It is difficult to avoid the phenomenon in social networks. Since the beginning of June, Internet users have fallen in love with the Dall-E Mini website, which has been renamed from Craiyon. This tool automatically generates a series of nine images from written queries. The result is often absurd, comic or hilarious. Some do not hesitate to enter the most unlikely quests, such as “The Little Mermaid Eats Sushi”, “Dora the Explorer at a Nuclear Test Site” or “Donald Trump in Minecraft”. Now around 50,000 images are created every day.
Craiyon is a tribute to OpenAI company’s Dall-E project. It’s a smaller-scale, open-source replica of this deep neural network, capable of autonomously generating images from plain text. Dall-E pored over vast visual databases and learned what a labrador looks like: art deco or yellow. The visuals created by this artificial intelligence are stunning.
“When OpenAI unveiled its Dall-E project in January 2021, I wanted to try and replicate the same.“, he explains Figaro Boris Deima, machine learning consultant. This Frenchman living in the USA took advantage of the competition launched by the Hugging Face platform and Google in July 2021 to test his idea.
“This hackathon provided access to powerful computers and technical support from both companies. Other people joined me and we ended up winning the competition. But the Dall-E Mini wasn’t as good as it is today with low resolution images. I kept refining the model in my spare time and eventually it got to the point where it went viralin June 2022. This success led OpenAI to ask Boris Deima to drop the Dall-E Mini name to avoid any further confusion between the two projects.
Estimated results
“Initially, Craiyon was used by artists working with artificial intelligence. I never would have believed that it would later be used to create memes on the internetsmiles the Marseille Central graduate who has lived in Houston, Texas, for ten years. To cover the cost of the servers needed to run Craiyon, advertising will appear on the site and paid features are being discussed.
OpenAI limits access to Dall-E to a few thousand testers and has safeguards in place to prevent misuse of its technology. Craiyon is available to everyone. “No one can doubt that the created images are from software, it is obvious that they are artificial– continues Boris Dayman.
AI, for example, doesn’t know how to draw realistic human faces. “The model makes rough approximations. It is not noticeable on the tree, but it is immediately visible on the face. This technical limitation is ultimately an advantage that makes Craiyon safer. It’s still fun.»
Raising public awareness
Boris Deima advocates opening Craiyon to all Internet users. “Now we need to inform the general public about the existence of this new technology.“which will soon enable the creation of visuals that the human eye may not always suspect were designed by a machine.”develop critical thinking“. Craiyon’s popular success has effectively shed new media light on the work of OpenAI, as well as Google, which is working on a similar project called Imagen.
“Discussions about the limitations and biases of these models also need to be wide open.beyond the scope of artificial intelligence researchers, continues the designer. These AIs are trained on large visual databases, which have their share of biases. “The model is based on what it sees most often. And so, for him, unless he is told otherwise, a doctor is definitely a man and a housewife is definitely a woman.»
Boris Dayma, however, does not believe that such AIs can replace graphic designers and visual designers. “These professionals will use these models as a source of inspiration, a way to test ideas and avoid blank page syndrome. They will be able to do much better then. These AIs will primarily be tools to aid creation.»
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.