TreeGen v0.01
I think I first launched the Esotropiart website in 2001. Back then it was a simple hand-coded platform to showcase my artwork. In 2005 when I added the blog, it became more about writing. Over the years the site has been many things. These days it is again somewhere I can type junk and share what I'm working on.
Right now I happen to be interested in writing scripts using AI, so that's what I'll write about. I already thought of another idea: TreeGen. From the very beginning I chose brown as the site's color scheme and a tree as the background. My original wish was to make a tree that grew and moved, with branches, leaves, and so on. There was a time when I wanted to find a perfect tree somewhere out in the world that I could take a photo of and use as the silhouette for the background image. All these years later, and I still haven't done any of that stuff!
This afternoon I wondered if I could get AI to write a random tree generator script. I gave the most basic prompt in history:
"Can you draw an svg shape that looks like a large leafless tree, with a trunk and gnarly branches in an svg file?"
It thought I wanted an image generated, so it made this:
"Can you write the code to generate a vector tree shape in svg?"
There's pretty much zero chance that is enough information to get a good result. Sometimes it's fun to see if artificial intelligence can use its imagination with almost no guidance.
If you are an artist, you've heard the joke, "I can't even draw stick figures" a hundred times when people admire your work and can't think of anything else to say. Well want to see AI's version of "I can't even draw stick figures"? Except it's worse. Much, much worse. I give you...
TreeGen v0.01
If you are also thinking that's the best tree drawing you've ever seen... then I'll try to find someone else who agrees with you. I gave up the search already. No one thinks it looks good. However, if you want to see this amazing tree in every possible color, moving all over the place... that's a motion I can second... and third, fourth, ad infinitum and beyond.
AI has successfully created a fountain fireworks icon... or Batman's tennis racket.