Tag: images

The DALL-E imaging algorithm is now available to everyone to play with. Do realise while the entity providing DALL-E is called OpenAI, it is no such thing.

An AI generated color photograph of a 1960s green Volkswagen camper van parked underneath a night sky with the milky way running from front to back, as a commercial airliner with two contrails flies past from left to right

Generated with DALL-E using the prompt “A color photograph of a 1960s green Volkswagen camper van parked underneath a night sky with the milky way running from front to back, as a commercial airliner with two contrails flies past from left to right.”, a single image selected from the first iteration of four.

Stable Diffusion, an open sourced model that can be run on your own hardware, produces this with the same prompt


Generated with Stable Diffusion using the prompt “A color photograph of a 1960s green Volkswagen camper van parked underneath a night sky with the milky way running from front to back, as a commercial airliner with two contrails flies past from left to right.”, a single image selected from the first iteration of four.

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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.

Favorited Forcing Google’s Image Search to Provide CC Licensed Results by Default by Alan Levine

Good suggestion Alan, I’ve used it to add a ‘gcc’ workflow to my AlfredApp. If I type, sticking with your example, ‘gcc dog’ it will open https://www.google.com/search?q=dog&tbm=isch&tbs=il%3Acl. Any input ‘gcc query’ will open an url https://www.google.com/search?q={query}&tbm=isch&tbs=il%3Acl. I do wonder, as you note as well, about the general effectiveness of a Creative Commons search through Google. It yields many results that aren’t at all obviously CC licensed for instance. I use the Flickr search a lot as it allows me to set which specific CC license I am looking for, not all CC licenses are suitable for use on my blog e.g. And there is also OpenVerse (previously Creative Commons search, now an open source project hosted by WordPress), which I probably should be using more often and which includes Flickr. I have added Alfred workflows for those too (WordPress: https://wordpress.org/openverse/search/image?q={query}, Flickr with a specific license: https://www.flickr.com/search/?text={query}&license=4%2C5%2C6%2C9%2C10). So your post is a good prompt regardless of Google.

Do everything you can to subvert The Google. And find joy when you succeed. It’s a likely losing war, but you might come out on top of a few skirmishes.

Alan Levine