Having completed the 48,000 word-long science fiction story "The RNA Seeds", I used Google's Flow Music to turn "The RNA Seeds" into a musical. That musical version of the story (titled "RNA the Musical") ended up including 26 songs, each about 3 minutes in duration.
Google's Flow Music has a feature called "Spaces" which I used to make an alien voice synthesizer and a tool for displaying illustrated liner notes for each song in the "RNA the Musical" playlist. These were my first two experiments in vibe coding. The user interface for the liner notes display tool is shown below in Figure 1...
I ran into several problems while experimenting with Google's Flow Music. I've still never paid for any AI service, so everything described on this blog page pertains to the free version of Google's Flow Music. I started with Google's Flow Music by using an older version of the Firefox browser and I created an account with the user name "Tyhry". Quite quickly, I created a second account with user name "Eddy Watson" which I use with Google's Chrome browser. However, there seem to be bugs in Google's Flow Music (see below in Figure 2) that are so severe as to occasionally crash even my newer computer when running Chrome.
Figure 2. A Flow Music error message.
Eventually, I learned that there is a problem with Flow Music if Chrome browser is set to us my Mac's graphics chip for "extra" processing power. After I turned off that option in Chrome (Settings> System> toggle OFF "Use graphics acceleration when available"), the Flow Music-induced crashes became less frequent.
Figure 4. User preferences.
The main set of tabs in the Flow Music user interface is shown to the right in Figure 3. The tab that is labeled "Tyhry FREE" opens up another set of tabs that are essentially user preferences and user-specific information such as "credits" (see Figure 4, to the left). A new Flow Music account starts with 500 credits. I get a deduction of credits when I use Flow Music's AI to generate songs, but each day I get some "daily free credits".
Clicking on the "Profile" tab that is shown in Figure 3, opens a profile page like the one shown below in Figure 5. Flow Music makes it fairly effortless to add images. You can either enter a text prompt and get an AI-generated image or you can upload images the are 5 MB and smaller. Shown in Figure 5, below, is a banner image for the "Tyhry" account that was made using Google's text-to-image Flow software. In many of my science fiction stories, I like to imagine that Tyhry is a human variant, a tryp'At.
Figure 5. Flow Music user profile page for user "Tyhry".
Figure 6. Account settings.
One of the Google Flow Music features is seen above in Figure 5. As long as you are using Google's Flow Music, at the bottom of your browser page is a song player.
In a user's account settings (see Figure 6, to the right), one of the options is to force "clean lyrics only". Apparently, when active, this preference setting ensures that all song lyrics Flow Music generates will be PG and not include "dirty" words. In my own songs, I have not explored how "dirty" Flow Music can get (but see "Kindred Dick"). When I searched for "dirty" I found "Low-Down Dirty". My search for "sexy" turned up "Sexy Temptress". The only song that Flow Music generated for me which seems at all "racy" is "Load Bearing".
The song "Load Bearing" was generated spontaneously by Flow Music while it was making up "alien voices" for several of the characters in "The RNA Seeds" (see this session). "Load Bearing" is a song for Klaudy the robot, who is a character in "The RNA Seeds". During that vibe coding session, the Flow Music "Producer" AI had just worked on a voice for Systolina when it then suggested, "Klaudy the Manikoid robot might be an interesting contrast with those "industrial mechanical textures." I clicked on one of the AI-generated "suggested replies" which was "Refine Klaudy's voice". Google's Flow Music then generated the lyrics for the song "Load Bearing".
"Learn More"
Google's Flow Music has an annoying "system" of credits, points, levels and badges. Users begin in the "learning" level and can progress to a "debut" level after "earning" 1000 points. The tab/page titled "Customize Producer" (see below, Figure 7) can be reached by clicking on the tab in the main interface (Figure 3) that displays your current number of points.
Figure 7. The "Customize Producer"page/tab.
One of my Google Flow Music playlists (titled "Meta Music" is for songs about the "joys" of using Flow Music and other AI software. Google's Flow Music automatically remembers things about users. What the AI has learned about you can be viewed by clicking the "Memories" tab that is on the "Customize Producer" page (Figure 7). One of the things that Flow Music has learned about me is: "user often creates songs satirizing their experience with Producer and the platform's limitations"
Flow Music Blurb. Click image to enlarge.
There is a blog for Flow Music which seems to have only one entry from March 2025. I suppose Google has a rule that all of its "apps" need to have a blog, so ✅.
Figure 8. Flow Music on Discord.
I believe that this is the main page for Flow Music documentation, which quickly links users to a discord server. Back when Goggle's Whisk was still in existence, I explored the discord for Whisk and found it to be pretty useless, so I did not rush to investigate the Flow Music discord server space. The "good folks" at Google Labs seem to enjoy spewing jargon on their Discord server space.
Figure 9. Google Labs on Discord.
I find the entire Discord interface to be confusing and irritating to navigate (see Figure 9 for an example).
pay for x-tra features
Of course, they have some kind of freemium system with for-pay services and advertising that supports the whole Discord operation, but I use an ad blocker on my browser, so who knows what I'm missing?
I'm certainly not missing the annoying Discord popup windows that are integral to the Discord software and can't be blocked by an ad blocker (example in Figure 10, below).
Judging from what I see on the Google Flow Music discord server, Flow Music has gone through several iterations since 2022 including an existence as "Riffusion" before being acquired by Google in early 2026.
Figure 10. An X-box ad on Discord.
Duet format
The first thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was a
tutorial from a user who is struggling to get Flow Music to do what they
want it to do. I suspect that the people at Google do not even know how
Flow Music works. They bought the Producer AI from someone else and
they can't even explain to users how to use it.
The second thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was the recommendation to use "Da Vinci Resolve" rather than Flow Music. Based on what I see in the 179 MB instruction manual for Da Vinci Resolve, it is similar to iMovie and allows you to put together music and video tracks.
The third thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was discussion of long-term users of Riffusion trying to adapt to the changes that have been made to the software by Google.
I then searched the Flow Music discord server space for "duet" and found a set of instructions from what looks like some random user (see the image to the right). I tried asking Producer about those instructions and it agreed they seem reasonable. I really dislike software for which users are forced to guess how to use it.
Other Problems. The chat sessions with Producer have a length limit. When I was building a Space (see the song "Flow Music Spaces"), I ran into the length limit and that inspired another song ("Vibecode 22").
Flow Music struggles to pronounce many English words correctly.
Flow Music seemingly randomly repeats some song lyrics lines and drops other lines.
As for all generative AI systems, users have to experiment and find out what the limitations of Flow Music are and try to work around those limitations. Here are instructions created by Claude:
Figure 11. Helpful instructions by Claude. Click to enlarge.
To make "RNA the Musical", I provided song ideas and song titles to Claude. Claude then generated lyrics for each song along with music production instructions. Those lyrics and music production instructions were then provided to Flow Music which generated the music for each song.
If you click on the "Flow Music" button in the upper left corner of the Flow Music interface (see Figure 3) it opens up a "welcome" page that looks like this:
Figure 11. Flow Music welcome page. Google's User Interface Philosophy: "Love That Whitespace."
Figure 12. Flow Music "Song" tab.
I don't like the Flow Music welcome page; it makes my computer over-heat. The default for the song list is "featured", but you can switch to a couple of other views if you want to browse what songs have been created recently by users. I have no idea what qualifies songs to be "featured".
The Flow Music "Song" tab is shown in Figure 12. This shows all of the songs that a user has generated. Songs can be "published", which makes them visible to other users. You can also "follow" other users, but I don't really understand all the benefits that accrue from following someone on Flow Music.
Figure 13. Following.
"When a user you follow shares a track publicly, you gain the ability to use the Remix function. You can extend their audio sections, swap musical parts, or tweak their baseline tracks with your own AI instructions."
"By keeping tabs on specific profiles, you can follow the 'flow' of their creative sessions, find out what parameters they use to guide their AI studio 'Producer', and borrow structural elements like specific instrument configurations or custom drum machine patterns."
Figure 14. A "typical" user.
User's like "imnotningning" (see Figure 14) are pretty common on Flow Music, people who show up, make a song or two, then never return.
