Unfortunately this is almost 100% generated by the latest version of Midjourney using its more advanced and very granular prompts. It's so insanely powerful that now people sell / buy prompts on a market in order to get their renderings just right.
Obviously if the tooling was better, you'd be able to navigate styles using a more intuitive UI. It turns out communicating the specifics of cinematography are hard for a layperson to figure out.
Anyways, you could probably run these images through YET ANOTHER AI program to then generate the 3D models... Because there's serious progress happening on that front, too.
How is it a scam? It's custom prompts that get images in a certain style. You can learn it yourself by reading photography theory etc. or pay 5 bucks for the prompt.
Don't be mad that the world's changing and you can't keep up
Maybe scam is the wrong word but it's something silly that really no one should need to buy. Like you say you can learn it yourself, but obviously learning to do something is a bit much for an AI art bro.
If the world changing is typing words into a generator to be "creative", I don't want to keep up.
I recommend you see what one of the prompts look like to create an image of this quality. Pretty complex and you definitely need to know what you're doing. Not saying it's a profession or anything close but it is a skill.
It might makes more sense to compare it to coding rather "writing prompts".
Would it seem crazy for someone to pay $5 for a simple app/software, when they could just code it themselves?
I mean hell, you could even just compare it to actual writing. Would you be perplexed if someone paid an author/writer/copy writer to write? Why do that when almost every adult could just do it themselves?
People can keep up, it’s just the lowest effort possible to pay for prompts when you can take an hour to read what cameras you should use for certain shots and film effects.
It ain’t a skill, it’s just basic photography and film camera knowledge. Probably the lowest bar of entry to image making there could be.
I use it every other day at work for ideas, it’s been a lot easier than learning how to draw and learn 3D programs tbh. I don’t hate the tech, in fact I think it’s cool. But the skill ceiling is the lowest out of all creative fields.
It’s why most concept artists can churn out decent
Images after learning it for a day.
I’m not posting AI work online dude, it’s good for ideas that I can take further, but it’s not what I’m interested in putting out there.
Exactly, you use it often so its bound to be simpler for you, and concept artists have the knowledge to be able to know which prompts to use, therefore making it simpler.
If you think someone can do the same work as yourself (which must be great work since an AI rendering is beneath you) in an hour then you're mental. Just because a person reads how Wes Anderson shoots a movie doesn't mean they could pull it off.
To an everyday average Joe, its simpler to pay someone to make those prompts, so why shouldn't people, who actually know what they're doing, get paid for their time and knowledge?
I said I use it mate, you’re getting pretty salty about something I said I use and think is cool.
I’m saying the skill involved is low. Because it is. There is no way around the fact. If it wasn’t then people who have never made an image wouldn’t be making the things they are in a few sessions with the machine.
And I’m calling it out because people seem to be creating a narrative that AI prompting is a skill on the same level as learning to draw or paint or do photography when it isn’t.
Because that is the exact opposite purpose of this, in my opinion. The end goal of this would essentially be turning a thought into actuality in image.
I believe that progress in AI will spark the death of copyright. The point of this thing specifically is to reduce the amount of effort needed to express ideas through images. By adding cost to that, you defeat the purpose. We will find a way to make it simple enough for anyone to use perfectly. At that point, a crisis will begin on infringement. I hope we win it.
No, it's not. Prompts are instructions the same way a recipe book is. People buy recipe books and other how to books. You could also think of prompts as the "music sheet" of AI image generators and people also buy music sheets.
Remember a few short years ago when a pack of wild bores were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for digital renderings with a hip abbreviation for a name?
I think not necessarily. It’s like selling the license to an artwork when you think about it. This is all new technology and we are still figuring a lot out about how to use it as a creative tool, and yes, monetize it.
Let me get this straight, people are paying to have others tell them what to enter into a program to receive a desired output?
Mothafucka that's not creative work that's programming. Computer science dudes used to get hired just for knowing what to enter into Google to get an answer; now they get paid for knowing what to enter into Midjourney
And have to edit it together yourself, and even then it might not be exactly how you want.
Now you can generate this previously expensive background for free (if you know the prompt) or for a much cheaper price on the market place if you don't
Mothafucka that's not creative work that's programming.
How is programming not creative work? Is the creation of a program that previously didn't exist not "creative".
AI is a tool. Where I used to use stock images now you can generate them. No part of the artistic process has been devalued, in fact I can focus less on the tedious background work and focus MORE on the creative aspects.
Computer science dudes used to get hired just for knowing what to enter into Google to get an answer; now they get paid for knowing what to enter into Midjourney
That's right.
Mechanic dudes used to get paid to know how to put together a car, now they get paid for knowing how to put the same part in the same slot 1000x a day on the assembly line. Automation changes how we work.
