xerrAIre Starts Playing With AI, and I Like It!
So my grandson Silas came into my room/office and told me about this fun way to make art. It wasn’t exactly something he was taking very seriously as we started playing around with several websites, we became rather silly as to some of the outcomes that would happen. You see, AI art is something that one can type into an area of a program and tell it what to create, hit the create button, and sometimes we could have a horse, but it would have 5 legs. John came online and he also began making some images. Most sites only let you do so many a day, and then they ask you to either wait until the next day or pay for its use. I had a few days of fun finding new places to make free images but soon left the whole topic alone. However, now and then, John would send me an image he had just created with AI, and I soon started up again. It was like a real challenge to get the image creator to do what you wanted it to do with just your words.
I found a place called Night Cafe. It has been a very nice community from all over the world, old and young, and everything in between.
Here is a little of their story:
NightCafe Creator was founded by Angus Russell in November 2019 from the spare bedroom of his tiny semi-detached house in Sydney’s Inner-West. As of October 2022, over 35 million AI-generated artworks have been created on the platform.
Angus started NightCafe after a house guest commented on how bare his walls looked. Angus agreed, and jumped online the next day to look for some art to buy. After scrolling through hundreds of pages of artworks on every wall-art store he could find, he was left unsatisfied. Nothing seemed personal enough. You couldn’t have a conversation about it with a visitor.
Having known that AI Art had been a thing for years, he thought “maybe I can generate some more personalised art using AI”. Surprisingly, his Google searches yielded few results. Forgetting about his own walls, Angus became obsessed with making this “obvious” idea available to the world.
The rest is history. NightCafe Creator – originally a neural style transfer app – launched on Reddit in November 2019, and Angus has been working on it ever since. In late 2020, Angus’ wife Elle joined the founding team as Chief Operating Officer.
Night Cafe, about us.
So that was interesting to learn they are in Australia!
They have daily competitions, or challenges as they call them. For some reason, I wasn’t frustrated enough with the challenges of making my text work to create an image, so I started doing theirs as well. It has been fun. I’ve got to know some people from Belgium, Spain, and an Austrian who has immigrated to Paraguay. Many people by their artwork, are obviously Christians, retelling Bible stories with their beautiful creations. Some people, they seem to be devoted to the other side 🙂
Either way, as I recently got a long-lasting case of shingles, it has been a great distraction for pain and itching. I can see this as being a very useful and worthwhile process. If you want to personalize a tee shirt or use an item for a teaching moment, or they even let you send it to the printers and create art for your home. Imagine, with only few skills or even none, you could create art to decorate your home!
To start your own AI Journey, try Night Cafe here
Here are a few of my images, if you’re logged in, you can see them HERE
