Crabapple Farm as: "A New England white farmhouse in Autumn as an Impressionist painting."
See the latest AI art here. See the AI videos here.
The original DALL-E images are below, but to see an updated image gallery, go here.
The original DALL-E images are below, but to see an updated image gallery, go here.
So, I've been playing around with DALL-E. And the results are mostly hysterical. Poor little AI-Bot isn't always that great with faces, especially eyes. It also has issues with teeth, often making the person in the image look like he needs some major dental work. Probably I'm not so great with the descriptions, either, lol. If you're curious about how AI is used to create realistic images, this article explains it pretty well.
Update: Just for fun, I used MusicFX and asked it to create a theme for ASKOF. It was pretty awful all around. Mostly kept returning bad elevator jazz music, no matter the prompt I gave. I guess I was ASK(ing) too much OF it. Ba-dum-bum. I'll be here all night, folks. The best it came up with was this. Still, to think how far the AI creator technology has come in such a relatively short time, I feel like we aren't too far off from where we could genuinely make TB movies from the stories we've written. (<--- I was right! 9/24).
Update 2: AI is getting better.
Update 3 (01/24/26): And it's still getting better. I don't think DALL-E is even a thing anymore. But I just asked Gemini to take the back cover image from the oval paperbacks and create a "real" person. This is what I got. Interesting that it assumed she was older than 13/14.
Update: Just for fun, I used MusicFX and asked it to create a theme for ASKOF. It was pretty awful all around. Mostly kept returning bad elevator jazz music, no matter the prompt I gave. I guess I was ASK(ing) too much OF it. Ba-dum-bum. I'll be here all night, folks. The best it came up with was this. Still, to think how far the AI creator technology has come in such a relatively short time, I feel like we aren't too far off from where we could genuinely make TB movies from the stories we've written. (<--- I was right! 9/24).
Update 2: AI is getting better.
Update 3 (01/24/26): And it's still getting better. I don't think DALL-E is even a thing anymore. But I just asked Gemini to take the back cover image from the oval paperbacks and create a "real" person. This is what I got. Interesting that it assumed she was older than 13/14.
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Update 4 (02/09/26): Another stab at making the book cover Trixie a "real" person. I first just asked Gemini to create a photo from the image, then asked it to create a portrait of her. For the record, when I first discovered Trixie as a little girl, they were in the cream paperback format at my library. I didn't even know about the earlier editions until years later.
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So, I figured, let's try Jim, and... I actually really like the results! Well, his posture's a bit wonky in the first image, but otherwise, I think this is a genuinely decent Jim.
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ASKOF AI THEME
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Trixie Belden
I swear I put in "teenager," but Trixie looks like she might be 11 here. Also, "short curly hair" gave some truly bizarre results, so we're just gonna say she grew her hair out.
Trixie Update & Update Part 2 |
Jim Frayne
I think Jim must've spent too much time in the sun?
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Dan Mangan
All I said for this one was "teenage boy with dark hair wearing a white t-shirt and black leather jacket". Dall-E came up with the unhappy, teenage angst expression on all its own.
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Diana Lynch
DALL-E really wanted to make Di goth. Or Asian. This was the closest I could get to someone who at least partially resembled the description of her in the books.
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Brian Belden
Brian was strangely difficult. He either came out way too old looking or way too young. Or Hispanic. This was the best of the bunch.
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Honey Wheeler
I actually had a couple of good choices for Honey. I like this one because she looks like someone who would have Honey's kind and sweet personality.
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Mart Belden
DALL-E has real trouble with "freckles." A few times it gets them close to right, but mostly, the images come back looking like someone drew on them with a Sharpie. I chose this Mart because he looked enough like the AI Trixie to qualify as her "almost twin."
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William Regan
The eyes! The AI struggles with eyes. Frequently, one eye looks fine, but the other not so much. I went with this photo for Regan, even with the odd almost-squint, because all the others made him out to look like he was the lead singer of a alt-rock band. (No, really.)
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Bobby Belden
Bobby is extremely suspicious of all his siblings and what they're probably up to, no matter what they tell him when they say he can't come along. I tried to give him curls, but like with my attempts with Trixie, it always came out very strange - frizzy rather than curly.
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Hallie Belden
I had several decent results for Hallie, except there was always something crazy with her eyes, lol. I decided this one's not too bad.
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Tom Delanoy
I originally tried instructing the AI-Bot to give Tom a "chauffeur's hat" and it came back with images with men in top hats, lol. Not sure what's up with the so serious look...
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Miss Trask
This is not at all how I ever pictured Miss Trask, but in my head, the poor woman has been stuck in 1955 no matter when I set my stories. I really like this version for a modern Marge.
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