AI Tomfoolery

One question I asked myself pretty early on in thinking about this novel is whether AI had any part to play. Here’s where I landed:

  • When it comes to the actual text of the novel, no. I want it to be entirely my own creation.
  • It sure can be fun to play with image generators. I might throw an AI-generated image in there if it seems right.

Chapter 5 will involve a little snarky gossip and cartoon about Samuel being placed in Punch magazine, blaming him for the whole traffic jam at the Queen’s Drawing Rooms. I played with making some Stable Diffusion woodcut cartoons like they might have in Punch.

Here’s one of the better ones.

shrewhorse

A few, like that one, were OK. Most of them contained unspeakable horrors like giant rodents with wheels for legs. And it was very hard to get the AI to make a shrew instead of a rat. It only works if it’s a shrew though, as the cartoon would be making a play on the name “Shrewsbury”. Ultimately I decided against using any of them, primarily because I couldn’t get the edges right. Punch’s cartoons almost always have a detailed center but then have faded ragged edges before hitting any border. Neither I nor the AI seem to know the right terms to make that happen. So the story will refer to the cartoon, but leave the visual to the reader’s imagination.

Character Shots

A while back I also did some pretty (I think!) pics of the main characters. The AI gets all kinds of details wrong (Cora’s neckline plunges too low for the era, Samuel’s shirt morphs weirdly into his vest), but it still tickles me to see these characters come to life like this.

Cora

Cora Mallory

Samuel

Samuel Talbot

Leti/Lethetani

Lethetani

The dive into Punch and other London periodicals was its own intimidating trip. The puns and Victorian culture references are dense. I’m sure most of the little vignettes are referring to people and minor scandals of the day but it would take a lifetime to re-create all that context. I’m happy to invent details of my own, but I did want to get the tone right. You be the judge. Project Gutenberg has a fabulous archive of old Punch issues.