your profile by ai, a new project

 dall-e has intrigued me since its launch. the AI program allows you to type in a description of anything, and it will spit out its visual rendering of what you typed. i've been using it for my own personal use for months before coming up with an idea today where everyone could get a taste of dall-e.

it's called your profile by ai, and the gist is, i look at someone's instagram profile, and i type into dall-e a description of the vibe i get from the profile, using specific references to photos, and overall aesthetic. dall-e takes that description and makes four pictures from it!

this idea excites me because i love the collaboration of humans and AI. it's like a piece of art going through multiple rounds of edits. the art, let's say, is the photos this user posts on their instagram. the first round is the user editing and curating their photos, locking into an aesthetic they potentially see in their head. the second round is me observing their profile for a couple minutes, and picking up on little patterns i see, and things that stand out to me that i specifically like. and third, maybe the most important round, is the AI interpreting what i've described, often times leaving out many things i write, and opting to hone in on one thing. for example, i'll type into dall-e "woman brown hair on film travels a lot rome red dress reflection soccer play" and then dall-e will spit back a stunning portrait of a woman in a red dress looking at herself longingly in the mirror. dall-e knows what it wants to focus on. just like me. just like the user.

the artist is dead. the user tries to curate a look, i observe what they try and give my interpretation, and then the AI decides their viewpoint on it. there's even a fourth round. the viewer, looking at the AI rendering I posted and interpreting whatever the hell the AI created. ALL FOUR ARTISTS ARE DEAD!

it's also interesting to look at a visual representation of our online personas... because who are we online versus offline? on paper, instagram should be a proper rendering of our real life. on most of our profiles, we are ripping pictures straight from the events we go to, the friends we hang out with, vacations we take. yet, often with these dall-e renderings of my descriptions, it is so vastly different from who this person is in real life. granted, i know this because, i'm currently only doing dall-e renderings of my good friends. so i know, my friend miso is not just gibberish text with a microphone. yet, my friend matthew, may be a red page with poetry on it.. sometimes dall-e gets it right. or maybe i described them the way i know them to be in person... i'm excited to experiment on strangers (ok scary scientiest)

for now, you can check out what dall-e and i have made so far here.