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  • AI-Generated Portraits

    Prompt: A fascinating series of portraits featuring diverse individuals, each with unique facial features and expressions.

    Engine: Microsoft

    I have this feeling that at its core, nearly all AI engines have only a few “faces” that it can spit out with various facial expressions or facial hair. If you look at these close enough, there is something unsettlingly similar about all of them. They’re real looking, but there’s still something just a bit off.

    If you look at a collection of portraits, you’ll see a much better diversity of human appearance without that unsettling undertone. Is AI really all that it’s hyped to be?

  • Quantum Waves

    Prompt: A visualization of quantum waves, depicting vibrant, swirling patterns of light and energy that evoke the mysteries of the subatomic realm.

    Source: Microsoft

    This gets a bit trippy for me, perhaps this is the hallucination of an AI that isn’t quite sure what to make of this kind of prompt. Not sure how any of this is supposed to look subatomic, or any bit of quantum waves. With my collegiate chemistry background, maybe I’m a bit biased and disappointed as my own view of the subatomic is a bit less hallucinogenic. I find more comfort in explanations and graphics like the CERN does with their Higgs Boson page.

  • Neon Noir

    Prompt: A dark, gritty cityscape at night, with neon lights reflecting off wet pavement and towering skyscrapers looming in the background.

    AI: Microsoft

    Currently these AI models have difficulty with text, but it is interesting that it chose a sign-based language to set this city in. I suppose it’s better than a Latin based alphabet where it’d be easy to realize the text is absolute gibberish. None the less, a reasonable picture given the prompt. Great at a passing glance for sure. Not a city I’d want to live in though.

  • Fractal Forest

    Prompt: A photo realistic image of a forest filled with fractal-patterned trees, their branches and leaves repeating in intricate, self-similar designs.

    AI Engine: Microsoft

    Fractals are a fascinating but complex mathematical idea. Most lay people can easily recognize the pattern, but do not realize the complex math behind these designs. On that level, I suppose most don’t realize the underlying history of transformers and large language models that have resulted in the “AI” that we use today.

  • Galactic Dreamscape

    Prompt: An AI-generated landscape of a futuristic, glowing city on a distant planet, with sleek spaceships flying in the background.

    Source: Microsoft Designer

    I find it interesting how the prompt made the AI put a distant planet in the backdrop, whereas without that planet in the background the scene would be pretty accurate. A very sci-fi looking picture, where evidently dual engine space craft are the go to.