For a while, I had a Twitter account, @robGANhitchock, where I was posting AI illustrations of Robyn Hitchcock lyrics I created using a Generative Adversarial Network (“GAN”). This was an interesting project, because when it started I knew next to nothing about generative art; as I worked on it I learned more about crafting prompts, and more and better tools emerged, so over the course of the full set, you can see the progression of experience and improved generative algorithms: from the first few in VQGAN, then FreewayML, and finally Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

Because the later output is much more successful, I’ve ordered this gallery in reverse order (the same order in which pictures originally appeared on Twitter.) Scrolling lower, to the earlier pieces, you can see the development of quality and styles, including a lot of early output that aren’t so striking as art but are interesting from the standpoint of seeing how the technology works.

Click any image to enlarge

She's my bright fresh flower and I dream her

Have a heart, betty (I'm not fireproof) (II)

I feel like making love to a photograph (II)

I kneel before you, bearing a crown

There's a thin line between being well and being ill. That's what julia told me and I know she always will.

Have a heart, betty (I'm not fireproof)

1.) I feel like making love to a photograph
2.) I feel like asking a tree for an autograph
3.) Photographs don't smell
4.) Give it to the soft boys.

1.) Muriel's hoof 2.) The rout of the clones

Everything revolves around the sun

1.) In the aquarium, the fish went through the trees, the planes went through the seas, and you were still with me.
2.) In the aquarium, you stroked a greasy ray, just at the end of day, way down in monterey.

Janice, don't go squatting in nettles, etc. (III)

Janice, don't go squatting in nettles (II)

Janice, don't go squatting in nettles. Last week three people came in to be dignified and they all got stung.

Trevor, come and shave your playmates!

1.) Judith, come and get your apples, don't expect not to be scratched
2.) You said "hey hey hey hey, it's a mystic trip". Hey hey hey hey, why don't you try it?

1.) I something you 2.) You whatnot me

The warning on the label said, "keep away or you'll be dead"

I had one chance to stop her eggs (pronounced "eggs" or "brad")

Oh, elizabeth jade, you shake me up like pre war lemonade

She was tapering to a point in a corona of foam

A mind is a persuasive place, especially when it's dark

1.) Napoleon wore a black hat, ate lots of chicken, and conquered half europe.
2.) Napoleon was caught by the british, imprisoned on elba, he died on the phone.

1.) I'm going back into my body, back out of my dream, dressed up as a human with a routine
2.) Dressed up as a human, with a routine, that I call me

I'm the man with the lightbulb head, I turn myself on in the dark.

Oh, you boring little creep, don't say that this ain't love.

I'm the man with the lightbulb head, I turn myself on in the dark (II)

Millstream pigworker (III)

Millstream pigworker (II)

Millstream pigworker

All I want to do is be your creature.

This could be the day I've waited for all my life

Like a wedding cake festooned with leeches.

In the spiritual kingdom of love

Yesterday I saw the devil in the nude. It was embarrassing.

Let's get really mellow together, baby

The can opener still roves the gulch, with severing claws akimbo

I think I understand why you're bald and still a man. (III)

I think I understand why you're bald and still a man. (II)

I think I understand why you're bald and still a man.

Splash my cold enamel with blood, a rendezvous with stone will leave you bleeding.

How's about you, my pretty one, do you still smear yourself with jam?

1.) It don't feel much like a fish without a pond.
2.) It don't feel much like a train without a buffet car.

3.) It don't feel much like a foot without a shoe.
4.) It don't feel much like a drug without a side effect

5.) It don't feel much like a home without a dog.
6.) It don't feel much like a church without a god inside.

7.) Come on, baby, gimme your meat.

I used to say I love you, I said it as a threat

I'm alone, like a queen in bed, with a barrel of vodka and lime (II)

1.) He was white and she was white, as statues often are. Fifty years they stood there, looking stupid, by a jar.
2.) One night in mid august when the moonlight got too strong, they climbed off their pedestal and then they sang this song.

I'm alone, like a queen in bed, with a barrel of vodka and lime

I would ramble on through time and space, just to have a butcher's at your face (II)

The return of the sacred crab

@eugenemirman a bearded listener (and j.geils aficionado)

1.) I don't know why the people wanna meet, when all they know is that they'll breed like rabbits in the end
2.) Ordinary people on the street, they never know, but if they can't be rabbits, they'll be friends

I'm just a crab on a verdigris slab

Blonde on the tracks

1. Adventure rocket ship, the lover and the slave
2. The skeletons of spacemen, unzipper me with love

Hermaphrodite in style, you crash upon a star

1.) I was riding in your car in san francisco, but I'm never gonna ride with you again.
2.) A man's gotta know his limitations, briggs

I would ramble on through time and space, just to have a butcher's at your face

1.) The way you look and all the things you said
2.) If looks could kill, then baby, I'd be dead

1+2.) Ain't no way I'm gonna be anything I oughtta be. All I wanna do is be your creature. 3.) Ain't no way I'm gonna be anything I want to be. All I want to do is be your teacher.

