Hello geo-enthusiasts! As 2022 comes to a close, chances are pretty good that you have heard a thing or two in the news about AI generated art – digital art created by artificial intelligence, prompted by human input. For an overview of what AI art is and how people are using it, check out this article by Wired.
AI image generators were born from the marriage of two separate technologies. One was a historical line of deep learning neural nets that could generate coherent realistic images, and the other was a natural language model that could serve as an interface to the image engine. The two were combined into a language-driven image generator. Researchers scraped the internet for all images that had adjacent text, such as captions, and used billions of these examples to connect visual forms to words, and words to forms. With this new combination, human users could enter a string of words—the prompt—that described the image they sought, and the prompt would generate an image based on those words.
(Kelly, 2022)
While AI art generators can be used to co-create almost any kind of scene imaginable, my geospatially-obsessed mind immediately leapt at the possibility of creating interesting maps and fantasy landscapes.
Earlier this year, I joined the Midjourney Beta and began to experiment (note: you can try it for free, but you’ll eventually hit a paywall). Midjourney is an independent research lab that claims to be “…exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species” (Midjourney, n.d.).
So how did it go? After creating some truly terrible mashups (the machine was not well trained on faces in the beginning), I got the hang of prompting. Today, I can generate fantastic geo-inspired outputs in a matter of minutes. Here is a collection of some of my favourites:
While these AI-generated maps neglect the scientific aspects of cartography (for now), the speed with which they can be generated has enormous potential to inspire geospatial professionals looking to spice up their map layouts and get creative with layer symbology. With fantasy maps, the only limit is your imagination!
Follow @geographyrocksxyz on Instagram to check out my latest fantasy maps co-created with Midjourney.
Have you tried to create maps using AI art? How did it go? Comment below and let me know!
References
- Kelly, K. (2022, November 17). Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips. Retrieved December 29, 2022, from wired.com: https://www.wired.com/story/picture-limitless-creativity-ai-image-generators/
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