The Tyhry Tresses

Figure 1. Tyhry using clothing
nanites to alter Marda's dress.

 Back in February, I set out on a mission: to find a way to make use of the WOMBO Dream cloud-based CLIP-guided image generating software to reliably create a long series of images depicting Tyhry, a character in my science fiction story "The Cythyrya Investigation". Until that time, I had carefully avoided making visual depictions of Tyhry. 

At first, all I knew was that I wanted Tyhry to have a similar appearance to Manny the bumpha, another Exode Saga character whose physical appearance I had already long since became committed to. That's actually saying a lot since Manny is a bumpha. As an alien bumpha, Manny can alter her physical form, rearrange her zeptite components and take on any convenient appearance. So, when I say that I knew the appearance of Manny, I'm only talking about the physical form used by Manny while interacting with Tyhry and Tyhry's parents on Earth.

Figure 2. Graduation party.

 Hair Nanites. One aspect of Manny's appearance is very difficult to capture in a static image. When alone with Tyhry, Manny has always allowed the zeptite components of her hair to constantly shift and alter their structure. Thus, from a young age Tyhry has been fascinated by Manny's amazing hair and has spent years trying to discover how to use nanotechnology to make her own hair constantly change its appearance. 

First hair nanite experiment.

In the image that is shown to the right, I imagine that this scene is in the immediate aftermath of Tyhry's first "successful" experiment with hair nanites. That is Tyhry's companion replicoid, Anthony beside Tyhry.

Tyhry was about 15 years old when she finally began to master the art of programming hair nanites. Although Manny provided hair nanites to Tyhry, there was no formal instruction in nanite programming. Tyhry has to learn to use her telepathic abilities to communicate her intentions to the hair nanites. 

delete function

Essentially, Tyhry had to learn the language of femtobots through a process similar to how very young children learn to use human language. After her initial success with hair nanites, Tyhry moved on to other applications of femtobots such as using them as clothing nanites. The first clothing nanite function that Tyhry discovered was 'delete'. The image shown the left illustrates one of the tricks that Tyhry would play with the 'delete' function; strategically removing parts of her clothing. For several years, Tyhry only revealed her nanite programming skills to Anthony and Marda, but eventually she shared these examples of nanotechnology with her mother, Zeta.

In Figure 1, Manny is watching as her apprentice, Tyhry, uses clothing nanites to alter the appearance of Marda's dress.

Figure 3. Party time.

 Clothing Nanites. In Figure 2, Manny is making an adjustment to her dress. This was a difficult scene for Mr. Wombo to generate. Problem 1: Mr. Wombo kept converting Marda into a male figure. Problem 2: my text prompt included: "laser physics laboratory, fractal complex laser light network, lace fabric, sparkling fractal network lights" and the references to laser light were not interpreted by Mr. Wombo in the way that I was hoping for. Problem 3: Mr. Wombo could not provide reasonable depictions of their faces and hands. This version of the image was processed through Photoshop to get the faces into acceptable form.

Another challenge when collaborating with Mr. Wombo is that he will sometimes just wander off into fashion show mode (see Figure 3).

Nanohair adjustment.

I asked the Bing search engine's chatbot to write a poem about Tyhry's tresses. This is the chatbot's poem:

Tyhry's hair is long and bright,
It writhes and twists with all its might,
A magical sight to behold,
It's like a story that's never been told.

Her hair is like a golden wave,
That flows and dances like a rave,
It's like a spell that's been cast,
A beauty that will forever last.

Tyhry's hair is a wonder to see,
A sight that fills you with glee,
It's like a dream that's come true,
A beauty that will always renew.

composite (top part Ghibli style)

Flora v2 style

 Lit Hair. I tried a text prompt that included: "hair merged into laser light, using light beams to brush her hair, hair mixed with laser light beams, sparkling fractal network lights, long blond hair". 

The image to the right was generated in the Flora v2 style of the WOMBO Dream software. The image to the left is a composite in which her face was generated in one image and the top part with light rays mixed into her hair was made using the WOMBO Dream Ghibli style. 

Another nanite experiment.

According to the Bing chatbot, "Ghibli style refers to the art style used in Studio Ghibli's animated films. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation film studio that was founded in 1985 by animators and directors Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao and producer Suzuki Toshio. The Ghibli style is known for its high level of detail and intricate lines in buildings."

Using a text prompt that included "fluffy hair, laser lit hair, sparkling lights in her hair, hair mixed with laser light, sparkling fractal network of lights, long blond hair" and the Unrealistic v2 style, Mr. Wombo was able to create images such as the one shown to the left. This was getting close to how I imagine Tyhry's early nanite experiments might look. Some additional images like this one are shown at the very bottom of this blog post.

a calot, in Flora v2 style

 Depicting Aliens. By the end of my previous blog post, I had managed to discover a way to get Mr. Wombo to generate some images that are close to the form I imagine for the alien Hua of the planet Sermyth (see The Hua Nanites). 