1+2.) I wanna destroy you 3.) And when I have destroyed you I'll come picking at your bones 4.) You won't have a single atom left to call your own

Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl, so I could wreck myself in the shower (II)

Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl, so I could wreck myself in the shower

Maureen and the meatpackers (II)

Maureen and the meatpackers

The face of death is my best friend

I get run over by the cars she used to drive, they recognize me on the street

I used to say I love you

Seems like you were in a glass hotel

He's in every film, sometimes wearing a towel, and if you don't get him, you get andie macdowell.

1.) I was the pulse of it all, but there's always poison to drink alone or to share with friends 2.) Sincerely I remain, arthur kane

¡olé, tarantula!

My wife can't swim but neither could she, and deep in the sea, she's waiting for me, she's waiting for me

Whoo my, it's fine, got a zipper in my spine

The abandoned brain

Bloody red bats, squelching offal

I dream of antwoman, with her audrey hepburn feelers, and her black and white stripes

Girls were decked with flowers and violated while boys spat juice from out of their fresh young bulbs

She walks like a leopard, her feet padding down, down, down (I)

She walks like a leopard, her feet padding down, down, down (II)

Old lady bent like a question mark, with a shopping bag and skin of bark

Dennis and the experts

The executioner of love

Daisy bomb

The ghost ship

Alright, yeah

A creature from the future from way out when

Verdegris, verdegris, verdegris, verdegris, verdegris, verdegris

Can you really screw the wanger up high?

The ghost in you

Left: a creature that is sleekly groomed right: some poor soul that is alone and doomed

My wife and my dead wife

The raging muse

Alright, yeah (in swedish)

The shuffle man

The queen of eyes, with her carapace shell and her black lace thighs

The raging muse

Balloon man blew up in my hands

Flavour of night

Lady waters and the hooded one

A raymond chandler evening at the end of someone's day

Tongues of fire hissing through the dark and tropical night, drawn by nubian slaves

Grooving on a inner plane

Queen elvis

Queen elvis II

Serpent at the gates of wisdom

Tell me about your drugs, morris

The devil's coachman

A fiend before the shrine

A couple of clones in a rock 'n' roll toilet

Being just contaminates the void

Underwater moonlight sets the body free

You are an insect mother, and I your jelly son

Somebody rang the cheese alarm

Take your knife out of my back

Sinister but she was happy

One long pair of eyes

Furry green atom bowl

Said the vicar to the waitress, "the best thing about you is your waist."

A can of bees

Victorian squid

It's strange how no one else can see

I suddenly found myself underneath a bucket, but there was nobody else there except some cement, so I went home wearing the wrong head

Slipping you the midnight fish

Little priestess

I've got the hots for you

Adoration of the city

The devil's coachman

Kiss the lips of forever and inhale her tawny breath [?tweet, since deleted.?]

I'm a doorway leading to the dark, I'm a liquid you're dissolving in

Like all great jazzers, god doesn’t want to repeat herself

This horrible age of abuse and decay

Listening to the higsons

I'm in love with a beautiful girl

Syd barrett's last session, he can't sing anymore

Trams of old london

Raymond and the wires

It's only a mistake as long as you keep making it

Happy the golden prince

Your baby's gladys, she move like a worm

Underwater moonlight

The wreck of the arthur lee

I'm a memory, engraved upon your soul

The green boy

The queen of eyes

I often dream of trains

A million sprats in conical hats who are oozing in the sea

Creeped out american girl

The man with the lightbulb head

Mr. Tong and his friends

Ye sleeping knights of jesus

Goodnight oslo

Here I am again, it's no surprise

From tromso down to kirstiansand, they're waiting for the dark that never comes

She had one long pair of eyes between her

That damn thing swallowing you

A cool bug rumble in a shower of sparks

1.) They call me dr. Sticky because I'm so practical 2.) They call me dr. Sticky, I don't regret it at all

The soft boys

I'm looking for the golden road to socialism

The unpleasant stain

The man who invented himself

A charming and dangerous guy

The face of death

You and oblivion

Wendy brought asparagus, and lawnmowers, and felt

The aetheric plane, above all pleasure and all pain

The kind of girl that really does need bandaging

The flavour of night

Dissipate in wonder through your wide open star

Ghastly mellow saxophones all over the floor

Stand back, dennis!

The universe is based on sullen entropy

Tropical flesh mandala

A taxidermist looking for a fight

A raymond chandler evening at the end of someone's day

Young people scream, but the old, they can't hear what they say

Let your weaknesses sink to their own murky depths and mutter amongst themselves

I'm gonna see what the shuffleman saw

Uncorrected personality traits that seem whimsical in a child may prove to be ugly in a fully grown adult

The warm creation of a sigh

Funky denim wonderland

A man with a woman's shadow

There's nothing in the future and there's nothing in the past, there is only this one moment and you've got to make it last

Lucifer in frognal

Don't talk to me about gene hackman

The steaming air, as hot as sprouts

It rained like a slow divorce

Wading through a ventilator

Tennessee clouds mean business

The organism rapes itself

Old pervert

Daisy bomb

September cones

Birds in perspex

Plato, pluto, monroe, garbo, all between the sheets.

Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl

There's a butterfly on my face, and I'm a number in a drawer