Throughout this brief experiment, it quickly became clear the subtleties and nuances necessary to properly “speak” DALL-E’s algorithmic language. Sure, typing in phrases like you would in a text to friends can occasionally spit out something interesting, but more often than not it’s necessary to set the tool up for success with the right placement of nouns and verbs.
This was clearly evident when asking DALL-E to create a poster representative of Ridley Scott’s 1979 space horror classic Alien. When we first simply instructed DALL-E to make an “aliens poster” it produced several kitschy, cartoony images with great green monsters reminiscent of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons. When we refined the input to include the date of the film, however, and clarified that we were talking about a movie, DALL-E produced this interesting image. On the surface it’s nothing at all like the original poster and the word ‘alien’ is spelled wrong. Still though, it manages to capture the cold and dark blue aesthetics associated with the film. The image feels, above all else. Unquestionably “sci-fi.”