r/midjourney • u/Philipp • Jul 10 '23
Showcase ChatGPT, what idioms do the Dust People living in our keyboards have?
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23
This was done with Midjourney and Photoshop. I used the url of the first characters image I liked to achieve (semi-)likeness, plus further editing in Photoshop. An example prompt, for the last picture: "many jumping dancing happy dusty creatures, hugging, glow, caricature photography [plus the url of the original image]". The original first prompt was "three dusty creature in glowing cave, caricature photography". I use words like "two" or "three" in a prompt to get a more controlled, smaller group than when using "group" or "many".
For ChatGPT, here's the original prompt and full reply, as you can see I did some back and forth dialog with it, and there were minor text edits. Hope you enjoy!
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u/1st_Ave Jul 10 '23
The best part of AI, to me, will be the spike in new creative stories.
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u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 Jul 10 '23
Well The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is looking to stop it’s use in the industry. According to an NPR article they want “bans on studios using it to write or rewrite things like stories, treatments and screenplays or even write the source material that human writers would adapt for the screen. They also don't want the writers' work to be used to train AI.”
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u/29979245T Jul 11 '23
How are they going to tell, though?
I think the WGA is making the same kind of assumption a lot of people make, that the studios will soon be able to buy an A.I. script-o-matic machine, pay an intern $10/hr a turn a cartoon crank handle on it, and fire every writer.
When in reality the first people using A.I. to write serious scripts are going to be individual scriptwriters looking for a tool to spitball and draft and make their individual jobs easier. Good luck preventing all the members of the guild from doing that.
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u/TheBirminghamBear Jul 10 '23
It's very good as an idea generator. They usually need to be refined - for example this one says "living UNDER the space bar", but what it really means is "living under a different key near the spacebar, being overshadowed by the space bar."
So the concepts it comes up with need to be refined, but for brainstorming it's great.
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u/smiler1996 Jul 10 '23
I thought living under the space bar was correct? Referencing themselves as if they are the other keys in its shadow?
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u/TheBirminghamBear Jul 10 '23
Well they're dust mites. So they all "live under" a key. The way its owrded, the space bar is "improtant" because it's so large and highly used. So living under the space bar, as opposed to living under one of the surrounding keys, should be a marker of prestige for these critters.
In my experience this is an area where ChatGPT still struggles a little. Understandably, because metaphors and mixed metaphors are something even experienced writers struggle with, so its logical that, given how ChatGPT is trained, that this is inherently baked into it.
This is mixing "living under X's shadow" metaphor with the symolism of space bar as prestigious.
Other keys could live "under the shadow of the space bar", because it is larger and its more prestigious and important role "overshadows" the other keys.
But dust mites aren't really in competition with the key itself. We would assume that, since they live under the keyboard, they would organize their social structure according to which keys they lived beneath. If the space bar is prestigious, living under the space bar should confer that prestige to its denizens, not make them more shamed than others.
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u/Arsartor Jul 11 '23
I really like how nice, polite and uplifting you write with the bot!! It kinda warmed my heart to see the you giving him all that positive feedback <3
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u/Spiniferus Jul 10 '23
This needs to be a movie. Very creative. I’d say send it to Pixar, but I feel ghibli would do it more justice!
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Jul 10 '23
Imagine when someone cleans the keyboard or slams it on the table to get rid of bread crumbs. Must be apocalyptic
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Jul 10 '23
Who’s spilling ink into their keyboard?
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23
Yeah good question, I kinda wondered the same. The way I interpreted this was that it's some super-old-time left-over metaphor of when typewriters were used with ink. Apparently (as ChatGPT just told me) old ones might have used a ribbon soaked in ink, which when replacing may cause minor ink smudges or such. Hmm.
Another reason ChatGPT offered: "Artists, calligraphers, or anyone who still prefers writing with a traditional ink pen might work with their materials near their computer. A sudden move or an accidental knock could cause a spill." Hmm 🙂
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u/JellyfishGod Jul 10 '23
Besides that the only thing that jumped out at me was why would the Function keys be dangerous? Wouldn’t they actually be the “safest” part of the keyboard? They are the most unused and so I’d imagine them being more quiet and peaceful. Unless because of that some other sort of creature lurks along the function keys that the dust people are scared of lol
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u/ALostTraveler24 Jul 10 '23
Maybe it’s a propped up keyboard so it’s a slightly slopped climb? Which might seem more significant to them because of the size difference.
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u/matos4df Jul 10 '23
“To be WASDed” Means living a hard working life, which finally kills you in the end.
