The below entry has been cross-posted to my www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com site. With Microsoft Designer in free preview I recently fooled around with the software—purely for fun—and ended up falling down a rabbit hole generating AI photos of Amira and Darragh from Just Like You Said It Would Be. I'm not going to tell you how many images I ended up with (a completely wild amount! Also, a bizarro image of a 60s glam rock band fighting off a bunch of shark men but let's leave that aside). The first problem was that Dall-E didn't know what Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge looked like and in response to my description continually offered up a slew of other bridges that sometimes weren't even footbridges instead. There were also a few issues with unusually large, weird-looking eyes and the well-known problem that AI often has generating hands. Other times the couple (or sometimes half of them) simply didn't match the images of Amira and Darragh I have in my head.
If you've read Just Like You Said It Would Be you've probably formed your own images of the characters which might be a little different than mine, but here are some of what I consider to be the best Amira and Darragh on Ha'penny Bridge photos generated by Dall-E. You might notice I relocated the couple to Grafton Street for several of the below images. I'm also going to thrown in a few solo examples of each of the characters where Dall-E got Amira right but not Darragh and vice versa.
Not sure what the deal is with the roof on this bridge but it's interesting:
Supposedly on Grafton Street but there's actually no curb on that street since it's pedestrian.
Finally, I described Amira and Darragh on Grafton Street separately and ended up with results I was pleased with, although Dall-E once again failed to understand that Grafton Street is pedestrian. It also placed a London bus than a Dublin one in the background (Dublin's city buses aren't red). Other than that the general architecture of the setting has the right look.
I wouldn't use these professionally in any capacity for ethical reasons concerning AI's impact on the arts, but it was a fun experiment for sure and I'll be posting a few other photos relating to Shantallow on my Instagram soonish.