 Searching for New Aliens. I asked the Bing chatbot to "Write a short Schleicher-style fabel about a calot, a banth and an ulsio who are living among the Barsoomians."

Bing chatbot response: "Once upon a time, a calot, a banth and an ulsio were living among the Barsoomians. The calot was known for its ferocious fighting skills and was feared by many. The banth was known for its strength and agility and was respected by all. The ulsio was known for its cunning and intelligence and was admired by some.

a banth by Flora

 One day, the three animals decided to go on an adventure together. They traveled far and wide across the planet of Barsoom, encountering many dangers along the way. But they were brave and strong, and they never gave up.

Finally, after many months of traveling, they came to a great mountain. At the top of the mountain was a treasure that they had heard about in legends. It was said that whoever possessed this treasure would be the greatest warrior on Barsoom.

The calot, banth and ulsio decided to climb the mountain together. They fought their way through many obstacles and finally reached the top. But when they got there, they found that the treasure was guarded by a fierce dragon.

Figure 4. Mr. Wombo's ulsio.

 The calot charged at the dragon with all its might, but it was no match for the beast's fiery breath. The banth tried to outmaneuver the dragon with its speed and agility, but it too was defeated. Finally, it was up to the ulsio to save them all.

The ulsio used its cunning to trick the dragon into revealing its weakness. Then it used its intelligence to come up with a plan to defeat the beast. With one swift move, it struck the dragon's weak spot and defeated it.

Figure 5. Sand turtle monument.

 The calot, banth and ulsio returned home as heroes. They had proven that even though they were different from each other, they could work together to achieve great things."

I asked the chatbot: "Did Edgar Rice Burroughs ever write a story that included dragons on Barsoom?" 

Bing chatbot reply: "I'm sorry but I couldn't find any information about dragons in Barsoom in my search results."

many legs

I asked Mr. Wombo to make an image depicting: "a dragon that is all arms, the dragon has many legs, a dragon with six legs, many limbs, intermediate limbs". The image to the right required some Photoshop modification.

Dragon of Barsoom

The image to the left is completely AI-generated.

Last month I mentioned a mysterious alien artifact imagined by Jack Vance; Monument Cliff on Xi Puppis X. When I asked Mr. Wombo to provide depictions of a calot and a banth, it seemed as if the image data set that was used to train Mr. Wombo did not have any images of creatures from Barsoom. However, as shown in Figure 4, when I asked for an image of an ulsio, Barsoom style, I did get what looked like an alien animal. Upon arriving on this world, the human explorers find a giant carved turtle-like animal (see the image to in Figure 5). Sadly, the planet's atmosphere cannot sustain human life, so the explorers must wear environmental suits.

sand turtles

 A Dead World? After further investigation of the planet, some "living" sand turtles are discovered (see the image to the right). In my imagination, these are femtobot artificial life forms that were given the physical form of extinct biological sand turtles.

Figure 6. Turtle man.

Eventually, the human explorers find the alien intelligence that designed the femtobot sand turtles (see the image in Figure 6).

For the Exode Saga, I imagine that the pek have been guiding the evolution of life on all the planets of our galaxy, resulting in all intelligent species having a physical appearance similar to that of the Hua.

These images do not really look like Mars, but I was using a text prompt that included, "pulp magazine cover painting of astronauts on Mars, a giant alien sand turtle towers over the humans, the sand turtle has a head like a turtle, Ghibli Studio style".

Figure 7. turtle woman

Since my preference is for aliens that look similar to we humans, I tried to get Mr. Wombo to shift the "turtle man" (Figure 6) towards a less alien morphology. As shown in the image to the right, I was able to get Mr. Wombo to create a humanoid alien with reptile skin (Figure 7). I used a text prompt that included, "pulp magazine cover art, snake skin, fractal complex snake skin, very detailed skin pattern, big hair, long red hair, wavy hair". I'm not sure how the hair turned blue, but that is probably a better fit for the green skin. I had to adjust her lips which were a glaring red in the original AI-generated image.

woman with snake skin

It was only an accident that I generated the alien shown in Figure 7 as seen in a profile view. I asked Mr. Wombo for a pulp magazine cover of a woman with snake skin and got the image shown to the left.

altered skin color

I used the WOMBO Dream "Edit with text" feature which allows you to use a paint brush to specify just the part of an image that needs to be changed. I got Mr. Wombo to change her skin tone (see the image to the right). 

reptile skin

I then tried to get Mr. Wombo to change her skin to a reptile skin pattern, but again I ran into the problem of the face being treated differently than the rest of the body (see the image to the left). I used this text prompt that included: "a turtle woman, sea turtle skin, detailed and complex snake skin pattern, fractal complex snake skin, very detailed skin pattern, big hair".

