Subaru Crosstrek, through AI eyes

DALL·E, disposable cameras, & deserted islands

A new VU JA DE joint for ya 📽️🚗

It’s an (unsolicited) music video for “Subaru Crosstrek XV,” a satirical rap by Hobo Johnson. Why the song? Because it made for a good test subject. Specifically, testing my hand at making a music video entirely of AI imagery. With lyrics like—

My clique orders club salads
And look like they all sing ballads

—I knew I’d like the results. See for yourself…

VU JA DE [SUBARU CROSSTREK]

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The 691 images making up this video were generated using Craiyon, a popular *free* AI image generator. In the world of machines-scraping-web-images-to-create-new-images, its capabilities are modest. At least, when you compare it to DALL·E, the RED camera of this space.

DALL·E, not yet available to the public, has yielded heaps of creative FOMO—at least for people (like myself) whose fine art skills range between kindergartner and chimp with a pencil. I mean… look at what people are making with DALL·E! So, as fun as it’s been concocting preposterous images with Craiyon, I couldn’t help but see it as merely a waiting room for my true appointment with Salvador (what DALL·E’s close friends call him... just kidding, it's only me I think).

As it turns out, my last day working on this video was also my last day on the DALL·E waitlist. Great… convenient timing! I felt like this 2003 Super Bowl commercial parody version of Tom Hanks from Cast Away: after years on a deserted island, this outrageously dedicated FedEx worker has finally returned to civilization to deliver his precious cargo. He curiously asks the recipient what’s in the box, to which she cheerily drops the dagger into his heart:

“Just a satellite phone, GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds. Just silly stuff.”

The pain!! But then again, maybe rushing back to modern civilization (or off the DALL·E waitlist) wasn’t the point. If you remember anything from Cast Away, it probably didn’t happen after Tom Hanks finally got home. The magic happened on the island.

By some measures, I’m living on that island already. My most recent creative purchase was a Hi8 tape camcorder released in 2003. Before that was a 1970s Soviet 16mm camera. Or the stack of vinyl records I just gave as a birthday present. Our tools for capturing reality are advanced as ever, yet what many of us crave most are the deviations from reality—the imperfections. The grain and the noise, the glitches, the leaks and burns.

When it comes to AI image generation, these ‘deviations’ take on a quite different character. Instead of those analog pleasures, you get demented cyclops faces, deformed hands with 6+ fingers, and other grotesque patchworks of reality. Not the same charm, huh? But while it’s easy to see the cyclops face as a failure, I appreciate it just as I do shooting on film: because I don’t know exactly what I’m going to get back.

So what does that make Craiyon? The disposable camera of AI image generation? The hypermodern version of ripped jeans? Is the cyclops face… vintage? I can say one thing confidently: when anything conceivable can be conjured up instantly, exactly how I imagined it, the first thing I’ll look for is a way to rough it up. Make it less perfect. I’ll yearn for the simpler times, when everything wasn’t so damn crisp and predictable.

So, DALL·E might be my ticket off that deserted island… but maybe the island wasn’t such a bad place to be after all?

You feel me? Crazy talk? Let me know. If you like the video, consider sharing it. Here’s that link…

Oh yeah, and give Craiyon a try—send me your results! For inspo, some more links:

• Craiyon Forum

• DALL·E Prompt Book

• Prompt Engineering Guide

• DALL·E Murals

• A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows