I agree, many were quite pleasing as well, especially the adorable avocado armchairs and many of the macro photographs. Another personal favorite are the tetrahedra made of fire—they are exactly how I would picture Sauron, if Tolkien had described him as a tetrahedron.
The nauseating ones included:
Several to do with bats, the worst to me being “a stack of bats” on the table. Part of the problem is I was expecting to see bats (the sporting equipment), so bats (the animal) came as an unpleasant surprise. Not totally surprising this might cause nausea though, given the connection between bats and disease.
Agree with arielroth about some of the national food ones. They reminded me of the display foods you see at some kiosk-type food stations—the shape of the real thing, but just enough off to look completely unedible.
I think the rest of it was a building up of noticing little irregularities that gave overall feeling of unease. The misspelled letters on the storefronts, the animals made of strange textures, the view from my old apartment in San Francisco—but wait, there should be a shop on that corner! And that street should go uphill, not downhill! So much felt familiar at first glance, but just wrong after a little closer inspection, and it added up to a stronger effect after some time.
Not really nauseating, but along the same line of feeling wrong to me, were the golf clubs. I’ve played golf for a long time so I’ve seen a lot of pictures of clubs, and these images seemed normal at first glance but then wait, why does that one have a shaft coming out of both sides of the clubface? And those are just clubfaces with nothing attached. And those grooves would never get the ball out of the sand. Why would anyone ever make anything like that? Because they wouldn’t, and that gets to the heart of the discomfort. They have “clubiness”, but they’re not clubs.
On another note, an example I found really impressive was how every other country I looked at had only generic stadium images, but China’s were instantly recognizable as the Bird’s Nest from the Olympics.
(But I wonder if the architect of the Bird’s Nest would look at those images and say, those beams would never support the weight of the structure! Look, that one’s cracked! It’s so wrong!)
I’ve learned to be resilient against AI distortions, but ‘octagonal red stop sign’ really got me. Which is ironic, you’d think that prompt would be particularly easy for the AI to handle. The other colours and shapes didn’t have a strong effect, so I guess the level of familiarity makes a difference.
I think the level of nausea is a function of the amount of meaning that is being distorted, eg. distorted words, faces or food have a much stronger effect than warped clock faces or tables, for example. (I would also argue there is more meaning to the shape of a golf club than a clock face.)
I agree, many were quite pleasing as well, especially the adorable avocado armchairs and many of the macro photographs. Another personal favorite are the tetrahedra made of fire—they are exactly how I would picture Sauron, if Tolkien had described him as a tetrahedron.
The nauseating ones included:
Several to do with bats, the worst to me being “a stack of bats” on the table. Part of the problem is I was expecting to see bats (the sporting equipment), so bats (the animal) came as an unpleasant surprise. Not totally surprising this might cause nausea though, given the connection between bats and disease.
Agree with arielroth about some of the national food ones. They reminded me of the display foods you see at some kiosk-type food stations—the shape of the real thing, but just enough off to look completely unedible.
I think the rest of it was a building up of noticing little irregularities that gave overall feeling of unease. The misspelled letters on the storefronts, the animals made of strange textures, the view from my old apartment in San Francisco—but wait, there should be a shop on that corner! And that street should go uphill, not downhill! So much felt familiar at first glance, but just wrong after a little closer inspection, and it added up to a stronger effect after some time.
Not really nauseating, but along the same line of feeling wrong to me, were the golf clubs. I’ve played golf for a long time so I’ve seen a lot of pictures of clubs, and these images seemed normal at first glance but then wait, why does that one have a shaft coming out of both sides of the clubface? And those are just clubfaces with nothing attached. And those grooves would never get the ball out of the sand. Why would anyone ever make anything like that? Because they wouldn’t, and that gets to the heart of the discomfort. They have “clubiness”, but they’re not clubs.
On another note, an example I found really impressive was how every other country I looked at had only generic stadium images, but China’s were instantly recognizable as the Bird’s Nest from the Olympics.
(But I wonder if the architect of the Bird’s Nest would look at those images and say, those beams would never support the weight of the structure! Look, that one’s cracked! It’s so wrong!)
I’ve learned to be resilient against AI distortions, but ‘octagonal red stop sign’ really got me. Which is ironic, you’d think that prompt would be particularly easy for the AI to handle. The other colours and shapes didn’t have a strong effect, so I guess the level of familiarity makes a difference.
I think the level of nausea is a function of the amount of meaning that is being distorted, eg. distorted words, faces or food have a much stronger effect than warped clock faces or tables, for example. (I would also argue there is more meaning to the shape of a golf club than a clock face.)