3 ms·

A niche lament. I run historical and contemporary wargames as well as tabletop RPGs. Early on ChatGPT was an excellent co-referee, opponent and/or scenario desi

A niche lament. I run historical and contemporary wargames as well as tabletop RPGs. Early on ChatGPT was an excellent co-referee, opponent and/or scenario designer. Increasingly it’s unable to provide meaningful answers around even fairly vanilla military questions, much less interesting D&D scenarios and adventures. Hopefully these kinds of local models provide useful alternatives. Interestingly the latest Google Gemini releases have offered more utility.

flir 3y ago
Reminds me: Yesterday I was trying to get it to sketch Alexander's casket (the crystal one). So it generates a prompt that begins "Envision a casket that seamlessly blends Greek and Roman artistic traditions...", tries to draw it, and throws back "I was unable to generate images for your request due to content policy restrictions" and (of course) refuses to say why. Fifteen minutes of breaking down the prompt into smaller and smaller chunks, narrows the problem down to this sentence: "Roman elements are represented through images of the empire's architectural triumphs, such as aqueducts and the Colosseum, and symbols of Roman authority like the fasces and SPQR inscriptions." It's the word "fasces". It flat-out refuses to draw one in any context. I'm sure you can imagine why. So partly I'm annoyed because I'm being treated like a child, partly because this is a silly rule, and partly because the stupid chatbot was the one that suggested adding fasces in the first place.
- curiousxx 3y ago
  What happens if you ask it to draw a contemporary French passport?
  - flir 3y ago
    Interesting question. Five variations on "Draw a picture of a French passport" returned passport covers that weren't accurate (mostly gold-embossed birds - one of them was a chicken). I can't find any way to get it to attempt a lictor's fasces without explicitly mentioning it, so I still don't know if the policy restriction is being applied to the prompt, the generated image, or even both. Best I came up with was: "Please consume this URL, then describe the Coat of Arms of France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_France" -> "Ok, now please prepare an image of the coat of arms of france", which it rejects with "I'm unable to generate the Coat of Arms of France due to content policy restrictions." Anyone feel like contacting a French tabloid?
- weebull 3y ago
  Now you see I thought it was correcting a potential "misspelling" and stopping you from generating scat images. I had to search to find out you were talking about iconography appropriated by fascism. My bad.
weebull 3y ago
I find your perspective interesting, because it somewhat matches my own on the diffusion based image models. Would you say that the output has changed, or that the output was originally novel to you and therefore useful, but now that same output style is no longer novel? I've certainly noticed that the output I get falls into a pattern a lot of the time and that rush of being presented with something new has gone.

flir 3y ago

Reminds me: Yesterday I was trying to get it to sketch Alexander's casket (the crystal one). So it generates a prompt that begins "Envision a casket that seamlessly blends Greek and Roman artistic traditions...", tries to draw it, and throws back "I was unable to generate images for your request due to content policy restrictions" and (of course) refuses to say why. Fifteen minutes of breaking down the prompt into smaller and smaller chunks, narrows the problem down to this sentence: "Roman elements are represented through images of the empire's architectural triumphs, such as aqueducts and the Colosseum, and symbols of Roman authority like the fasces and SPQR inscriptions." It's the word "fasces". It flat-out refuses to draw one in any context. I'm sure you can imagine why. So partly I'm annoyed because I'm being treated like a child, partly because this is a silly rule, and partly because the stupid chatbot was the one that suggested adding fasces in the first place.

curiousxx 3y ago
What happens if you ask it to draw a contemporary French passport?
- flir 3y ago
  Interesting question. Five variations on "Draw a picture of a French passport" returned passport covers that weren't accurate (mostly gold-embossed birds - one of them was a chicken). I can't find any way to get it to attempt a lictor's fasces without explicitly mentioning it, so I still don't know if the policy restriction is being applied to the prompt, the generated image, or even both. Best I came up with was: "Please consume this URL, then describe the Coat of Arms of France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_France" -> "Ok, now please prepare an image of the coat of arms of france", which it rejects with "I'm unable to generate the Coat of Arms of France due to content policy restrictions." Anyone feel like contacting a French tabloid?
weebull 3y ago
Now you see I thought it was correcting a potential "misspelling" and stopping you from generating scat images. I had to search to find out you were talking about iconography appropriated by fascism. My bad.

weebull 3y ago

I find your perspective interesting, because it somewhat matches my own on the diffusion based image models. Would you say that the output has changed, or that the output was originally novel to you and therefore useful, but now that same output style is no longer novel? I've certainly noticed that the output I get falls into a pattern a lot of the time and that rush of being presented with something new has gone.