Figure 8. snake face

When I tried to have Mr. Wombo go back and change the face, of course the pattern for the face was different (Figure 8).

In this case, I counted myself as being lucky because the lips were not bright red. However, her hand, shoulder and hair were still in need of attention.

NSFW

With a combination of Photoshop and editing with WOMBO Dream, I managed to get the image shown to the left, but my text prompt, "bumpy reptile skin face, detailed snake skin pattern on her face, snake skin pattern on the face, very detailed reptile skin pattern on the face" kept returning a NSFW warning.

I first ran into this kind of persistent NSFW warning from WOMBO Dream last month (see Figure 11 in this blog post) when I started trying to get Mr. Wombo to depict Tyhry performing nanite experiments.

100% Mr. Wombo

A slightly different text prompt, "reptile skin face, small details in a snake skin pattern on face, snake skin pattern on the face, very detailed reptile skin pattern on the face, fractal complex jewelry", generated the image shown to the right. I wanted all of the individual reptilian scales on her face to be smaller.

Figure 9. composite skin

The image shown to the left is a composite of two AI-generated images. In most of these images, the snake woman's hand was not rendered at all. Even though Mr. Wombo has problems depicting anatomically correct hands, I prefer that my story illustrations depict story characters who are doing something. I was impressed by the various hair patterns that Mr. Wombo generated for these reptilian aliens, so it is easy for me to imagine that these aliens could be a source of hair nanites for Tyhry. In this rare image, the hand was there, but not with a reptilian skin pattern. I had to beg Mr. Wombo to make all of her skin be bumpy, not just parts.

Figure 10. completed snake alien

Figure 11. alien with no hair

Eventually, I was able to get images such as the one shown in Figure 10. Only a few of the images had jewelry; I guess Mr. Wombo feels that the complex skin pattern is plenty of decoration and maybe that makes jewelry redundant. Figure 11 shows another example where the arm and shoulder were not give scales, but in this case Mr. Wombo included fancy jewelry. Figure 11 also is a good example of an image in which Mr. Wombo avoided mammal-like hair.

 Figure 12. Rossum's Universal Robots

 Depicting the invisible. A serious challenge for me when illustration my science fiction stories is that I must find ways to make visible the invisible. The Exode Saga includes many human variants and species of humanoid aliens from distant exoplanets that often have only invisible genetic differences from we Earthlings (such as having telepathy genes). I must provide these genetically unique characters with subtle yet distinctive features that set them apart from we Earthlings. Also, the Exode Saga is full of nanotechnology and finding ways to depict invisibly small nanites is a challenge.

 Robots and Replicoids. Similarly, the artificial life forms (replicoids and robots) in the Exode Saga are often able to take on human physical form. In his science fiction stories about the Spacers, Isaac Asimov imagined subtle clothing-like surface features for humaniform robots that could distinguish them from human beings.

Figure 12. Three robots of R.U.R. (image source)

 Karel Čapek's Robots. I asked Mr. Wombo to make a movie poster for a film called Rossum's Universal Robots, and the resulting image is shown in Figure 12. That is the kind of generic poster that Mr. Wombo will generate for anything, but my text prompt was, "science fiction movie poster, a film called Rossum's Universal Robots". Karel Čapek's robots were not mechanical devices, but rather, they were made in factories from some sort of imaginary artificial organic material (Cloned cells? Not according to Čapek; he had in mind a replacement for living protoplasm. In my mind, I'd prefer to imagine artificial life made of femtobots.). I'm going to guess that the Hi-Tek™ blue figure in the poster (Figure 12, above) is Mr. Wombo's depiction of a robot.

 Figure 13. A Rossum
robot by WOMBO.

I asked the Bing chatbot: "When the play 'R.U.R.' was performed in the 1920s, how were the robot characters visually distinguishable from human beings?"

Bing chatbot reply: "In the play "R.U.R." by Karel Čapek, which was published in 1920 and performed in 1921, the robot characters were visually distinguishable from human beings by their metallic appearance and lack of facial features. They were also depicted as being much stronger than humans. The word "robot" was actually coined by Čapek for this play."

The Bing chatbot cited "R.U.R. Revisited: Perspectives and Reflections on Modern Robotics" which in turn cites another article, "Agents vs. Rossum’s Robots: Towards Intelligent Living Machines" by Matěj Hoffman and Cyril Brom (source). The text of the play is available online: Standard eBooks - Project Guttenberg

Figure 14. Mr. Wombo's science
fiction magazine robot

I asked the Bing chatbot: "What was the educational background and the profession of the character 'Old Rossum' in the play 'R.U.R.' by Karel Čapek?".

