From ‘Barbies scissoring’ to ‘contorted emotion’: the artists using AI

Four creators share their Dall-E-generated images - and their hopes and fears about AI in art

You type in words - however nonsensical or disjointed - and the algorithm creates a unique image based on your search. This is Dall-E 2, a startlingly advanced, image-generating AI trained on 250 million images, named after the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Pixar's Wall-E.

While use of Dall-E 2 is currently limited to a narrow pool of people, Dall-E mini (or Craiyon) is a free, unrelated version that is open to the public. Drawing on 15m images, Dall-E mini's algorithm offers a smorgasbord of surreal images, complete with absurd compositions and blurred human forms.