I enjoy science fiction stories about baseball. Back in 2022, I tried to find all of the old science fiction stories about baseball that were published in science fiction magazines (see my blog post "
Sci Fi Baseball").
See also: AI-generated
2023 baseball.
In 2024 I had a blog post called "Science Fiction Baseball" in which I experiment with AI-generated images of some strange baseball scenes such as alien plant creatures playing baseball. Also in 2024 was "Alien Ghosts On Second" in which invisible aliens play as the "ghost" runners for extra innings of baseball games.
The arm-bat. Here in 2025, I tried to get an AI-generated image of a humanoid robot that was designed so as to have just one arm that is shaped like a bat. However, I suspect there are no images of a robot with a bat-like arm in the training sets that are being used by
ImageFX,
WOMBO Dream,
Gemini,
Whisk or
Leonardo.
Text prompt #1: "A humanoid robot playing baseball. One of the humanoid robot's arms is shaped like a baseball bat. The humanoid robot is at home plate and trying to hit the pitched ball by swinging its bat-like arm."
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Figure 1c. Generated by Gemini.
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Each of the five text-to-image systems that I experimented with has its own preferred style for depicting a humanoid robot. As shown in
Figure 1a, ImageFX seemed to try to put the name of a baseball team on the front of the robot in large red letters. ✅
Safety First. Leonardo (see Figure 1b) tried to dress the robot like a baseball player, even providing a batting helmet. ✅ I also like Leonardo's robot because it has a face that is much more human than those generated by the other image generators. ✅ Some of the AI-generated baseball-playing robots were shown during a night game.
The robot stance. I was impressed by the shinny metallic surface that Gemini used for its robot that is shown in Figure 1c. All of these image generators struggle with the correct way to stand at home plate. Gemini's robot seems to be standing with one foot in the left-side batters box and the other foot in the right-side batters box.
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Figure 1e. Image generated by Whisk.
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The robot that was generated by
WOMBO Dream (see
Figure 1d) also got a batting helmet.
Shown in Figure 1e is an image that was generated by Whisk when using text prompt #1. Whisk's image is amusing it that 1) the batter is wearing what looks like an old-fashioned catcher's mask, 2) the robot has an interesting grip on the bat, 3) the image seems to have been given "motion lines" to show that the bat is moving and 4) the robot almost got positioned in the batter's box. ✅
I asked
Claude for help in generating a better text prompt that would include these features in an image: 1) One arm of the robot should be shaped like a baseball bat and 2) The robot should not be holding a bat in its hands.
Claude suggested text prompt #2: "A humanoid robot at home plate in a baseball stadium. The robot's right arm is completely transformed into and shaped like a wooden baseball bat from shoulder to tip, with no hand or fingers. The robot's left arm is normal with a regular robotic hand. The robot is in a batting stance, swinging its bat-shaped right arm to hit an incoming baseball. The robot is not holding any separate bat - its arm IS the bat. Realistic lighting, professional baseball field background."
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Figure 2b. Generated by Leonardo.
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The image that was generated for text prompt #2 by ImageFX (see
Figure 2a) was creative; the robot seems to have three arms, two arms hold the bat and one arm is catching a ball in a glove. The robot is also carefully placing a toe on home plate while a second baseball sails by over head.
The image that was generated for text prompt #2 by Leonardo is shown in Figure 2b. Leonardo seemed to be very confused by this text prompt. One of the robot's arms seems to have broken off at the elbow joint. The robot is holding two bats, one of which appears to be successfully hitting the ball behind the robot's back.
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| Figure 2c. Generated by Whisk. |
The image that was generated by Whisk for text prompt #2 is shown in Figure 2c. In this image, Whisk tentatively began to alter the left arm of the robot, making part of the arm have a wood-like color. ✅
For the image shown in Figure 2c, Whisk seems to be making sure that there is good lighting for this day-time baseball game, so the arrays of lights above the stands are blazing. While the stands are full of fans, sadly there are no other players on the field with the robot. This robot seems to be trying to hit the ball into the first base-side dugout. I love the finely-crafted robot toes.