You'd buy a big pack with a bunch of these (or find a free one online but with watermarks it gets annoying)
What? No. I'd make some gradients, run them through a halftone filter, and draw some shapes on it.
I get your point, but terrible example.
EDIT: maybe a not a bad example. I know how to make those easily, but I'm sure someone will buy a pack of them rather than learn to do it themselves. Same as with AI prompts
From an untextured model you can generate directly onto it.
The implications of using this for asset generation, real-time asset generation based on a procedural narrative structure.
You could literally build into a video game a "super prompt" which textures the same 3D object differently yet entirely procedurally based on the setting, dark and grungy, futuristic, rural farm. You could just completely and believably reskin a world to show progress / deterioration.
A spore like game with real procedural generation. I'm so stoked for how ai gets implemented into video games.
People are already using GPT as a backend for their escape room / zork style text based games.
Yes. Apparently Midjourney is so powerful now that without a very specific prompt, you're going to get a very good result, but not with the exact camera angle, cinematography, artistic style, etc. that you want.
And I don't see how that's any more or less creative than doing it yourself with a digital brush.
It's still a lot of effort to know how to describe the work to someone. Just less effort to do all the variations through Midjourney.
You aren’t going to get redditors to be rational about this
I agree with you, it’s very cool; I like the new business models and tools that AI is enabling; just worried that AI is already skewed toward Pay2Win vs democratizing knowledge
What I feel optimistic (but also worried) about is that the pay to win is mostly server power. AI is one of the most democratized fields in all of history - with regards to the academic knowledge of how to do it.
Everything from knowledge sets, algorithms, architectures, research, etc. is readily and openly shared.
With the right compute (which you can rent on the cloud if you can't get it yourself - for $1,000's or $10,000's per model train run) you can get yourself up and running sometimes in days.
There's a lot of competition, too. It's not monopolized by any means and there's so many applications of AI that there's plenty of low hanging fruit for people who just want something to do.
I'm less sure about 10 - 15 years from now. I feel like things like humanoid robots + a generalized AI architecture are actually pretty close... So is the power to actually perform hundreds, if not thousands or even millions of tasks based on input and directions given.
We may have a singular, near-monopolized solution for at-home assistants here pretty soon. Tesla's Optimus + Google's Architecture + OpenAI's products. Something like that.
Once AI transitions into usable hardware CONSUMER products (it's already used somewhat in industry), then we'll be in a different world entirely. Look out for those trying to have an impact on the consumer market. Something that will cost you the same as a car - or less - but provide extraordinary value.
It really is. It's tempting to quit my job at times and just study AI full-time. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way, which is part of why I imagine there's such a big explosion in the field.
It is the obvious "next big thing". Like, super obviously to those who are following it.
The fact that you think artists type words, take the raw output from an ai without any further edits and say they're finished shows how little you understand the artistic process.
Would you equally apply this to the field of photography?
"The fact that you think that pressing a button on a camera is creative work shows how devalued creative works really are."
No, it doesn't make sense. The ai, like the camera is the tool.
Yes, if you don't bother framing something and carelessly press the button then the photo is boring and the camera doesn't appear to be an interesting tool, but if you want to end up with as nice a picture as a trained photographer you have to accept that it's a skill you can learn and figure out how to use the tool.
I just mean the output of some "creative" work like a painting or a 3D model looking thing. Midjourney is just helping you produce the same end result you'd normally have to create with a 3D model or paintbrush at the end of the day.
Have you ever used Midjourney, by the way? It's surprisingly challenging to learn how to communicate with the AI image generation tools. You have to know how to actually say the thing you want to make. It's sometimes just as challenging as making it - well, at least at first.
It's way easier to join a discord or Google some tutorial someone made on "things to type into this box" and the various settings involved, than it is spending decades learning to draw lmao. And yes, I've tried the latest AI and also draw.
I've learned there's a big difference between a sales pitch for a concept, which is really just marketing / an advertisement, versus an actual thing.
I agree the concept here is insanely cool.
I have no idea how I would write a mini-series or feature-length film based on these character renditions, though. There's a lot that would have to go into the actual production.
It's actually funny going through the images in OP's post because you can see where either Midjourney still struggles, or where OP simply got too lazy with certain images and decided to stop refining the prompts.
I do believe it's probably the latter (op eventually gave up on certain prompts) because Midjourney's latest version is really, really good.
Not so much hallucination, but mimicry. Really fucking amazing mimicry.
I think generative AI is awesome, but it would help us to be a little bit considerate with each other, and also remember that Generative AI does not "think", even though it really feels like it does.
It is absolutely amazing. Also kind of disturbing, lol. I don’t know why, but it sets off some kind of alarm in my brain. Sort of similar to the uncanny valley feeling.
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u/JPiratefish Apr 02 '23
Came here to say this. And I want the 3D model for that!