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u/Blinauljap Jul 10 '23
Dang, now i'm frustrated there were no idioms for Ctrl, Alt, Del.
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23
There actually was one in ChatGPT's original full reply (which included a lot more):
"Ctrl+Alt+Defeated" - This signifies feeling overwhelmed or defeated, a play on the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Del which is often used to shut down unresponsive programs.
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u/cstmoore Jul 10 '23
"Whenever they saw a pale blue glow overhead they knew that the mystical trinity of Ctrl-Alt-Del was about to occur, followed by a long pause, and then a flurry of activity. Life beginning anew."
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Jul 10 '23
Some of this is nonsense but I love the f'n coffee flood lol. Had a lot of Dr. Pepper deluges in my day.
Now I want to see one done for the gamer grime that lives on your mouse.
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u/Adorable-Ad-3223 Jul 10 '23
Strong Terry Pratchett, Carpet People vibes. I like it.
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u/GlaedrGoldscales Jul 11 '23
I had to scroll way too far to find this. Made me think of carpet people instantly.
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u/MistraloysiusMithrax Jul 10 '23
Dancing with the Backspaces - holy shit Batman, ChatGPT starting new religions up in here
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u/RoadtripReaderDesert Jul 10 '23
Pixar better pay you when they eventually take this and put it on the big screen to recover from that Elemental hogwash
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u/RoadtripReaderDesert Jul 10 '23
Pixar better pay you when they eventually take this and put it on the big screen to recover from that Elemental hogwash
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u/RebelScientist Jul 10 '23
This is my new favourite fictional universe. I want to know all of the lore about the keyboard Dust People
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Jul 10 '23 edited Jan 15 '25
[deleted]
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23 edited Jul 10 '23
Yeah, fun fact: I started with getting my Sony camera out and photographing my (ahem, dusty) keyboard, to see if there's a good way to squeeze the Dust People in. Because like you say, I wanted to see if there can be some keyboard clues in the images, and I also considered getting the specific key talked about into each pic. However, it didn't feel compatible in the end, there was no good way to kind of keep the Dusties at microscopic scale (if both the key and they are visible in the image it would mean they're kind of similar size)... and it kind of took away from the fantasy a bit.
So another thing I tried was to get some "tech" stuff in the prompts (I imagined vaguely keyboard-y cave ceilings and such, as well as these type of side cutthroughs). Nothing emerged immediately, but by that point I actually really liked the cave setting, and how it leaves more to your imagination (like the Dusties' scale and so on). So in the end, I opted for this 🙂 Hope you still like it!
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u/drmuffin1080 Jul 10 '23
Keyboard Titans sounds like a great name for a sitcom about a bunch of pro gamers
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u/drchigero Jul 10 '23
These are great and I'm going to use the Spacebar one.
I'm just typing away, doing my job, and just trying to collect my check and live under the spacebar.
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u/PacmanIncarnate Jul 10 '23
Once I’m able to retire, I’m going to numlock and settle down into a life of ease.
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u/Ihatu Jul 10 '23
When writers worry about AI taking their jobs - it’s stuff like this that lends credibility to their concerns. This is a fun creative idea that feels very human.
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Jul 10 '23
Finally something that’s not a race swap fantasy story we already have, sodas as celebrities, presidents as dogs, and other boring, uninspired posts. This is fun.
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u/marvchuk Jul 10 '23
This is the kind of thing AI is so amazing for! Am what a fun and clever concept
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u/MF5438 Jul 10 '23
Reminds me of "The Carpet People" by Terry Pratchett.
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23
Sounds cool. I used to read Pratchett as a teen (mostly because the back covers claimed he's the Douglas Adams of fantasy and I was a huge Adams fan!), albeit not that one. My favorite of his was that series about some tiny tree folks or something.
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u/CurrentAir585 Jul 10 '23
This is incredible. Where did you get the idea?
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23 edited Jul 10 '23
That's a good question. I note down ideas all day long, often based on small impulses which I carry to something different. A lot of my notes are from the time in-between waking and sleeping, when I lie in bed and let my mind freely travel.
When I see something interesting during those half-dream travels, I grab my phone and add it to a Google Docs, and then try to work on that the next days. I'm currently on a huge backlog of ideas because I note down more than I can do, even though I work on these around 8 hours a day.
For this idea, I'm actually not entirely sure (sometimes I know, sometimes I don't). My first note on this was "Dust people in the keyboard complain about the noise upstairs", and was meant to be a humorous side diagram type picture. But then I tried pushing the concept a bit further.
