Would you like your very own, personalised piece of digital fox art?
Get in touch detailing your request (colours and setting) or alternatively, you can send a photograph of your pet (it doesn't have to be a fox) and myself and Black Fox Creative, will work our magic!
Note: Please do not send any images that you do not personally own and have full rights to use. All the work generated is an original creation using images and digital art owned by Black Fox Creative, Dream AI and Pixlr editing tools.
What is the deal with AI?
AI art is becoming more and more accessible. Until recently, the public accessible AI art apps were only able to comply with requests accurately by utilizing the form of the common red fox, these systems have slowly learnt over time, that red foxes or simply "foxes" can also be black. The more we use and update these systems, the better they will get at complying with unusual requests regarding the different forms of fox that exist in the world. Given the terminology surrounding foxes ('red fox' being a species not a colour, 'grey fox' being another species of fox completely and 'silver fox' being more than a reference to handsome older men, is just a small sample of the confusion the AI is going to encounter)
Training the AI to complete a request accurately is a bit like training an animal to complete a new task. It is something that comes naturally to me and that I find quite rewarding and enjoyable. I am also skilled at using art apps to create my own digital art, which helps in the process of editing what the AI throws up "off the mark". It is very simple, once you get the hang of it, but it is time consuming, especially when it is learning to comply with a request from scratch. Just as with training animals, you may need to go back a step, make adjustments, start again from scratch or break the process down further, to reach a desire goal.
I use the Pixlr app to edit the AI results and I use Dream Ai and the "Cartoon" style setting, in compliance with their Terms of Service, to create the artworks.
"Wombo Dream very likely uses 2 artificial neural networks VQGAN and CLIP. The numbers in the artificial neural networks are set in the training stage (done by the developers) by being exposed to many images (VQGAN) or images+captions (CLIP). When one uses Wombo Dream, math is being done on the numbers in the neural networks. No image web search or database search is done when a user uses Wombo Dream. More info about VQGAN+CLIP is at this blog post."
The dataset that it appears to use and continues to develop, seems to not only include the limited initial data it was trained upon (yet to be disclosed - I would hope this is because they paid for the rights to use the initial set and don't have to disclose anything. The styles applied are similar to face filter and animator apps), but also the data users input and the evolutions of that. Users are requested to agree to and follow the terms of service, in regards to the uploading of data when using the service.
The First Lesson
As an example; I might prompt the AI with the phrase "Black Fox and Coyote Create the World". The first image in the set (seen below) is what the AI came up with at that request. It does this using the basic information on foxes it was originally trained on. It is still not sure how many limbs an animal should have, so I downloaded the result and added missing limbs or removed excess design, before I uploaded it back to the art app, asking it the same request. I then kept evolving the results and repeating this process until I got as close as I could to the result I am seeking to achieve.
The difference of AI to other digital art apps, is that it can learn from and remember past information, applying that to future requests. How you train the AI, combined with the edits you make, will determine your results.
While it may appear the results occur within a few evolutions, the reality is, is that it can take many, many evolutions and edits, to get a desire goal. I also lost some great results, trying to evolve them. An example of evolution from a prompt alone can be seen below. This is a shortened version of the evolutionary process.
Prompt: "Black Fox and Coyote Create the World" (this 2-legged fox was created by the AI before the recent news story)
Prompts: "Black Fox on a Trainline" and "Black Fox in London"
Prompt: "Black and Red Fox by a River"
Prompts: Initially "White Fox, Inari" then "Grey and Brown Fox in Snow"
Prompt: "Black Fox with Red Eyes Sleeping" then "Black Fox in front of Flowers
Prompts: "Oriental Black Fox" "Black Fox at Dusk" and "Black Fox and Crimson Moon"
Prompts: "Black and Red Fox Under the Stars" then "Black and Red Fox Resting"
Prompts: "Woman Greeting/Petting a Black Fox". The middle image in the bottom set is the final AI result before my editing for the completed image. The final image, is the result of a different evolution from the same prompt and photo.
Prompts: "Platinum Fox Resting on the Sofa" (top right),"White Fox Under the Stars" (bottom left - visually unprompted) and "Platinum Fox Under the Stars" (bottom right)
Prompt: "Fox". My own digital artwork on the left, the AI adaptation on the right.
Prompts: "Platinum Fox" and "Black Fox". My own images and photos on the left, the AI adaptation on the right.
A friend asked me to create a piece based on her grey fox Ozzie, in the style of an earlier work produced by the AI, of a black fox in a graveyard. These are the results:
Prompt: "Light Brown and Grey Fox in a Graveyard"
A selection of my favourite artworks so far:
Tea Fox
Oriental Dream
Steamed
Marble Heights
Lunas Legacy
Arctic Squishy
Sermon
Encounter
Prairie
Alarm Call
Albion Inkerton
Visit my DeviantArt Portfolio
Models Include: Scamp, Luna, Ellyn, Zion, Loki, Evie, Vex, Ishy and mascot, Albi!
Final Note:
For those worried, AI art apps are no more likely to put artists out of work, than AI website apps, design apps, video apps, music apps, article writing apps, medical apps and animal behaviour apps, will put web developers, designers, content creators, reporters, musicians, doctors and animal behaviourists, out of work.
I get the concerns but I also helped in the development of the first animal behaviour AI's, which were taught to detect lab animal grimace scales, many moons ago, as a means to improve experimental results and lab animal welfare. Those simplified (and highly inaccurate) animal behaviour apps that exist today, do so because of past experiments, like that.
As I see it, it is a new tool for people to create with, should they choose to use it. It is to digital art, what digital art was to paint. The concerns over people using work that is not their own is valid, but this is not something occurring with my artwork. These are original creations of my own design, using the AI. It took time, AI training, providing my own work and a lot of editing, to guide the AI to these specific results.
I would prefer to have some protection and return for my input, but I am accepting of the fact that the AI is learning from me, that it may use what it has learnt in future, as it would be if I taught a person. And after thinking hard about it, I don't create for profit and I like the fact that the AI might create its own masterpieces in future, that others might also, using my work and prompts, as an inspiration.
As for the wider concerns of AI, those are an evolving issue that society needs to address, no matter who chooses to use it. There are many AI systems currently being trained, are we prepared for when they "grow up"? Do we understand the importance of the right training for new and developing systems?
Whatever the answer, AI is here and evolving. Art is one way to get people exploring topics they may not yet understand - whether it is AI or silver foxes. I would like to think the Luddites would find it a worthy cause!
I suspect that in future, once the AI's have had enough training to complete and evolve most requests asked of them accurately, that the ability to upload any work will be removed completely and that to produce, evolve and use a piece of AI created art, will come under a price plan.
In the mean time, I am happy to develop my digital and AI art skills further, using this new tool. It has been fun and I am very pleased with the results 🦊
Hey Hayley, got my print from https://www.blackfoxes.co.uk/buy-an-official-mascot.php today!
Look great, DPD delivery and is nice quality, thank you!