AI Art Has a Looooong Way to Go

Can Artificial Intelligence (a.k.a. regular computing) generate art? The jury is still out (even if the US copyright office is not). I’m skeptical and an idea popped into my head last night; can ‘AI’ generate something even remotely close to the real thing and how would they compare? E.g. what if we asked it to generate images of actor John Goodman as Fred Flintstone?

Readers of a certain age may already know where this ends up but for those unfamiliar, here is a primer:Yes, that’s actors John Goodman and Rick Moranis as Fred and Barney respectively in the live-action Flintstones movie from 1994.

I put out a call on Socel for someone to have a go at my idea since I didn’t think I could do it myself and lo and behold, Wobbe F. Koning replied and delivered!

So can current AI technology generate art that’s close to reality or is if just a whimsical plaything? Here’s the results.

Here’s MidJourney’s attempt:

And here’s Stable Diffusion’s attempt

Will you have nightmares tonight? I think I will.

Add your thoughts with a comment!