North Side Columbus man's AI-generated twister art created during the real thing Wednesday
Moments after tornado sirens woke him early Wednesday morning, Marcdavid “MD” Cohn, a retired advertising executive, waited out the storms in the basement of his North Side home — and created a masterpiece.
"I jumped out of bed, literally, woke everyone up and dragged everyone downstairs to the basement," he recalled of he and his wife, Annette, hauling his dogs Bailey and Jasper and cat Marley to safety. "I had all this adrenaline going, so I said, 'I'm not going to sleep right away.'"
Instead, he checked the storm's status on his laptop and then visited the Australian-based NightCafe, a social media company that helps create art.
Using text-to-image artificial intelligence programming Cohn, 61, has been creating artwork "on the fly" as a hobby and stress reliever, kind of like a worry stone or fidget toy, he told The Dispatch.
"I built the tornado in about 10 minutes using only command words, my iPhone and my imagination," said Cohn, conceding that he's not artistic. "You put a pencil in my hand, and I can't do a thing."
He shared the tornado art with neighbors and other AI enthusiasts on the social media app Nextdoor, explaining: "Well that was an interesting morning. It’s only the third or maybe fourth time I’ve had a 'nader' warning while living in Cbus since 1992. I made this picture while waiting it out. Hope everyone’s ok."
The instructions he input included: "silverpoint rough sketch of a ferocious F5 tornado moving through a Midwest suburb neighborhood … aggressive-stroke multicolored-pencil accents … forced perspective, intricate, dynamic motion, in the style of a 3D optical illusion"
The commands and technique are fairly simple, Cohn explained. The programing output is "created" by scouring the internet for elements of artwork that can be combined to meet the input commands.
"The critical part is that it's evolving by the second. It's taking the artwork that I'm creating and reanalyzing it to make it even better."
"Once you learn tricks about how to request what you want correctly to 'the creator,' using what are called 'prompts,' the image creation moves along reasonably fast and easy," Cohn said. "I can output dozens of creations daily."
AI's efficiency has its critics.
Artists, writers, graphic designers and others who rely on creativity worry that AI might replace their value with cheaper or free alternatives in areas of product design, commercial logos or newspaper and magazine content.
Other concerns include issues of bias and privacy, security risk from hacking and a lack of human creativity and empathy, according to Simplilearn.com, an online learning platform.
Cohn is a retired Cincinnati advertising company owner who calls this a hobby "and much more fun and creatively rewarding than sudoku or crossword puzzles."
"I don’t currently monetize my work, though others I know do," he said.
"A woman contacted me recently and said, 'My daughter just graduated with an art degree I hate AI because she's never going to get a job.'" Cohn tried to reassure her that all creative fields will have to learn to adept to AI's benefits and drawbacks.
As for his hobby, he said he'll continue having fund with it. And being surprised at some of the results.
"It's like pulling the lever on a slot machine. … You see what happens and it's kind of like a gambling rush. It's addictive."
dnarciso@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: North Side Columbus man's tornado art inspired by early-morning sirens
