Thursday Things: Bunny Horse Edition
1 September 2022. Vol 4 No 35 By Dan McGirt. #160
Welcome to Thursday Things! If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know. You can post a comment by clicking the dialog bubble.
It’s a bunny horse! As imagined (?) by Stable Diffusion AI
Behold the bunny horse!
People of Thursday Things, I give you … the bunny horse.
I made that image above. Or, more precisely I typed “bunny horse” into a text prompt field and an artificial intelligence engine trained on gobs of online text and image pairings translated my words into a rendering of the bunny horse.
Which is adorable and I want one. You probably do too.
The story here is not so much the bunny horse as the art-generating AI. Apparently this has been a thing for a while, but it only in the last few weeks began enter my awareness that such things existed. I made the bunny horse with the Stable Diffusion demo, described as “a state of the art text-to-image model that generates images from text.”
It does exactly that. If you click the link you can enter a text prompt and get your own image of a bunny horse or whatever else you imagine. Or at least get the AI’s best attempt to turn your words into art.
Ah, but is it art?
Turbo Future asks that question: The World’s Best Artist Is Now an AI. Are Humans Obsolete?
Perhaps you haven’t heard yet about the amazing, artificially intelligent artist called DALL-E 2, the AI that can create fantastic drawings and paintings for you—from scratch!
No, this is not a Photoshop or Instagram filter that merely alters a photo that you give it. This is an AI that creates fantastic and beautiful images from a blank virtual canvas.
And here’s the most amazing part: You don’t have to be an expert to use it. You simply tell it what you want, as if you were talking to another human being, and it gives it to you. And its work looks like it was done by a talented professional artist with years of experience and training!
It is mind blowing. Click to that article and see some of the AI-generated images that blow away my bunny horse.
The act of creativity is considered the quintessence of being human. Art is considered an expression of the human soul. It is the way we communicate with others. It is a visual expression of our emotions—our very being.
So what does it say when a machine is able to create artwork that is indistinguishable from that created by humans—art that contains emotion, passion, drama, a sense of composition and beauty, even a sense of humor?
What will the arrival of AI artists do to the professional art field? Who will be considered the creators of AI-generated artwork? Will artificial intelligence soon take over all jobs? Is there any point to drawing and painting anymore if an AI can do it as well or better than we can?
These are just a few of the thorny questions we will tackle in this essay.
If those are questions that interest you, read the whole essay.
After making the bunny horse — or having the bunny horse made, I suppose — I tinkered with a couple of other AI image-generators:
NightCafe Studio Instagram account (many examples of generated images)
With some variations, these do the same thing as Stable Diffusion. There are various settings you can play with, such as choosing a “style” for your image (i.e. line drawing, oil painting, surreal) and advanced settings I don’t understand. All let you generate a few images for free, but you have to buy credits or a subscription plan to really get into it.
Here are more AI image makers
The one I see mentioned over and over is DALL-E 2, which is an AI image generator developed by OpenAI. It has a wait list you can sign up for to eventually gain access to it. Some of the DALL-E 2 images I’ve seen are astounding.
What does this all mean? I imagine for visual artists is could be either a frightening prospect of being replaced by computers or a powerful new tool to use and explore and create with. Either way art-making AI is here.
I assume AI-generated newsletters aren’t far behind. But I’m not going to worry about that right now, because I’ve got a bunny horse!
Another variation of the bunny horse. Image: Stable Diffusion AI
It’s your lucky knight
If I were a knight, I’d want to ride a bunny horse into battle. As long as we were fighting balloon animals or gummy bears or something harmless like that. I wouldn’t want my bunny horse to get hurt.
Colorful knight riding a bunny horse. Image: Stable Diffusion AI
But maybe you like your medieval art a bit more authentic than that. Then you’re in luck!
Thousands of medieval images available for free, thanks to Albertina Museum
A museum in Austria has made available over 150,000 images into the public domain, including many from the Middle Ages. Fans of Albrecht Dürer will be particularly delighted, as more than 2100 of his works are now available.
The Albertina Museum, located in Vienna, is considered to have one of the best collections of drawings and prints in the world. Recently, they put into the public domain most of the online image collection, which will allow people to use the images freely.
Nearly 4,000 of these images date between the 12th and 15th centuries, with another 23,000 dating to the 16th century. The Albertina has a large collection of works by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a German artist who was famous for his woodcut prints and a variety of other works.
“All for free! And I ain’t lion.” Image: Albrecht Dürer, watercolor, 15th c. via Albertina, Vienna
Here is the link to access the online collection at Albertina Museum.
Pumpkin my ride
A world of bunny horses should also contain fantastical gourd-based modes of transportation. Don’t you think so? Well, Duane Hansen of Nebraska agrees. Mr. Hansen recently celebrated his 60th birthday by doing what many wish they could — by turning an 846-pound giant pumpkin into a boat and piloting it 38 miles down the Missouri River. It sounds like a tall tale, but it’s true!
Nebraska man shatters world record for longest trip in a pumpkin boat
A Nebraska man carved out a new Guinness World Record by riding inside a hollowed out pumpkin for 38 treacherous miles down the Missouri River.
Hansen told News Channel Nebraska that the trip was fraught with peril, with his floating fruit repeatedly taking on water as passing boats sent waves in his direction.
“The boats leave the waves and you’ve got to stop everything and just hold on and ride with those waves,” he told the outlet. “That was bad.”
The wondrous thing to me is not that he broke the world record, but that there was an existing world record for longest trip by pumpkin boat there for him to break.
Hansen first set his sights on the record after running into the previous record holder at a fruit-growing seminar in Oregon.
The master gardener grew the mammoth pumpkin — weighing 846 pounds — in his own garden for the specific purpose of beating the 25.5 mile record set in 2018.
This is America, where we don’t let records like that stand for long. No, we rise to the challenge, grow a bigger, better pumpkin boat and break that record!
Or at least Duane Hansen, master gardener does.
“I’m so proud of my dad,” said his tearful daughter, Morgan Buchholz. “He has always said that you can do anything you want and how can you not believe somebody who goes out and does exactly what he wants and I’m just so proud.”
An inspiration to his family, and to us all. Well done, Mr. Hansen. You deserve your place alongside such luminaries of American folklore as Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Pecos Bill.
Pumpkin ain’t easy. Image: Facebook/City of Bellevue, Nebraska via NY Post
Thank you for reading Thursday Things!
Again, please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you next Thursday!