I’ve only gone and done it. The thing I was sucessfully avoided so far. Let’s talk about Weird Al. and AI. (This post contains AI-generated images, but trust me, they’re quite funny)

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Tremendously weird and funny, Weird: The Al Yankovic story is a pseudo-biopic loosely inspired by Weird Al’s life with a whole lot of artistic license. Daniel Radcliffe plays the titular character, and does a rather good job of it. The film is crammed full of some of his biggest hits as you’d expect, and other than a bit of a slump around the two thirds point, it’s worth a watch if you’re a fan or even slightly Al-curious.

Weird Al vs AI

The lower case “L” and uppercase “i” has resulted in some hilarious comments. Chief of all was the response Weird Al posted to the Grammy’s announcement that they were only including human creators.

Weird AI (i, not L)

I haven’t had a lot of time for AI-generated content thus far in my life. I find the AI driven suggestions in WordPress mildly unhelpful, although the auto-transcription tools I’ve seen for meeting notes are quite powerful. There is definitely potential there, but once you’re writing articles and generating the images, what’s the point of writing? Don’t get me started on the hands. Actually, let’s start with the hands. That aspect appears to be getting better.

In a world generated by AI, Inigo Montoya would have struggled to find his father’s killer…

Inspired by a children’s story writing trail at Buckland Abbey, I thought I would put the results on here in a desperate attempt to generate some content. Keep in mind that the prompts have been filtered through the mind of a four year old who decided the direction of travel, and there are a fair number of non-sequiturs. Given the bizarre nature of the results, the optimal pairing is with Microsoft AI-generated images. With that, let’s open the book…

The book cover turned out quite well. The others were…nuts? Despite the prompt having the exact spelling of the title, there were extra letters all over the show, and why have one “the” when you can have multiple? Oh, because it’s English. That’s why. From now on the commentary will be in italics, with the story in regular type.

Once upon a time, the Beast caught Belle. Belle promptly escaped when the Beast was sleeping. Before she escaped, Belle put bow ties on the Beast’s beard.

This image was surpisingly good. It worked well because it didn’t stray as far from the reference material and no extra fingers that I can see.

Belle rushed back to her father, Maurice, as quickly as possible. On the way back, Belle was intercepted by Gaston who proposed marriage.

This one was confusing. It wasn’t clear if they were both being pursued or not. The addition of cars was also confusing, and the faces.

There are additional creatures, including a few furry critters with one sporting a top hat. There was nothing about this in the prompt. I don’t think I can get past the faces though. This is the stuff of nightmares. As long as you don’t too closely you’ll sleep soundly. You’ve been warned…

But Gaston’s horse was started and he crashed into a tree. A hand reached out to assist him, which he gratefully accepted, only to reel in horror when he realised it was attached to a violent-looking troll. Suddenly a unicorn appeared, whisking Gaston to safet

“Thank you. Say, what’s your name? said Gaston.

“Unicorny” said…Unicorny.

“A fair name indeed”

Should we question the utility of a unicorn with three front legs? No idea what’s going on with the lanterns?

And then Rapunzel came to visit Belle, and they all had a great tea party and a unicorn came to bring Rapunzel home.

On to another story…

Long, long ago, there was a dark, dark cloud, with naughty eyes, which surrounded Rapunzel. Our hero was living on a sunny sandy beach, so the appearance of said cloud was most unwelcome. She had been comfortable in her sand tower until now.

This appears to be a common AI image issue. Weird nonsenical language inserted into the images. “I din’t sopy!” is an instant classic.

Flynn had been out foraging for treasure but rushed back when he heard Rapunzel. Flynn had upgraded his waistcoast to a fine silk version, and he had grown out his brown hair into luscious locks as part of his island look. He finally had everything he wanted. An island. A beautiful bride. And they were surrounded by enormous piles of money. And he was tan. Of couse, they never were alone with Pascal and Maximus around.

This one was fun, but don’t look too close. I don’t know what’s going on. Are the faces low priority because they’re not the main subject of the image? Clearly AI can manage reasonable looking humans but these are horrifying.

Rapunzel was teaching Elsa how to play the guitar when the storm came. Then they went sea fishing, but when Elsa reeled in a fish, it bit her finger. She cried out in pain. She lost control of her power and froze the sea. An odd sorrowful sound played out; it was a whale.

This one was very odd. There’s the horrifying Olaf, and the cross of Rapunzel and Flynn (I think)

So the results of the image generation are even more bizarre than the stories generated by a four year old girl during a walk around a National Trust property. Will it get better? Probably. Would I rather just have a talented person create something for me? Yeah. There is little beyond novelty value and the images barely stand up to cursory scrutiny. I was also pained by the resources required to power AI prompts. I’m not sure it’s justified or measurably enhancing our experience.

Feel free to change my mind.