User grufel is a much more active Flow Music user. As far as I can tell, only a person's published songs are visible to other users. It would be cool if following another user gave access to their unpublished songs, also.
For example, right now I have generated 161 songs, but I've only published 55 of those. Often when a prompt is given to Flow Music, two versions of the same song are generated. Sometimes three versions are generated and the user is asked to provide feedback for which one is not as good.
Users can write a 250 character-long self-description for their user page.
Playlists can be given 500 character descriptions, but Flow Music does not show that entire description, instead leaving a bunch of blank space on the playlist banner.
Figure 15. More active user.
As shown in Figure 15, Flow Music users can select songs as "favorites' 👍. For example, I added the song "mother" to my favorites. I have a playlist for my favorites.
I want to mention one other tab in the main Flow Music set of tabs (see Figure 3), the "turntable" tab. Clicking on the turntable button opens up a window like the one shown in Figure 16, below.
Figure 16. Turntable "feature". The bait: "Earns you credits".
Figure 17. No lyrics.
Be warned: some of the sound samples on the "turntable"
are little more than noise. I feel like there should be a warning about
hearing damage for those who participate in this Flow Music activity.
Maybe this is one of the ways Flow Music tries to get rid of users like
me who don't pay.For some of the paired song versions, I'd like to be able to vote "none of the above" rather than say which one is better.
As shown in Figure 17, some of the songs have no lyrics. Also be warned that initially the "turntable" counts you down towards 10 pairs of songs listened to. If you can survive those ten pairs, then it switches to counting you down to 20 pairs, which feels like a classic bait and switch trick. I think I got 20 credits for listening to 20 songs (10 pairs). Life is too short for that kind of nonsense. I made a song about this kind of software interface, see: "Give Me Credit(s)".
A nice feature of Google's Flow Music that is easy to miss is that there is a song player that activates if you click on the image that is on the page for a song (see Figure 18). This song player zooms in on the image for the song and then super-imposes the lyrics, scrolling through them as the song plays. An example is shown below in Figure 19.
Figure 19. The scrolling player for the song titled "Time Stream (1482)".
Figure 20. Seven Flow Music playlists on June 23rd.
Flow Music 1000 points. Click image to enlarge.
June 23 update: Today I reached the first "milestone" in Flow Music's pointage system: 1000 points. To get to the "gold" level 10 playlists are required; currently I have 7 playlists. By my count, I have marked 44 songs as favortites.
For several weeks I have been seeing a message inside Google's ImageFX saying that Google is terminating ImageFX on April 30th 2026 (the same is true for Whisk). Today I clicked the button to transfer my old saved images from ImageFX to Google's Flow. It only took Google a few minutes to transfer over to Flow my old ImageFX images going back to January 2025.
Any of the old ImageFX-generated images can now be edited by Flow using Nano Banana 2. I also have access to the original text prompts that ImageFX used to make the images. An example is shown below in Figure 1...
Figure 1. The end of ImageFX.
Inside the ImageFX Creations folder in Google's Flow.
The original text prompt for the image that is shown above was: "science fiction movie still, a futuristic mansion on a distant exoplanet, the mansion is surrounded by palm trees and other desert plants, there are NO suns, stars or planets visible in the movie still 35mm film".
I gave Flow a new prompt that it could use to edit the original image: "Add to this science fiction scene: in the foreground a tall slender young blond woman walking on the stone-paved path towards the front door of the mansion. The woman is seen from behind. The woman is dressed in a tight-fitting futuristic silver metallic jumpsuit that sparkles in the star light of this distant exoplanet. The entire body of the woman can be seen from her black boots to the top of her head." The new image that was generated by Flow is shown below in Figure 2a...
Figure 2a. New image generated by Google's Flow from the image shown in Figure 1.
I made the mistake of mentioning in my text prompt that this scene is on an exoplanet. Google's free image generating software always wants to place big looming planets in the sky for any scene involving an exoplanet (see Figure 2a, above). I wonder if Flow could have found a more ugly way to arrange her hair. I don't know if their "pro" version of the image-generating software is any better than the free version that I have access to.
