AI costume design, part two

There are many valid, ethical concerns about the use of these prompt-driven generative AI models—sustainability and ecological impact, inherent bigotry/bias, exploitative labor practices, violations of copyright and content use consent…the list goes on—and this post is not to enumerate or discuss those, although they would be excellent discussion topics to bring up with students in class. This post is aimed at educators, whose institutions are encouraging/requiring them to incorporate the technology into their teaching. 

In this post, i'll share the process and results of an AI-generated costume design exploration for the character of Elphaba in Wicked using my university's license for Microsoft Copilot. 

In the first post in this series, I shared how Copilot explained how to use itself for creating a costume design sketch. 

Basically, it needs a description of what you want it to generate. Here's the first prompt I entered:

create a costume design sketch of a glamorous green-skinned witch in a black dress and pointy black hat. The costume and sketch should be in the Art Nouveau style.

And here's what I got back:

 

OK. My prompt was pretty generic so it's no surprise what it generated is, too. Not bad but she's very elongated and exposed, not to mention her features are cartoon-sexy and she's quite youthful. 

But given the datasets this was likely trained on, it's no surprise the default femme character created is a slender objectified girl falling out of her clothes.

I probably undermined myself by including the word "glamorous." I didn't want it to generate a Disneyfied cartoon hag, and instead I got a cartoon WILF. 

At this stage, my general feeling is that it would be easier to start rendering my design by drawing, even if I suck at drawing. Trace a croquis, digital or old-school collage, anything that is less steeped in the hypersexualized visual paradigm of how our culture has depicted women for decades. I'd have to experiment with non-femme character design but I suspect a wizard wouldn't come out of Copilot looking like pinup calendar art.

I refined my prompt with further detailed description of what I envisioned...and here's what I got back:

Three image limit?

If this educational license only allows for the generation of three images a day, it's not going to be useful for production or academic design projects unless that limit can be raised. 

But because I'm just exploring, time isn't a constraint, so I'll try again tomorrow! And it gives me a whole day to revise my prompt.

To be continued...