I haven’t had as much time to produce AI religious art as I would have liked, so this might be it until we get the next version to play around with, but a few insights:
- AI is actually okay at depicting religious sentiment in art without specific prompts. For example, below is a MJ image (not mine, from a FB page I follow) with little else in the prompt except “repentance” and “forgiveness.” If you can ignore the extra fingers it’s a reasonably moving depiction.
- AI is sometimes okay at depicting imagery with little else but the actual scripture verses themselves. Below is the result of my simply inputting Moses 1:8 (“And it came to pass that Moses looked, and beheld the world upon which he was created; and Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered.”). The people invoked in the verse aren’t there, but it’s still somewhat faithful to the image described.
“Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.”
I’ve done this one before in the earlier Midjourney, but this version is much more photorealistic.
3. Not super important, but a fun story: the adult filters are a little temperamental. An image of Adam and Eve I generated gave them full frontal nudity. (Without going into detail, the AI-generated genitalia had some of the same problems as the fingers and hands). I tried to redo the prompt while adding “no nudity,” and got a warning that the word “nudity” was banned and that I would be banned if I tried to circumvent it.
4. Finally, sometimes religious art is fraught because it draws on a certain set of artistic themes that you may or may not want to include. For example, any language involving “Heavenly Mother” tends to draw on the artistic depictions of the Madonna (presumably as the Queen of Heaven). I’ve seen artistic depictions of Heavenly Mother, but never of one with Heavenly Father, so I tried that out using my own descriptors.
Very interesting! I really liked the representation of heavenly parents. Indeed, I do not remember any representation of both and it seemed to me a powerful image.
Love it. Although I was the opposite on the heavenly parents. Weirded me out. My first thought was to note how very, very European they are. Interesting that AI would go there, but perhaps understandable if using Christian/European art to start.
Very cool! And I had a good laugh about your mishaps with Adam and Eve.
I also like the Heavenly Parents image. Yes, they’re very white but no whiter than any other depictions of God in most LDS artwork. I’m genuinely curious as to what would happen if you framed that one and swapped it out for a Greg Olsen in a chapel somewhere. It’s such a novel image. How many people would notice? Who would want it taken down? Who would stare rapturously while soothing a baby in the hallway during Sunday school? Who would want a copy in their own home?
@ReTx: Yes, AI isn’t super good at being representative since, well, the training set of everything online isn’t super representative. All of the default women are very attractive, and when you type in “a doctor and the doctor’s husband” it gives you two men before it gives you a woman and a man, with the reverse being true for “a nurse and the nurse’s wife.” Of course, you can make it be more representative in the prompts, and I’ll be posting a post soon that does just that.
Kirkstall: Yeah, no offense to Greg Olsen, but for typical scenes like the ones he does I do think AI is going to spell the end of his line of work. Of course, for a true genius like Jon McNaughten it might be different ;)
Ha! Now I really want to see AI generated art “in the style of Jon McNaughton.” Midjourney probably wouldn’t be able to figure out what he’s up to, but I’ll bet a chatbot could generate descriptions of faux McNaughton paintings.
Another nice set of images.