The Joy and Dread of AI Image Generators Without Limits

For the past few months, Elle Simpson-Edin, a scientist by day, has been working with her wife on a novel, due out late this year, that she describes as a "grimdark queer science fantasy." As she prepared a website to promote the book, Simpson-Edin decided to experiment with illustrating its content using one of the powerful new artificial intelligence-powered art-making tools, which can create eye-catching and even photo-real images to match a text prompt. But most of these image generators are designed to restrict what users can depict, banning pornography, violence, and pictures showing the faces of real people. Every option she tried was too prudish. "The book is quite heavy on violence and sex, so art made in an environment where blood and sex is banned isn't really an option," Simpson-Edin says.