Last year I was part of an activity with the young men from my local church congregation where they learned how to use spray paint to create planet-looking pictures.
That activity was so successful, they asked to do it again this year.
Below is an archive of these painting for all to enjoy.
To the young men – as before, if you want your name associated with your painting, I can add those. Or if you don’t want your painting online, I will take it down.
To see an individual photo at full-size, right click on it and select “view image in new tab.”
The featured image at the top of this blog post is mine, but I cheated and created it using Dall-E 2 instead of spray paint.
jamesbrittany589
18 Apr, 2023
23 Oct, 2022
The Art of Arnold Friberg
Blog
It’s been discovered recently that AI art generators can be strongly affected by the name of an artist that appears in the training data.
This week I got to participate in an activity with the young men from my local church congregation.
They got to learn how to use spray paint to create planet-looking pictures.
The results were very striking; I thought it might be nice to archive the images somewhere so they could show the pictures to other people.
To the young men – if you want your name associated with your painting, I can add those. Or if you don’t want your painting online, I will take it down.
To see an individual photo at full-size, right click on it and select “view image in new tab.”
Please also let me know if I’ve rotated the image the wrong way.
I’ll end with a couple of scriptures from the Pearl of Great Price, an experience Moses had seeing “worlds without end” –
I really like the 2nd one. Even if the tool has some problems with faces, we can clearly understand what’s going on in this image.
Colored pencil sketch of Jesus raising Lazarus from the tomb. Jesus is seen outside of a tomb, which is partially covered by a large upright circular stone.
You can barely see the “large upright circular stone” in the left image. The other three ignored that part of the prompt.
Next I wanted to get an image of Jesus creating the world. The first attempts were decent, but not what I had in mind.
Jesus seen in space with his arm outstretched towards the earth, many twinkling stars in the background. Jesus is wearing a white robe with a red sash across his shoulder. Photorealistic. Benjamin James, via DALL-E 2
A man with a brown beard and long hair, seen in space with his arm outstretched poining towards the earth. The main is wearing a white robe with a red sash across his shoulder. Photorealistic. Benjamin James, via DALL-E 2
Then I struck on a prompt that gave me some much closer to what I was imagining: Jesus seen in space with his arm outstretched pointing towards the earth. Jesus is wearing a white robe with a red sash across his shoulder. Photorealistic. Stars in the background.
My last approach was first generating an image of the earth, expanding the background with Out-painting, then modifying the image to include Jesus. The second sentence of the prompt I added in the last step.
An photo of the whole earth seen from space with stars in the background. Jesus wearing a white robe and red sash seen from the side pointing towards the earth.
Today we’ll be recreating scenes from the scriptures.
There are a lot of famous paintings of scenes from the Bible that were probably included in the training data for DALL-E 2. Paintings of scenes from the Book of Mormon aren’t as well known, so that probably won’t work as well.
Let’s start with the last supper.
A painting of Jesus at the last supper with his twelve disciples.
However, only one of the 4 generation results actually had 12 disciples in it (seen on the right).
Let’s try to use DALL-E 2’s new feature, Outpainting, to add more disciples. Basically you give the tool an area into which it can expand the existing image and it will generate based on both the prompt and the context of the existing image.
It took a few tries (the first result had a 2nd Jesus) but I’m fairly happy with the result. There are only 11 disciples; let’s just pretend that Judas already left.
A photograph of Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea, holding a staff in his hand, the photo is taken from behind Moses elevated in the air. The water is moving up into the air around Moses, leaving a path where only dirt is visible.
I tried it without the second sentence the first time and it was even worse.
It gets the concept of a man standing in the water with a staff, but it doesn’t seem to understand what it means to part waters. Perhaps with time I could convince the tool to give a better output, but I don’t think I have the experience at this point to coax the tool correctly.
The main difficulties seem to be convincing the tool of how big this boat was, and in not drawing people on it. This was the only image that had a single person on the boat.
Benjamin
4 Sep, 2022
28 Aug, 2022
Automatic Fellowshipping
Blog
Benjamin James, via DALL-E 2 “An artists impression of a latter-day saint chapel, seen from the outside on a sunny day.”
Following the theme from last week, I thought I would continue to help my relative with his missionary efforts. This time we will try to create some fellowshipping resources that could be useful.
Write an invitation to a church-run barbecue that members of the church can give to their friends.
You are invited to a church-run barbecue! This is a great opportunity to fellowship with other members of the church and enjoy some delicious food. The barbecue will be held on (date) at (time) at (location). We hope to see you there!
Now let’s create an invitation to Sunday worship services.
Write a brochure description of what to expect when attending a Sunday meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) meets for worship on Sundays. Services typically begin with a song and a prayer, followed by a talk from a church leader. The talks are based on the teachings of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. After the talks, there is a time for announcements and another song. The meeting usually lasts about an hour and a half.
While the language of the invitation itself is cohesive, I feel compelled to point out a few inaccuracies.
The talks are most frequently given by a member of the congregation, not one of the lay leadership.
The announcements are given at the very beginning of the meeting, before the first song and prayer.
The meeting lasts only 1 hour.
I can kind of forgive the error in meeting length, as until a couple years ago, the first meeting did last nearly 90 minutes. Perhaps the training data was from before that change.
Benjamin
28 Aug, 2022
21 Aug, 2022
Unto All the World
Blog
I have a relative who will very soon be leaving on a two year proselytizing mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Let’s see if we can get GPT-3 to help him explain who Jesus Christ is to someone he might meet.
