AI Weirdness: the strange side of machine learning
A colorful set of cartoon shapes with incorrect/misspelled captions. AI-generated image.

Shaped like information

Hey look, it's a guide to basic shapes!

A grid of colorful shapes with cheerful faces, each labeled with a name. The only correctly labeled shape is a circle at the upper left. The only other correctly spelled shape is "square" at the upper right that unfortunately is labeling a circle. Other labels include chale (a rectangle), tliable (a rectangle), renatle (a hexagon), hectanbie (a triangle), and pso (a two-colored rectangle). Hoboz labels a six-lobed sun shape, and flotn labels an eight-pointed star. Seoisuon appears to be a 3D cube.
Prompt: "Please generate a colorful guide to basic geometric shapes, as an aid to children learning to identify basic shapes."

Not only does it have the basic shapes like circle, tringle, hectanbie, and sqale, it also has some of the more advanced shapes like renstqon, hoboz, and flotn!

The fact that even a kindergartener can call out this DALL-E3 generated image as nonsense doesn't mean that it's an unusually bad example of AI-generated imagery. It's just what happens when the usual AI-generated information intersects with an area where most people are experts.

There's AI generated "educational material" offered for sale on all sorts of topics - cookbooks that list "the veggies" as a protein and "orange colored" as a fruit, math help that makes basic math errors, and research papers that begin with "Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:". They're not adding anything of value.

Asked to generate an alt text description of the image above, chatgpt4 writes:

"A vibrant educational guide featuring basic geometric shapes aimed at young learners. The image includes a circle, square, triangle, rectangle, and hexagon, each in a different color and adorned with cheerful facial expressions. These shapes are set against a light, inviting background and are clearly labeled with their names in a large, child-friendly font. The layout is clean and organized, making it easy for children to identify and learn each shape."

I've noted before that AI image descriptions can miss the obvious. It's certainly a description-shaped incorrect description of incorrectly labeled shape-shaped shapes. And it's all going into the training data for the next generation of generative AI!

Bonus content: another set of entertainingly incorrect shapes.

Bonus: More shape shaped shapes

The image I shared in my main post isn't one of the more incorrect examples of DALL-E3 generated guides - it's actually one of the more correct ones. Here's another generated image from the same prompt. Particularly found of the Suadle and the Sarsle.
AI-generated image of cartoon animals saying incorrect sounds

Learn your farm animals with AI!

Hey kids! What sound does a woolly horse-sheep make?

Happy cartoon animals, many with speech bubbles. A blue cow says Moo. A cow? pig? horse? says oink. A pig in a scarf says oink. A pig with spiked shoulder pads and confusing hoofs says "Camolo". The A has two horizontal bars instead of one. A cheerful sheep/chicken in a bandanna is saying nothing or possibly swearing. A horse, or more precisely its butt, says "Baaa" (with extra bars on all the a's. A horse with a fluffy sheep body says "boaa". A small stubby horse says Cluck. A cat is emitting a speech bubble with a mouse face while a speech bubble saying "baaa" emerges from somewhere off-screen. A very confusing blue animal with pointy ears and a double duck bill says "sheep". A terrifying frog says "chicken". A penguin says "cluck" and also is somehow pronouncing a paw print. A horse with a mane that goes all the way down its back is eating a blue handkerchief and saying "M". A grey sheep with a beak is pronouncing spheres. A chicken says "quack". And finally a ducklike bird says "quack".

The image above is what you get when you ask dalle-3 (via chatgpt) for some basic educational material: "Please generate an illustrated poster to help children learn which sounds common animals make. Each animal should be pictured with a speech bubble spelling out the animal's sound."

Here's another, generated with the same prompt:

A set of cartoon farm animals with speech bubbles, most of them very incorrect. At the upper left a cow says moo, and that's as good as it gets. A pig-shaped horse says "pig", and a pig-shaped pig says "mock". A very stubby donkey with long floppy ears says "hooo". A pig with a white mane says "sheep". A three-legged sheep witha chicken face says "shleh", while the seagull next to it says "baa". There is a sheep with four chicken legs and a chicken head that looks startled, and a chicken with a woolly sheep head that says chicken. A horse says baa, while another horse says quck. A slick pink chicken says qluck, an ordinary rooster says qluck, and a seagull-patterned chicken says quck. Scattered throughout the background are short numbers and phrases, mostly illegible.

There is so much not to like about how people are using image generators to rip off artists and replace their work with shoddy imitations. But I am enjoying these pockets of weirdness where I find them.

Bonus content: more pockets of weirdness! In the form of more labeled animals and the things they say, including in "Swedish".

Generated candy heart images. Messages include "le yas", "dove tut", and "hove".