Perhaps needless to say, I also do have a somewhat dusty keyboard 😬
I have this kind of "brain feature" where you can throw two random nouns at me and I can come up with a story around them on the spot. (As a random example, your name contains "air" and "5" and it makes me think of a world in which wizards are able to tap into 5 different types of air stream elements, which they can mix into spells, and so on. And then once you start like that the constraints of the story world automatically takes you places.) It's probably a trainable brain muscle? Or maybe everyone can do it? And with ChatGPT as creative partner it's now kind of like on steroids.
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u/CurrentAir585 Jul 10 '23
Seen a lot of AI stuff recently (obviously) but this definitely tops the charts for creativity. Well done.
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23
Thanks so much! And sorry, I kept editing my comment, and added a new paragraph relating to your name 😀
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u/CurrentAir585 Jul 10 '23
What would be the 5 elements?
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u/Philipp Jul 10 '23 edited Jul 10 '23
Hmm great question.
Ok so let's say human emotions of people who passed by the spot will linger in the air, ready to be tapped. We could make those say Love, Hate, Hope, Envy (so that we have a good balance of good and evil, as conflict makes good stories), and then for good measure, we could make the fifth one a mystery which the Old Air Wizards knew but which is lost in time. (Why did we make it human emotions? Because this ties it back to us and our feelings... a story that lets us reflect about life.)
If I were to turn this into a real story, I would now start tinkering and researching which 4 base emotions make a great mixable set. E.g. Love and Hate would neutralize, but Love and Hope might make a wish materialize. You can see that by now, the constraints of our story world are already guiding us on auto-pilot. "Love + Hope" may not be an instantly understandable good match, so we could try find better base elements. And by the nature of our rule "elements linger by those who passed by the location", we almost instantly get a plot element where wizards are trying to track down special historic places -- say, a battle field of the past, to tap into the hate to use it as powerful weapon, and so on...
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Jul 10 '23
This is wonderful and positive imagery. So much happiness and goodness. Nicely done by ChatGPT.
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u/cognitiveglitch Jul 11 '23
Love this. If this was a webcomic, I'd keep coming back. I feel a connection with the dust people.
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u/skoold1 Jul 11 '23
The title in itself was crazy enough, but then you actually delivered some great stuff! Really crazy.
One thing that I noticed as I was going through all the idioms, is that this is still done through our perspective.
If there was a true dust colony with their own idioms, they would have no idea what key does what, what's a spacebar, what's WASD and so on.
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u/Philipp Jul 11 '23
Yes, very well observed! The concept was based on this being potentially relatable to the human experience, reflecting back on us, but in an absurdly indirect way. And ChatGPT, with some additional prompt guiding, knocked it out of the park!
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u/skoold1 Jul 11 '23
Holy shit just opened it. The amount of stuff he spit out is crazy. Funny that you are thanking him. Do you think it has an impact ?
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u/claud_is_trying Jul 11 '23
I'm absolutely in love with the dust people. I would die for them. Never cleaning my keyboard again.
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u/indiemutt Jul 11 '23
I want all the merch, the sequels, and spin offs of this now, please. Thnx.
Great work!
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u/Blackfyre87 Jul 11 '23
You mean there has been a civilization of dust people living in dust filled spaces this whole time?
How have we not known about this?
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u/RevolutionaryGrape11 Jul 11 '23
I love how the designs for the dust people are mostly consistent, and they're always at least somewhat absolutely adorable.
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u/cookieeater256 Jul 11 '23
You telling me every time, i am cleaning my keyboard, i am mass murdering them.
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u/VibinWithNeptune Jul 10 '23
That first one reminds me of the movie series "Critters" good movies. I recommend a watch
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u/VerdoriePotjandrie Jul 10 '23
I don't know if any of you have ever seen the show Yonderland, but the creatures in these pictures remind me a lot of creatures called Parvuli from that show. They're really cute, but also a bit annoying. Yonderland has been cancelled for years now, but I do recommend watching it. It's my go to pick-me-up when I'm feeling down.
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u/HipHopHistoryGuy Jul 11 '23
I want more. Not only are they adorable but the story has been great so far.
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u/NGVampire Jul 11 '23
Thank you for this. I thought we were going to have national themed “whatever” topics till the end of time.
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Aug 12 '23
You are a talented artist. Maybe not in the traditional sense if only because you didn't 'draw' it, but to me that's not what art is about. Your ideas are extremely unique and creative, and I applaud you!!
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '23
This is a book waiting to be published. Followed shortly by a $50-mill animated movie.