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AI (Artificial Intelligence) graphics / photo generators

Bevan Price

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22 Apr 2010
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Looking for a bit of amusement on a damp day, I had a look at AI photographic generators on line. Most seem to require you to register, and often pay fees.
However, I found one that neither needs registration nor payment:


It may or may not be the best AI, but gives an idea of the capabilities.
Just click the link, enter some text into the "description" box, and click the "generate" box.
Some of the results are remarkable, others less so.

Typing "British Steam Train" or "British Diesel Train" produces trains with mostly non-British appearance; the generation process seems a bit random, so if you repeat something, the successive images will not be identical. Also the screen seems to automatically regenerate about once a minute, so be quick if you want to do a screen capture to save something.

It also has dangers, because you can enter names of well-known people - alone, or together, and let it imagine them in various states, e.g. as old people, as babies, (or doing rude things).
 
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McRhu

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I find the AIs have problems with railway track, especially points which they completely fail to grasp. I use Bing Image Creator quite a lot though and it can give fantastic results in general: just not accurate trackwork. Incidentally, I paint (mostly in oils) and have stuff for sale online now and again. The site I use most now has a lot of AI generated fantasy type art and there is no way to compete with that in terms of pure mind-boggling scope and execution.
 

Farigiraf

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Generated what looks like a class 222 in the former Anglia Railways livery. Prompt was 'aerial view of british rail HST' (I wanted to test what it knows about train names).
 

nlogax

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I find the AIs have problems with railway track, especially points which they completely fail to grasp. I use Bing Image Creator quite a lot though and it can give fantastic results in general: just not accurate trackwork

Indeed. Bing is pretty much my favourite AI image tool though.

Prompt: A steampunk British Rail electric multiple unit passing through a railway junction on a sunny day, photorealistic
Bing Image rendered using 'A steampunk British Rail electric multiple unit passing through a railway junction on a sunny day, photorealistic' prompt
 

Pete_uk

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I use the Bing image creater in the Bing app.

Here's my image of a GWR express train and a class 156.
 

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DelW

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Indeed. Bing is pretty much my favourite AI image tool though.

Prompt: A steampunk British Rail electric multiple unit passing through a railway junction on a sunny day, photorealistic
View attachment 145799
That certainly backs up @McRhu saying that these systems are still rubbish at railway track! What kind of contorted nightmare is that stuff in the foreground?
 

GatwickDepress

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Prompt: An LNER steam train express locomotive with teak passenger carriages approaching Kings Cross railway station.

Railmotors, eat your heart out!
 

McRhu

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I love the steampunk emu and the almost Cuneo-esque painting style in the rail motor image is a wonder to behold.

Here is my contribution: a “BRCW class 27 with three on leaving Mallaig”. I don’t remember the 27s throwing out quite that much exhaust but I could be wrong.
 

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90019

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Featherstone, West Yorkshire
One of the biggest problems with these AI image generators is the source material that's used to train them - a significant amount of it, if not the majority, is stolen artwork scraped from various sites like DeviantArt without the knowledge or consent of the original authors.
 

nlogax

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Mostly Glasgow-ish. Mostly.
One of the biggest problems with these AI image generators is the source material that's used to train them - a significant amount of it, if not the majority, is stolen artwork scraped from various sites like DeviantArt without the knowledge or consent of the original authors.

You say that but a huge amount of rail imagery on DeviantArt is itself AI generated. Increasingly a case of AI eating itself.
 

McRhu

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Very true @nlogax.

Apologies if I've told this tale before, but you're all about to receive it gratefully once again, amen.... Many years ago - the late 70s - I worked for a local newspaper which still used letterpress technology. They had hot metal linotype, cases of fonts, typesetters, compositors, etc, etc. That all changed dramatically when web-offset and all the electronic chicanery that became DTP reared its head over the horizon. Upshot was that all the old skills were suddenly redundant, along with those who wielded them.

For most of my working career I made a living from art in its various guises. We used to scoff at the idea that something as subjective and creative as art would ever be originated by computers, but now it seems to be the caseroom all over again. AI art can be stunning, but is still in its infancy - the images are made with no regard as to what's correct and what isn't, other than what's inherent the originals the AI 'learns' on. However - there seems to be no stopping its progress and I can see no natural barrier to anyone and everyone churning out AI masterpieces of their own on their desktop, in any style from photo-realistic to manga, in the not so distant future. All in all it's a grim horizon for we paintbrush pushers and photographers and everyone else too probably, once it learns to climb the stairs.
 

Pete_uk

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For the 156, did you specify GBR livery by any chance? :)

Not that one, but this one, yes!

Image is of a fictional locomotive in fictional GBR livery
 

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PTR 444

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Apparently this is an ‘Intercity 125 train with GBR livery’ :rolleyes:
 

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D6130

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Here is my contribution: a “BRCW class 27 with three on leaving Mallaig”. I don’t remember the 27s throwing out quite that much exhaust but I could be wrong.
Hmm....looks more like a 31 with ten on. At least the rails are more-or-less in the right place! I can remember 27s throwing out that much exhaust occasionally....usually while swaying wildly on the back of a Glasgow-Edinburgh push-pull at full throttle through Lenzie, with the Falkirk fire brigade on standby! o_O
 

Pete_uk

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Here's a cross country train.
 

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Purple Train

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Not that one, but this one, yes!

Image is of a fictional locomotive in fictional GBR livery
I see 180s are at it again...

I asked the computer for an NSE Class 47 with eight coaches passing Lewisham. I instead got this:

It does seem to have very little intelligence beyond "train", although I'm pleased that it worked out that Lewisham isn't a rural idyll.

(Image shows three side-by-side pictures of vaguely American-looking trains passing generic cityscapes, apart from the middle one, which looks slightly like an Irish locomotive.)
 

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Galvanize

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Inspired by something I saw on a Facebook group a few months ago…

How to make Blackpool look even more dystopian than it is!
 

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