In a romantic pre-Raphaelite style, a tender moment unfolds between a handsome knight in gleaming silver armor and a beautiful woman in a flowing white gown adorned with flowers.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2025
The knight, with a sword at his side, sits astride a brown horse with a red-gold draped saddle,… pic.twitter.com/0w32szTD9D
10 ఆగస్టు, 2025
"why does the horse have three ears"/"So he likes 7 foot tall women? Or is he riding a pony?"
X users rain on Musk's boyish dream.
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68 కామెంట్లు:
Too funny.
That would make for a weird puzzle…she’s got a wart or a scab or something…
A unicorn? A superimposed outcropping? Is the lady floating? On an emotional high as is common in fantasies between the sexes. High heels? At least she's not wearing shoulder pads.
Simple solution.
Smithsonian Magazine says...
"The Horses of Medieval Times Weren't Much Bigger Than Modern-Day Ponies A study of the remains of 2,000 specimens reveals the steeds were around 4 feet 10 inches tall."
Dumb f*ck haters of Elon.
"Who is the dickhead now, eh?"
From the comments on X:
“She’s got Nutella on her nose. Must have been trying to get the last little bit out of the jar. I’ve been there.“
Some funny comments, Elon knew they were coming. He got millions to look and engage.
She's 7-ft tall so she can whisper how to vote in the next election.
7 ft tall? Green object incoming ?
Mighty impressive young maiden there. I'd say she's about 24 hands tall and has legs that could mount just about any stallion quite nicely.
She's got quite the neck.
Artificial Imagination (AI). Autopost? Musk or Grok?
I thought this is Elon's way of telling us he finally found the right one.
Her neck is as tall as the horse is short.
Looks more like a dorky romance paperback cover.
Let the band play Neck! IYKYK.
It's football season soon.
God bless the memory of Josephine Baker.
B-CU Marching Wildcats - Neck
If its somewhat representational then people will nit pick. The solution is to get AI to do ugly crap ala Chagall or paint splotches like Jackson Pollack - then no one can nit pick.
Most of the comments on X remind me of various nerds's comments on movies, they're uninterested in story, dialogue, or acting, but man if there's a plot hole or goof in one scene they'll never shut up about it.
A study of the remains of 2,000 specimens reveals the steeds were around 4 feet 10 inches tall.
If they're measuring those horses they way horses are measured now, that 4'10" is to the withers. If that horse's shoulders are almost 5' high, she's got to be at least 8' tall.
One last consultation before he rides off to vote for emperor.
Most people, especially boomers, love ugly. They love "dark and gritty". Which is why art is pretty much dead. Maybe AI will revive it. I'm going on a limb and say most young people wont be using AI to paint abstract art.
I am teaching my daughters how to use AI image generation and use pixel editors to clean them up.
One thing you realize when you actually get into making art is that it rarely ever looks like you expected it to. Part of the magic of using art generation is to be fluid in your expectations.
That's a pony. Why would s knight ride a pony. Plus, that's the wrong saddle by, maybe 300 years. What the heck?
I hope he asks Grok to do something Maxfield Parrish next. I loved his work when I was a little girl. I also had some stationery that was illustrated with a court jester in black-and-white motley, perched on a crescent moon in the night sky, the deep blue fading to light blue by maybe a third of the way down the page so you could actually write a letter.
Ah, to be young and silly again...
Do I detect modern make up on the lass? Blush, etc.?
Mary Beth: "...If that horse's shoulders are almost 5' high, she's got to be at least 8' tall."
Yup. That's 24 hands.
The Medici family gave us the Italian Renaissance by supporting artist's careers. We now celebrate that culture created by marriage of the creative and wealthy classes.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Palantir Technologies and others are giving us their version of a 21st century Renaissance. Will there be nothing for future generations to celebrate since our arts culture will consist of machine-produced written words, music or visuals created by simple prompts?
I always treasure the drawings my wife gives me and have a stack of them all around the house. I keep my kid’s paintings because they remind me how the world is full of awesome in a child’s eyes. I don’t think a digitally plagiarized image will ever bring me that joy of human connection, but it might sell me some really sweet running shoes.
The gripe I had with AI writing was that it couldn't imitate a writer's style very well. If I asked it to write in the style of Dickens or Austen, it just gave a little period detail, but nothing of the author's voice. Here, though, AI does a very good imitation of the Pre-Raphaelites' style, but messes up on sizes and proportions. It's probably something that programmers could correct though.
