I’ve only recently started paying attention to the field of AI-generated art, and this Discord-based art AI seems to be one of the most advanced. (If you just want to play with something free and web-based, I’ve had good experiences with Dream by Wombo).

In Midjourney, you type in prompts, the software renders out four thumbnails of randomly generated images based on the text prompts, and gives you the option to create larger, higher-res versions (upscaling, buttons marked with a U) or create new variations on one of the thumbnails (buttons marked with a V). After a free trial of around 25 render minutes, you have to subscribe to continue using it, and in the less expensive subscription you quickly find yourself paying for extra render minutes over and above what comes with your subscription, but the program is set up to where you never exceed what you buy. (You pay in advance for what you think you need, they don’t just let you blindly run up a bill.)

I had some luck with space battles, in case I need new covers for Shadow Captain and its upcoming sequel, but in this post I’m going to show off my Jane Austen fan art experiments. A word of warning: Midjourney has trouble with faces, so a human hand has to step in and do a bit of plastic surgery to make them look not disturbing.

Then I started using actors’ names as part of the prompt

Played Darcy in a 1957 Italian miniseries, the oldest miniseries adaptation still surviving. A pretty good performance, kind of in the same stern, macho vein as Colin Firth, but I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Volpi was not nearly this good looking. I think the AI got his pictures mixed up with Franco Corelli, a very good looking opera tenor who worked with someone named Volpi.

He played Mr. Darcy in a live BBC broadcast in 1952, before they started recording this stuff for posterity. Looks like the AI was finding reference pictures from his horror movies, at a guess the ones dated about 10-15 years after 1952 P&P.

That’s more like it.

No, he hasn’t played Darcy, but I think he’d make a good one.