5 ms·

Context in mind, what jumps out to me is a remarkable compositional competence of the algorithm, even when given extremely vague prompts like "happy sisyphus".

Context in mind, what jumps out to me is a remarkable compositional competence of the algorithm, even when given extremely vague prompts like "happy sisyphus". The images match the prompt remarkably well with a few notable exceptions like "cottagecore tech-adjacent young robert moses", where it seemed to have focused on "cottage" rather heavily, not understanding cottagecore as an aesthetic neologism, and "power bottom dad is for the people", which definitely got the "dad" part, but it looks like it still struggled to understand "power bottom" (perhaps the curation of training data may have contributed to this). Even if these were curated specifically to match the prompt, what the algorithm was able to do with profiles is amazing (especially bearing in mind that these profiles are meant to be evocative, intentionally idiosyncratic blendings of extremely complex, contextual terms that were written without visual representation in mind, even if they gesture at specific aesthetics) Side note: what might make artists a bit relieved is the fact that artifacting is still pretty apparent even in the curated examples. Fine details or even whole figures sometime devolve into that scrambled topography familiar to AI art. Even in more compositionally competent artworks, the "brush strokes" frequently have identifiable blurs at the margins. Text also seems to be gibberish even if aesthetically coherent. Even still, these are all such minor issues that additional photoshop would be both easy and readily doable. Overall, this is frankly stunning and I'm really excited to see what others come up with. I feel like it's language and composition ability definitely did not disappoint the hype of its press release.

jonas21 5y ago
> "power bottom dad is for the people", which definitely got the "dad" part, but it looks like it still struggled to understand "power bottom" To be fair, as a human, I struggle to understand what this means.
- moeris 5y ago
  At least in gay culture, power bottom has a pretty specific meaning. I imagine "for the people" is referencing socialist leanings. Admittedly, it could mean many things. But it pushes my mind towards fully automated gay space communism.
  - hisnameisjimmy 5y ago
    > fully automated gay space communism I hope I have the opportunity to use this turn of phrase at some point in my life. Magnifique!
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      it's easy, whenever politics comes up just say "i'm voting for whoever promises fully automated gay space communism" btw "fully automated luxury communism" is a more mainstream thing like people have written manifestos and made art etc
    - riidom 5y ago
      If you happen to be a game dev, just add "simulator" to the end of the phrase. Prominent recent example: "space warlord organ trading simulator" :)
tmalsburg2 5y ago
But see these examples where it utterly fails at even the most basic form of compositionality: https://mobile.twitter.com/david_madras/status/1512573390896480267 https://mobile.twitter.com/david_madras/status/1512573390896...
- recuter 5y ago
  This is from the paper. We don't talk about it.
  - gwern 5y ago
    But you should talk about it because when you say it 'utterly fails', you leave out that GLIDE does much better: https://cdn.openai.com/papers/dall-e-2.pdf#page=15 https://cdn.openai.com/papers/dall-e-2.pdf#page=15
    - recuter 5y ago
      Agreed. And it is an improvement, no doubt. But still far from perfect. That would put a damper on the hype, much more fun to look at the handpicked results and claim the singularity is upon us :)
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Yep, seems like it knows about words but not grammar
  - tmalsburg2 5y ago
    Basic word proximity would be enough to deal with the basic stuff like "red cube" but it's struggling even with that.
orangecat 5y ago
Yeah, this is incredible. It's in the category of things that 5 years ago people would say an AI could never do because it requires insight/creativity/understanding/empathy that can't be produced by matrix multiplication. Text also seems to be gibberish even if aesthetically coherent. Although "Follove me" is either brilliant or a lucky accident (https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1511904232252784641 https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1511904232252784641).
quirino 5y ago
This feels like a new form of art altogether - creating images from words. GPT-2/3 were very impressive and I had pondered over their possible effects on society, but if something half as capable as Dall-E 2 were made publicly available it would likely be world-changing. This really makes me think that the next major paradigm-shift in society is AI-related. (The most recent one being the Internet, or possibly the iPhone)
- thomashop 5y ago
  Friends and me run the site https://pollinations.ai/ https://pollinations.ai/ which allows experimenting with a variety of open-source versions of DALL-E. Some are quite impressive.
flycaliguy 5y ago
Illustrators should feel relieved that they still have a few years left to rub Adobe’s AI all over Dall-e’s AI to create final drafts.
TheDudeMan 5y ago
> additional photoshop would be both easy and readily doable. Prediction for 2 days after this code is released: Just double-click the area you don't like and boom -- a variant.
- thomashop 5y ago
  Already possible. "DALL·E 2 can make realistic edits to existing images from a natural language caption. It can add and remove elements while taking shadows, reflections, and textures into account." https://openai.com/dall-e-2/ https://openai.com/dall-e-2/

