Artificial Intelligence Classics: “Improvements” on some of my previous rides

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– Posted on December 7, 2022

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) generated art is a big thing right now. It can produce some amazing and creative images as well as some very weird and/or disturbing ones. There is also some debate about who the ultimate creator of the resulting piece is. The human feeding it prompts or the machine doing the generation via gathering source images to combine and manipulate with various algorithms. Luckily, we are not here to debate that but instead ponder if any of its creations are any good. I fed it some of my greatest hit vehicles with suggested improvements to see what comes out.

I started with Dream by Wombo mostly because it is free. I like free. Also it can work with source images, keywords and a selected style. I inserted a few of my previously owned vehicles and relevant key words to see what it might produce. The tool is a little awkward as it uses a vertical ratio rather than the more common horizontal but a little cropping is a small price to pay.  In the first example we will start with is my 1970 Mercedes 220D. How about requesting it be a little sportier?

It came up with this rakish coupe. Not bad. Certainly better than I could draw.

It even generated a rear view of a pillar-less hardtop.

Next up is my Mazda 2 which perhaps we will ask to haul a bit more.

There are some fine detail issues to be sure but the overall vision is reasonably believable.

Our next victim is a bit of an oddball for me in the Nissan Fairlady Z. My cars are generally older and in less good condition than it was. Can we convert it to that?

We maybe went a bit far with the junkyard vibe.

Minivan-ize the Z? I guess that is sort of a Nissan Quest.

Speaking of the Quest we actually had one so let’s take it and go the sports car route.

There are some fairly major detail problems but the overall stance is sporty. It reminds me a little bit of a modernized Toyota Sports 800.

The 1961 Pontiac Laurentian is likely well remembered here but what will everyone make of the AI muscle car variant?

Triple head lights? It lacks detail which made me debate its inclusion but the overall vision gives me Plymouth vibes for some reason.

My Lada Niva was fun to drive but definitely not sporty. Let’s solve that.

A sporty little number indeed! I do not see much of the source material beyond colour in there but I certainly could see Fiat building something similar back in the day. Perhaps a bit of a Honda S600 coupe influence?

A re-roll gives us this misshapen creation. Ok, let’s move on.

I never really did much with my Studebaker Lark on account of its noisy and presumably ailing automatic transmission. Perhaps AI can help us see what could have been.

A rather wild result that oddly converted to dual rather than quad headlights.

Volvo 240 series cars are often accused of being boxy so I included that as a suggestion word.

And the AI delivered on the boxy theme in spades. Strangely enough in a few other outtakes it converted the trees in the background to palm trees and removed the snow. Given it is currently winter I would gladly take that upgrade. Maybe not the car though.

For the last trick I submitted my Austin A40 Somerset and suggested it be a coupe. I thought I would additionally try a heads on angle shot.

The quasi-Aston Martin feeling car was the result. Quite smart I think.

If you wanted to give it a try you may have to add some extra space at the top and bottom of your photos, like above, to size them for the process.

I have found the “Retro-futurism” and “Realistic” settings work quite well for vehicles. Feel free to share some of your creations. Let me know in comments if you thought the AI alternations of some of my vehicle history were hits or misses.

 

Further Reading

What If: AI Generated Cars That Never Were