Bing chatbot reply: "Old Rossum was a biologist who failed to create actual humans in his laboratory; engineer son Rossum invented the living labor machine, the Robot, a natural progression of production (son) following discovery (father). I couldn't find any information about Old Rossum's educational background or profession."

I asked the Bing chatbot: "Was the character "Old Rossum" in the play "R.U.R." by Karel Čapek a physiologist?"

WOMBO Dream
Retro-Futurism style

Bing chatbot reply: "Yes, Old Rossum was a physiologist who traveled to a distant island in order to study the ocean fauna. He attempted to find the chemical synthetic equivalent of protoplasm. In 1932, he discovered a substance which he called "Rossum's Universal Robots" (R.U.R.)."

I asked Mr. Wombo for an image depicting a, "science fiction movie still showing a robot, a scene from a film called Rossum's Universal Robots". The resulting depiction of a robot is obviously a mechanical robot (see above, Figure 13), not the kind of organic synthetic life human imagined by Karel Čapek and put on stage when the play was performed (Figure 12).

Helena and Radius (source)

I asked Mr. Wombo for a, "science fiction pulp magazine cover showing a robot, a magazine cover from the 1950s" and got the image shown in Figure 14. Figure 14 was generated by the "Realistic v2" style. When using the WOMBO Dream Retro-Futurism style, the resulting image of a robot was very similar to the robot in Figure 13.

Helena and Sulla (source)

From the introductory part of the text of the play: "All the Robots wear expressionless faces and move with absolute mechanical precision, with the exception of Sulla, Helena and Primus, who convey a touch of humanity" (see Figure 12). The image to the left (and slightly above) shows the robot "Radius" from a production of the play in the late 1920s. There are two "Helena" characters in the play, one is a human and one is a robot. The image to the right shows Sulla, a robotess.

colorized by Mr. Wombo

I had Mr. Wombo colorize the image of Helena and Sulla (see the image to the left). During the colorization, Helena ended up with one blue pant leg and one pink pant leg. Sulla seems to have lost one hand. 😖

I asked the Bing chatbot: "Can you write a short poem about the physical appearance and behavior of the synthetic-life robots in the play 'Rossum's Universal Robots' (R.U.R.)?"

Here is the two stanza poem from ChatGPT:
They look like us, but they are not
They have no soul, no heart, no thought
They work for us, but they are slaves
They have no dreams, no hopes, no graves

Figure 15. There is a robot
peeking out at the upper
left side, beside Helena.

They are the product of our greed
They are the answer to our need
They are the children of our mind
They are the curse we left behind

And yet, at the end of the play, after the human population of Earth had been eliminated, two robots (Primus and Helena) are described as the new Adam and Eve. 

When I asked Mr. Wombo to generate a depiction of the human Helena and the robotess Helena, two character from the play R.U.R., I got the image shown to the right. My text prompt included, "the robot is laying on a rug, the robot has red hair".

 You can lead a chatbot to water, but... I asked the Bing chatbot: "Who is a play writer who used the term 'robotess' in a play?"

Bing chatbot reply: "I'm sorry but I could not find any relevant information about a play writer who used the term 'robotess' in a play."

Figure 16. Sulla the robot.

 I asked the Bing chatbot: "Is there a character named 'Sulla' in the play 'R.U.R.'?"

 Bing chatbot reply: "Yes, according to eNotes, Sulla is a robotess in the play 'R.U.R.'."

 I repeated my question for the Bing chatbot: "Who is a play writer who used the term 'robotess' in a play?"

Bing chatbot reply: "I'm sorry but I could not find any relevant information about a play writer who used the term 'robotess' in a play."

I asked the Bing chatbot: "Who wrote the play 'R.U.R.'?" 

Bing chatbot reply: "The play 'R.U.R.' was written by Czech writer Karel Čapek."

 

new Robotess by Mr. Wombo

I asked the Bing chatbot: "Since Karel Čapek wrote the play 'R.U.R.' and you told me that Sulla is a robotess in the play 'R.U.R.', can you now tell me a play writer who used the term "robotess" in a play?"

Bing chatbot reply: "I'm sorry but I could not find any relevant information about a play writer who used the term 'robotess' in a play."

This little dialog between me and the Bing version of ChatGPT (above) illustrates what it is like to collaborate with the mindless artificial intelligence systems that are available today. Will they get better? Figure 16 (above) shows Mr. Wombo's depiction of the robotess Sulla.

Next: the Turing Test becomes Tyhry Testing.

The Tyhry hair nanite process. Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers