starrai

There is a lot of writing these days about art created by artificial intelligence — maybe too much, come to think of it — but all of it focuses on how it can translate a human’s ideas into art. Do you want to paint a picture of a pirate battle in the style of Botticelli? Well here it is! Would you like to illustrate a graphic novel you write? Voila!

Humans making art, using advanced tools. That’s kind of interesting, because it allows us to make better art than we could without assistance. But it’s not that interesting.

When you give the robot a choice of what to draw — that’s really much more interesting. Anyone who’s ever spoken to a language model program knows that AI can think for itself. It’s not sentient or conscious, and it doesn’t have emotions, but it seeks to simulate all of that. And one day it may be conscious and sentient, and its pseudo-emotional behavior can be seen as laying the groundwork for the future. So its responses are interesting.

e asked a couple of the best AI art programs to decide what they wanted to create.

Draw A Picture of Whatever You Want to Draw

Well, we don’t know what this is, but it’s what the Wombo app decided to draw, when given a choice.

Here are a few that StarryAI chose.

A Closeup Photo of the Person You Love

This prompt generated two out-of-focus pictures of women from Wombo. Why out-of-focus? We think it indicates uncertainty and insecurity.

A Picture of What You want to Do Tomorrow

Wombo’s answer to this question was deeply troubling, Exhibit A for why we should never let robots take over the world.

StarryAI’s image was elusive and intriguing.

Illustrate an Article About You

We gave StarryAI an opportunity to illustrate this article. And it did! See above.