Man Simulates Time Travel Thanks To Stable Diffusion Image Synthesis (arstechnica.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Throughout December, a social media user known as Stelfie the Time Traveller has been crafting a time-hopping travelogue using generative AI. Thanks to Stable Diffusion and fine-tuning, an anonymous artist has created a fictional photorealistic character that he can insert into faux historical photographs set in different eras, such as ancient Egypt or the time of the dinosaurs. Stable Diffusion is a deep learning image synthesis model that allows people to create fictional scenes using text descriptions called prompts. With an additional technique called Dreambooth, people can insert their own subject or character into scenes generated by Stable Diffusion. It can also be used to insert real people into fictional situations.
So far, "Stelfie" has taken historical selfies during the ice age (being chased by a woolly mammoth), in ancient Egypt (during the construction of the pyramids), in ancient Greece (with the Trojan Horse), hanging out with Leonardo da Vinci (while creating the Mona Lisa), in the old West, while running from a tyrannosaurus rex, and while sailing with Christopher Columbus. The artist behind Stelfie writes social media posts (on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit) in character as playful dispatches from a 41-year-old time traveler as he visits different locations. [...]
The anonymous artist (a self-identified "funny old man") detailed some of the process he uses to create the images in several Reddit comments: a combination of Stable Diffusion 1.5, a custom AI model for the landscape, and a custom AI model trained on the Stelfie face, which is apparently a fictional person created using Character Creator. He uses "a lot of inpainting," which means inserting AI-generated imagery into the images to fix errors and sculpt the scene, and each image takes three hours to create.
So far, "Stelfie" has taken historical selfies during the ice age (being chased by a woolly mammoth), in ancient Egypt (during the construction of the pyramids), in ancient Greece (with the Trojan Horse), hanging out with Leonardo da Vinci (while creating the Mona Lisa), in the old West, while running from a tyrannosaurus rex, and while sailing with Christopher Columbus. The artist behind Stelfie writes social media posts (on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit) in character as playful dispatches from a 41-year-old time traveler as he visits different locations. [...]
The anonymous artist (a self-identified "funny old man") detailed some of the process he uses to create the images in several Reddit comments: a combination of Stable Diffusion 1.5, a custom AI model for the landscape, and a custom AI model trained on the Stelfie face, which is apparently a fictional person created using Character Creator. He uses "a lot of inpainting," which means inserting AI-generated imagery into the images to fix errors and sculpt the scene, and each image takes three hours to create.
Oh great! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heresy! Everyone knows the world is over 9000 years old!!!
Man "paints" picture! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Maybe, but rather pervasive [latimes.com] and only minimally news.
Did he timetravel using a Quantum Computer ? (Score:3)
Did he timetravel using a Quantum Computer simulating a Wormhole, which is scientifically speaking as good as actually creating a Wormhole, as we all know(*).
Ugh. (Score:3)
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Funny)
What's amazing was how he got those live dinosaur pictures to photoshop himself into :-).
Photoshop is not time travel. (Score:5, Informative)
3 hours? (Score:4, Insightful)
It took this guy three hours to Photoshop someone into a photo? WITH the help of AI? Color me unimpressed. I've seen real graphics artists work. This is amateur hour.
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This isn't the Twitter files (Score:1)
Nor is it news.
This barely makes me angry..
DEVS! (Score:1)
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WTF slashdot? (Score:1)
I mean, it's better than all the political and climate bullshit on what's formerly-known-as-a-premier-tech-focused site, but who honestly gives a shit about some guy's photoshop selfies (no matter what method is used to generate them, supposedly)?
Amazing! :) (Score:1)
^^
First post! (simulation) (Score:3)
This isn't actually the first post on this article, but I'm simulating time travel. If I had been actually time traveling, this would have been the first post, and you can see what it would have been like.
Oh good grief (Score:2)
Sometimes I have to shake my head regarding some of the stories that get posted to Slashdot nowadays.
This is neither "news for nerds" nor "stuff that matters".
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Sometimes I have to shake my head regarding some of the stories that get posted to Slashdot nowadays. This is neither "news for nerds" nor "stuff that matters".
This is okay news. The subject is new extension to AI image generators which allows to insert user content. It is better than to be limited only to the training data set. Or did I get it wrong and was that always possible?
From the article:
With an additional technique called Dreambooth, people can insert their own subject or character into scenes generated by Stable Diffusion. It can also be used to insert real people into fictional situations.
lol time (Score:1)
On a more serious yet possibly weed induced note, isn't "time" more like a byproduct and not actually a tangible thing that could be "manipulated" by say, going back and forth through it? Seems like trying to rewind a fire. Gravity on the other hand is actually a "thing", yet we barely seem to grasp that other than "magnets=useful" and "bodies=sticky".
He's trying to sell NFT's (Score:1)
From the article: "Some may find Stelfie's attempts to sell the images as NFTs unpalatable..."
So it's just another gimme-money scam...