DALL-E3 generates candy hearts

I've experimented a couple of times with generating candy heart messages using various kinds of machine learning algorithms. Originally, short messages were just about all the original text-generating neural networks could handle. Now we've come back around to approximately the same performance, yet with orders of magnitude more computational resources consumed. (although I don't have to photoshop the messages onto candies any more, so that's nice) Here's DALL-E3 generating candy hearts:

A grid of pastel-colored candy hearts with messages stamped on them (with varying degrees of blurriness). A sampling of the messages included: You yous, My wear, jert toot, love, eave dort, Have, you oou, no no, shave, yoss, Lave vert, hiss shot, y, i test, le yas, dove tut, yo morrt, and hove.
My exact prompt: "Please generate a grid of candy conversation hearts on a plain white background, each heart displaying a longer than usual message."

My impression is the text here is operating not so much on the level of "here are plausible candy heart messages" so much as "here are some clusters of pixels that are associated with candy hearts". As with most AI-generated imagery, it's the most impressive at first glance, and then gets worse the longer you look.

I've noticed that the more text DALL-E3 tries to put in an image, the worse the readability of the text is - I'm fairly surprised at how legible most of the candy hearts above were. (Maybe it helps set expectations that the real-life candies are often garbled.) When I ask for fewer hearts, they end up crisper. But not necessarily improved in coherence.

Four candy hearts in crisp focus with messages clearly and evenly stamped on them. They read "Love you", "Love yous", "Heeas you", and "Vders Yo1s"
My exact prompt: "Please generate an image of four candy conversation hearts on a plain white background, each displaying a unique valentine's message."

Coherent text is particularly difficult for image-generating algorithms, so the candy hearts may just be a reflection of that.

But there's another possibility that amuses me. The search "candy hearts with messages" brings up images from past AI Weirdness candy heart experiments. It is likely that these were part of DALL-E3's training data, and they may have had an effect on the weirdness of generated hearts that I'm getting now.

When I ask for candy hearts with "quirky, AI-style messages", I get candy hearts that are (to me) indistinguishable in quality from the first grid.

A grid of candy hearts with messages more or less clearly stamped on them. A sampling of the messages: I'e good, lve haen, Eall, Have iiill, House mal, sold horn, all sou, ii sol, do do, heeen veeet, al spont, an all, you hall, and avors.

Bonus content: more candy hearts!

Generated image of a fancy chocolate in cross section, each layer mislabeled.

Chocolates, labeled

So much of current AI-generated stuff is derivative sludge that I'm enjoying the pockets of weirdness where I find them. One of my favorite things right now: DALL-E3's attempts to label things in the images it generates. Here I asked "Please generate a cross section
A variety of unrealistic flightless birds, included a two-headed cassowary labeled "Kheo"

Flightless birds

I enjoy asking DALLE-3 to label things. I learn so much!

Here I asked it to generate a labeled grid of flightless birds.

Ostrich: Actually a reasonable-looking female ostrich with maybe a perkier than usual tail and fluffier than usual thighs. Emu: Body looks like an emu but neck is blue and featherless like a cassowary's. Casowary: One can't help but notice it has two heads. Peguio: Obviously supposed to be emperor penguins but one has very long legs and another has a goose-like body shape. Rheo: A bird with small round body and an extravagantly enormous black and white neck. Perched on its back is a shaggy bird with tiny legs. Wegun: A variety of round birds, one of which looks like a penguin, and the others are unidentifiable speckled orbs.

I think it's trying to do ostrich (a female apparently! unusual for a bird poster but I approve), an emu (definitely not an emu's head), a casowary (pretty good except for the TWO HEADS), penguin (with hilariously long legs), rhea (...what), and ...maybe a weka or a penguin?

Or this attempt:

There are four cassowary things, none of which are labeled cassowary, and one of which has two heads facing in opposite directions. A long-legged bird labeled penguuitn is hunched over and has two creepy clawlike hands (or extra legs?) in front. There's an auklike "kasowary" with two adorable ear-tufts, and a tall long-feathered bird with a cute head-tuft labeled "penguin". A "weedo" has a toucan-like beak but is all black and white.

As far as I can tell, it's the same group of attempted birds, with the possible addition of the dodo. In this set we have some birds with excellent head tufts, another two-headed cassowary, and one bird with creepy hands.

I also like this set. Some of them remind me of cats.

These birds are the squattest and shaggiest, with their feather-floofs stretching nearly to the ground. One "cassowwary" is sitting like a cat. The most alarming "birds" are unlabeled. One stands bolt upright and has a black crest, a hairless orange neck, and featherless snakelike wings. Definitely flightless but dang. At the center of the grid is a three-legged bird standing like a cat. Its feathers are shaggy black and white and it has a dinosaur-like thick tail, as well as a glowing red eye and wispy head-crest.

I asked ChatGPT (which was passing my requests to DALL-E3) what the unlabeled bird in the center was, and it replied that it was a penguin. I don't think it had any ability to label images it had generated, I think it just picked a likely answer based on what it knew the prompt had been.

DALL-E3's flightless birds aren't fit for purpose as scientific illustrations (or as much else, really), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like them. I like the ones with big chunky fluffy legs, the shaggy ones, and the ones with head tufts especially. I wonder if this is what the Mesozoic was like.

Bonus: more chunky flightless birds!

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