The interwebs have been full off AI generated imagery. The AI script used is OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 (Wall-E & Dali). Images are created based on a textual prompt (e.g. Michelangelo’s David with sunglasses on the beach), natural language interpretation is then used to make a composite image. Some of the examples going ’round were quite impressive (See OpenAI’s site e.g., and the Kermit in [Movie Title Here] overview was much fun too).
One of the images resulting from when I entered the prompt ‘Lego Movie with Kermit’ using Dall-E Mini. I consider this a Public Domain image as the image does not pass the ‘creativity involved’ threshold which generally presupposes a human creator, for copyright to apply (meaning neither AI nor macaques).
OpenAI hasn’t released the Dall-E algorithm for others to play with, but there is a Dall-E mini available, seemingly trained on a much smaller data set.
I played around with it a little bit. My experimentation leads to the conclusion that either Dall-E mini suffers from “stereotypes in gives you stereotypes out”, with its clear bias towards Netherlands’ more basic icons of windmills (renewable energy ftw!) and tulip fields. That, or it means whatever happens in the coming decades we here in the Rhine delta won’t see much change.
Except for Thai flags, we’ll be waving those, apparently.
The past of Holland:
Holland now:
The innovation of Holland:
The future of Holland:
Four sets of images resulting from prompts entered by me into the Dall-E mini algorithm. The prompts were The past of Holland, Hollond, the innovation of Holland, the future of Holland. All result in windmills and tulip fields. Note in the bottom left of the future of Holland that Thai flags will be waved. I consider these as Public Domain images as they do not pass the ‘creativity involved’ threshold which generally presupposes a human creator, for copyright to apply. Their arrangement in this blog post does carry copyright though, and the Creative Commons license top-right applies to the arrangement. IANAL.
@ton Now try The Netherlands
@fabriek that results in the same, except for less tulips and more canals.
By way of experiment I have added, where they exist, annotations of my postings to the posting itself. Such annotations are made in Hypothes.is an online annotations tool, with social features.
Hypothes.is uses the W3C standard for annotations, and the service has an API. That opens it up for experimentation. For instance there is a Obsidian plugin that pulls in my annotations and brings them to my notes.
I now experimentally use the API to check for annotations that exist for a single posting. If such annotations exist, a page with a single blogposting will mention the existence of annotations just above the comments, and provide a link to them. For this I adapted the template for single postings in my WordPress theme. See the image.
The number of annoations, if any, is shown beneath individual postings above the comments.
Like with comments this opens up a surface for people to interact with my blog and have that interaction made visible on my site. As with comments and trackbacks of old, this also opens up a possibility for spam, especially as there is no way yet for me to moderate such annotations to be shown, nor a way to prevent them in general.
Hypothes.is has existed for a decade and reached 2 million annotated articles early this year. It’s relatively unknown, and not commonly used. This at the moment should be enough ‘protection by obscurity’ for now. Maybe in time I will reconsider, there are valid reasons to do so.
Existing users of Hypothes.is don’t need a link like I added to my postings, they see that in their browser already (depicted below). However it may encourage other readers of this blog to check out those annotations and perhaps create their own.
In a next step I may aim to list the existing annotations, and their authors, not just link to them, but not immediately. First I’ll think some more about how I might use the Hypothes.is API for other things in my personal workflow.
A screenshot of how a logged-in Hypothes.is user in their browser sees a post on this site that has annotations.