Classic WIRED Covers—Regenerated by AI

Jessica Pettway, photographer
“The visual archive that DALL-E is acquiring feels like one of the worst archives I have ever seen in terms of visual language and cultural diversity. Certain words and phrases were not returning logical results, for example, when searching for “women wearing box braids”, the first result was a white woman with loose braids. There was no need to add “white” or “white” to the search phrases when exploring the concept of digital blackface. This was because it was assumed to be the default even when searching for items or themes specific to black culture. ”

Example prompt: “Hoop Earrings” “Grilled Mouth” “White Hands with Super Long Nails”

Sam Cannon, photographer
“DALL-E has a great dataset, but the fact that despite the 650 million image/caption pairs they use to generate the images, they were unable to render a close replica of my image. I was delighted with the cover, I had no problem creating an image with similar elements (needles, hands, pills) and mimicking the overall style (dark environment, harsh light from above). But the abstract idea of ​​a hand breaking through a pin screen was outside the scope of its function…now.”

Example prompt: “3D rendering of a person with a head impaled by thousands of needles, octane, and intense light.”

Patrick Savile, designer and illustrator
“Originally it was a bit difficult to get what I wanted, so I changed the concept a bit until I got the image as close as possible to the idea in my head, which turned out to be egg-based. Did.”

Example prompt: “High-definition airbrush painting of an egg cracking open, including clouds, background storm clouds, shimmering psychedelic colors, high contrast, Masao Saito, Michael Whelan, Hajime Sorayama, high resolution”