Like many people, I have been playing around with AI generated art. 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 effort. While the included GUI is convenient, the easy install was what appealed to me the most. Some versions can be rather difficult to install and setup whereas this one is pretty straightforward.
To get fast results you need a pretty recent GPU with a hefty amount of VRAM. However, a GPU is not a requirement to use Stable Diffusion UI as long as you are willing to be patient. 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 in my prompts 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.
I really like how this one turned out but the "steampunk" elements are still pretty weak. It seems more like a sci-fi or even fantasy image to me. The helmet the smaller figure is wearing has a vaguely steampunk look to it though the rest of the outfit does not. In the larger headshot it looks like the girl has some sort of contraption on her neck that is maybe used in the connection of the helmet (I'm assuming they are really the same individual of course) but this whole thing has a sci-fi feel to it. However, even when images don't turn out has I expect or I don't get what I am trying to achieve, they can still turn out well.
