A Goodbye To Image Playgrounds, An Absolute Nightmare

I hate AI generated images. Not a bold or unique position, but to some surprise, I used to love them. Years ago. In 2020, I was publishing a niche webcomic involving aliens, and I wanted a unique and visually outstanding way to portray otherworldly background visuals- but to maintain my rapid publishing pace, I wanted all that, but without having to either illustrate those visuals, 3D model them, or use existing pre-made assets others made. I wanted it to appear as something never seen before. Enter Artbreeder. Artbreeder and Chaos In Artbreeder, you used to be able to splice together “Genes” of photos: Recurring elements that have been recognized by a machine to be shared across photos of “Apple”, “Tomato” or “Horse”, and watch a neural network try it’s damn hardest to create something that fits the Genes you selected, with strength and randomness sliders for each. This was mad science, and it was awesome. The Land of Salinas and Frogs, a place that does not exist. The resulting…