9 ms·

I’m fascinated by how much this is exactly like working with a human artist who doesn’t really understand the domain that you are wanting to represent with an i

I’m fascinated by how much this is exactly like working with a human artist who doesn’t really understand the domain that you are wanting to represent with an image. Iterate, iterate, iterate. It seems like the most valuable thing this could do is get some of that early exploration out of the way faster and easier than a human can do it, get to two or three concepts that feel like they’re in the neighborhood, and then let a human expert take over and turn it to something final quality. That’s pretty cool.

cube2222 4y ago
Agreed. At the end of the article I also described a bit how I would see the evolution of such a tool, and it looks like we're thinking very similarly. --- Though I think the real breakthrough will come when Dall-e gets 10-100x cheaper (and faster). I would then envision the following process of working with it (which is really just an optimization on top of what I’ve been doing now): 1. You write a phrase. 2. You are shown a hundred pictures for that phrase, preferably from very different regions of the latent space. 3. You select the ones best matching what you want. 4. Go back to 2, 4-5 times, getting better results every time. 5. Now you can write a phrase for what you would like to change (edit) and the original image would be used as the baseline. Go back to 2 until happy.
- jherrmann 4y ago
- yomkippur 4y ago
  I see this happening in all areas. Everything would be prompt-driven. Do you like this? What about this? You simply nod or reject the solutions that you don't want. Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. One day enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no. I am worried that the middle class is rapidly disappearing. We will own nothing and be happy seems quite ominous. The question is then what field is safe from advancements in AI? The only field I can think of is doctors, lawyers, executives, buy-side money managers. Even their jobs will be partially automated but it will be safe as long as they generate revenue.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. Every art director at an ad agency just shrieked!
    - bigfudge 4y ago
      I doubt it, because the process of thinking of phrases to feed dall-e is really the hard bit. This is ok for a logo like this where it’s fair to say the base level expectation is not super creative. This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error.
      - logifail 4y ago
        > This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error. Q: Are there really logos out there that are "interesting and novel" and that "stand out or make the product [..] distinctive"? Which ones? EDIT: (perhaps more importantly) are there interesting, novel, distinctive logos that actually contribute to profitability?
        notahacker 4y ago
        tbf I think when it comes to big company branding it's the opposite. A lot of GPT iterations of the design has left the article author with something which is quirkier than your average logo, but also looks like clipart and probably doesn't scale up or down well or work in monochrome. Which is fine for OSS. (He might get more users from blog traffic about using GPT-3 to design his logo than he ever could from any other logo anyway) But when it comes to bigger companies, the design agency are the people that sit in meetings with execs persuading them that a well chosen font and a silhouette of a much simplified octopus will work much better ("but maybe the arms could interact with some of the letters etc etc, now lets discuss colours). The actual technical bit of drawing it is the bit that's already relatively cheaply and easily outsourced, and plenty of corporate logos are wordmarks that don't even need to be drawn...
- cpeterso 4y ago
  This workflow reminds me of a generative art program from the early 1990s, but I just can't remember its name. It was a DOS or Windows program that had a very curvy, fluid GUI with different graphics sliders. It would show you some random tiles and you choose one to guide the algorithm's next generation of tiles.
  - VladimirGolovin 4y ago
    Kai's Power Tools.
    - shon 4y ago
      +1 what a great program
    - qwertox 4y ago
      I wonder if Kai Krause lurks here at HN. I'd love to know how he's doing. Apparently he's still living in his castle, which he bought around 1999 [0]. Some-when in the 00's I read an article about him that he was putting advanced networking stuff into the castle and had the intention to start something like a "think-tank" (doesn't really fit it, but I don't know what I'd call it) where he and others would hang around and code stuff. I found the article [1] from July 2002, "Lord of the Castle Kai Krause presents Byteburg II". > So that 's Kai Krause's long-cherished plan: Now the software guru has finally opened a center for founders and developers from the IT and software industry in Hemmersbach Castle near Cologne -- the Byteburg II I really wonder what he's doing to these days. His plug-ins were legendary, as well as the User Interface for Bryce [2] [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krau... [1, google translate] https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)
      - 4y ago
- Iv 4y ago
  It will get cheaper. On 5 years it will run on your phone
- WhitneyLand 4y ago
  Given the stochastic way it works I wonder how the randomness is seeded for a certain phrase. In other words, if another person needed a logo and used the same phrase how long on average until they get a duplicate of your image?
  - cube2222 4y ago