Is this still a "Large Language Model"? Do we call it something else? Or is there language without words, since everything is reduced to bits and bytes anyway?
I have been followin Althouse almost from the very beginning and I have to say her commenters are the best!
I am probably a nerd, but he needs some Greaves or Sabatons for his shins and calves. Boots won’t do the job. Arrows and such.
Did AI write the description? "She gently touches his armored hand."
AI cannot make art. It cannot write poems or stories, cannot paint, cannot make music. Neither can AI "communicate" or "think" or "suggest" or do any of these purely human actions that we alone can do. We can use those verbs just in a lazy sense to approximate what is happening because it seems similar (but isn't).
Art is a particular emanation of the human condition / lived experience etc. That is the root of its value. Not the product itself.
Lazarus said...
The gripe I had with AI writing was that it couldn't imitate a writer's style very well. If I asked it to write in the style of Dickens or Austen, it just gave a little period detail, but nothing of the author's voice. Here, though, AI does a very good imitation of the Pre-Raphaelites' style, but messes up on sizes and proportions. It's probably something that programmers could correct though.
Is this still a "Large Language Model"? Do we call it something else? Or is there language without words, since everything is reduced to bits and bytes anyway?
Lazarus is noting the rate of improvement of these models.
People mock the inadequacies of LLMs and Image creation tools right now. But I am currently working on creating videos using images that I create.
This is all in work now but compare what these tools can do now to modern movies.
This was made by an "amateur" creator
He obviously has a job now and some of the new stuff is great.
The next decade will be compared to the renaissance.
Where I came from a freakishly tall woman was called a moose.
Teachers in art school always asked "why?". And as far as I can tell, machines still lack that answer.
But I think what we're really trying to figure out is, will that matter anymore to those paying the bills.
And this gets to the idea of what is an improvement with AI over what humans do today. If just including 4.95 million more figures in a painting makes it better, then is more better or just more?
My fear is, as with most technical improvements we'll decide it's good enough. to just create a variation of something done before, but without the costly humans.
Perhaps Musk gave the general instructions and got this imperfect image. So the world's richest man, running multiple cutting edge technology companies should spend a few hours and iterations on fine tuning this? Whereupon the new and improved image would be nit picked with a finer sieve.
People, people, people.
There are so many problems from a historical perspective that it can barel be listed. It’s a lovely painting, and very romantic, but the problem with being a friend of someone who belonged to the Society for Creative Anachronism means that I can see a great many issues with the knight and his lady (and no doubt my friend would see more).
The knight is in full armor (sort of — I’ll come back to this) but he’s riding a palfrey — what today we’d call a normal-sized riding horse. He’s simply too heavy for it. He’s wearing a hauberk (a chain mail shirt) under his plate armor, and that’s at least 50 pounds all by itself. The plate armor adds at least another 50, more or less. And even though he’s probably short by modern standards, if he’s been training to fight in armor then he’s pretty muscular. So all in all we’re probably looking at at 275 to 300 pounds. A knight fighting on horseback ride a destrier, a war horse, that was more like modern Clydesdales or Percherons.
(Interesting footnote: has anyone heard the phrase “Get off your high horse”? They’re telling the person to dismount from their destrier — the “high horse” — and stop trying to fight a battle.)
As Patrick Henry says upthread, the saddle is wrong. Saddles for knights came up much higher in the back and front, to brave the rider swinging a sword.
The knight has a two-handed sword (“Zweihänder”) which pretty much places this scene in the 15th or 16th century. But where is his helmet? Where is his shield? Are they in the hands of a squire? And why isn’t he wearing greaves to protect his shins? The use of greaves to protect the lower legs of an armored warrior dates back to Bronze Age Greece.
Maybe the knight is headed off to a jousting tournament. I remember going through the Imperial Armoury in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and seeing jousting armor, which I seem to recall did not include leg protection. But then why are he and his lady-love meeting in a secluded garden? Why isn’t she in the tournament stands planning to cheer for him? Hmm. Is he two-timing his wife (or wife to be) in an arranged marriage?
I don’t know as much about Medieval and Renaissance women’s fashions, but I’m pretty sure that the sort of woman who could afford an expensive dress would have worn some sort head covering. C.f., pictures of Anne Boleyn and other wives of Henry VIII. What I understand to be the case is that a woman of that era would only let her hair down in her sleeping chamber.