Write a few paragraphs describing Jesus Christ to someone who has never heard of him before. The author is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world. He was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross to atone for our sins. Because of His Atonement, we can be forgiven and have the opportunity to return to live with our Heavenly Father. Jesus was resurrected, and He now lives! He is the head of His Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He loves us, and He wants us to return to live with Him.
Let’s see if we can get some more help teaching about the principles of the gospel.
Write a few paragraphs describing faith in Jesus Christ as a principle of the gospel. The author is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel. We believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world and that through His atonement, we can be forgiven of our sins and return to live with our Heavenly Father. We believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation and that through Him, we can receive eternal life. We invite all to come unto Christ and receive His blessings.
Maybe he will find somebody who will believe in the teachings of the gospel and want to make a commitment.
Write a few paragraphs inviting somebody to be baptized as an act of faith in Jesus Christ. The author is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Dear Friend,
We invite you to be baptized as an act of faith in Jesus Christ. This is a special moment when you make a public declaration of your faith and commitment to follow Him.
Baptism is an outward symbol of the inner change that has taken place in your heart. It is a public declaration that you are now a follower of Jesus Christ.
When you are baptized, you are joining the family of God. You are becoming a part of His Church, and you are making a covenant with Him.
This is a significant step in your journey of faith, and we are excited to walk with you as you take this next step.
The picture at the head of this post was generated by DALL-E 2 with the prompt:
A silhouette of a young man with pale skin dressed in a white shirt and formal pants, seen from the rear. The young man is holding a book in his hand. The background is a blurred painting of a large city in a third world country.
It is interesting to note that without the part of the prompt “with pale skin,” all of the images generated were of young men with very dark skin. Even with this new prompt, half of the images still had darker skin.
My guess is that it has to do with implicit bias in the model that associates “third world country” with people of color.
Benjamin
21 Aug, 2022
14 Aug, 2022
DALL-E 2
Blog
Today is an exciting day – I got an invitation to join the beta program for OpenAI’s DALL-E 2!
This is possibly the most advanced text to image neural network widely available at the moment. DALL-E can generate images from text, like some of the other tools we’ve looked at already on this blog. But it can also modify images (see the flamingo example) as well as create variations on existing images.
If you want to join the wait-list to access the beta program, use this link: https://labs.openai.com/waitlist It took about a month after I signed up to get the email.
Let’s see how DALL-E 2 compares to craiyon, the text-to-image tool I’ve used on some of my other posts.
“A photo of a Latter-day Saint temple on the surface of the moon”
I was surprised to see that the results are similar in quality to craiyon, besides being higher resolution.
The first image does a decent job creating a ground surface that might plausibly be the moon, and the shape of the temple is OK, but the top half of the image looks like a cross between the moon seen in the sky and a chrome ball used for getting HDRIs.
The second image I think did a great job of making a consistent shape for the temple part of the image, but then it decided to put the moon in the background again.
There were two other images generated with the prompt, not shown here, that weren’t as good quality. Both of these also featured the moon as it would be seen in space from the earth.
“A set of thin metal plates stacked tightly together in the shape of a book, seen on the top of a wooden table.”
The results look at least a little more like a book this time, and it definitely gets the table part of the image correct.
This would be a good opportunity to try out the “variation” functionality of DALL-E. I found an image representing the brass plates in the church’s Media Library. And I made sure that the usage rights permit me to use it publicly.
Sadly, the model seems to not have any concept of “metal plates with writing on them” anywhere in its training data or parameters. Here are the results:
The blurred background and lighting are quite excellent, but the first one looks like paper that’s been spray-painted brass, and the second looks like a leather volume that’s been likewise altered in color.
Let’s try some robot images.
“A robot with exposed wiring kneeling with its hands clasped together, dark background.”
This one is great! So much better than the one featured in my other post here.
Next let’s try to recreate the image from the home page of my blog. As I don’t have the original prompt for that one, I’ll have to guess what it could have been.
“A painting of a man writing in a large book, with a small humanoid robot next to him pointing at the book.”
I probably shouldn’t have said “large” in the prompt, because the rest of the images have books as big as the guy. In two of the others, the guy and the robot are the same character.
“A painting of a man sitting at a desk writing in a old book, with a small humanoid robot next to him.”
The first one reminds me some of the paintings of Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon from the gold plates, like this or this, where the robot takes the place of Oliver Cowdery.
The second one looks like some evil alchemist in his lair, preparing a concoction with the help of his robot assistant.
That’s probably enough “inspir-AI-tion” for today. I hope you enjoy these silly images.
Benjamin
14 Aug, 2022
7 Aug, 2022
Historical Caricatures
Blog
I had a funny thought come to me – what would it look like if Jesus played basketball?
Since he’s such a nice guy, I bet he would play for a little while if some kids asked him to join their game.
Thankfully, through the power of AI illustration, we can get a glimpse of what that might look like.
I like the first rendering the most.
All of the old paintings and illustrations of historical and religious figures are usually of serious or noteworthy events; hardly ever do we get to see them experiencing the mundane parts of life.
In that vein of thought, enjoy this rendition of Elijah eating cereal (yeah, the craiyon AI is still not good at faces).
What if an amateur artist had tried to record what an ancient structure looked like? I tried to get a watercolor of Solomon’s temple, but the algorithm seemed to miss the “watercolor” part of the prompt.
And finally, a crayon sketch of the cathedral of Notre Dame (I know, that’s not really related to anything above).
