By Autumn Rain

The big criticism of AI art is that by plugging in an artist name, it can quickly copy their style. However, AI art has tons of benefits — as a writer, for example, I enjoy being able to generate pictures of characters and scenes that I can use to supplement my descriptive writing; this is especially useful for me, because I have aphantasia and can’t conjure up mental images.

Truth is, as Stable Diffusion continues to be refined, it is actually becoming more of a burden to use artist names, since they cause it to throw in random artifacts like signatures that are extremely difficult to get rid of. Plus, the artist community is pretty pissed about it.

So, for the sake of ethical AI use, I quit using artist names.

To cover our bases, my standard negative prompt is:
signature, text, fonts, words, watermark, badly drawn, bad composition, boring, collage, surreal, nonsensical, incoherent, ugly, disfigured, deformed, beginner, amateur, asymmetrical, low contrast,

I customize this as necessary for the specific images that I create.

I also include standard at the end of the positive prompt: professional quality, well drawn, attractive

So, let’s see what we can do with the prompt, “Cherry blossom”. Same seed and other settings.

As you can see, specifying medium alone makes a huge difference in the type of images that are generated — no artist names necessary.

As I’ve said before, AI art appeals to me because I think so strongly in words. I enjoy the process of crafting out prompts and put a lot of thought into writing them, and I hope that one day AI art is viewed as a legitimate form of creative expression — alongside traditional and other digital mediums.

Here is a giant list of different mediums that can be used in Stable Diffusion. There are a lot more possibilities that weren’t included, so experiment!

Phew, the long nightmare of 2023 is finally over! Bring on the nightmare of 2024!

Joking aside, I have made it my goal to get back into regular blogging this year, since even just one post a week is better than nothing. Blogging is something that I like to do to organize my thoughts, and it sure is helpful to have some organization.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I’m putting a temporary pause on writing The Scions. After all of the events of 2023, that sail no longer has wind behind it, metaphorically speaking. My heart isn’t in it anymore. So I’ll finish it later, when the timing is better.

I’ve begun a new writing project that heavily uses AI as part of the process. Not only am I using Stable Diffusion to generate character portraits and concept art, I’m also using language model AI to help with the writing itself. I feel obligated to point out that AI is not to the point of being able to spit out a coherent novel, so while the process is different, it’s still very time consuming.

Essentially, my visual imagination is very weak, which makes describing visual things very difficult for me. AI has been enormously helpful in bolstering this weakness for me, so that I can focus more on writing how everything feels instead. To put it as a simile, it’s like switching from using a needle and thread to using a sewing machine.

I’m looking forward to sharing this new project with you.

Happy 2024!