A brief postscript re: AI

 

There's been some discussion where someone creating an AI deck defends it by saying what matters is "the intent of the creator." The problem with that is that AI ignores intent.

Last night I went to DALL E and made a simple request: Theda Bara reading playing cards. The image exists on the net, both the image above and this movie poster version:

What I got was this:

 

 

Besides the usual horrifically blinded eyes and deformed hands (something nobody intends), none of them are Theda Bara.

The first one looks liked Shirley Feeny from Laverne and Shirley.

 

All of this stuff is in its infancy, and in spite of what some folks think, it isn't putting jobs on the chopping block. Manufacturing plants need people to monitor and run the robots, otherwise they damage product in all kinds of hilarious ways, or just stop working. I don't see automated vehicles being used for trucking, either. There's enough horror stories about the cars. Imagine an interstate full of automated 18 wheelers.

Its one thing to enjoy playing with it. But it makes lousy deck images.

There's a (zombie) elephant in the room (and it's walleyed and the trunk is fused with...something.)

 

I made the above with DALL-E. I told it to give me Jean Harlow under the moon with spanish moss and a dog. It gave me this.

Admittedly, I don't spend much time with AI at all. So I haven't found the right words to make it give me anything sane looking. But the thing is, a lot of people DO spend a great deal of time with it, they're making decks, and none of those are sane looking either. I won't be so mean as to publish anyones' images here. But suffice to say that I'm seeing misaligned eyes, clothes growing out of peoples' skin, fused and deformed body parts, motors and mechanical parts in nonsensical places, tons of destroyed mattress stuffing...well, you get the idea.

I was talking with someone about this, saying how the people and animals resembled zombies and road kill. And they said that was the darkness and monstrosity they felt from it. They called it Frankentarot.

I've used the term Frankendeck before, to refer to those decks people put together from scavenged Public Domain images. While some of them are nice, many are jarring - the art styles can be incompatible. 

But this takes it more than a few steps further. You can think of the AI as Dr. Frankenstein and Igor. They go forth collecting parts from graves and gallows, bring them back, and stitch something together for you. Interesting, but not what I want in a reading deck.