St Jerome continues his journey to Brussels. He travels in time from the 50s to the present day, while he stays in the same railway station.
Note: I posted some of these images last November, during the Translating Europe Forum — but there I wanted to tell a story that connected to the conference. I didn’t use all the images, but only the ones that were closest to reality.
So, to move Jerome seventy or so years ahead in time, I asked the following:
Me: Create a photorealistic image of St Jerome, as a Franciscan monk, waiting for a train in a futuristic train station. The station is underground and completely dark. There are no trains or people.
These images are almost plausible, but some quirks betray that the AI still has very little connection to reality. It knows very little about the “use of things”. In the first picture, a track runs in the middle of the platform, disappearing into the tunnel. In the second image, the track is in the right place, but DALL-E seems to have been overthinking this one — the track itself is physically impossible.
And, instead of noticing these, what do I do? Ask for more darkness, that’s what I do. My only excuse is that I was prompting these on my phone and had a hard time examining details on the tiny screen.
Me: Make the station darker. The lights should be white.
Not much changed, but the track in the second image looks more like the real thing. In the first image, a track still occupies the middle of the platform, and even a train seems to approach from the tunnel, right there. I think Jerome might need to move soon.
What follows is from another session. I wanted to switch up the anachronism, and make Jerome work while he is waiting for the train. (He apparently waited all night in this empty world.) So I gave him a tablet and made him busy editing some translations:
Me: Create a photorealistic image: St Jerome, dressed as a Franciscan monk, sits in an empty railway station. He is holding a tablet (computer), and is editing something on it using a pen. The railway station has glass walls and ceiling. Outside it’s dawn, which makes the inside of the railway station vivid and colorful.
If you look at the tracks, especially in the second image, you will see DALL-E continues to have difficulties grasping their purpose. (Is it my fixation to notice this, or DALL-E’s to get it wrong, almost consistently?)
Anyway, I asked to make the station larger, and then:
Me: Put St Jerome farther away, and show him from the side.
If memory serves, I used the last image on Instagram because there even the track looked realistic.
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