Dall-E Mini, the AI-powered text-to-image generator has taken over the internet. With its ability to render nearly anything your meme-loving heart desires, anyone can make their dreams come true.
DALL-E 2, a portmanteau of Salvador Dali, the surrealist and Wall-E, the Pixar robot, was created by OpenAI and is not widely available; it creates far cleaner imagery and was recently used to launch Cosmpolitan’s first AI-generated cover. The art world has been one of the first industries to truly embrace AI.
The open-sourced miniature version is what’s responsible for the memes. Programmer Boris Dayma wants to make AI more accessible; he built the Dall-E Mini program as part of a competition held by Google and an AI community called Hugging Face.
And with great technology, comes great memes. Typing a short phrase into Dall-E Mini will manifest 9 different amalgamations, theoretically shaping into reality the strange images you’ve conjured. Its popularity leads to too much traffic, often resulting in an error that can be fixed by refreshing the page or trying again later.
If you want to be a part of the creation of AI-powered engines, it all starts with code. CodeAcademy explains that Dall-E Mini is a seq2seq model, “typically used in natural language processing (NLP) for things like translation and conversational modeling.” CodeAcademy’s Text Generation course will teach you how to utilize seq2seq, but they also offer opportunities to learn 14+ coding languages at your own pace.
You can choose the Machine Learning Specialist career path if you want to become a Data Scientist who develops these types of programs, but you can also choose courses by language, subject (what is cybersecurity?) or even skill - build a website with HTML, CSS, and more.
CodeAcademy offers many classes for free as well as a free trial; it’s an invaluable resource for giving people of all experience levels the fundamentals they need to build the world they want to see.
As for Dall-E Mini, while some have opted to create beauty, most have opted for memes. Here are some of the internet’s favorites:
pic.twitter.com/DbLoe1s00c
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 8, 2022
pic.twitter.com/cxtliOrlHz
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 12, 2022
no fuck every other dall-e image ive made this one is the best yet pic.twitter.com/iuFNm4UTUM
— bri (@takoyamas) June 10, 2022
pic.twitter.com/rEBHoWR7lH
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 12, 2022
pic.twitter.com/RSZaCIDVV7
— Chairman George (@superbunnyhop) June 9, 2022
back at it again at the DALL•E mini pic.twitter.com/iPGsaMThBC
— beca. ⚢ (@dorysief) June 9, 2022
There’s no looking back now, not once you’ve seen Pugachu; artificial intelligence is here to stay.
I Want to Die by Murder Hornet: An Open Letter to God
I want murder hornets to kill me.
Dear God,
Hey. It's me. I know we don't talk much, but it's finally time for me to reach out.
I'll be honest, I didn't actually believe in you until recently. I'd always think: "If God was real, would he really let humans get away with all this sh*t?"
Now you've answered my question. We elected a gameshow host rapist as President of the United States, and then we spent four years writing articles about it while our government fell apart. So you unleashed a biblical plague. Touché. And real talk? It makes a lot of sense from a narrative standpoint. I always felt like the fall of Rome flowed a little too perfectly in history books, and I'm coming to realize that you have a really solid understanding of three-act structure.
As if I need to tell you.
But here's the thing. I was not expecting the murder hornets.
pej_pej_pej/Getty Images
Coronavirus makes sense, thematically. Humans have taken advantage of the planet with no regards to its long-term well-being, so a horrific, highly contagious virus is a little bit like a metaphor for what we've been doing all along. I want you to know, I get it. And from a hypothetical historical standpoint (like, reading about this time period in a hundred years, from a library in space), I kind of love it.
But we gotta talk about these murder hornets. I'm trying to place them within the larger narrative, but they really just feel so out of left field. Coronavirus was definitely foreshadowed. Remember when Trump disbanded the government's top pandemic response team shortly after taking office? We've seen enough disaster movies to know how that would pan out. But if there were any seeds planted earlier for this whole Bee storyline, I must have missed them.
All that said, I trust your plan completely. You're the architect, and we're just here to f*ck up all your sh*t until you finally get pissed enough to go all fire and brimstone on our asses.
So please know, I'm not questioning your directorial vision when I ask this question–but: If you're going to kill me, can you please let me die by murder hornet?
Allow me to explain my reasoning. Obviously, I could never presume to know your plan, but I can picture the story playing out in a few different ways. The first would be the deus ex machina approach, wherein we spent the entire time thinking Trump and coronavirus were the enemies when, in reality, the real villain is bees. That's so stupid that it's objectively funny, and in this kind of plot, I would really hate to die to anything other than the primary cause of humanity's destruction–which is, again, bees.
http://daypop.itmwpb.com/2020/05/04/asian-giant-murder-hornet-discovered-in-u-s/
Another possible approach would be using the killer bees as a red herring. Maybe you're waiting until we're all distracted by the killer bees to release the real big bad—MechaTrump or something, I don't know. Currently, murder hornets kill roughly 50 people per year in Japan, so we can assume that if the bees are a red herring, them murdering someone in the US will be an important plot point. The news will cover that person's bee murder and, meanwhile, MechaTrump will begin his rampage on New York or whatever. I've always wanted to be famous, at least for a little bit, so if this is your game, I'd prefer to be the bee guy instead of getting smushed.
Finally, even if my guesses are totally off-base, murder hornets are just really f*cking cool. Here's a quote from a "retired Police Department beekeeper" who was asked if the murder hornets were dangerous to humans: "Absolutely. Oh, my God. Have you seen the mandibles on these things?"
As someone who loves cool bug pics, I feel a need to put this into perspective. The Asian giant hornet is supposed to be scary because of its massive, venomous stinger that can pierce through a beekeeper suit, inject poison into the body, and feels "like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh." Insect mandibles are the appendages near their mouths. This means that a "retired Police Department beekeeper," which I'm assuming is the guy who trains police attack bees, looked at the murder hornet with its giant built-in death needle, and thought, "Damn, look at its face."
This is insane. In any other circumstance, I would go so far as calling the murder hornet an affront to God, but clearly we're past that point, aren't we. So I'll just come out and say it:
I want a murder hornet on my gravestone. I believe that would be very cool, and the only way it would really make sense and not seem like a super tryhard thing to do, is if I get stung to death by one. So make it happen, God. I don't ask you for much, but I need this. Thanks, bro.
Amen.