Let’s See What Artificial ‘Intelligence’ Thinks Good Valentine’s Day Car Images Look Like

As you likely know, it’s not just Ash Wednesday, but it’s also Valentine’s Day! Two days all about whatever the hell Ash Wednesday is about and love, or something! I get Ash Wednesday is a serious, real holiday, but let’s be honest: Valentine’s day has become a marketing cash-grab, for the most part. So, with that in mind, let’s do something just as callow and plastic and contrived as so much of what Valentine’s Day has become: let’s get AI involved, why not? And some cars.

Here at the Autopian, we’ll never use AI for stories or for crucial art about specific cars, partially for ethical reasons and partially because, as a computer, AI algorithms have no idea what they’re producing. They have no idea if a story they’re writing is true or not, and if AI generates an image of a car, it doesn’t know if it’s getting any crucial details right or wrong. We can’t use it.

But we can certainly play with AI, and see just how it handles various requests, because, frankly, it’s interesting. So much of how these things work are still black boxes; we don’t really understand just what the hell is going on there in those massive nests of if-then-else statements. And often, the results are interesting.

So, with that in mind, I asked my wife Sally, who has been playing with MidJourney, to ask the AI to come up with some car-based Valentine’s Day images. The only limitation I imposed on myself was to ask for cars that were common on the internet, so the AI would have plenty of image references to steal from, since every time I ask for something more obscure, it gives me deeply wrong-looking cars. So we’ll keep it simple.

So, I had her start with a car I know is very well represented online: a Volkswagen Beetle. Sally added appropriate Valentinesy descriptors, and the AI did its thing.  So let’s see what we got:

First, I can see AI is getting better at a lot of things, including how it renders VW Beetles. These are decent Beetles! The headlights in the upper left quadrant look like these aftermarket units that were popular for pre-’67 Beetles decades ago, and most of the others seem to have sealed beams, along with those horn grilles, making for cars that roughly resemble ’67 Beetles. But without the big bumper overriders.

The cars are all deep cherry red, which is on-brand, but the weird little cherubim and angel-like beings are still pretty creepy. Let’s look closer at some of those:

What the hell is going on between the two cars? What is that bloody mass of putti-flesh? And what’s going on with those weird skinny fellas in jammies lounging on the hood of the left car? This is weird. Let’s look at another:

Again, nice Beetles, with well-rendered bumper brackets, even, but what sort of monster is crawling in the vent window? That’s hard to even look at! And who’s the weird shirtless dude on the roof?

Let’s try another batch. These are pinker, still decent Beetles, but the upper right image has some freaky arm stuff happening, and the proportions of the lower right depiction are strangely narrow and tall. I wish I understood how it made decisions like using vertical slats in the horn grilles (correct) or horizontal (wrong, but some aftermarket parts did that).

Let’s try another popular car. A Miata!

Hm. Again, the cars are rendered expertly, even with the Mazda logo remaining pretty intact, and AI is usually bad at that. Lots of pink smoke and clouds, and at least one woman emerging from the hood of the car. What’s up with that Dionysean figure in the background of the upper right one? Zoom and enhance!

Oy, what is that? Some sort of matronly-robotic figure? This is all still sort of unsettling. Let’s try for something less pink and with more Camaros:

Oh yeah! That looks like it’s a roughly 1970-ish Camaro, often with doubled turn indicator types, which is fine by me. I think the bigger issues here are the revealing of the fact that AI has no real idea how big people or dogs are compared to cars! Also, it’s worth noting that the prompt did not ask for a dog in any way. Somehow the AI just decided that the dog was necessary. Sometimes giant dogs, and giant women.

These are all impressive technically, in many, many ways, and this technology is definitely a fascinating development. It’s also still weird and creepy, and, if I’m honest, I hope that part never changes. Happy giant lady and dog day!

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