Claude suggested text prompt #3: "
A futuristic humanoid robot with a cybernetic prosthetic arm replacement. Where a normal right arm would be, the robot has a solid wooden baseball bat permanently attached at the shoulder joint. The bat extends straight down from the shoulder socket with no elbow, forearm, or hand - just a smooth wooden baseball bat as the entire right limb. The robot's left arm is completely normal with fingers and a hand. The robot is positioned at home plate, rotating its torso to swing the bat-arm at a pitched baseball. No traditional baseball bat is being held. The bat IS the robot's right arm prosthetic. Stadium background, dramatic lighting."
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| Figure 3b-i. A "two headed bat" generated by Leonardo. |
Text prompt #3 seemed to confuse ImageFX (see
Figure 3a). Maybe robots can increase their chance of getting a hit by using two bats at the same time. Maybe the batting stance of one foot on each side of the plate is for robots with no pain receptors and that do not care if they are hit by a pitch.
Two heads are better than one. With text prompt #3, Leonardo was inspired to invent the "two headed bat" (see Figures 3b-i and 3b-ii). Sometimes Leonardo gets creative with text that it adds to images. In the case of the image that is shown in Figure 3b-i, the text that is on the bat does not make much sense. I'll guess that it was an attempt to label the bat as "official" and to include a brand name.
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| Figure 3b-ii. Another "two headed bat" generated by Leonardo. |
In the case of
Figures 3b-ii, Leonardo managed to get
THREE bat heads into the scene. Maybe it would be possible for an umpire to call three simultaneous strikes on one swing if this robot used the two-headed bat and that second bat all at the same time.
Both Gemini and Whisk had some success when using text prompt #3 (see Figure 3C, below). I'm not sure if both Whisk and the free version of Gemini are currently using the same Imagen version, but they both generated an image that appears to show a robot with a "bat arm" and each robot has a similar "upper arm adapter", although only the Whisk-generated version has a wood-colored adapter. ✅
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Figure 3C. Two robots with a "bat arm". Left panel -Generated by Gemini. Right panel -generated by Whisk.
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Figure 4. Another two-headed bat generated by Leonardo.
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Another two-headed bat innovation by Leonardo is shown in
Figure 4. I specified that Leonardo should begin generating 'female humanoid robots' with long blond hair.
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| Figure 5. Generated by Leonardo. |
Text me. The image that is shown in
Figure 5 seems to be set inside a stadium in "Sacket Texas" where there are no fans in the stands. In this case, it is not clear why she is there behind home plate and holding her bat like a club.
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| Figure 6. Generated by Leonardo. |
Make her better than before. In some of these Leonardo-generated images, the robot was given what looks like a perfectly human face while retaining mechanical arms (for example, see Figure 6). Maybe Leonardo is generating images of cyborgs: women who have been given artificial arms.
No bat-arms for you! It is not clear that Leonardo knows how to generate a sensible image of a bat or a pair of hands on a bat. In Figure 6, it is not clear that a sensible bat handle was actually generated by Leonardo. These problems were probably compounded by my text prompts that requested images of someone who was not actually holding a bat in their hands, but rather has an arm that is shaped like a bat. In many attempts, Leonardo could never successfully generate a robot with a bat-like arm.
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| Figure 7. Generated by Leonardo. |
The Leonardo-generated image that is shown in
Figure 7 is interesting for several reasons. First, Leonardo placed a bunch of numbers at the top of the image. Second, this appears to be another bat with two heads. Third, Leonardo seemed to turn part of her arm into pieces of wood.
Go Batty. It is fun to challenge the text-to-image systems to generate interesting alien creatures. Alien baseball text prompt (prompt #4): "
A humanoid alien female who has beautiful translucent bat-like wings is at home plate during a baseball game. She is swinging a baseball bat. She has wavy blond hair. She has long and graceful legs and a slim waist. She is hitting a pitched baseball with her bat during baseball game on the infield of a major league baseball stadium."
