Like many people, I have been playing around with AI generated art (text to image). In my case, I have been using a variation of Stable Diffusion originally called StableDiffusion UI and now called EasyDiffusion (at least I think they are the same). This is an easy to install version of Stable Diffusion that also includes a graphical user interface. I was able to get it running on both Windows and Linux without too much difficulty. While the included GUI is convenient, the easy install was what appealed to me the most. Some versions can be a pain to install and setup whereas this one is pretty straightforward.
To get fast results you need a decent GPU with a pretty hefty amount of VRAM. However, a GPU is not a requirement to use Stable Diffusion UI as long as you have enough patience. If you choose to generate images using only the CPU, each image will take much longer to generate than with a GPU. It can take thirty minutes or more for each image depending on your hardware and the settings you use. However, this is open source software so you can generate as many images as you want without any fees or having to sign up for anything. The end result is that even with limited hardware, you can still produce all the images you want as long as you are willing to wait for them.
Steampunk has been one of the key words that I have frequently used and this is a continuation of a series of images I have been posting occasionally for a while now. The amount of "steampunk' in such images can vary greatly from none at all to a lot.
This is another example of an image that I ended up liking but doesn't really have the Steampunk elements I was trying to achieve. I think I just need to make my prompts a little more specific in terms of what elements to include. However, it's always kind of fun to leave things a little vague and see what the AI comes up with.