jonas21 5y ago

> "power bottom dad is for the people", which definitely got the "dad" part, but it looks like it still struggled to understand "power bottom" To be fair, as a human, I struggle to understand what this means.

moeris 5y ago
At least in gay culture, power bottom has a pretty specific meaning. I imagine "for the people" is referencing socialist leanings. Admittedly, it could mean many things. But it pushes my mind towards fully automated gay space communism.
- hisnameisjimmy 5y ago
  > fully automated gay space communism I hope I have the opportunity to use this turn of phrase at some point in my life. Magnifique!
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    it's easy, whenever politics comes up just say "i'm voting for whoever promises fully automated gay space communism" btw "fully automated luxury communism" is a more mainstream thing like people have written manifestos and made art etc
  - riidom 5y ago
    If you happen to be a game dev, just add "simulator" to the end of the phrase. Prominent recent example: "space warlord organ trading simulator" :)

tmalsburg2 5y ago

But see these examples where it utterly fails at even the most basic form of compositionality: https://mobile.twitter.com/david_madras/status/1512573390896480267 https://mobile.twitter.com/david_madras/status/1512573390896...

recuter 5y ago
This is from the paper. We don't talk about it.
- gwern 5y ago
  But you should talk about it because when you say it 'utterly fails', you leave out that GLIDE does much better: https://cdn.openai.com/papers/dall-e-2.pdf#page=15 https://cdn.openai.com/papers/dall-e-2.pdf#page=15
  - recuter 5y ago
    Agreed. And it is an improvement, no doubt. But still far from perfect. That would put a damper on the hype, much more fun to look at the handpicked results and claim the singularity is upon us :)
kzrdude 5y ago
Yep, seems like it knows about words but not grammar
- tmalsburg2 5y ago
  Basic word proximity would be enough to deal with the basic stuff like "red cube" but it's struggling even with that.

orangecat 5y ago

Yeah, this is incredible. It's in the category of things that 5 years ago people would say an AI could never do because it requires insight/creativity/understanding/empathy that can't be produced by matrix multiplication. Text also seems to be gibberish even if aesthetically coherent. Although "Follove me" is either brilliant or a lucky accident (https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1511904232252784641 https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1511904232252784641).

quirino 5y ago

This feels like a new form of art altogether - creating images from words. GPT-2/3 were very impressive and I had pondered over their possible effects on society, but if something half as capable as Dall-E 2 were made publicly available it would likely be world-changing. This really makes me think that the next major paradigm-shift in society is AI-related. (The most recent one being the Internet, or possibly the iPhone)

thomashop 5y ago
Friends and me run the site https://pollinations.ai/ https://pollinations.ai/ which allows experimenting with a variety of open-source versions of DALL-E. Some are quite impressive.

flycaliguy 5y ago

Illustrators should feel relieved that they still have a few years left to rub Adobe’s AI all over Dall-e’s AI to create final drafts.

TheDudeMan 5y ago

> additional photoshop would be both easy and readily doable. Prediction for 2 days after this code is released: Just double-click the area you don't like and boom -- a variant.

thomashop 5y ago
Already possible. "DALL·E 2 can make realistic edits to existing images from a natural language caption. It can add and remove elements while taking shadows, reflections, and textures into account." https://openai.com/dall-e-2/ https://openai.com/dall-e-2/