Impressions - March 2024 - 32
Art by Web Buttons Inc - stock.adobe.com
Marshall Atkinson
In this excerpt from the Impressions " Ask the Experts "
podcast and online video series, Impressions Content
Director, Adam Cort, discusses the importance of artifi cial
intelligence, or AI, with veteran screen-printer Marshall
Atkinson. Atkinson, a long-time business coach and principal
of Atkinson Consulting, recently launched what he calls the
" Midjourney: Elevating Print Creativity Newsletter " with an
eye toward explaining AI to those new to the subject
Photo courtesy of Marshall Atkinson
Adam Cort:To start out, for listeners who are
not yet familiar with artifi cial intelligence art
generators, I wonder if you could give us an
overview of what it is they do. As I understand
it there are a number of options out there, platforms
like Pixar, Artguru and, of course, your
favorite and the platform we will be talking
about in depth today, Midjourney (midjourney.com).
So, how do they work?
Marshall Atkinson: Th ey're all slightly different.
But they all kind of work the same.
Th e idea here is that we're going to be able to
create an image that could be really anything,
right? And it's based on word prompts. How
it works is it starts off with random noise, like
if you ever turn your TV to channel one, you
see just random dots. How they work then
is they take a word, whatever the word is,
" horse, " right? And all of these platforms have
been trained on " what is a horse, " a picture
of a horse, the idea of a horse...So, when you
say " horse, " it knows what that is, and when
you say " watercolor, " it kind of knows what
watercolor is in the same way. What it does
then is it takes these ideas and somehow-I
don't know how it works-it converts it to an
P.32
algorithm that converts it to math. So, it takes
the random noise and assigns math to it to
realize an image of a watercolor painting of a
horse. Now, what's interesting here is that if
you did it and I did it, using the same tools,
we would always get diff erent results, because
[the program] starts off with random noise. Th e
interesting thing here is where [each platform]
was trained on... For example, Midjourney, in
my opinion, gives you best results, because it's
trained on a larger set of images, really, trillions
of images that are on the Internet. Now, stuff
that's Adobe based is only based on the Adobe
image library, which is a smaller subset. So,
you don't get as good of an image that you
might with Midjourney, because it's trained
on a smaller set of knowledge.
AC: Right, and if I remember correctly, having
done a little poking around myself, the systems
will then off er you some options-is that
correct?-and you can decide which prefer.
MA: With all of these generators you get an
image. Okay? Sometimes it's a home run right
off the bat. Other times you're going to want to
play around with it, and they all have tools that
ImpressionsMagazine.com March 2024
you can do that with. You can change things,
you can upscale, you can do variations, you
can add and remix prompts. What's amazing
here is the speed at which things work. A fi nal
image that you could use for stuff is, you know,
two minutes of work. It's not that big a deal to
get something that is really usable. Th e trick
is the words that you're using really matter.
Also the word order that you use matters...
We're creating an image with words, so your
vocabulary matters. Th e fact that you know
how to run a Th esaurus matters, because the
same idea expressed diff erently with diff erent
words can give you a better or a worse result.
AC: And you can come up with some really
crazy combinations, right? Certainly with
Midjourney, it will fi nd a solution. It'll come
up with some crazy images you might have
never thought of?
MA: Well, it will always give you results, but
will it give you the results you want? All of
these platforms are like dealing with a genius
4-year-old. It'll give you a really amazing result,
but it doesn't understand what you're asking.
It's not like it knows what a cupcake is. It will
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Impressions - March 2024
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - March 2024
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Impressions - March 2024 - Cover1
Impressions - March 2024 - Cover2
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