This week I was intriged by an article in Hackaday about Midjourney – an AI bot which makes images out of textual prompts given to it by the user.
It’s pretty geeky stuff, and I don’t claim to understand what it’s doing but I managed to sign up for the free version and get it working – although I think I’d need to play a bit more to really get a feel for what it can do.
Looking at the work that I and others are generating, there is clearly a genre, or a vibe going on, I am not sure where that comes from, but I am really surprised and excited by what the Midjourney app can do.
I fed in some lines from poems of mine, I had to tweak them a little to get the effect that pleased me (so it can be curated by a human) and you can tell the app which of the initial 4 pictures it suggests you like, and it will make more around that design.
All in all very interesting! Have a look at my gallery below for some of the pictures I generated and don’t miss this: the lyrics of Stairway to Heaven interpreted surprisingly well by the bot and put to video – excellent stuff! (not my work!)
AI gallery
The pictures below were generated by the AI bot after feeding it one line of various poems of mine:
We danced but you let go and I fell into the void 
I sat with my grief today, he held my hand….. 
Round and round in circles…… 
Crunch, smell, decay, man and nature unearthing with every storm…
So, is it art?
I think we will be debating this one for a long time to come – and of course the answer is, it depends on your definition of art! Did I create the above ethereal pictures with my own hands? No. But a computer did after reading my poems and I love what it did with them!
I’m already planning some more….. 🙂
What do you think?!
Ailsa Brims Art 