In my science fiction story "The Nanite Smuggler", Tyhry visits the home of Kasty the Yastyn on the planet Threy. That big empty house (Figure 1) seemed too empty. Here is the new editing prompt that I applied to the image in Figure 2a: "Change the woman's hair so that it falls naturally past her shoulders. Remove the looming ringed planet from the sky. Add a tall slender humanoid female inside the mansion in a room on the first floor. The humanoid female is looking out through the window at the blond woman as she approaches the mansion." The resulting image is shown below in Figure 2b...
Figure 2b. New image generated by Google's Flow from the image shown in Figure 2a.
For me, it looks like this alien mansion has three floors. The humanoid alien that was generated by Flow appears to extend from the first floor to the second floor (Figure 2b, above).
I tried to correct the size of the alien and alter its appearance with the following new editing prompt: "Reduce the size of the humanoid female inside the house to half the height. Give the humanoid female long wavy black hair, long pointed ears that protrude through the hair on her head and very large glowing alien eyes." The resulting new image is shown in Figure 3.
For the new image in Figure 3, Flow was able to put hair on the head of the alien and give her long ears and glowing eyes, but she appears to be only slightly shorter than what was originally generated in Figure 2b.
I tried once more with a simple editing prompt: "Reduce the height of the humanoid female to half of the current size." The resulting image is shown in Figure 4.
Welcome to the Astra Lounge. Flow proved that it can shrink a woman, but Flow shrank the wrong woman (compare Figure 3 to Figure 4). Also, Flow spontaneously decided to add a sign that says "Astra Lounge". This kind of inability of Google's free version of the software to follow what seems like simple instructions is a source of frustration. These newly generated images were saved inside Flow's "ImageFX Creations" folder.
I also transferred my saved files from Whisk to Flow and they were added in to the displayed list of Flow "projects" (going back to December 2025, see Figure 5), with the oldest successfully transferred Whisk-generated files shown as being from May of 2025. It seems as if I did not recover my oldest Whisk files which were created in January of 2025.
The transferred Whisk → Flow files include the Whisk-generated videos (see Figure 6).
When some of the Whisk-generated images are re-opened in Google's Flow, the images do not always appear to have been correctly re-proportioned (see Figure 8).
I had Flow make an edit to the Whisk-generated image that is shown below in Figure 8. The text prompt for the edit was: "Add some lens flare centered on the white core of the alien creature." The new image generated by Flow is shown below in Figure 9.
Figure 8. A Whisk-generated image displayed by Google's Flow in two different ways. Also visible is the prompt ↑.
No, I don't care if Figure 8 (below ↓) is after Figure 9 (← to the left) on this page. I wanted Figure 8 to be displayed at a large size so that the old Whisk text prompt can be seen in Figure 8.
I tried to get Flow to make a short video clip with the pink alien wrapping its tentacles around the woman....
There are two different short Flow-generated video clips in the video shown above. Those two video clips were combined with the "lens flare" still image from Figure 9 (see above on this page), all packaged with some stock audio by Apple's iMovie into a 25 second video. She says, “Let’s try to establish a synapex connection.”
Sometimes Goggle's Flow fails to generate images. Sometimes Flow claims that a reference image depicts a real world person. In the image shown to the right, I had an AI-generated image that was made by WOMBO Dream and I tried to use that image as a reference image with Flow, but Flow claimed that the AI-generated woman was someone famous and the image was rejected. I was able to uploaded the Flow-rejected image to Gemini and have Gemini alter the face. Then I was able to upload that new Gemini-generated image to Flow.
Sometimes Flow warns that the topic of the image is too racy or violent for Google: "This generation might violate our policies". For the image generation showed to the left, one of the two images was generated while the second failed. My original text prompt was: "a tall slender young blond woman emerging through the extremely narrow opening of a forming inter-dimensional portal that is opening into the high desert of Arizona. The edges of the opening portal are indistinct and translucent. Blue sky and desert terrain in the background behind the opening portal" Another plain "failed to generate" message ↓ is shown in Figure 10, below...
Figure 10. Failed image generation with Google's Flow (third panel on right: "something went wrong").
