How would AI decorate an easter egg?

I've tried this before by training an image-generating model exclusively on pictures of easter eggs I decorated (they came out plain, if a bit wobbly).

I decided to see what I would get using a model based on CLIP, which has trained on a huge collection of internet images and text. Presumably that collection included Easter eggs?

For this experiment I used the image-generating model from Midjourney, which combines CLIP with an ever-changing mix of image generation methods (in other words, by the time you read this, the algorithm will already be different from the one I used. it's not a very scientific experiment). I gave it a phrase, and Midjourneys optimized the image to match the phrase to the best of its ability. (See the image caption for my prompt phrase.)

Eggs swirled with abstract vivid colors. None of them are perfectly egg-shaped and one seems to be partially split with yolk hanging out.
Easter eggs, acrylic on canvas

It knows what Easter eggs are! They are colorful and egg-shaped (although some of them look strangely double-lobed). You'll notice I added "acrylic on canvas" which is a signal to the AI to "make it a nice artsy picture please" - one challenge with using CLIP to generate images is that there are plenty of crummy pictures in its online examples.

Each modifying phrase (which I am going to refer to as "seasonings" as Kate Compton suggests) has a huge effect on how the AI renders "Easter eggs".

Vast landscapes with bare trees and pointed church towers. Looming over the trees and towers are huge easter eggs. In one photo, yolks float ominously in the sky.
Easter eggs, matte painting

Since matte paintings tend to be backdrop landscapes for epic films, the AI has made the eggs epic enough to fit in with giant landscapes.

Is that a couple of fried eggs floating in the upper right? It appears so. In fact, as I tried asking for different kinds of Easter eggs, egg-themed eggs became a recurrent thing.

sleek smooth egg-shaped plasticky objects with wobbly curves and bright colors. One has a tiny viewscreen. Another is white with a yellow circle, like an egg.
easter eggs from the future, trending on artify
egg-shaped swirls of colorful string, some with a yellow-and-white color scheme that looks like eggs.
easter eggs made of string trending on artify

The most extreme case of eggs on eggs was, oddly, one that involved giraffes.

floating vaguely egg-shaped objects, some of which are colored like egg yolks and whites. There are splashes of giraffe spots and also splashes of egg whites. Fun. Motion-filled. Does not really look like easter eggs.
easter eggs decorated by giraffes, trending on artstation

It's almost as if the AI panicked and started turning eggs inside out. Or maybe it's trying to optimize the eggness of the picture by adding even more stuff that matches "egg", even if it doesn't also match "easter".

I got it to generate a collection of pysanky, which are Easter eggs intricately decorated with geometrical patterns, traditional to Ukraine and Poland.

A grid of eggs painted with colorful dots and swirls and stripes. Some have tiny fried eggs on them. Their shapes are kinda like eggs, but most are too flat on the bottom and too pointy on top.
ukranian pysanky easter egg collection, trending on artstation

You'll notice a few fried-egg eggs among them. I also got some like these:

Glasslike eggs whose bottoms are decorated with geometrical red and black patterns and whose tops have the blue and yellow pattern of the Ukranian flag. Here and there are dots of yellow like egg yolks. Or maybe that's just me.
ukranian pysansky easter egg, trending on artstation

In an effort to make the eggs look even more Ukranian, the AI has added the Ukranian flag. I think there might also be tiny egg yolks? I'm seeing them everywhere now.

The eggs-themed-eggs trend isn't the case for every image-generating algorithm that uses CLIP - it may not even be the case for the Midjourneys algorithm tomorrow. But it made me smile.

Bonus content: more Easter egg flavors, including x-ray and radioactive.

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