Elder God Attack by Rohsiph on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Preface: I'm not sure I want to muddy my "brand" with boobless sci-fi landscapes, but this one I had to share. I was trying to make more boobs in the prompt, I swear. Also, I get into "the debate" below. Please feel free to ignore everything below. Your regularly booby programming will return to schedule shortly.

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The warcry of the anti-AI-art brigade seems to be something like "Machines can't put the heart and soul of true art into computer-generated content!" For a long, long time this was true. There was always something wonky, something awry with anything pumped out by an image-generating (or text-writing, or music-composing) algorithm.

Tell me you don't see a story here. I'll bite the bullet that the style is composed of a hodge-podge of hopefully freely-shared (but surely potentially stolen) contemporary art styles making the piece "generic." That's fine. The ability to distinguish one's own consistent (yet ever evolving) original techniques separates hobbyists from professionals, and I'm a hobbyist. All the love and respect for the professionals.

Again though... I mean, probably if you're on my profile you already see generative-AI as a tool of art-democratization... but just in case: can you really tell me you don't see a story here?

Summoned by accident, the star-spawn of a primordial Elder God lays waste to a class-2 colony world. It planet-breaks a moon in its initial offensive. No weaponry can scratch it, and it heeds no language known to the civilization's denizens. Before long, its fecund tendrils infect the land, distorting all biota into amalgamations of its dreadful form. The system is now off-limits, but despite the propaganda, the Empire has no clue what specific ritualistic incantations drew the anomalous alien to this dimension.

So, also generic to a point, yes, but also kinda friggin' cool, right? (Also, fwiw, generated by my human brain in first-draft form, and first drafts are always shitty). Even if I've watched that movie's basic strokes a dozen times, this doesn't disqualify the inclination to see the next version. Most likely, it won't inspire anything more than mild amusement. But maybe... just maybe... it plants an idea in a young mind seeing the tropes for the first time that could become something truly special down the line.