An AI paints the Diamondbacks

This, I want to make clear, is all Wes’s fault.

Challenge accepted. Well, not actually my hastily-drawn scribble. I am entirely devoid of artistic talent. But I have been playing around with AI art creators, which is the latest hot thing. Basically, these take a written prompt and use it to generate artwork. It can be as simple as “a cat wearing antlers”, but you can add all manner of details to guide the style of the result, such as specific artists. The results are... well, a mixed bag, to put it mildly. The AIs almost all have issues with hands, often adding extra fingers or twisting them in entirely impossible ways. Text and logos are also problematic (as we’ll see shortly). But when you get it to work, the results can be stunningly good.

Now, with great power comes great responsibility. The potential for abuse in this is obvious, and so the public access AI creators almost all limit what you can ask for. Asking for an image of a real person is forbidden, but more generic requests are permitted. I would not be able to ask it for “David Peralta”, but “A baseball player from Arizona” is fine. So, working carefully around these, here is a pictorial guide to your Arizona Diamondbacks. First of all, this is the park in which we play.

Well, that’s certainly a bit... different. It’s more airy than I remember it - didn’t it use to have a roof? But I do appreciate the way you can stand in what appears to be a parking lot on a hill behind home-plate and watch the game from there. No wonder attendance is way down this year though. I then asked it to provide an example of a generic player for the team, and this is what it delivered.

On the plus side, it seemed at least to be in the correct zip-code with regard to the color scheme (the background perhaps more so than the powder-blue jersey, though that may simply be a stylistic and artistic choice), while the player does look human. This is not always the case. However, as mentioned above, the AI struggles with text and logos. The cap seem to have strayed over from the Angels, and we are now supporting the Arizona Dibccks. Though the font is, again, not too far off what I’d expect. Despite my vague prompt, I think it does look a bit like David Peralta. Or perhaps a young Luis Gonzalez.

Then I asked it to draw Baxter - I felt that was okay, as he is not a “real” person (the Discord channels are filled with requests for anime characters, etc.). I present to you the Diamondbacks team mascot which resulted:

Yeah, sometimes you don’t get the results you want, but the results you need. I have no clue why it went off in its own direction, and opted for a friendly-looking dog rather than a bob-cat. But I’d call it a clear improvement over the current mascot, even if the logo still seems to have issues, and the team name... well, it starts with a D and then appears to go downhill from there. It’s probably canine-related. But I think calling him “Chase the Dog” would be perfect, considering the current mascot was based off a ballpark name which was changed more than seventeen years ago - basically no current kids ever went to BOB...