I’m continuing to check out art created by artificial intelligence at craiyon.com.  You type in some words and the AI creates nine pictures from the prompt.

Yesterday I was trying to see if the AI could capture emotion on a face.  It took some iterations but the answer?  YES.  A big yes.  The final few renders were amazing.  Here’s an example that I didn’t post yesterday:

the face of a cyborg overwhelmed with love in a painterly style

To get a good result the AI needed lots of very specific text telling it what to do and lots of trial and error to find the right words.  The AI needed to understand the meaning and context of the words correctly.  When it didn’t things fell apart and became superficial and symbolic, like bland clip-art.

But what if I started from scratch and gave the AI as little direction as possible?  Where would it go?  Will anything dramatic come out?

Lets begin with one word:

face

OK, not bad.  Since I’m giving as little direction as possible, I’ll do two renders of every prompt just to see more variation.

There’s some drawing style in this second one but essentially the same theme.

a face

Things are already getting super cool and abstract.  Let’s keep going…

the face

Changing the article seems to change the style.  There’s an interesting lack of color in most of the pictures.  I also get an old silent motion picture vibe… maybe even some German Expressionism.

These are all wonderfully artistic with deep expression and dramatic lighting.  They are way, way beyond the bland images I was expecting.

my face

That changed the style quite a bit probably because the craiyon AI is now referencing all the selfie avatars of the world.  That large pictorial reference contaminates this minimalist experiment a bit I think.  And what’s up with all the messed up noses?    Anyway, continuing on…

your face

The thing I find interesting here is that “my face” really injected a sense of photo realism because of the selfie avatars but “your face” leans more toward cartoon drawings.

her face

Not sure what to think here.  The middle bottom of the first render is really creepy with what looks like a two fingered hand.

his face

This is getting very strange.  Do I see monkeys in some of these?

its face

Definitely seeing monkeys again.

our face

These are wonderful.  Boy, if you ever need a creepy avatar for something, craiyon is the place to go.

no face

Uh oh… There’s a relatively well known character called “no face” in the animated film Spirited Away.  Craiyon has choked and reverted to referencing character images as well as using symbols for concepts like the red circle with a line for “no.”  It’s also bringing in a t-shirt again presumably because somewhere the no face character is for sale on t-shirts.  This is definitely a fail for the AI.  I should go back to something that worked, but first I absolutely must try the opposite of this prompt…

yes face

Oh no!  Emojis!  The ultimate symbol for emotions.  Super FAIL!  OK fun’s over.  Time to get back to the good stuff.  Lets go back to something that looked artistic and dramatic…

a face

I see people specifying different “Iterations” on Craiyon.  Not sure what it does but I’m going to try it.

a face, iteration x

Hmmm… Flat abstract line drawings.  Let’s try a few more…

I’m not sure why all these are line drawings now.  I’ll have to read up on what “iterations” do.  Maybe I should try something more descriptive to add, like trying to make it a pencil sketch.

a face, sketchy

Not bad.  The single word “sketchy” could be taken several ways, but it understood what I meant.  Not a bad sketch top middle either, for an AI that usually makes horrible faces.  What other description can we try?

a face, shadowy

WOW!!!  I need to try a few more of these!

Amazing!  Dramatic!  Haunting!  I could play with this all day!

Check out Craiyon for yourself at craiyon.com.