I've been working on my wargames rules, and had a useful exchange with Count Stryker, who has also been working on his. He provided some useful width to my views, and we worked up to the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" stage which, again, proved to be valuable.
Ian has been looking at AI as a development tool for his published rules, and our discussion got into that area. Interesting. I, of course, have been thinking vaguely about AI but have done nothing about it. I have always preferred to have my friends walk through the minefield before I have a go myself. Whatever, our discussion was interesting and potentially useful, and Ian kindly sent me an example of the sort of thing he has been doing with illustrations. This is one of my own photographs, of one of my own wargame units, uploaded to ChatGPT by Ian and rendered as a line drawing.
I realise this is kindergarten stuff as AI goes, but I am thunderstruck. I absolutely love this - it is a formal drawing of some of my little friends, produced apparently by magic, and I find it surprisingly touching - no idea why - I just love it. My sincere thanks to Stryker for sharing this with me - I shall take this whole topic more seriously in future.
If you're out there, Neil, please cross AI off my list - there's a good chap.
***** Late Edit *****
I decided to have a go myself, to see what I can manage with no experience at all. I uploaded a photo of my French Army Command Group to ChatGPT, and asked for it to be rendered as a traditional watercolour - this is the result, with no further editing...
I am very pleased. Nice little 20mm men.
Righto - this is now getting silly, but I thought I'd try one more before bedtime - here's the same photo, rendered in Baroque style (or what AI thinks is Baroque style). This is all Stryker's fault.
I'll think about Blenheim Palace Tapestry style tomorrow...
*********************
I'd say that shows the merits and demerits of AI. The outline version of the photo dispenses with all the colour and shadows and lets us concentrate on one point - it is a unit of 9 mounted figures. However, the AI seems confused as to whether it is a unit of three subunits or not, which could affect a wargame. Perhaps it has not been exposed on its home planet to quite such exactly shaped and placed sub-unit bases as your table sports.
ReplyDeleteInteresting - I'd say that's maybe a bit harsh. My original photo was certainly not brilliant - I think AI has identified things which were not clear, worked out what they are, and improved them a little, but the results are pleasing enough, if you happen to like them. The standard-bearer's right hans is a case in point - AI recognised this is a hand holding something, and produced some details itself. The gap between 2 of the subunits was invisible on the photo - that is preserved in the drawing. Maybe AI might have worked out that symmetry suggested that there should have been a gap there, and created one. This image is produced by ChatGPT - I have done a little playing about with Gemini, which is very good at finding things online, very enthusiastic, but gives up too early when it finds something relevant - first suspect is guilty, story is finished unless you challenge it, but it falls over itself to change its mind if challenged.
DeleteDon't put it in charge of spotting incoming missiles just yet.
I think AI is going to be present in most things we do in future, whether or not we are aware or agreeable, so I am gently interested in possible upsides. I'll play around with it. I understand it is very good at checking for consistency and producing summaries of things - I can see that might be useful, but I think I will be looking for suggestions rather than completed fakes!
Here's a thought. Are you in any way able to ask it how large it thinks what is depicting is? Does it 'think' this is a distant line of real cavalry or a nearby line of models? I think this might have something to do with whether the myriad photos it has been fed have more real or model horses among them
ReplyDeleteGood question - I'm going to have to guess here, since I didn't do the original upload to ChatGPT and there is no ongoing dialogue I can interrogate further. I guess it knows these are toys - the perfect repetition of the faces of the Higgins troopers suggest it is aware these are not real people, and the eliptical figure bases are probably a giveaway ["aha - Higgins horses - circa 1971"] - AI has seen lots of toy soldiers - it even can offer a suggested style of rules for a 1970s tabletop miniatures game! I doubt if it could guess how big the toys are - the photo has no items to contrast scale with - in fact I understand that if I left a teacup in the photo as a clue AI would be confused and might start making things up.
DeleteI suspect that there is a lengthy queue of toy-soldier enthusiasts supplying images and draft text - I'm not sure to what extent it carries forward its learning from request to request, but it obviously collects something along the way.
I have been feeding these into Google image search (too hot to do anything better). It thinks that no 1 is model soldiers (perhaps lancers!) on a display or gaming base, that no 2 is 'expertly painted' miniatures rendered with water colour and that no 3 is an actual painting in the Rijksmuseum (Breitner's Yellow Riders, 1886).
DeleteInteresting - not hugely impressive, maybe - perhaps we get an insight into why Google needed new AI offerings? Breitner's painting is dark and includes a few horses, not much else in common. Thanks for this.
DeleteAs I am somewhat detached from the modern world a lot of this is beyond me but I do find what AI can do is very interesting (often amusing).
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly well beyond me, Jim. For text exchanges, it plays tactical games, rearranging what you have told it and feeding it back to you as detail - some of the additional detail is derived from actual Internet records, and some of it is improvised, and can be well off-target. If I go back to Gemini and say it is completely wrong, it will apologise profusely and it seems to try a little harder from that point. I think there may be an algorithm at work - most of the queries are trivial, or maybe just exploratory. If the responses are followed up or corrected then it suddenly seems to be working more thoroughly.
DeleteI asked Gemini about some of my personal musical history, and gave it sufficient leads for it to make an impressive summary of things that happened between 40 and 25 years ago - all really good - unfortunately it was convinced I was a drummer, so we'll gloss over that! [maybe I was, and I forgot?]
AI does have its uses, that's for for!
ReplyDeleteNo doubt about it Ray - I'm going to try to get the hang of what it's good at. I want a photo of myself that's as handsome as the Jolly Broom Man's - maybe he paid extra for it?