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| Figure 9. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image shown in
Figure 8 was generated by
WOMBO Dream using the combination of text prompt #4 and a reference image that had been generated by Leonardo (see
Figure 9). The text prompt for
Figure 9 began as: "
A humanoid alien female who has beautiful translucent bat-like wings is at home plate during a baseball game. The humanoid alien female is swinging a glowing plastic baseball bat. The humanoid alien female has wavy blond hair. The humanoid alien female has long and graceful legs and a slim waist. The humanoid alien female is hitting a pitched baseball with her bat during baseball game on the infield of a major league baseball stadium." (text prompt #5) However, Leonardo "flow-state" constantly modifies the text prompt.
WOMBO Dream was willing to make non-human faces for these aliens with bat-like wings. The face shown in
Figure 8 was actually generated separately by
Mr. Wombo and pasted in to replace a scowling face that I did not like. The image that is shown in
Figure 10 is unaltered. Unlike the "bat-like alien" in
Figure 8 which had both a small human-like ear along with the large "bat ears", the alien in
Figure 10 has one pair of ears and a non-human face that seems to go nicely with her wings.
The Bluesox baseball team. Using exactly the same text prompt (prompt #4) Mr. Wombo often did not bother generating any wings (for example, see
Figure 11). My text prompts NEVER specified large ears for any of these images, but the AIs have their own definite "ideas" about how to depict humanoid bat creatures.
As shown in
Figure 12, some of the aliens generated by Mr. Wombo had horns. WOMBO Dream seemed to like the idea of getting creative with home plate, sometimes depicting it as a rounded baseball-like structure embedded in the ground. For
Figure 12, there are two strange rectangular objects on the ground along with a baseball.
Some more of the diversity in image styles that was possible with WOMBO Dream is indicated by the images in
Figures 13 and
14. These images were made using text prompt #4 and no reference image.
In Figure 13, the batter looks like a conventional human in a standard baseball uniform, except for the wings.
The image shown in
Figure 14 was rather unusual. This alien was put into a dress and given a near-human appearance. I guess her painted eyes are supposed to give her a "bat girl" appearance... or something.
The image shown in
Figure 15 was accented by what looks like a base rather than home plate and a stray baseball over her head. This is why batters should wear helmets. Her left hand has a real serious glove that goes half way to her elbow. The back-lit wings are impressive.
The image that is shown in
Figure 16 is one of the WOMBO Dream-generated images that gives Leonardo competition in the art of adding text to images. Maybe this alien is simply called "Bat" by her team mates.
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| Figure 17. Generated by Leonardo. |
Yellow Bats. The image shown in
Figure 17 was generated by Leonardo with a text prompt that included "
glowing plastic baseball bat" (text prompt #5, above). I was tempted to manually add a baseball to the scene in
Figure 17, but I'm not convinced that this alien with bat-like wings is actually playing baseball.
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| Figure 18. Generated by Leonardo. |
The Leonardo-generated image that is shown in
Figure 18 illustrates several tendencies of the Leonardo "flow state" image generating system. 1) Leonardo often gives robots more than five fingers on a hand. 2) In
Figure 18 it looks like her hand might not be connected to an arm. 3) The "bat" she is holding is not really shaped like a baseball bat.
A similar Leonardo-generated image is shown in Figure 19. By my count, the hand in Figure 18 has six fingers while the hand in Figure 19 has seven fingers (see below). The images in Figures 18 and 19 are right at the edge of giving the robot a slightly artificial face.
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| Figure 19. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image that is shown below in
Figure 20 (below) illustrates how Leonard fails to comply with conventional physics. 1) Her right hand seems to merge into the structure of the bat handle. 2) The bat seems to have been inserted through her hair, like a needle pushed through a fabric.
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| Figure 20. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image shown in
Figure 21 (below) illustrates how Leonardo was tempted to "dress" a baseball-playing robot in a traditional plasticoid body "suit" that really looks very little like a baseball uniform. Also, notice that her right hand in
Figure 21 apparently has six fingers (assuming there is a hidden thumb behind the bat.
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| Figure 21. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image shown in
Figure 22 (below) is an example of a Leonardo-generated image in which some effort was made to provide the robot with what looks more like a baseball uniform.