Hmm again.
And back in those days the notion of a dress that exposed shoulders and the chest from the neck down to just above her teats would have been amazingly scandalous.
A horticulturalist might weigh in here, but I believe that the sort of modern-looking roses did not reach Europe until the late 18th century. Roses as a genus go back millions of years in Europe, but I have been given to understand that the varieties cultivated by the Romans were nothing like modern tea roses.
For all of that I’d rather have this piece of kitschy art on my wall than a Madonna painted with the artist’s feces, so there’s that.
Before AI, the big enthusiasm was for virtual reality. Then AI became the vogue and we mostly forgot about VR. AI and VR will come together in the future to create virtual worlds. Will AI be writing great novels or poems or symphonies? Probably not, but we won't notice because we'll be at the virtual playground in our spare time. We'll be in a Dickensian England created by AI and filled with details by AI, rather than reading Dickens or AI-created Dickens novels.
Of course, that presumes that there will be sufficient energy to power the new virtual worlds and that humanity won't self-destruct -- which is a real possibility if millions lose their jobs to AI.
Mechanical Intelligence is neither discerning nor creative, a limited language model built on terabytes powered by terawatts of non-renewable energy and performative Green sludge.
well virtual reality was bandied about in the 90s, yet it never really caught on, despite dystopian offerings like Wild Palms from the mind of Bruce Wagner and Virtuosity, which Russell Mulcahy conjured up I think
The prompt describes an animated scene.
Also, the carpet doesn't match the drapes - the pony's, that is.
Cool. We can have a computer make a picture for us, badly done. but in time, it will be perfect, in the style of van Gogh or which ever artist you want to steal from..
When electricity is rationed, becomes unaffordable for most, and when there is no or limited water in your tap, maybe people will begin to question AI.
because rates are rising, blackouts happen more often, and water is being taken away from people to feed this AI machine.
But we get to ask Grok stupid questions, the answers are often wrong, or ideologically slanted. so much fun to let a machine think for us. Think of all the Musk anime we would miss without the acres of land devoted to huge computer farms.
Sounds like Jimmy wanted a pony and didn't get one.
Imagine a wall. Imagine the woman is standing on the wall. Or a stepladder.
The reason her dress is so long is to conceal the stepladder, which is what they did in the Age of Chivalry.
Historical analysis of this fantasy makes as much sense as historical analysis of Saturday morning cartoons.
A lot of knights rode high on the saddle, IYKWIM.
AI "art" may be an entertaining distraction, but it is pretty meaningless except to graphic designers. The real benefits of AI will come from materials science and genetics. LLMs and image creation are a sideshow.
Bumble Bee:
Simple solution.
Smithsonian Magazine says...
"The Horses of Medieval Times Weren't Much Bigger Than Modern-Day Ponies A study of the remains of 2,000 specimens reveals the steeds were around 4 feet 10 inches tall."
Exactly! In Medieval Asia, the average man was 5' 2". I think, too lazy to look it up. History was written by short men riding ponies! It's amusing to think that samurai were as tall as middle school kids.
There are probably dozens of Pre-Rafaelite paintings on this theme, all created 125 years ago, or more. It would be very damning indeed if Grok couldn’t manage an adequate pastiche. But that is all it is. As art qua art, it does not rise to level of illustration. AI’s gauzy filters cover a multitude of sins. As for historical accuracy, we must be fair. The Pre-Raphaelites were hardly sticklers for paldrons, greves, and haubergeons. The prompt emphasized romance and fantasy, not Tobias Capwell accuracy. Lastly, my guess is that the very tall lady is standing on a rose infested wall or a berm by a sunken lane.
In fairness, the Pre-Raphaelites weren't big on historical accuracy either. I, for one, would like to see what AI makes of a request to paint a Madonna in the artist's feces, or a banana worth millions of dollars because it is taped to a museum wall.
Automated Intelligence bundles existing methods and processes. AI represents a capacity evolution of Ford's assembly line. The Japanese improved performance with statistical sampling.
For those who think AI has somehow failed here, I could lead you on a Great Master tour that beclowns the laws of anatomy and perspective. Ingres’ Grand Odalisque and Michaelangelo’s David are two of the most famous examples, but once you start to notice, every other masterpiece seems to contain some stealthy trick of distortion.
Grok in guac would be a selfie-effacing achievement, and empathetic gesture to Anthropogenic Intelligence (AI). A public relations coup.
