Our world is changing fast! You may have heard of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) that can turn out very human-sounding writing so good that it can create school essays and pass business school exams.
People have started doing interesting things on the Internet with these and other artificial creation tools. Some are amazing, others are weird, and a few go off the range into bizarre places. Here are six examples:
Artwork from a written description
AI “artists” like Midjourney can create a fantastic image from just a written description. You just tell it something like “a cat riding a scooter”, and then you get a picture like this:
A children’s book created in a weekend
Usually, it would take years of experience and months of work to create a children’s book. But for Ammaar Reshi, who has no training in drawing or writing, it only took a weekend. He used the writing AI, ChatGPT, and the art AI, Midjourney, to write a story and create illustrations for the book Alice And Sparkle, about a girl and her robot friend.
By the next week, he was selling it on Amazon. Some say the final product isn't great, but that is beside the point. Thanks to AI, someone with no real experience made an illustrated book in a weekend. That’s crazy!
Lyric videos
Head over to YouTube and search for “AI-generated lyric video”. You'll get lots of hits. Here are a few options: Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, Black Sabbath's War Pigs or Eminem's Rap God. The videos are essentially slide shows of AI-created images, often by Midjourney, using the song lyrics. The results are fascinating, imaginative, surreal, and sometimes creepy.
There’s a misconception that such videos are made purely by using the lyrics. But more work and trial and error go into it – with stunning results. And it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing music videos created by machines.
Photo album of Roman emperors
Did you know that “camera” comes from a Latin word for a particular type of dark room? Yet while the Romans gave us a name for a device that takes photos, they never had a camera of their own. Until recently, we’ve had to be happy with ancient painted images, mosaics, and marble statues of their faces. But not anymore. In 2020, a designer named Daniel Voshart used an AI called Artbreeder to turn those statues into photos.
The results are astounding. It wasn’t a simple process, and Daniel had to add extra references to help guide the AI towards the best results. Still, all those photos were created by one person and a machine, creating better results than large teams had managed before.
Bizarre TV shows that never existed
Modern art-creation AIs can make photos that look very realistic, even if the images are strange. This has led to a trend of fake television show stills and photos from eras that look straight from the set of an actual TV production or time period. The results are often so good that people can’t believe these aren’t real shows – and quite a few wish they were.
Examples include The Legend of the Golden Child, Flower Child, Wen Wormhole, and Everyday Yōkai. Not all of these are necessarily meant to be fake shows, but they certainly feel like that. Thanks to the truly bizarre ideas that AI can come up with, many of the designs are mind-blowing and out of this world.
The never-ending sitcom
People are using AI to create extraordinary and disturbing things. Yet, while one of the most controversial AI projects is not visually startling, it can get strange and unnerving. Nothing Forever is a never-ending sitcom, portrayed by low-quality gaming graphics. AIs wrote the script, created the voices and determined the scene layouts. The onscreen characters do minute-long skits and then the show flicks to a new scene.
Since it's all automated, the results can get very strange. The scenes aren’t really funny, but they create some odd conversations and have even convinced some people that the show is self-aware (it isn’t). Recently, Nothing Forever was even briefly suspended for making offensive comments, but it’ll be back soon for more surreal AI banter.
Vodacom Fibre gives you access
Without an Internet connection, ChatGPT and Midjourney are just names on a page. Get Vodacom Fibre for fast and reliable Internet. Visit the website and check if you have coverage where you live.
