I was similarly astonished at this adaptation of stable diffusion to make HDR spherical environment maps from existing images- https://diffusionlight.github.io/

I was similarly astonished at this adaptation of stable diffusion to make HDR spherical environment maps from existing images- https://diffusionlight.github.io/ https://diffusionlight.github.io/ The crazy thing is that they do it by prompting the model to in paint a chrome sphere into the middle of the image to reflect what is behind the camera! The model can interpret the context and dream up what is plausibly in the whole environment.