    Since the image is RGB 1024x1024, and the random seed is noise (as it is for diffusion models), I guess it would be quite long.
  - nodja 4y ago
    The model starts from 64x64 8bit RGB image of noise (random pixels) so technically 1 in 3_145_728 (64x64x256x3) but most will probably be very close to each other as the color difference won't be that much. The image is then further upsampled by two other models which will change some details, but shouldn't affect the general composition of an image.
    - spyder 4y ago
      Maybe I'm wrong, but with these diffusion models there is randomness in every sampling step too not just in the initialization and they can have 1000 steps to generate a single image.
      - nodja 4y ago
        Ah good point, this would introduce more variation if the initial noise is close, but if the initial noise is exactly the same it probably means it was initialized with the same seed and the rest of the generation will be the same since the random algorithms are deterministic.
bredren 4y ago
Yes! It gives powerful tools for someone with a concept to get much closer to visualization of their idea. DALL E 2 is like a low or no-code tool in that way. The outcome may not be a "finished" product, especially as viewed by a professional designer (or web dev). However, its a heck of a lot better than a tersely written spec. And in some cases, the product will work well enough to unblock the business, get customer feedback and generally keep things moving forward.
atwood22 4y ago
I think this is more powerful than a simple exploration tool. It took the author a long time to find a query format that generated logo-like images. Once they had that part down, they were quickly able to iterate on their query to find an image they liked. They were even able to fix part of the logo using the fill-in tool. I'm not sure why you'd bring a human into the mix, especially if you're on a budget.
antioppressor 4y ago
Nah, people will leave out the professional. The same wild west grab whatever you can, steal, plunder to the detriment of artists, writers etc. And when the legislation arrives it will be already too late, accidentally.
- nyhc99 4y ago
  Why should there be legislation? Do you want to restrict what people can do, just to force them to employ artists and writers? We could also forbid people from filling the gas tanks in their own cars, to protect the job of gas station attendant, but nobody wants to live in New Jersey.
  - antioppressor 4y ago
    "Why should there be legislation?" Lol. Read the uber files.
  - Noos 4y ago
    you remember the concept of dumping, i.e., flooding a market with below cost product to drive out competing businesses? This is dumping for creatives. editing: not that it's intentional, but these things will have the same effect; way too much product even for creative works. No one will be able to make money off the product but the tools.
    - ric2b 4y ago
      Is it below cost though? It might just be very cheap to run.
joshstrange 4y ago
Yeah, my first thought was "Ok, but you are going to need to involve a graphical artist to actually really make use of that logo". Like you probably want a vector version and you definitely need simplified versions for smaller sizes but then I stopped and realized how amazing this actually is. It "saved" (I know, it cost $30 but that's a steal for something like this) all the time and money you would have paid for iteration after iteration and let the author quickly hone in on what they wanted. As someone who is incredibly terrible at graphic design but knows what they like this could be a game changer as iterations of this technology progress. I can imagine going further than images and having AI/ML generate full HTML layouts in this iterative way where you start to define your vision for a website or app even and it spits out ideas/concepts that you can "lock" parts of it you like and let it regenerate the rest. I'm not downplaying designers role at all, I'd still go to one of them for the final design but to be able to wireframe using words/phrases and take a good idea of what I want would be amazing, especially for freelance/side-projects.
- Theodores 4y ago
  Nice ideas, great enthusiasm. I think your art/design/craft is pretty good. Some people use pencils, some use Adobe products, you have gone out there and tried the new Dall-E medium. Glad you thought out the usage, I am sure that when the novelty wears off that you will have that neat-as-octocat logo sorted out. I appreciate that you appreciate the value that highly skilled designers bring to a product with their visual expertise. However, I would like to see you A/B test the Dall E logo versus the winning designer logo. You could show odd IP addresses one logo and even addresses the other. I think the designer would edge the robot for what you need (a logo), however, the proof is in the pudding and conversion rate.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Honestly though the hard part is the actual design which is already done here. Learning to vectorize a raster is something that can be done in a weekend with Inkscape, there's no reason to involve an actual graphics designer with this anymore.
  - 4y ago
dclowd9901 4y ago
Ehnnnnnnnnn... An experienced human designer, right away, is going to ask how you want the logo to be used. That's going to have a major impact on how it's designed. So yeah, this may be like working with a doodler, but, as the author intimated, this is far from an ideal experience in getting a professionally designed logo. This is more like "Hey, you, drawing nerd, make this thing." Nevertheless, astonishing technology in its own right.