Yea, AI can’t do this, AI has no soul, AI is a dumbshit. All the cool kids agree. But have they really used it? It is just amazing in its ability.
If a high school kid wants to know what the double slit physics experiment tells us about light, or wants to calculate herself the charge on an electron using Millikan’s oil drop data, or see how matrices fantastically make multi dimensional calculus so easy, it will tell you everything you want to know.
Baseball stats? Calorie counting for weight loss, what do I have to do to qualify as ocd under the dsm? It’s there, and you can go as deep as you want.
It is a textbook for everything. There were people who hated the wheel, it denigrates the human body, steam engines are evil because they steal wages. Ok stay in the cave and paint with sticks and ochre, that is the highest expression of humanity.
A letter to Tennessee Tuxedo from Dr. Whoopie.
The horse's legs are obscured in a flowery depression. The lady appears as a floating image in her flowing dress, a universal prerogative to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes. The gentleman bows slightly to meet her glance. A fantasy of ageless conception, realized in faithful union.
Teachers in art school always asked "why?".
And also taught "how" - I suppose they still do, for those who want to learn. And I hope they continue to ask "Why?" so that artists will continue to try to answer that question.
Too often these days it seems as if their only answers are either, "Why not?" or "To mock and denigrate my parents."
If I were still in courtrooms, I'm not sure how we would ever be able to lay a proper foundation for photo exhibits.
AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
Last week, I wondered here if something like this would happen. Even if it's not serious now, it may be in the future. Some things are common knowledge. Some things are proprietary. Where do you draw the line? Maybe what we'll see is something akin to public lending right, where AI companies kick something back to the originators of the content they use to train their LLMs. Pennies? Or something more substantial?
Lazarus said...
AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
Last week, I wondered here if something like this would happen. Even if it's not serious now, it may be in the future. Some things are common knowledge. Some things are proprietary. Where do you draw the line? Maybe what we'll see is something akin to public lending right, where AI companies kick something back to the originators of the content they use to train their LLMs. Pennies? Or something more substantial?
It is too late for any of this to really matter.
In the last 2 years people have generated more information, art, written content, and historical documentation and other forms of media than we did in the previous 15,000 years.
People are not going to be able to live off of royalties. Better versions of everything are going to be made. Who the original creator was will be something that will be very difficult to ascertain and by the time a court rules on something it will be too late because everything is going to move too fast.
At least until we turn the court system over to ML algorithms. One of the best parts of watching the leftist judges destroy our judicial system is knowing it hastens the day when cases are submitted to open source AI algorithms and humans are removed from courts.
Earnest Prole said...
For those who think AI has somehow failed here, I could lead you on a Great Master tour that beclowns the laws of anatomy and perspective. Ingres’ Grand Odalisque and Michaelangelo’s David are two of the most famous examples, but once you start to notice, every other masterpiece seems to contain some stealthy trick of distortion.
Nostalgia like a great many feelings can be boiled down to the need to signal tribal belonging.
Bumble Bee said that the normal size for horses was 4 feet and 10 inches . The measurement for a horse in by the hand which is 4 inches. So that is 14.5 hands. A horse is over 14 hand and 3 inches. A TB is usually around 16 hands.
Why am I not shocked by Elon's confirmation bias?
In fairness, the Pre-Raphaelites weren't big on historical accuracy either. I, for one, would like to see what AI makes of a request to paint a Madonna in the artist's feces...
It would be reassuring is AI got the cultural references wrong, and painted the one from the Bronx.
It isn't the 'art' exactly. It's the fullness, the curiosity, the struggle for meaning and yearning for connection, all so beautifully achieved. AI can certainly 'make'. And it can make surprisingly well. But it cannot struggle, is not curious, does not yearn. It is non sentient, and thus always and forever derivative, scrambling and varying those inputs fed into it. We do not need to bash it to understand the grave error of conflating it with the mind, the life, of an artist.
If you want an outstanding (if dense) read on the fundamental and unbridgeable difference between the miracle of sentient life and the dazzling algorithmic power of AI, read Federico Faggin's 'Irreducible' (Faggin created the worlds' first microprocessor and speaks powerfully on the fundamental difference between mind and machine).
Liberal Boomers hate this sort of boyish fantasy that Musk has. They want painting full of weird fantastical figures and women with 3 breasts etc.
Musk is from the follow on Generation and represents a reaction against that.
She's standing on a peasant. I thought that was understood.
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