Epistemic calibration and searching the space of truth

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Style Pass

2024-07-09 16:30:08

I’ve long been enamored by DALL-E 2’s specific flavor of visual creativity. Especially given the text-to-image AI system’s age, it seems to have an incredible command over color, light and dark, the abstract and the concrete, and the emotional resonance that their careful combination can conjure.

I picked these twelve images out of a much larger batch I generated with DALL-E 2 automatically by combining some randomly generated subjects with one of a few pre-written styles suffixes like “watercolor on canvas.”

Notice the use of shadows behind the body in the first image and the impressionistic use of color in the third image in the first row. I also love the softness of the silhouette in the top right, and the cyclops figure that seems to emerge beyond the horizon in the second row. Even in the most abstract images in this grid, the choice of color and composition result in something I would personally find not at all out of place in a gallery. There is surprising variety, creativity, and depth to these images, especially considering most of the prompts are as simple as giving form to metaphor, watercolor on canvas or a cozy bedroom, still life composition.

When I try to create similar kinds of images with what I believe to be the state-of-the-art text-to-image system today, Midjourney v6, here’s what I get with similar prompts.