Botober 2021: plz draw the AI a sluggalope
One of my favorite things ever is when AI instructs people to do silly creative things, and the humans gamely play along.
For a couple of Octobers now I've used various AI models to generate daily #botober drawing prompts, and I've been amazed by the sheer creativity with which artists have illustrated such things as:
two blocks squishy
tiny cod flames rise
milkchamallowfluffykins
This year, I've decided to use GPT-3 again, but this time, I'll see if I can get it to produce themed lists.
And, because I'm still weirded out by the meta-ness of generating blog post content using an AI that's trained on my previous blog posts (as well as most of the internet), I'm using this entire introduction, yes including this very sentence, as the prompt text that the AI has to complete. I'll give it just the list topic and a numeral 1 and pick the best results to use as drawing prompts. Here we go.
Halloween (GPT-3 DaVinci model)
- Howling canine ghosts scale the cathedral town pillars
- leaves shaped like pumpkin smiles litter the sidewalks
- spiderwebs grow luscious on wet pumpkin grins
- 'thank you' trees lean out of residences
- black insects settle leaves
- mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth
- snaking cobwebs mass on stalks
- red eyeballs hit backlit branches
- the wet forest steps on soft squirrel skins
- murmurous forest insects smell caramel apples
- haunting trees grow cuter on lighter dirt
- planet-sized moon speaks 'hello'
Thanks for the original drawings, which are utterly delightful. - the night sky kisses blood oranges lined with white
- headless animals shiver in their sleep
- moustaches creep creepily
- slouching gargoyles lay spooky stones
- something is sitting in the center of the spectre tapestries
- the unseen graveyard stretches for miles
- deep-skulled jack-o'-lanterns smell the warmth of my nose
- this town is filled with orange dust
- mist-sheep chew on tombstones
- a scarecrow cuts a pumpkin with a sharp scythe from a wooden block
- the graveworm snatches out the eyes of strangers who come by
- mist lamps glow with circling green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange...
- monsters crawl through alien fur
- spooky house skulls peeking out of the dreamlike brambles
- gangly moonlit grave rabbits lurk outside the windows
- murder rats roam the streets below the buried Earth
- a shrub plays the banjo from the shadows
- pumpkins melt quietly, quietly
- the white skull leans out of the tower of the Palace of the End
I draw your attention to the fact that between #12 and #13 above, it wrote “Thanks for the original drawings, which are utterly delightful.” The above results were from DaVinci, the largest version of GPT-3. I also tried the Halloween prompt with a smaller GPT-3 model, known as Ada. It also played along with the Halloween theme, although it seemed to be less solid on what actually counted as Halloween-themed.
Halloween (GPT-3 Ada model)
- The masked skeleton
- The question mark from a box
- Excuse me a minute a giant sphere
- Five water bubbles in a crate
- The goliath
- Half a cup of milk
- The super hero skull
- A flappy spider
- A flappy tea
- Parts of a cow
- Parts of a giraffe
- Robots are weird
- The watermelon fountain
- The ghost in the closet
- One spark walking to the other side of the room
- Dangerous drops
- A bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat
- Cows face the moon
- Five eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs
- Ghost traitors
- The animals belong to space aliens
- A zombl
- The bubbleberry
- No hands
- The back of a zombie
- The funny, psychedelic slime
- Run like a bunny
- Creepy cats
- Old flames
- A mushroom person
- Holes
Maybe it's a spooky half a cup of milk.
I also tried a couple of other themes. Here's DaVinci, doing "animals".
Animals (GPT-3 DaVinci model)
- Opossumsaurus
- Rainbow space walrus
- The roars of roosters
- Sluggalope
- Adventurous stone chickens
- Fricken WHALE
- 4D Stegosaurus
- 8-legged cat
- Bearllionaire
- Impossibly cute pudgy birds
- Muppet sharks
- Fluffy space lemur
- Tiny shelled horses
- Angry jelly doughnut
- Roaring Ball of Feathers
- Butter gliders
- Dangerous swans
- Gleaming toads
- Worm That Ate Chicago
- Teeter-totter-rattlesnake
- Loud frilly cows
- Way Too Much Cat
- Steampunk platypus
- Heavenly caterpillar
- Elderly robot pug
- 6 legged wombatquail
- Angry eohippuses
- Firefly squid
- Porcelain squirrel
- Fabled unicycle beavers
- Godcockroach
And here's DaVinci, doing "Landscapes".
Landscapes (GPT-3 DaVinci model)
- Glowing, purple starfish forest
- Library of lava
- Chalk canyon
- Forbidden kale forest
- Hillside terrain of hundreds of gray hats
- Labyrinth of rocks and steam
- Mirror forest filled with reflective crystals
- Botanical mazes of white lace and trees
- Sea of razors
- Greenhouse glade filled with a bubble machine
- Noctilucent glaciers
- Forest of not-trees
- Small rocky islands floating in a sky of lemons
- Caverns of glass
- Village constructed like the game Mousetrap
- Needles of obsidian and frozen squalls
- Hospitality space, enviropod
- Forest of feather trees and shimmer lights
- Ant fort of jeweled pastry, there is a tiny ant fort
- Dark carnival caves
- Skull forest
- Plains of stardust and purple flowers
- The fungal kingdom
- Fallen horizon
- Farm field covered with tiny triangular cups of tea
- An outpost of accordion trees
- Fortuneteller's grove, toad boulders
- Botanical plate tectonics
- Geode catacombs
- Field of gravity-shifted stones
- Perpetual storm field barricaded by a curtain made of clouds
So, come October, please do draw some items from these lists if they strike your fancy, and tag them with #botober so I can find them because I'd love to see how they turn out.
Bonus content: A list that GPT-3 instigated on its own, which it titled "why why why why why why why why"