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| Figure 22. By Leonardo. |
The images in both Figure 21 and Figure 22 have an innovative bat feature; black rings. In my imagination, these bats can be assembled from pieces that screw together at the locations of the black rings. In Figure 22, Leonardo almost generated a reasonable two-handed grip on the handle of the bat. ✅
Leonardo is the master of dropping seeming random bits of text into AI-generated images. In Figure 23 (below), "LTC" stands for Lathe Turned Club, the name of a baseball team and also the special lathe turned bats that they have pioneered.
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| Figure 23. Generated by Leonardo. |
Another bat innovation by Leonardo is shown in
Figure 23; the "lathe turned club", a special bat that rather than having a smooth profile from end to end has at least one precipitous discontinuity.
ImageFX had specific preferences for making a bat-winged humanoid alien, preferences that did not include cute baseball players with human-like faces (see Figure 24). I was tempted to try to get ImageFX to put a baseball uniform on its bat-wing alien, but I moved on to Whisk which generated the image shown in Figure 25 (below).
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| Fragexa the bat girl. Figure 25. Generated by Whisk. |
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| Figure 26. Generated by Leonardo. |
Another bat innovation by Leonardo is shown in
Figure 26. It looks like her bat has two handle-like ends. Some of the baseball players with bat-like wings that were generated by Leonardo were inexplicably placed somewhere in the stands rather than out on the field.
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| Figure 27. Generated by Leonardo. |
Leonardo seemingly wanted to have some of these cute aliens with bat-like wings walk down a red carpet (see Figure 27), but maybe this baseball stadium simply has some very red soil.
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| Figure 28. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image shown in
Figure 28 was modified to change the text on the bat to "futures". Leonardo has always had trouble "keeping it together" when performing
stable diffusion. In this example, it looks like she only has a single bat wing and Leonardo could not be bothered to make the upper body point in the same direction as the lower body. Some other examples of Leonardo struggling to orient body parts are shown
here and
here.
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| Figure 29. Generated by Leonardo. |
Last year there was talk of "
see-through uniforms" in MLB. The image shown in
Figure 29 illustrates what I'll call one of Leonardo's see-through baseball uniforms.
Asking Leonardo to generate images of Neanderthal women or female space aliens seems to increase the chances that Leonardo will forget to put clothing on the ladies.
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| Figure 30. Generated by Leonardo. |
The image shown in
Figure 30 has an alien woman with blue skin. I don't care to argue the question of if she is wearing a translucent or transparent uniform.
Maybe some alien baseball teams of the future will intentionally distract opposing teams with their strategically designed uniforms. Some of the Leonardo-generated images of baseball players seemed to provide the women with uniforms that left their breasts uncovered or possibly sheathed in translucent fabric (see Figure 31).
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| Figure 31. Generated by Leonardo. |
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| Figure 32. Generated by Leonardo. |
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| Figure 33. Generated by Leonardo. |
A close-up from
Figure 31 is shown in
Figure 32. As shown in
Figure 33, sometimes Leonardo could not resist the temptation to put high heels on a baseball player. These images show Leonardo's on-going struggle to decide on ears vs horns and even how many ears and horns to include in each image.
In some cases, as shown below, the alien humanoid baseball players with bat-like wings were clearly depicted by Leonardo as wearing either short shorts (Figure 34a) or possibly underwear (Figure 34b).
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Figure 34a (left) and 34b (right). Generated by Leonardo.
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Fabric shortages. In some Leonardo-generated images (see Figure 35), it was apparently too much effort to include both tops and bottoms in the same image.
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Figure 35. Generated by Leonardo. Left (1), bottomless. Right (3), topless. Click the image to enlarge.
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Leonardo did display some confusion about how to position the bat-like wings. In the first panel of Figure 36, Leonardo seemed to completely give up on the task of trying to figure out how to attach bat-like wings to the back of a woman, alien or otherwise.
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| Figure 36. Generated by Leonardo. Click the image to enlarge. |
Next: the Metamorph Intervention.
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