How To Tame AI Art!

AI Art is Here, How Do I Use It?

Need Help Or Want a Commission? Contact Me Here

Acknowledgements: A lot of this was thanks to the great work of  RiversHaveWings

There is a lot to learn, for a really in depth explanation go here.

It shows the history and explains CLIP very well its a great article. 

The purpose of this article is more to help get people started and less about technical or historical aspects of Clip+VQGAN

Google Colab Guides towards the end!

First an Introduction to AI Art:

What is AI Art? AI Art is an image or video created through the usage of a prompt, a piece of text, which then is fed to a specialised AI which understands language as well as images Associated with the terms and phrases in that language. What is used is an Image Model

An Example of a Prompt would be:

"A Green Dog on Thursday Devours Trees"

What isn't AI Art? AI art is not images found on google or stored locally. It uses a GPU to process images from the associations it gains from being trained. This AI art is also different from things such as StyleGan and GPT but related.

The total size of this AI is around 8.3Gb it runs offline and online

Here is a video of the AI in Action!

What Do I Need To Get Started?

This question mainly relies on two factors:

How much money do you want to spend?

How much do you understand coding?

I will start with the easiest to start with options!

Hugging Face Clip+VQGAN by ak

A simple and free app released just as I posted!

Its very new so may be down for a bit, if it is read the rest of the article!

Just input your prompt in text input, wait a little for it to load and then Bam!

Snowpixel.App

 What does it need in short:

• Twitter or Google Account
• Money: 10 USD Creates 30 images
• No Code Knowledge Needed
• Mobile or Desktop both great!

 

Snow Pixel is a great website for quick and code-knowledge-free AI Art. 

Using their service however is more costly per image, with 10 credits or 100 images costing 10 USD, this code free experience however does have me coming back to it, especially letting me bulk create images

10 prompts will create ten relevant images each!

Although it comes at a cost there is no tutorial needed to use it!

 

Here are a few images I created there:

Google Colab

What does it need in short:

• A Google account
• Some familiarity with code
• Better to use on a desktop

Now for most people the easiest whilst also cheapest method to get started is Google Colaboratory I will link Google's Explanation but I will summarise it:

Google's research servers which they allow individuals to use for free, although it is semi-limited, for the purpose of executing code which would require expensive hardware and preparation to use. There is a paid subscription version which is less limited called Colab Pro.

So Google Colab is great as you only need your google account and something that has a web browser, so if you are reading these words you more than likely can use this service! I will detail specific Colabs to use after I go through the options

To use Google Colab you must have a link to a Google Colab Page, this lets you run someone else's code, I link two throughout this but here have a bunch, without info or guides:  1, 2, 3, 4

(Two with guides further down)

 

An Image I Got From One Such Colab:

Visions of Chaos  by Softology

What does it need in short:

• Need a Nvidia 20 or 30 series GPU
• Some understanding of coding
• Desktop only

A Good Tutorial for Installing this can be found here, it's a YouTube video by NerdyRodent, (note ignore his python package update step as it is outdated follow the ML guide here)

What Visions of Chaos allows you to do is use a wide range of Machine Learning and AI Art programs, as well as other amazing visuals. For the AI Art part you will need a Nvidia 20 or 30 series GPU with minimum 8gb of VRAM to run anything.

It is simple to install however when it comes to AI art it's a little complicated so follow the guides I linked above

One Image I Got from VOC:

The "Pay me to do it" method:

One option I have recently started doing commissions! If you don't want to bother with all of the code parts of this space I am happy to help out!

You can contact me here

My commissioning rate is around 20 dollars per Image+Video, I can work with you on a custom prompt and everything.

My best contact is through Instagram

Python and GitHub Method:

What does it need in short?

• Great programming skills
• 30 Series Nvidia GPU Preferable
• Desktop Only

There are options of using python and GitHub. This option requires two main things, a very in depth knowledge of coding generally and a great GPU, 30 series is preferable, use VOC if you have a 20 series as you will have an easier time for the performance you can get.

I am not too knowledgeable on this so I have very little advice outside of this Github link which will allow for local running you will need Ubuntu to run this.

(Another Snow Pixel Generation)

Colabs You Can Use To Create With:

Here are a few of my favourite Google Colabs, I will write two little guides for the one I use the other is hopefully self explanatory, using your phone is more difficult than a desktop for these:

To start with I created a guide to an easy Colab:

You will find your generated images below "Actually do the run code"

Thank you for reading my article, hopefully you found it helpful!

Below is my ethical analysis from my first guide effectively:

Number 1, Be patient:

The AIs I have here are dependent on a few things, your ability to deal with Google Colab and patience with certain code. I am not very code smart but I understand it enough to be comfortable. 

Google Colab lets you run the program using a google server, you can use a phone, laptop or PC and it won't matter. However it can be a bit difficult to get used to. If you get stuck on something I can be contacted via my Instagram and Twitter accounts to help out by the same name as this blog.

Number 2, Be Aware:

There are questions around energy usage when it comes to this AI usage

It uses a similar amount to games or other GPU tasks

Unlike Crypto or NFTs there is no industrial mass scale and it is unlikely to become one

More efficiency for these algorithms means better quality, faster times and less energy usage. This also is an exercise in being artistic and as such has a positive, non-profit driven outcome

The Main issue with these types of algorithms is the time of running your GPU or a cloud GPU does add energy load but it is only a problem when it hits a mass market, this can become that but due to complexity and barriers to entry it is, in my opinion, unlikely to hit the massed appeal that occurred with Crypto.

Number 3, Be Positive:

I implore any AI creators to remember their exterior, there is a big issue with the AI it reflects cultural norms, it can be influenced to provide an outcome positive or negative with a prompt and sometimes images can be frightening or disturbing. Please understand that this means any creations are an extension of the prompt writer and the dataset creator.

Be careful and please be positive. Horror can be interesting, I have created ghosts, aliens and monsters but its important that you don't go too far, the AI creates but you have the power to post.

If you wish to support me or have any requests:

https://ko-fi.com/onestrokebrush420

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