cube2222 4y ago

Agreed. At the end of the article I also described a bit how I would see the evolution of such a tool, and it looks like we're thinking very similarly. --- Though I think the real breakthrough will come when Dall-e gets 10-100x cheaper (and faster). I would then envision the following process of working with it (which is really just an optimization on top of what I’ve been doing now): 1. You write a phrase. 2. You are shown a hundred pictures for that phrase, preferably from very different regions of the latent space. 3. You select the ones best matching what you want. 4. Go back to 2, 4-5 times, getting better results every time. 5. Now you can write a phrase for what you would like to change (edit) and the original image would be used as the baseline. Go back to 2 until happy.

jherrmann 4y ago
yomkippur 4y ago
I see this happening in all areas. Everything would be prompt-driven. Do you like this? What about this? You simply nod or reject the solutions that you don't want. Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. One day enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no. I am worried that the middle class is rapidly disappearing. We will own nothing and be happy seems quite ominous. The question is then what field is safe from advancements in AI? The only field I can think of is doctors, lawyers, executives, buy-side money managers. Even their jobs will be partially automated but it will be safe as long as they generate revenue.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. Every art director at an ad agency just shrieked!
  - bigfudge 4y ago
    I doubt it, because the process of thinking of phrases to feed dall-e is really the hard bit. This is ok for a logo like this where it’s fair to say the base level expectation is not super creative. This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error. Q: Are there really logos out there that are "interesting and novel" and that "stand out or make the product [..] distinctive"? Which ones? EDIT: (perhaps more importantly) are there interesting, novel, distinctive logos that actually contribute to profitability?
      - notahacker 4y ago
        tbf I think when it comes to big company branding it's the opposite. A lot of GPT iterations of the design has left the article author with something which is quirkier than your average logo, but also looks like clipart and probably doesn't scale up or down well or work in monochrome. Which is fine for OSS. (He might get more users from blog traffic about using GPT-3 to design his logo than he ever could from any other logo anyway) But when it comes to bigger companies, the design agency are the people that sit in meetings with execs persuading them that a well chosen font and a silhouette of a much simplified octopus will work much better ("but maybe the arms could interact with some of the letters etc etc, now lets discuss colours). The actual technical bit of drawing it is the bit that's already relatively cheaply and easily outsourced, and plenty of corporate logos are wordmarks that don't even need to be drawn...
cpeterso 4y ago
This workflow reminds me of a generative art program from the early 1990s, but I just can't remember its name. It was a DOS or Windows program that had a very curvy, fluid GUI with different graphics sliders. It would show you some random tiles and you choose one to guide the algorithm's next generation of tiles.
- VladimirGolovin 4y ago
  Kai's Power Tools.
  - shon 4y ago
    +1 what a great program
  - qwertox 4y ago
    I wonder if Kai Krause lurks here at HN. I'd love to know how he's doing. Apparently he's still living in his castle, which he bought around 1999 [0]. Some-when in the 00's I read an article about him that he was putting advanced networking stuff into the castle and had the intention to start something like a "think-tank" (doesn't really fit it, but I don't know what I'd call it) where he and others would hang around and code stuff. I found the article [1] from July 2002, "Lord of the Castle Kai Krause presents Byteburg II". > So that 's Kai Krause's long-cherished plan: Now the software guru has finally opened a center for founders and developers from the IT and software industry in Hemmersbach Castle near Cologne -- the Byteburg II I really wonder what he's doing to these days. His plug-ins were legendary, as well as the User Interface for Bryce [2] [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krau... [1, google translate] https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)
    - 4y ago
Iv 4y ago
It will get cheaper. On 5 years it will run on your phone
WhitneyLand 4y ago
Given the stochastic way it works I wonder how the randomness is seeded for a certain phrase. In other words, if another person needed a logo and used the same phrase how long on average until they get a duplicate of your image?
- cube2222 4y ago
  Since the image is RGB 1024x1024, and the random seed is noise (as it is for diffusion models), I guess it would be quite long.
- nodja 4y ago
  The model starts from 64x64 8bit RGB image of noise (random pixels) so technically 1 in 3_145_728 (64x64x256x3) but most will probably be very close to each other as the color difference won't be that much. The image is then further upsampled by two other models which will change some details, but shouldn't affect the general composition of an image.
  - spyder 4y ago
    Maybe I'm wrong, but with these diffusion models there is randomness in every sampling step too not just in the initialization and they can have 1000 steps to generate a single image.
    - nodja 4y ago
      Ah good point, this would introduce more variation if the initial noise is close, but if the initial noise is exactly the same it probably means it was initialized with the same seed and the rest of the generation will be the same since the random algorithms are deterministic.

