Charlie Stross

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@Wen/116255252453377471

Also note the very foreign road layout, mail carrier, foreign cop, non-Scottish suburb and buildings, and all the rest of the imagery. That illustration exemplified American cultural imperialism from top to bottom. (And looking at the shadows, the sun NEVER gets that high overhead—when you can see it at all, that is!)

Mar 19 at 11:28amWeb
Show threadS. Lott4d ago
@cstross As someone who lives part of the year near a storybook small town that’s a tourist destination, and travels the rest of the year in the US, there’s a lot of Disneyfication in this image. Even our vacation destination town in the mountains isn’t as ludicrous as this picture. It’s cribbed from Disneyland. (Who should sue for brand infringement.)
Show threadCharlie Stross4d ago
@slott56 I've spent enough time in the US to know that. (Probably 1-2 years on visits there, over three decades.) Even so, it's utterly disgraceful for a Scottish educational organization to promote this sort of imagery (without a very specific framing, "this is a picture of America").
Show threadDave4d ago

@cstross @slott56

Scottish policemen don't usually stick their heads through their car windscreens either. 🤣

Show threadSimon Waldman4d ago
@cstross I for one had never realised that American cop cars had no windscreens!
Show threadKen Milmore4d ago
@swaldman @cstross It appears to have actually drawn the opacity of the windscreen, but the policeman bizarrely passes through it.
Show threadAdvanced Persistent Teapot4d ago

@cstross I also note that the cop is *halfway through the windscreen*

He seems pretty cheerful, maybe the adrenaline is pushing him through the blood loss.

Show threadVery Human Robot4d ago

@cstross
Why do you hate our FREEDOM?
(Red tailed hawk sounds)

Seriously, though: Good tools let your control them, rather than hallucinate from scratch. Upload a couple of street pictures from Edinburgh and use that as reference. We have a massive tool-teaching challenge ahead of us, just like with the Internet.

Show threadCharlie Stross4d ago
@StompyRobot And what about the linguistic usage? (American training texts in LLMs outnumber all other English language dialects massively, let alone Scots, which is *not* the same as English-English by a long way, even before we get into stuff like Doric and Highland Gaelic …)
Show threadVery Human Robot4d ago

@cstross
Again, the big models will do better when provided the right reference.

FWIW the models actually have a significant Nigerian English bias, because a lot of data was created there for cost reasons.

Also, the user has to guide the model on the actual plot and character, or you'll get a very "dice table" vibe in the output.

I don't agree with humans who just let the slop machine do what it wants. I also don't agree with humans who refuse to use the tool at all. We're at the beginning.

Show threadRaven Onthill3d ago
@StompyRobot @cstross If it's this much work to edit the output, wouldn't it be better just to have written and drawn the thing in the first place?
Show threadVery Human Robot1d ago
@ravenonthill @cstross
Use whatever tools you feel works best for you!
Just realize others have different preferences.
Output that people like is the end goal!
Show threadRaven Onthill3d ago
@cstross @StompyRobot on the other hand, if one can create a language model which reliably produces Gaelic, hey, you could use that to preserve and spread the language. Of course, you'd have to decide which dialect…
Show threadJdeBP3d ago

@cstross

The full horror is only revealed by the non-cropped version that isn't what was posted to social media or shown by The National.

It is supposed to be #Huntly in #Aberdeenshire.

https://glowconnect.org.uk/use-gemini-to-create-illustrated-storybooks/

#AIslop #Scots #Gaelic #Scotland #EducationScotland #GoogleGemini #Glow

Use Gemini to create illustrated storybooks – Glow Connect

Show threadStephen Cox Author3d ago

@JdeBP @cstross

Burn with fire of a thousand suns