DeleteYou already know I’m a convert on the image front. It is bloody amazing and costs nowt if you are happy to limit your experimentation to the the three or four free goes a day.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think I can maintain an open mind - I've seen some amazing things so far.
Deletethe figure base representation looks great - perhaps a hint at what we used to witness in wargame rule sets.
ReplyDeleteThanks Norm - this may also be connected to the fact that my soldiers look like what toy soldiers used to look like, long ago.
DeleteThat style of picture looks like it could be a useful way of illustrating a set of rules Tony. Is that what you were looking for?
ReplyDeleteI must say I'm looking forward to you being rendered in a periwig. From Maximilian Foy to Maximilian Emmanuel.
Hi Chris - in fact it was Stryker what done it - he just got one of my photos processed to show me what it could do. I am impressed - if I get one done of me as the Elector I'll get it rendered as a framed portrait. I quite fancy a watercolour too - or even a coloured line drawing...
DeleteTony, I'm afraid I still have misgivings about AI. There are some real ethical issues around water use for data centres for example.
ReplyDeleteWhile it can produce some stunning results, it can also produce doltry of the highest order. Advocates say all this will improve and it will soon be perfect....
My problem is that the original programming is done by humans, even if subsequent improvements are by AI itself. Now we all know just how perfect humans are.....
Some of what it can do is genuinely impressive, other things less so. A lot of the images are very samey. What is more disturbing is the way some images (females especially) generated by AI are disturbingly perfect or rather AI's ideal of perfection and oddly identical...
My real concern is the speed with which it is being adopted with few questions. It is making people very lazy and willing to accept dubious material as true. As if the world needs more stupid gullible people getting ideas from the internet.....
While I fight a desperate rearguard action, I'm aware most are only too willing to rely on it more and more....
Good luck when the power fails! I shall remain sceptical and prepared to throw metaphorical clogs into the AI machinery. After all the majority of the population did so well from the Industrial Revolution, didn't they?
I have enough problems with predictive text so I'm not rushing to join the throng. And here's a parting thought; what if Terminator and The Matrix were actually documentaries.....
Neil
I have misgivings too, but I think a lot of this is going to slow down, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money - developers are getting dodgy permissions and grants from governments, but are borrowing heavily to get these big centres started - there seems little likelihood of revenue streams capable of paying everyone back.
DeleteYet another Silicon Valley bubble? There are too many people talking about this without knowing much about it (including me, of course). It only requires a couple of Trump's pals to get singed on this, and the whole thing will calm down.
'what if Terminator and The Matrix were actually documentaries' ..... very good :-)
DeleteI'm loving the water colour Tony - perhaps you could ask for it now in the style of Baroque!
ReplyDeleteHi Ian - yes, I’ll try a few variations - I wonder if “in the style of the Bayeux tapestry” is available?
DeleteOur friend Mark at "1866 and All That" blog got Gemini to change his FPW Perry figures in a painting in the style of Édouard Detaille - they were amazing!
DeleteAs much as I have reservations about AI in many areas, the line drawing is quite charming, Tony... at least to those of us of a certain age! :-)
ReplyDeleteYes - Stryker started using that trick for his own manual, he takes photos of his beautiful Hinton-Hunts, and - bang - the line drawing conversion takes us right back to the 1970s!
DeleteAI is just a tool like any other, guns, knives, internet, etc. good or bad really just depends on what people use them for. I asked ChatGPT about what to use to make some roads, and it pointed me at some 0.5mm silicone sheet. It should get here in a day or two - I'll let you know whether or not AI really knows what it's talking about (it seemed to understand when I said I wanted to lay it over Hexon terrain tiles).
ReplyDeleteRighto - thanks for this Rob - looks like you got here just in time. It would be entertaining to hang out with ChatGPT and swap old stories about glues that never dry, basing materials that came up short, rules the cool guys don't use any more - fantastic. Please keep us posted.
DeleteI hope Rob lets us know how he gets on with the silicone, I’m looking for a similar solution on my hexon tiles.
DeleteToo right - this would be a valuable service in its own right, though my Grannie would have voiced suspicions that there were "sponsored" suggestions...
DeleteI will let you know when it gets here, but I forgot to check who was selling it, and 'lukasuk777' is apparently a Chinese firm, who'd have guessed. It is, reportedly, in the UK now so shouldn't be long.
DeleteBTW I just used ChatGPT again today. I had an image of some flint walling that I was trying to tile to create adhesive sheets that could applied the Donnington 'castle' I'm scratch-building (for 2nd Newbury). Obviously getting the joins between tiles (where there's a discontinuity in the patter) to not show up takes A LOT of messing around in MSPaint. So, I thought I'd ask AI to do it for me. I had to up load the picture I was using and the first three attempts weren't very good but the fourth was pretty good and is now stuck all over my castle. There will be a post on building this at some point.
Sorry for the delay but 2nd Newbury was taking up all my time. I've now posted some photos of the Silicone draped over some terrain on my blog.
Deletehttps://cabinettewars.blogspot.com/2026/08/tales-from-topographic-tables.html
Not great ...
Yes, AI image generation is quite incredible - but can also be a real rabbit hole of a time waster!
ReplyDeleteHi Keith - yes, I believe you are correct! Fortunately I have two advantages that should protect me:
ReplyDelete(1) I have always (where possible) refused to go along with fads, or to do things which public opinion told me I should
(2) These days I usually can't remember what it was I was excited about yesterday