bredren 4y ago

Yes! It gives powerful tools for someone with a concept to get much closer to visualization of their idea. DALL E 2 is like a low or no-code tool in that way. The outcome may not be a "finished" product, especially as viewed by a professional designer (or web dev). However, its a heck of a lot better than a tersely written spec. And in some cases, the product will work well enough to unblock the business, get customer feedback and generally keep things moving forward.

atwood22 4y ago

I think this is more powerful than a simple exploration tool. It took the author a long time to find a query format that generated logo-like images. Once they had that part down, they were quickly able to iterate on their query to find an image they liked. They were even able to fix part of the logo using the fill-in tool. I'm not sure why you'd bring a human into the mix, especially if you're on a budget.

antioppressor 4y ago

Nah, people will leave out the professional. The same wild west grab whatever you can, steal, plunder to the detriment of artists, writers etc. And when the legislation arrives it will be already too late, accidentally.

nyhc99 4y ago
Why should there be legislation? Do you want to restrict what people can do, just to force them to employ artists and writers? We could also forbid people from filling the gas tanks in their own cars, to protect the job of gas station attendant, but nobody wants to live in New Jersey.
- antioppressor 4y ago
  "Why should there be legislation?" Lol. Read the uber files.
- Noos 4y ago
  you remember the concept of dumping, i.e., flooding a market with below cost product to drive out competing businesses? This is dumping for creatives. editing: not that it's intentional, but these things will have the same effect; way too much product even for creative works. No one will be able to make money off the product but the tools.
  - ric2b 4y ago
    Is it below cost though? It might just be very cheap to run.

joshstrange 4y ago

Yeah, my first thought was "Ok, but you are going to need to involve a graphical artist to actually really make use of that logo". Like you probably want a vector version and you definitely need simplified versions for smaller sizes but then I stopped and realized how amazing this actually is. It "saved" (I know, it cost $30 but that's a steal for something like this) all the time and money you would have paid for iteration after iteration and let the author quickly hone in on what they wanted. As someone who is incredibly terrible at graphic design but knows what they like this could be a game changer as iterations of this technology progress. I can imagine going further than images and having AI/ML generate full HTML layouts in this iterative way where you start to define your vision for a website or app even and it spits out ideas/concepts that you can "lock" parts of it you like and let it regenerate the rest. I'm not downplaying designers role at all, I'd still go to one of them for the final design but to be able to wireframe using words/phrases and take a good idea of what I want would be amazing, especially for freelance/side-projects.

Theodores 4y ago
Nice ideas, great enthusiasm. I think your art/design/craft is pretty good. Some people use pencils, some use Adobe products, you have gone out there and tried the new Dall-E medium. Glad you thought out the usage, I am sure that when the novelty wears off that you will have that neat-as-octocat logo sorted out. I appreciate that you appreciate the value that highly skilled designers bring to a product with their visual expertise. However, I would like to see you A/B test the Dall E logo versus the winning designer logo. You could show odd IP addresses one logo and even addresses the other. I think the designer would edge the robot for what you need (a logo), however, the proof is in the pudding and conversion rate.
moffkalast 4y ago
Honestly though the hard part is the actual design which is already done here. Learning to vectorize a raster is something that can be done in a weekend with Inkscape, there's no reason to involve an actual graphics designer with this anymore.
- 4y ago

dclowd9901 4y ago

Ehnnnnnnnnn... An experienced human designer, right away, is going to ask how you want the logo to be used. That's going to have a major impact on how it's designed. So yeah, this may be like working with a doodler, but, as the author intimated, this is far from an ideal experience in getting a professionally designed logo. This is more like "Hey, you, drawing nerd, make this thing." Nevertheless, astonishing technology in its own right.