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.

Subscribe now