As shown above in Figure 10, Google's Flow is unable to generate a sensible depiction of outer space. Text prompt: "A science fiction scene showing a beautiful humanoid female with long brown hair, large alien eyes and large pointed ears seated inside a futuristic and luxurious cabin of an interstellar spaceship in the far future."
According to Google's blog: "To streamline your workflow, the best capabilities from our image generation experiments — Whisk and ImageFX — are moving directly into Flow, so you can now generate, edit and animate everything in one unified workspace." With ImageFX, I never ran into an upper limit on the length of text prompts. When I asked the Google Search AI if Flow has a limit, it suggested 480 tokens, based on documentation for a different image-generating model than Nano Banana.
Figure 11. A comic book image by Google's Flow. Click image to enlarge.
To test Google's Flow, I tried an approximately 400 word-long text prompt (over 2,400 characters): "A page from a 1950s full color comic book introducing readers to several types of artificial life-forms in the comic titled “The Huaoshy Reality”. A billion years or so in the past, in the First Reality, the pek had arrived in Earth's galaxy and discovered that the Phari had the most advanced civilization in the galaxy. The pek tried to work with the Phari, but the Phari could not abide how the pek forced each habitable planet in the galaxy to evolve a humanoid species that was expected to transcend its biological existence and eventually reside inside the Sedron Domain as an artificial life-form. The Phari had their own on-going project of enticing biological intelligences to transcend into the Hierion Domain. Unable to successfully compete with the pek in Hadron Domain, the Phari gave up on the Hadron Domain entirely and retreated into the Hierion Domain of the universe, where they continued to live as artificial life-forms composed of femtobots. The Phari became masters of the Hierion Domain and hierion-based technologies and tried to ignore the pek. Later, when the bumpha came on the scene as the Huaoshy's second type of agent in the Hadron Domain, the Phari extended their deep distrust of the pek to the bumpha as well — viewing both as intruders in the galaxy that the Phari believed was rightfully theirs. Sometimes the Phari altered the course of events on Earth, seemingly just to annoy the pek and the bumpha.
Figure 12. A comic book image by Google's Flow. Click image to enlarge.
The pek are one of the two types of artificial life-forms used by the Huaoshy to help develop humanoid species; more conservative than the bumpha. The Phari are the most ancient humanoid species from Earth’s galaxy. The Phari transcended their biological existence and now reside in the Hierion Domain as artificial life-forms. The Phari are masters of hierion-based technologies. The bumpha are one of the two types of artificial life-forms used by the Huaoshy to help develop humanoid species, guiding them towards transcendence into the Sedron Domain. The bumpha specialize in Interventionism, secretly altering the course of development of species like humans. The Huaoshy are the most technologically advanced form of life in the universe. After the Time Travel War, the Huaoshy altered the Dimensional Structure of the universe so as to prevent further time travel by positronic robots. The Huaoshy never leave the Sedron Domain. The Huaoshy created the pek and the bumpha to function as their agents in the Hadron Domain." As shown in Figures 11 and 12, Flow had no problem incorporating this rather long text prompt into pages of a comic book (click on the two images to enlarge and read the test in the comic panels).
How long is too long? For my next test of Google's Flow with an even longer text prompt I used a 1,400 word long block of text taken from the first scene (on the planet Threy) of the science fiction story "The Nanite Smuggler". This longer text prompt is shown below in blue text...
A page from a 1950s full color comic book introducing readers the characters Tyhry, Marda, Rylla, Eddy, Zeta, Manny and Systolina in the comic titled “The Planet Threy”. Entry into the Asimov Reality by using the Reality Simulation System was like walking through a narrow doorway. Tyhry and Marda, hand in hand, went through first, arriving inside a simulation of the planet Threy. Tyhry and Marda both reacted with delight when they arrived on a small hill over-looking the tourist resort. This part of Threy was located in a region of the planet with lush forests, crystal-clear lakes, and towering mountains in the distance.
