I for one welcome our new AI overlords

Just thought I’d get that blog title on record as a sort of insurance policy for the future. Truth be told, despite Keith’s impressive and creative use of AI (over at his Bydand blog) my own output has so far been less than stellar. 

My upcoming VBCW project has a fair amount of background fluff, so I thought that rather than writing  a wall of text to boggle the reader I’d present the backstory in a couple of neat faux newspaper front pages from the period. 

Being me, nothing ever goes to plan of course, so I thought I’d share my “creative experience” in the hopes that more compétant people can point out what I’m doing wrong,

First off I was trying to create a copy of the Daily Mail, infamous for its real world headline “hurrah for the blackshirts”. Given that it looked like I was trying to create something promoting fascism with prompts like… 

“Generate front page of Daily Mail May 3rd 1937. Headline «GOOD RIDDANCE » Picture of worried 1930s women and children under guard. Text around the picture Northampton has now been cleansed of communist agitators. Oxford, Cambridge and Leicester have also seen the back of these troublesome malcontents. New paragraph, WE BACK THE BOYS IN BLACK. Insert text in a border at the bottom of the page in the style of a period advert Farrington’s Bile Beans. The Perfect Restorative 2d.” 

…I got a lot of “this image generation request did not follow our content policy” responses, which was actually quite heartening to be honest. 

Being sly, and a lot less specific I pressed on and gradually worked my way through dozens of iterations where either the text was okay but the pictures were ridiculous or the pictures were okay and the text utter nonsense.

Unable to get the bugger to do what I really wanted I made a collage of the bits that were okay and created a Frankenstein version of the Daily Mail using cut and paste. 

The problem with the cut and paste was that it looked like…well… a cut and paste. Uploading my image to the AI I asked it to make it look more homogenous (ie make the background a uniform colour) which as you can see it did. The trouble is that in the process of doing that it corrupted the text, turning it into utter garbage and rendering my attempt at story telling useless. 

As you can see from the original cut and paste variant (below), it covered the deportation of communist agitators from Coventry (obviously just women and children) and Prime Minister Mosley visiting King Edward the VIII who’d been injured in a bomb attack at his coronation. 

I guess it’s reassuring to know that if AI ever becomes sentient and takes over the world it’ll probably make as big a balls up of it as we’ve done. 

Okay, frustrated semi rant over. 

Here’s a picture of a train and the new Brompton Carpets warehouse to placate those hoping for some proper wargaming content. lol.  

My new choo choo. Not bad for cardboard and mdf. Just gotta sort out the rails now.

Brompton Carpets three story factory / warehouse, where I’m told you can pick up some excellent end of roll bargains.

I’m pretty sure I’ll sneak another post in pre new year, but if not I hope you all manage to kick back and have a good one. 

Toodleooh