Prompting John Brown: Some Experiments in AI Art

The other day I was playing around with a couple of online sites that generate art from prompts--written descriptions--using artificial intelligence (AI). A friend of mine sent me an informative video about AI art. You can view it here:

   

At any rate, I tried putting in various phrases about "John Brown the abolitionist." Interestingly, however, as long as I used "John Brown the abolitionist" I kept getting renderings of Brown as a black man. Here are some of the generated black John Brown images:

Keep in mind, that AI images are not copies of known images but sort of reinventions based on the written prompts, based on what the AI gleans from what has been posted online. An article I read described it (and this is my best effort, so forgive me if I'm wrong) analogously as grinding down a tree into saw dust and then using the sawdust to construct a chair based on the available descriptions of a chair. There are also different AI generators using different styles, including imitating famous artists, etc.  One thing is for sure, every rendering is unique and you can regenerate images endlessly from the same prompt.

If you're interested in playing around with prompt-to-image AI art, it appears that Dall-e is one of the best. But access to it is limited and then you have to pay to keep playing around on it.  One with open access is Dream by Wombo.  You can enter your prompt and use different generators that produce different kinds of images, and you can repeatedly generate different images from the same prompt.

AI and Bias: Kissing the Black Baby?

At the same time, I do wonder whether AI reflects certain biases that are embedded in the culture since AI can only work with what has been put online.  For instance, the first inclination to portray John Brown as a black man may suggest that many people, who are largely ignorant, believe Brown had to have been a black man because he is associated with black people in their minds.  This bias would apply to both blacks and whites who simply do not know enough about history--something not surprising in the USA.  The video above shows that AI is biased toward the west, and I suspect biased more toward the USA, which is far more ignorant of history as a culture than are European peoples generally speaking.

I encountered this again using Dall-e, one of the leading AI text-to-image sites. I repeatedly and repeatedly tried entering prompts about "John Brown kissing a black baby on his way to execution."  Whenever I did, I kept getting images generated of John Brown as a black man kissing a black baby.  It was experientially like AI refused to follow the prompt.  Was this a fluke?

I thought I'd try one more thing by entering Hovendon, along with the prompt about John Brown kissing the black baby, etc.   This is a clear reference to a very famous painting, "The Last Moments of John Brown" (1884), by Thomas Hovendon, which is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  

Hovendon's "The Last Moments of John Brown" 

"Certainly," I said to myself, "the AI will pick up on this prompt and give me a rendering akin to the Hovendon painting."  But I was wrong.  The baby might change variously from black to white, but the AI John Brown remained black--and I tried this over and over again. Here are several examples of what the Dall-e AI kept producing with the prompt, "Hovendon's painting of John Brown the abolitionist kissing a black baby":

I also did a whole series of these on Dall-e using the same prompt but variously trying to add artistic flavors like Dali, da Vinci, and even impressionism.  They were all very nice, but they invariably made John Brown a black man and mostly made the baby black too. Maybe someone who knows about AI can explain this to me, and while I'd like to think that I'm missing something technical here, my tendency is to believe AI reflects a cultural bias rooted in deep racism, or at least, racialism.  

AI's White John Brown

Although my initial efforts to generate pictures of John Brown produced black versions, I did variously produce images of Brown by adding qualifiers like "white abolitionist" or "bearded white abolitionist."

I should stress that these were made on maybe two or three different AI sites, but this will give you an idea of what AI will generate.  The prompts here were brief and simple, always saying Brown was a white abolitionist in the 1850s or antebellum era.

Trying to Recreate a Lost Image

Since Dall-e is among the most sophisticated AI image generators, I then tried to recreate a lost daguerreotype that exists only by descriptions in a number of sources.  The image was made about 1848 by the black Daguerreian, Augustus Washington.  Washington's two surviving daguerreotypes of John Brown (below) have survived and are familiar to Brown enthusiasts. The lost image is said to have pictured Brown posing with his black friend and associate, Thomas Thomas, from Springfield, Mass. Jean Libby has documented the surviving daguerreotypes from this photographic session among the other John Brown images in her wonderful book, John Brown Photo Chronology  The most famous of the two images shows Brown with his hand uplifted as if making a vow, and holding a small banner said to have been emblazoned with "SPW," for "Subterranean PassWay," which was apparently what John Brown called the underground railroad--a term that perhaps preceded the advent of railroads in the 1830s and '40s.  The lost image is said to have pictured Brown with his hand uplifted and his other hand on Thomas's shoulder.  

(National Portrait Gallery)

(Nelson Atkins Museum of Art)

So, I began to use prompts that stated something like "John Brown the white abolitionist, posing with hand uplifted as if making a vow and his other hand on the shoulder of a black friend," or various efforts at this idea.  I omitted the fact that Thomas held the small "SPW" banner because I thought it was too much.  This was one of the better images rendered, although it is hardly what I expected:

Somewhat frustrated, I switched to the Dream AI generator and put in a simple prompt: "white John Brown making vow while placing hand on shoulder of a black man." In my simplicity, I figured I could possibly lead AI to get closer to the idea of the lost daguerreotype.  Instead, I got these interesting images based on my stilted prompt:

 While these AI images are all interesting, none of them came close to what I was hoping to get, although it is no surprise.  My prompt was simplistic and perhaps I was asking too much.  Like other AI images, there's a weirdness to these images although in some sense they do capture Brown's devotion and the pathos of his bond with black people.

From Kansas to Harper's Ferry

I'm closing this post with a couple of AI images based on simple prompts that went something like, "John Brown the white abolitionist" fighting pro-slavery forces in the Kansas territory," and "John Brown the white abolitionist" attacking Harper's Ferry with a group of white and black men.  Here is the Kansas image:

Quite weird, this John Brown in Kansas. The face, the hat, the uniform, and the way his hand melts into the suggestion of a weapon.  Nearby, a be-capped, bearded black man holds a weapon and turns as if looking to hear a word from Old Brown. Behind Brown are some strange-looking allies that suggest Star Wars more than antebellum Kansas.  AI is wonderful and weird.

Then, there's John Brown attacking Harper's Ferry.  This is what I got:

What the *&#.  Go figure. Both of them.

The first one shows John Brown brandishing some kind of rail in the air, with what looks like tall silos or buildings in the background.  I guess that's some kind of an attack.  The other is a bizarre, surreal rendering that strongly suggests conflict, and Brown seems to be the be-capped figure at the far right standing tall. There are sharp angles, movement, arms groping and extending, and the suggestion of fire or light breaking into the room.  I guess it's the Harper's Ferry engine house and Brown's last stand at the marine breakthrough.

This was definitely not a trip through history. It was not even a computer-generated survey-and-selection of available John Brown images.  It was like dreaming with  artificial intelligence, the bits and pieces of images and words, scrambled and rehashed, yet strangely discernible in a sense.

Maybe you'll want to play around with AI now that you've seen the weird fun it offers.

Postscript, Post-image

Oh, yes, before I close, I could not resist being a little silly.  So I tried one more thing.

I thought it might be fun to take a figure that is very familiar in western culture and then put him into an episode of pop culture television that most folks over forty will also recall, and therefore which might also be discernible to AI--the first interracial kiss broadcast on national television, with a little twist. 

And I was right. AI had no problem whatsoever getting the prompt.  Go figure.<>