Cyborg #1

Like so many others, I've started playing around with AI generated art. In my case, I downloaded Stable Diffusion UI and have been playing around with that. In particular, Stable Diffusion UI is an easy to install variation of Stable Diffusion that also includes a GUI. I was able to get running on both Windows and Linux with minimal effort. I believe the baseline version of Stable Diffusion is command line only so this is a nice option for those that prefer a GUI. I've been using the GUI but the real appeal to me of this version was the fact that it was very easy to install.

Stable Diffusion UI seems to work, within limits, on nVidia GPUs with 4MB or more. Minimum requirements are listed as being higher than that but with some minor adjustments it seems to work pretty well. You don't technically even need a GPU to use Stable Diffusion UI. It's just that if you don't have one and use only the CPU, each image will take 30 minutes or more to produce (depending on how fast your CPU is, the settings you use, and various other factors). However, this is open source software so you can generate as many images as you want for free. So even with limited hardware, you can still produce unlimited images as long as you are patient.

This image was generated with a prompt that included 'cybernetically enhanced'. AI seems pretty good with this prompt. Coincidence? Maybe this is how AI sees itself in the future?

Using Stable Diffusion doesn't mean I think I'm an artist or anything. To me this is just something fun to play with. I have no doubt this technology will affect artists in the future but probably more as a tool they need to add to their toolbox than as a replacement. Generating a specific image is not necessarily easy and chances are they will still need alternation by human hands.

Speaking of hands...