AI Image Creation With Grok-2

 

Instant picture making with a sentence.  

Musk announced Grok, the company’s answer to ChatGPT, in November, while Grok 1.5 debuted in April. The chatbot is available exclusively to Premium subscribers on X. Musk's xAI startup is also preparing to build what might be the world’s largest supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, which will handle Grok training.  Emily Price, PCmag.com.

Long before I became a photographer I had studied art.  Fine art to begin with and later graphic design and advertising.  During this time I’ve done some of everything for designing logos, airbrush illustrations, fine art painting, portrait painting, etc.  Later, when home computers became the next big thing I was interested in using them for design and art projects.  I recall my first experience in the mid 1980’s with 3D rendering using Sculpt 3D on the Commodore Amiga.  Just rending a few objects took hours, sometimes in the evening running the computer all night to render simple images.

One day I received an email from one of my photo stock agencies that AI images were acceptable for submission and sale.   I knew nothing about it and was unsure where to start.  Then recently, Grok-2 was announced by Elon Musk for August.  Up until then I had only used Grok to answer questions for research purposes.  I didn’t know it could render images as well.  Once I learned that Grok could create images I decided to explore what it could do.  What follows are my experiences with this new imaging technology.

Full article with examples posted at Substack--

https://open.substack.com/pub/georgebailey/p/ai-image-creation-with-grok-2

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley In Space

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.  Source: NASA

Congratulations to SpaceX, Elon Musk, NASA and astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for the successful May 30th launch to return astronauts back into space from American launch facilities.  

The two astronauts plan on staying on the ISS for 30 days or longer.  This got me thinking about astronauts and their ability to walk after returning from space.  

In my article The Right Stuff Never Stumbles, I document how the Russian cosmonauts and space tourists could not remove themselves from the capsule upon landing or walk. They had to carted off the field due to the effects of being in zero gravity.  Meanwhile, the Gemini and Apollo astronauts had no issues with this at all, regarding any of their flights and landings.  They could extract themselves from their capsules and freely walk about minutes after landing.  

So it will be an interesting test to see if Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley can walk shortly after their return from the ISS.  

If they can, something is amiss.  

Source

https://outwardtrends.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-right-stuff-never-stumbles.html