I asked for a catapult throwing fire. Is that so hard?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Fail, fail, fail. They look so sad. This is another good reason why Ars Magica has no AI art in it! LOL!

A historically accurate medieval trebuchet firing a magical fireball with medieval houses in the background
A historically accurate medieval trebuchet firing a magical fireball with medieval houses in the background1024×1024 150 KB

A medieval trebuchet firing a magical fireball
A medieval trebuchet firing a magical fireball1024×1024 163 KB

A catapult throwing Greek fire from the bucket at the end of the long wood pole, with medieval buildings in the background.
A catapult throwing Greek fire from the bucket at the end of the long wood pole, with medieval buildings in the background.1024×1024 164 KB

A historically accurate medieval catapult with a throwing arm and bucket, throwing greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background.
A historically accurate medieval catapult with a throwing arm and bucket, throwing greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background.1024×1024 169 KB

A catapult throwing Greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background, historically accurate.
A catapult throwing Greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background, historically accurate.1024×1024 164 KB

A catapult throwing greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background
A catapult throwing greek fire, with medieval buildings in the background1024×1024 190 KB

3 Likes
2

In fairness Greek fire was not generally launched by trebuchet, but what fired from a nozzle similar to a modern flamethrower, but with far bulkier pumping mechanisms.

1 Like
3

Hmm, well, for the first ones I asked for just a fireball, then I moved on to all the variations on it that I could think of. Thanks for the correction.

1 Like
4

Honestly, i quite like the 1st, 2nd and last one.

The first wo feel nicely magi-tech to me. Not for an ArM game, but cool nonetheless.

5

I think this is a truly clever way of showing the limits of current generative AI models. I suspect one needs an elementary understanding of the physics of a catapult/trebuchet to come up with something that looks as it should look, and that something trained on still images, rather than videos, has a hard time developing it. Though have you tried with "throwing a fiery projectile"?

I also really like the fact that it's evident from the prompts that, after the initial attempt, you were really trying to coax the model into giving you what you wanted (e.g. shifting from "firing" to "throwing") but it resisted all such efforts! I find the combination of the third image and its prompt particularly amusing: you went so far as to specify the various parts, and where the fire should come from, and it still got it wrong :slight_smile:

6

The problem with Artificial Intelligence is that it has no actual intelligence. It doesn't know what a "catapult" is... it has a set of things that someone has labeled "catapult", but it wasn't done by someone with a rigorous understanding of catapults and moreover includes a lot of "catapult-like" things. Trebuchet, ballista; the average person can't tell them from a catapult, and the AI certainly won't.

And when you add "throwing fire" into the prompt, that set gets expanded to include "fire-throwing-like" things. So you get all kinds of weirdo results. It gets even worse if you use a term for which there are many, many examples of one specific type out there -- they tried to cram the entire internet into their AI, so if you ask for a "troll" you'll be getting the troll-doll type.

I've had the most success starting simple -- very simple -- until I find a prompt that's close to what I want, and then add on the extras. I.e., start with "catapult", "trebuchet", "mangonel", etc until you get something that's sort-of what you want, and then add "fire" and the rest. You'll probably get a ballista that's on fire, but so it goes.

2 Likes
7

While the image producing AI is fairly new, it is a variation of generative AI which was had been a thing for a while when I went to college in the 90's. There is no actual "Artificial Intelligence" in existence today and we are no where close to actually producing such. All of them respond to query by running it through a lookup table that gives it a range of results, then picking one (or bits and pieces of several) by a setup random generator.

Those random generators do have a big drawback in that they are identifiable. ChatGTP for example commonly uses specific words which has allowed researchers to identify Scientific Papers which have been produces or rewritten by it. I am not talking about "AI Checkers", which can often give a false percentage. I am talking about a (massive) spike in specific adverbs and adjectives which are "catchwords" commonly used by ChatGTP.

For those who write for a living, I would recommend learning those words and avoiding using them as much as possible. Also save your original documents with all of the edit history.

8

To be fair an AI doesn’t understand the physics of a catapult, add to this there are few examples of a catapult with a rock or such in mid flight. The good AI based artwork is usually a composite. This is going to mean a little to a lot of contribution by digital graphic artist.

9

At least it didn't come up with a catapult throwing a Greek on fire.

1 Like
10

Intriguing idea. "

Prompt: a catapult throwing a Greek on fire, drawn in the style of a 13th century manuscript

Output:

ODe6RDuM8odtVqR0wnSc--1--nx4t9
ODe6RDuM8odtVqR0wnSc--1--nx4t91024×1024 205 KB

Well, uh, that's interesting.

3 Likes
11

Maybe try trebuchet?

12

That fire faerie is getting what for.

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13

...

Did the AI think a cataphract was a catapult?

1 Like