When I was a kid I looked forward to opening advent calendar doors in December, although the pictures behind the doors were pretty forgettable. A bell. A snowflake. If you were lucky, a squirrel.

So I thought I'd see if I can generate something a bit more interesting, with the help of AI. To generate the door descriptions, I used GPT-3, a text-generating neural network trained on internet text. I gave it the following story to complete, and saved my favorite responses:

We have a particularly interesting specimen here, which came to the Shop of Strange Antiques earlier this month. It appears to be an advent calendar of some sort, although this is only a guess based on the doors numbered 1 through 25, as the scenes behind each door are rather... atypical.
Item: Advent Calendar (?)
Age: Unknown
Provenance: Left on windowsill
Door descriptions:
1.

For illustrations, I used Pixray (free demo here), giving it the full image description that GPT-3 generated. Based on feedback from CLIP, an algorithm that has seen a lot of images and text on the internet, it shaped pixel art that attempted to illustrate each description.

Not everything worked. There were a bunch of good descriptions that were much too long to fit on a calendar door, and there were also a few that Pixray had an especially difficult time illustrating (I'm looking at you, "Santa Claus eating pancakes while riding a giant sloth".) For the glorious failures, check out the bonus post.

But some of the doors worked out! Behold!

AI Weirdness Advent Calendar: 1. A family of Santa Clauses, posing for a photograph. 2. A sleigh pulled by a weasel. 3. A particularly foul, possibly magical green liquid. 4. A hand reaching through a curtain to steal a Christmas tree. 5. Santa Claus, jumping from a chair into a box. 6. Santa Claus bouncing on a trampoline, and playing a banjo. 7. A plate of seven yellow and seven purple rocks. 8. Snow blowing up into the air. 9. A grizzly bear driving a sno-cone cart. 10. A pack of wolves playing poker. Some are wearing antlers. 11. A reindeer with a plate of green-and-yellow cupcakes. 12. Santa Claus with a centipede on a leash. 13. A snowman holding a sign reading "DOG OFFICE" 14. A collection of extremely polished spoons. 15. Santa Claus with a ray gun, shooting at an icicle. 16. A snowman having an argument with a penguin. 17. A troll carrying a gift in a bag labeled "For: stinky". 18. A reindeer and a giant, on a snowy hilltop. 19. An unusual variety of sheep 20. A can covered with a fuzzy sweater. 21. A solitary antler, with a sign reading "ANTLER". 22. A dustpan full of rainbow spaghetti. 23. Santa Claus, riding atop a giant, heavily-armed stegosaurus. 24. A Christmas tree hit by lightning during a lightning storm. [screenreaders: the rest of the article will probably read as garbage, but you've already read all the notable content]
1. A family of Santa Clauses, posing for a photograph.
2. A sleigh pulled by a weasel.
3. A particularly foul, possibly magical green liquid.
4. A hand reaching through a curtain to steal a Christmas tree.
5. Santa Claus, jumping from a chair into a box.
6. Santa Claus bouncing on a trampoline, and playing a banjo.
7. A plate of seven yellow and seven purple rocks.
8. Snow blowing up into the air.
9. A grizzly bear driving a sno-cone cart.
10. A pack of wolves playing poker. Some are wearing antlers.
11. A reindeer with a plate of green-and-yellow cupcakes.
12. Santa Claus with a centipede on a leash.
13. A snowman holding a sign reading
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