Fire & Ice

If sticking with poetry as prompts for AI art generation, I wanted to see how the various algorithms would handle shaply contrasting words, images, and concepts. “Fire” and “ice” fit the bill perfectly. Enter the dragon, Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I entered the poem as seen above, including punctuation, which does carry categorical meaning in the algorithms. The results did not disappoint!

Midjourney rendering of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”
Stable Diffusion rendering of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”
Dall-E rendering of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”

Now, Midjourney continues to provide surprising results, so I added two qualifiers to the end of the poem. In the first instance, I added “Impressionist,” and Midjourney rendered a vivid image that isn’t all that impressionist. The second qualifier was “Vermeer,” and Midjourney clearly understood who Vermeer is. See for yourself…

Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” via Midjourney, “impressionist”
Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” via Midjourney, “Vermeer”

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