Figure 14. Resort on the planet Threy. Image generated by Google's Flow
Next, Marda's mother, Rylla Onway, popped through the entry gate of the Simulation System and arrived on Threy. Rylla, a tall and athletic woman who had been a long distance runner for decades, took a deep breath of the Threy air, fragrant with the resins of alien trees that looked like Earthly hemlock. She reached her arms out to bask in the warm rays of Threy's sun.
Lastly, Zeta Gohrlay and her husband Eddy arrived. Eddy, the father of Tyhry, glanced around at the scenery and then told Tyhry, "I can see why you wanted to visit this world and stay at this resort. This region of the planet reminds me of Kings Canyon." It was mid-afternoon and light from the brilliant white star of Threy reflected off the glittering snow-capped peaks that rose high in the distance above a sea of green hills.
Figure 15. A hike on the planet Threy. Image generated by Google's Flow
The five vacationers strolled down the hillside, walking on a type of alien plant life that looked like a cross between Earthly grass and moss. The checked into the resort hotel and then they visited the swimming pool, all of them dressed in swimsuits. Rylla immediately dove into the warm water of the pool and began swimming laps. The other visitors from Earth sat at the edge of the pool. They were watching Rylla and the other swimmers while they devoted a small amount of attention to the task of making plans for their first full day on Threy.
There was much discussion of random topics and consumption of many beverages made for them by the robotic staff of the resort and served in the form of colorful frozen concoctions in tall, thin glasses.
Figure 16a. Pool on the planet Threy, version 1. Image generated by Google's Flow. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Tyhry was gazing at her father's face and contemplating the droop on the skin below his jaw line. Both Zeta and Eddy were over eighty, although a combination of good genes and medical nanites made them look far younger. Still, Tyhry worried about their advanced age. Tyhry was barely listening as Eddy told one of his favorite stories about meeting a robot on the planet Triskelion named Dani. Tyhry had heard this story dozens of times and she was feeling a bit bored.
Under Zeta's guidance, the conversation kept returning to the question of what they should do the next day and what popular tourist sites were to be found on Threy. Marda was keeping particularly close eye on her mother and now she said, “Who is that robot with mom?”
Figure 16b. Pool on the planet Threy, version 2. Image generated by Google's Flow. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Tyhry visually searched the rather crowded swimming pool and located Rylla who was standing at the edge of the pool and speaking to a robot. The robots were easy to spot. They were basically human in appearance, but their artificial body surface was composed a silvery metallic substance that glinted in the sunlight. Tyhry watched Rylla climb out of the pool. “She's done swimming.”
Marda noted, “She's bringing the robot over here.”
Figure 17. Systolina the robot serving drinks. Image generated by Google's Flow. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Rylla had finished her laps and now joined the others sitting by the pool. She said, “This is Systolina Kayto.”
Zeta performed introductions and then Systolina asked, “You are all from Earth? We don't get many visitors from the great Home World.”
Eddy said, “We are here for fun... to celebrate the recent college graduations of Marda and Tyhry.”
Figure 18. A resort guest asking a robot for a drink. Image generated by Google's Flow. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Systolina exclaimed, “How nice! I hope you will all enjoy the natural wonders of Threy.”
Rylla explained, “Systolina is a nature guide for the resort.”
Systolina added, “I'd be thrilled to serve as your guide and escort during your mis... vacation on Threy.” The robot was gazing intently at Tyhry and Systolina asked, “Is there some special place you want to visit?”
Figure 19. A resort guest learning from a robot about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow
Now everyone looked at Tyhry who squirmed under their gaze. After a long awkward silence, finally she told Zeta, “I was planned to surprise you with a gift, but I'll say this... it is the next step up from those medical nanites that Manny gave you.”
Rylla told Zeta, “You do look wonderful, mom. Maybe I should ask Manny for some of her magical medical nanites... I'll turn 45 next month and I'm already getting wrinkles on my wrinkles.”
Figure 20a. Version 1: Eddy asking the two robots,
Systolina Kayto and Dyas Totus for information about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow
Zeta giggled. She was quite pleased by the age-reversing effects of the medical nanites that now swarmed through the tissues of her body. Zeta was mid-eighties, but she looked like a vigorous middle-aged woman. Zeta told Rylla, “Your problem is that you just spend too much time in the sun.”
