Nicks ai thread got me thinking about illustrations. A quick look and a play with a random graphic ai site gave some interesting results. Only a few sentences are required but the more you describe the more accurate the depiction becomes.
Example below
This is using a site called nightmare. It's not great but took me a minute...
Before you ask it's supposed to be saxons vs romano british!
Quote from: Imperial Dave on Jul 26, 2025, 06:45 PMBefore you ask it's supposed to be saxons vs romano british!
Ah, I thought Early Byzantine. I think the general "tone" on this is pretty good. When you look at the detail, you start to see the mistakes - the leather armour, the mail pteruges, the helmets, the boots. How have they shredded their clothes so badly? Also, a curious thing about AI images is the story can be hard to fathom.They seem to be crowding round two men fighting, one bare handed, the other with a big knife. Did you program it to show this?
No it was basic instructions but if you add detailed instructions s the theory is the accuracy improves
In theory...
My experience is that the accuracy (in terms of correct equipment, weapons, clothing etc) doesn't improve very much. Image generating AI that I have played with seems to have drawn its ideas of what Greeks (for eg) looked like largely from Xena, Hercules, Troy etc. Lots of leather, vambraces, and brown clothes, pretty hopeless as actual depictions of ancient warriors.
Civilian clothing fares slightly better, but I've also struggled to get it to show actual ancient settings. Greek temples for example are invariably ruins, as presumably the AI doesn't have any reference to non-ruined temples to work with. No doubt it is improving all the time, but on the other hand its references are increasingly polluted by the rubbish it generates.
It is interesting to consider in light of this current news story (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeqe084nn4o). These are commercial AI. Extremely realistic and dressed with actual clothes from the advertiser's range. I suspect you could make very high quality AI illustrations of ancient troop types using real equipment examples this way. But look too at the workload and cost, which no wargames-grade publishing company could afford.
Blimey...
The site i used is night cafe. There are others. One consequence I can see is that potentially illustrators and artists are going to feel squeezed out by this and it's only going to get better/worse depending on your viewpoint
Ironically artists tend to be paid for book covers before the book is ever published, writers after, if there are any sales etc
I never knew that Jim
Quote from: Imperial Dave on Jul 27, 2025, 02:50 PMI never knew that Jim
certainly with self published stuff, the writer carries all the costs and speculates that the book will sell enough to cover them.
This is why I use only the finest artists.
Who are all dead and out of copyright ;) 41UuCWOidBL._SY445_SX342_ControlCacheEqualizer_.jpg
Wise words ;D
Quote from: Erpingham on Jul 27, 2025, 11:27 AMIt is interesting to consider in light of this current news story (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeqe084nn4o). These are commercial AI. Extremely realistic and dressed with actual clothes from the advertiser's range. I suspect you could make very high quality AI illustrations of ancient troop types using real equipment examples this way. But look too at the workload and cost, which no wargames-grade publishing company could afford.
Well AI (I wish there was something to call it other than AI - it's really a form of CGI) has always been good at creating realistic images of attractive young (white) women - it's probably 90% of its use case...
You can train an AI with specific images, as presumably this agency did with the clothing range. I have experimented with training one with images of hoplite reenactors. The results were still not great - the images were very obviously composites of bits and pieces taken from the various reference images, not a coherent whole. But then I spent a few minutes on it, not weeks.
The Yarkshire Gamer has been posting on Facebook about the AI-generated covers of recent editions of Wargames Illustrated, perhaps most notably the Roman legionaries disembarking from what looks very like a Viking longship.
Off for a shufties....
Quote from: Denis Grey on Jul 29, 2025, 07:37 AMThe Yarkshire Gamer has been posting on Facebook about the AI-generated covers of recent editions of Wargames Illustrated, perhaps most notably the Roman legionaries disembarking from what looks very like a Viking longship.
Another cover of WI a few months ago showed ECW cavalry, one of whom was depicted with a flag that was larger than, and with a design pretty much based upon, an ECW infantry flag. It looked about 7 feet square.
I'd love to see how it went if the breeze blew up, or the troop commander ordered anything faster than a walk...😁.
What rattles my cage is that the editor will actually APPROVE this and let it be on the front cover of his mag. It demonstrates a serious disconnect from any suggestion that history might get in the way of using a cheaply generated picture...and we wargamers are, in general, pretty keen on at least a nod to history.
AI needs careful handling. This one is a little out of period but it amused me ;D 523121524_24232119239717908_1755078822532302601_n.jpg
So Kalashnikov stole the design from the Americans? Who knew?
;D
and this has just come through in general
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyj4zky4zwo
Quote from: Denis Grey on Jul 29, 2025, 07:37 AMThe Yarkshire Gamer has been posting on Facebook about the AI-generated covers of recent editions of Wargames Illustrated, perhaps most notably the Roman legionaries disembarking from what looks very like a Viking longship.
While AI attempts at illustration are currently pretty humourous, the one thing you can be sure is that they will get better. So in a few years time it's likely that they'll be pretty accurate.
So what do we do then? It's not great news for illustrators, but then history is littered with professions that were made obsolete by technology. You only have to look at the contrast between the original issues of Slingshot and the current ones to see an example of that - magazine layout is now possible for small distribution magazines because you don't need to pay someone to do it.
and the ability to spot fake/AI generated images will diminish...
I always thought it was the French Army that liberated Paris in 1944.... ???
Another thought: has anyone experimented with using AI to make battle maps?