Plotting AI-generated artwork onto paper

AI-generated artwork is all the craze proper now, because of widespread sharing on social media. The enchantment is apparent: anybody can make the most of an internet service to create a novel (and sometimes hilarious) piece of artwork based mostly on a easy immediate. To show that artwork, one can make the most of a high-quality printer or a digital picture body. Or they’ll observe the lead of Eric Oaks, who constructed this pen plotter named “Drew” that attracts AI-generated artwork onto paper.

This pen plotter works with DALL-E 2, which is a well-liked AI artwork generator mannequin from OpenAI. Like most AI artwork fashions, DALL-E 2 prices cash to make use of. However OpenAI provides customers 50 free credit to start out and one other 15 free credit every month. Oaks makes use of the DALL-E 2 API to generate a brand new piece of artwork utilizing the credit he has obtainable, then plots that picture onto paper.

The pen plotter in query is a DIY machine that Oaks constructed utilizing linear rails, stepper motors, and an Arduino Uno board with a CNC Defend that runs Grbl firmware. The pc linked to the Arduino takes the DALL-E 2-generated artwork in bitmap format and converts it to vector artwork, which incorporates line paths. It then interprets these line paths into g-code that the Grbl firmware can perceive, so the plotter can draw the traces.

This works rather well for artwork items that look good as line artwork. Oaks even created a one-player Pictionary mode, during which the participant can attempt to guess the randomly chosen immediate used to generate a chunk of artwork.