Systolina sat down at the pool-side table with the five visitors from Earth. Responding to questions, Systolina described some of the nearby tourist hot-spots such as the Anyatal hot springs.
Figure 20b. Version 2: Eddy asking the two robots,
Systolina Kayto and Dyas Totus for information about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow
In the end, the three older visitors from Earth deferred to Tyhry and Marda since this family vacation was meant to celebrate their recent graduations. Tyhry finally suggested that they all go hiking in the mountains and start before sunup the next day so that they would have time to reach the top of Mt. Glisten. No better idea was offered and Marda gave a secret wink to Tyhry. So far, their plan was unfolding as expected.
As mind clones, Tyhry and Marda shared a telepathic connection. Now, Marda telepathically told Tyhry: No sign of Manny.
Tyhry reflected on the happy fact that someone was distracting Manny. For the past two months, Manny had been busy as a beaver, trying to round up all of those alien nanite samples. Manny took very seriously the task of controlling the availability of nanotechnology on Earth. Tyhry had seen very little of Manny during those past two months. Tyhry telepathically told Marda: All we need is one more day without Manny.
Figure 21. Marda and Tyhry with alien nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow
Systolina was once again looking intently at Tyhry, the robots eyes seemingly searching through Tyhry's tangled mop of long golden hair. “Fair-skinned visitors to Threy must take special care. Our sun emits large amounts of U.V. radiation.” Systolina said to Tyhry, “You are the fairest one of all, so I'm surprised you are not using a sun screen.”
Tyhry said jokingly to Marda, “Just my luck, now I get a robot mother to nag me on my vacation.”
Zeta told her daughter, “I think you should take Systolina's advice.” She moved her arm in a sweeping arc. “This is all a simulation, but you can still get burned.”
Tyhry nodded. “Yes, mother.”
Systolina added, “I can run over to the shop and get you a tube of sun screen.”
Tyhry said, “No, robomother, please don't bother. Nobody believes it, but I can take care of myself. I use nanites to protect myself.”
Systolina seemed surprised. “I always think of Earth a bastion of conservative forces, not a high-tech world like Triskelion. What does a youngster like you, from Earth, know about nanotechnology?”
”I know plenty, granny.” Tyhry immediately regretted her snarky use of the term 'granny' to refer to the robot, but she was defensive about her age and the lack of respect that she got from her elders. “I've had training in nanite programming from Manny the bumpha.”
Figure 22a. Systolina and Tyhry with alien nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow
Systolina asked, “What is a 'bumpha'?” The Reality Simulation System was programmed to automatically translate between languages for anyone using a Simulation of a past Reality. The translation worked both ways. But Systolina had never heard of the alien bumpha.
Systolina said, “Technicians from Triskelion recently obtained some antigravity nanites from the Yastyn. Now those special nanites are used in the transport pods, allowing them to hover above the ground. Tomorrow, we'll use some transport pods to carry supplies to Mt. Glisten.”
Eddy said, “Amazing. Nanite technicians from Triskelion... I had no idea...” Now Eddy was gazing intently at his daughter. Eddy imagined that he could guess why she had selected Threy for a vacation destination. It had nothing to do with the natural beauty of the planet.
Figure 22b. Systolina and Tyhry with alien nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow
As shown above in Figure 13, Flow was able to process my 1,400 word-long text prompt. I had Flow make two versions of the comic book page and the second one took about twice as long to render and had a somewhat different format (see here for a full scale version). I took some of the illustrations from that comic book page and had Flow use them as reference images for the generation of less cartoonish versions. Figure 14 (above) is view of the resort; I cropped out a 1950s era car that was on the road. Flow invented a scene with people in swimsuits walking down the hillside (see Figure 15).
Figure 23. Reference image used for making Figure 20. (the names were added later)
Shown above in Figure 16a and Figure 16b are two versions of a pool scene. In Figure 16bFlow gave the robot in the foreground a lot to carry. Since my text prompt included the word "exoplanet", Flow filled the sky with absurd fantasy astronomical clutter. Flow had trouble crafting sensible captions for some of the cartoon panels. The AI-generated caption text (seen here) for the panel shown in Figure 17 was, "Marda was keeping topics and colorful frozen concoctions the resort". For Figure 18, I had to make Flow edit the original image so that the blond woman was shown with a glass in her hand, asking the robot for a refill.
