AI Generated Magicians From The Past

[Peter Ross]

For your amusement:

https://padlet.com/pross671/AI_magicians

[Richard Kaufman]

Those are fascinating.

[Dustin Stinett]

It would be swell if they were identified, assuming they can be.

[Peter Ross]

I mostly used generic prompts, such as "Vintage photo of a magician doing a trick with eggs." I also used ones that said, "Old photo of Ricky Jay performing a magic trick for an old lady," and "Vintage photo of Houdini performing the cups and balls magic trick."

[Edward Pungot]

The eyes and faces on these ai generated images are a bit creepy and ghostless machine-like. It’s a bit like Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa where the ai slowly gradually become conscious that they indeed are ai and the horror that entails. Facial recognition was correct the first look through with Jay and Houdini. And the first indeed was generic and I wouldn’t put a name to the face. The props maybe made me think of Hofmann, but I don’t really have an image of Hofmann stored in my memory bank.
Ctrl alt delete

[magicam]

Interesting to see a few spatial/perspective oddities: the oversized airborne eggs. the dwarfish RJ, and the front seating arrangement in the doves pic.

[Jonathan Townsend]

That's great! Floating eggs. Cups and cups.

Did you specifically prompt it NOT to use playing cards?

[Bill Mullins]

These are . . . interesting. Not only for what they are right now, but for when you extrapolate the last few years' progress to what could be done in, say, 2026. It won't be long before AI-generated images won't be distinguishable from the real thing.

These do show some of the common flaws of AI images, though, particularly hands. "Ricky" has (if you zoom in) as many as six fingers on his right hand. The hand over the floating eggs is just weird, as is the left hand of magician #1.

If these were real performances, the one I'd most like to see in person is the woman who is rocketing up above the stage.

[Peter Ross]

I tried many variations of "Sawing a woman in half magic trick" but the results looked nothing like any recognizable rendition of the illusion in any form. They were creepy, bordering on horror.

[Philippe Billot]

As we are talking about magicians of the past, who knows if there is a photo of Henry Christ?

[Edward Pungot]

It’s amazing how some of these pictures stick in the brain cells with such detail even the morning after, especially the Ricky Jay one and the levitating lady. So much so that I have now adopted the “J” peg with the ai generated image as part of Roth’s ABC kindergarten code.

Hay little bee the wide web sea dose a good deed.
Relax and have an effervescent drink on me.
Ghee-wiz the heuristics of the eyes on Ricky Jay.

[Edward Pungot]

Relax (be at ease) and have an effervescent drink on me.

[Edward Pungot]

I’m pretty sure there is a picture of Christ in the book by Graham & Diaconis in the “Stars of Magic” section.

[Philippe Billot]

Bravo Edward and thank you.

It's page 173. He is with Sam Horowitz

[Bob Farmer]

For the Ricky Jay look-alike and the old lady, the caption is:

"Watch closely, Madame, as I crush Fifi your pet chihuahua into my fist of oblivion."

[Joe Lyons]

Surely you meant the Ricky Jay simulacrum.

[AJM]

‘Bob Farmer at the biker bar’ produces some interesting results.



Andrew

[Dustin Stinett]

We need laugh emojis for this place ...

[magicam]

We need laugh emojis for this place ...

[Peter Ross]

AI and I added six more...

https://padlet.com/pross671/AI_magicians

[Bob Farmer]

Caption for the seance table shot:

"I'm not sure but I think there's a ferret in my pants."

[Bill Mullins]

My family hoot-laughed at Doug Henning. And the herd of rabbit-headed sheep also was amusing.

[Edward Pungot]

George Karger, [ Harry Blackstone Sr. ], Circa 1950

This isn’t an ai generated image but I think the end idea is imbedded here, that is, eventually to make these old masters come back to life in a Harry Potter newspaper sort of way.

There was a Time Magazine special published a few months back worth a look and a read through (T100-AI). Magazine Memory Test anyone? AI meets AM

[Tarotist]

This is where I look for old magicians:

https://www.britishpathe.com/search/?se ... gic&page=1

[Bob Farmer]

Are these images generated by AI from scratch or are they simply a super Google search of already existing images?

[Peter Ross]

Bob, these are images created from scratch from a variety of text prompts I used in an AI image generator program. So in a certain way, I feel a sense of authorship about them. My choices about even a single word in the prompt changed the results entirely. It's been interesting to see what current AI comes up with in terms of what it thinks magicians are/were. Not surprisingly, if I just use the term "magician" the AI comes up with white males in any context, often with top hats. When I added modifiers in order to diversify the field, the results tended to skew toward racial and sexual stereotypes, which I would then have to further modify.

In the app I was using, I had to choose from six thumbnail results for each prompt. My primary artistic guidelines were: The magician should be doing something familiar but slightly off, The magician's faces have to be (mostly) without AI-generated flaws, and The composition should be compelling.

I prompted for vintage or old photos, and certain things popped up regularly, like smoke and glowing orbs. The results varied drastically when using "performing", "performing with", and "on stage" along with other modifiers.

Although I'm happy to share these thoughts and examples of prompts, I must admit that, like magic, I want to keep the "methods" secret, and just let the images speak for themselves.

As I look at this collection, I find that I want to tell a little story about each magician, since they have now come to life. Maybe I will.

[Bob Farmer]

Then it would seem that since you created the prompt that created the images, you would be the copyright owner of those images.

[Philippe Billot]

I have another request:

is there a photo of Elmer Biddle (in a magic book or magazine).

Thank in advance

[Joe Lyons]

I just uploaded one to his MagicPedia profile, and there's another in Genii November 1957.

[Philippe Billot]

Thank Joe