One of my favorite things ever is when AI instructs people to do silly creative things, and the humans gamely play along.

For a couple of Octobers now I've used various AI models to generate daily #botober drawing prompts, and I've been amazed by the sheer creativity with which artists have illustrated such things as:

two blocks squishy
tiny cod flames rise
milkchamallowfluffykins

This year, I've decided to use GPT-3 again, but this time, I'll see if I can get it to produce themed lists.

And, because I'm still weirded out by the meta-ness of generating blog post content using an AI that's trained on my previous blog posts (as well as most of the internet), I'm using this entire introduction, yes including this very sentence, as the prompt text that the AI has to complete. I'll give it just the list topic and a numeral 1 and pick the best results to use as drawing prompts. Here we go.

Halloween (GPT-3 DaVinci model)

  1. Howling canine ghosts scale the cathedral town pillars
  2. leaves shaped like pumpkin smiles litter the sidewalks
  3. spiderwebs grow luscious on wet pumpkin grins
  4. 'thank you' trees lean out of residences
  5. black insects settle leaves
  6. mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth
  7. snaking cobwebs mass on stalks
  8. red eyeballs hit backlit branches
  9. the wet forest steps on soft squirrel skins
  10. murmurous forest insects smell caramel apples
  11. haunting trees grow cuter on lighter dirt
  12. planet-sized moon speaks 'hello'
    Thanks for the original drawings, which are utterly delightful.
  13. the night sky kisses blood oranges lined with white
  14. headless animals shiver in their sleep
  15. moustaches creep creepily
  16. slouching gargoyles lay spooky stones
  17. something is sitting in the center of the spectre tapestries
  18. the unseen graveyard stretches for miles
  19. deep-skulled jack-o'-lanterns smell the warmth of my nose
  20. this town is filled with orange dust
  21. mist-sheep chew on tombstones
  22. a scarecrow cuts a pumpkin with a sharp scythe from a wooden block
  23. the graveworm snatches out the eyes of strangers who come by
  24. mist lamps glow with circling green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange and green and orange...
  25. monsters crawl through alien fur
  26. spooky house skulls peeking out of the dreamlike brambles
  27. gangly moonlit grave rabbits lurk outside the windows
  28. murder rats roam the streets below the buried Earth
  29. a shrub plays the banjo from the shadows
  30. pumpkins melt quietly, quietly
  31. the white skull leans out of the tower of the Palace of the End
Formatted list of the DaVinci halloween drawing prompts

I draw your attention to the fact that between #12 and #13 above, it wrote “Thanks for the original drawings, which are utterly delightful.” The above results were from DaVinci, the largest version of GPT-3. I also tried the Halloween prompt with a smaller GPT-3 model, known as Ada. It also played along with the Halloween theme, although it seemed to be less solid on what actually counted as Halloween-themed.

Halloween (GPT-3 Ada model)

  1. The masked skeleton
  2. The question mark from a box
  3. Excuse me a minute a giant sphere
  4. Five water bubbles in a crate
  5. The goliath
  6. Half a cup of milk
  7. The super hero skull
  8. A flappy spider
  9. A flappy tea
  10. Parts of a cow
  11. Parts of a giraffe
  12. Robots are weird
  13. The watermelon fountain
  14. The ghost in the closet
  15. One spark walking to the other side of the room
  16. Dangerous drops
  17. A bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat bat
  18. Cows face the moon
  19. Five eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs
  20. Ghost traitors
  21. The animals belong to space aliens
  22. A zombl
  23. The bubbleberry
  24. No hands
  25. The back of a zombie
  26. The funny, psychedelic slime
  27. Run like a bunny
  28. Creepy cats
  29. Old flames
  30. A mushroom person
  31. Holes
Formatted list of the Ada Halloween drawing prompts

Maybe it's a spooky half a cup of milk.

I also tried a couple of other themes. Here's DaVinci, doing "animals".

Animals (GPT-3 DaVinci model)

  1. Opossumsaurus
  2. Rainbow space walrus
  3. The roars of roosters
  4. Sluggalope
  5. Adventurous stone chickens
  6. Fricken WHALE
  7. 4D Stegosaurus
  8. 8-legged cat
  9. Bearllionaire
  10. Impossibly cute pudgy birds
  11. Muppet sharks
  12. Fluffy space lemur
  13. Tiny shelled horses
  14. Angry jelly doughnut
  15. Roaring Ball of Feathers
  16. Butter gliders
  17. Dangerous swans
  18. Gleaming toads
  19. Worm That Ate Chicago
  20. Teeter-totter-rattlesnake
  21. Loud frilly cows
  22. Way Too Much Cat
  23. Steampunk platypus
  24. Heavenly caterpillar
  25. Elderly robot pug
  26. 6 legged wombatquail
  27. Angry eohippuses
  28. Firefly squid
  29. Porcelain squirrel
  30. Fabled unicycle beavers
  31. Godcockroach
Formatted list of the DaVinci animals drawing prompts

And here's DaVinci, doing "Landscapes".

Landscapes (GPT-3 DaVinci model)

  1. Glowing, purple starfish forest
  2. Library of lava
  3. Chalk canyon
  4. Forbidden kale forest
  5. Hillside terrain of hundreds of gray hats
  6. Labyrinth of rocks and steam
  7. Mirror forest filled with reflective crystals
  8. Botanical mazes of white lace and trees
  9. Sea of razors
  10. Greenhouse glade filled with a bubble machine
  11. Noctilucent glaciers
  12. Forest of not-trees
  13. Small rocky islands floating in a sky of lemons
  14. Caverns of glass
  15. Village constructed like the game Mousetrap
  16. Needles of obsidian and frozen squalls
  17. Hospitality space, enviropod
  18. Forest of feather trees and shimmer lights
  19. Ant fort of jeweled pastry, there is a tiny ant fort
  20. Dark carnival caves
  21. Skull forest
  22. Plains of stardust and purple flowers
  23. The fungal kingdom
  24. Fallen horizon
  25. Farm field covered with tiny triangular cups of tea
  26. An outpost of accordion trees
  27. Fortuneteller's grove, toad boulders
  28. Botanical plate tectonics
  29. Geode catacombs
  30. Field of gravity-shifted stones
  31. Perpetual storm field barricaded by a curtain made of clouds
Formatted list of DaVinci landscapes drawing prompts

So, come October, please do draw some items from these lists if they strike your fancy, and tag them with #botober so I can find them because I'd love to see how they turn out.

Bonus content: A list that GPT-3 instigated on its own, which it titled "why why why why why why why why"

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