I was favorable impressed by the image that is shown in Figure 19 because my text prompt included, "The robot is explaining to the woman that she can serve as a guide for a hike in the nearby mountains," and Flow generated what looks like a holographic map of the mountains.
Figure 24. Reference image used to generate Figure 21.
Two robots are better than one. Flow spontaneously generated an image with two robots seated at the table (see Figure 23, above). Figure 20a and Figure 20b show two versions of the same scene. In Figure 20b Tyhry has seemingly wandered away, maybe to make arrangements to meet Kasty the Yastyn. For the image that is shown in Figure 21, I had Flow modify a rather generic image of two women seated at a table (see the image in Figure 24, to the right). The nanite cloud was added manually by me. As shown in Figure 22a, Flow has a thing for ugly hair styles. Figure 22b is better, but it almost looks like Earth's moon there in the sky of Threy.
Hit or Miss. Google's Flow did not reject my 1,400 word-long text prompt (over 8,000 characters), but it displayed obviously poorer performance in using that longer prompt to make a comic. For example, as seen here, Flow sometimes depicted Tyhry as a boy named 'Tuhry'. As shown in the image to the left, one panel in the comic showed Eddy saying, "I knew you'd like it, Dad!" The other comic page that was generated for the 1,400 word-long prompt 1) was rendered in half the time that was taken for the other version, 2) stayed closer to the prompt, 3) included one third as many images and 4) was significantly more coherent. I conclude that very long text prompts are risky, but so far I have not found an actual enforced upper limit for the length of prompts with Flow.
Working with Flow to illustrate science fiction stories. I've had fun with the idea that the Phari are so technologically advanced that they can teleport entire planets over long distances. I asked Google's Flow to generate: "A photo-realistic science fiction movie still showing an exoplanet being teleported. The habitable exoplanet is shown only half re-materialized after being transported to a new star system. Half of the planet is missing and stars from the background star field are visible where the planet has not yet materialized. Some of the planet's molten interior is visible."
The Flow-generated image in Figure 25a is not horrible. I suppose Flow felt that there should be a giant space station that is "beaming the planet in" to its new location. The Flow-generated image in Figure 25b doubled down and has two spacecraft. I suppose Flow can't stand the idea of Earth without spaceships hovering nearby.
I decided to focus my edits on the image in Figure 25b because it did not have the cloudy blue outline of the half of the planet that is still materializing.
Editing images with Flow. I suppose Flow did not believe that teleporting a planet is cool enough, so it added other features to the image that I then had to remove by editing. I asked Flow to remove the Sun, the spaceships and the nebulae from the image in Figure 25b. The new edited image is shown in Figure 26.
Just keep editing. Next, I asked Flow to edit the image that is shown in Figure 26 so as to remove the galaxies and simply use a normal star-field in the background. Also, I asked Flow to NOT use Earth's continents, since this is an exoplanet.
The next Flow-edited version of this planetary teleportation scene is shown in Figure 27. After some effort, I was fairly satisfied with the version of the scene that is shown in Figure 27. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Lava on surface?
As usual, I reached the point where I did not have the patience to keep working with Flow. In Figure 27 it looks like there are places where molten lava has escaped to the planet's surface after teleportation, but I called it quits. Minor imperfections in AI-generated images can be photoshopped faster than trying to get the AI to fix the image problems.
I had Gemini generate a song about the demise of ImageFX and Whisk and I built the song into a six minute-long video (see below)...
Whisk early release. Click image to enlarge.
I suspect that the reason why my older Whisk-generated files were not transferred to Flow is that I was initially part of testing an "early release" of Whisk. Possible none of those "early release" images were saved by Google. Some of my older Whisk-generated images that did not get transferred to Flow can be seen on these blog pages: "Back in Time", "Back Track", "Hair Nanites", "What is Library?"
