettes

rough mspaint pixel art flat 80s anime enlighpsychedelic painting collage algoriabsurd cutout elengfelicglowing dataviz miro, dragon with long, flowing mane and elegant wings flying through space, with pink, teal, purple, black, blue, mint green and turquoise hues in the background, low detail no shading

rough mspaint pixel art flat 80s anime enlighpsychedelic painting collage algoriabsurd cutout elengfelicglowing dataviz miro

Victory Alliance Military Designation: Tree-class EE Avolasci Research Designation: Type Fractal Size: System-scale Observed Armaments: None directly; relies on accompanying entities Notable Features: Geometric shapes resembling trees, fractals, and polygons Theoretical Function: Command and control for other EEs Tree-class EEs appear to serve as central hubs for what we hypothesize to be the Empyrean Fleet. Their branching structures extend into what our scientists believe may be extra-dimensional space, though this remains unconfirmed. Smaller entities, possibly information storage units, appear to be attached to these structures. These entities are invariably accompanied by a retinue of other EEs, suggesting a hierarchical structure within their civilization. Recent intelligence indicates that several Tree-class EEs have been destroyed or captured, potentially indicating internal conflict. -- Excerpt from a Victory Alliance on Empyrean Entities

picture generated with neural network ai art creator midjourney from the prompt "alien superstructure floating in deep space, icy geometric shapes that resemble trees, fractals and polygons, extending into extradimensional space, glowing angelic shapes hanging off the branches like fruit and flowers, eldritch, omnipotent" with some slight reiterating

description adapted from a passage i wrote and then "translated" into an in-universe document using claude.ai

unicorn knight, delicate, graceful, malevolent