An account by the name of @inspiredby.ai followed me on Instagram earlier today. Seems to be a service with an app that sends you AI-generated designs for specific kinds of product, for which you can then buy IP rights. For example: Okay, a bunch of odd chairs and couches. Stranger accounts have followed me, I guess. But what's that in the corner? What?! I'm not sure who's running this thing, whether they have any interest in sofubi or just thought it would be cool to try, or if they understand the design constrains of soft vinyl dolls. But man, this gives me a bad feeling, even as someone with an interest in AI-generated art. Hell, I've thought about doing something like this as a fun personal project myself but having the designs available for purchase, with a view to eventual production, is a hard no from me. Does anyone have more info? Different opinions to my doom-and-gloom crap welcome as always.
Checked up a bit more and most of the accounts they're following are sofubi collectors. So unless that's automated, good odds some of us are within 2 degrees of separation from whoever's managing the account. The project is run by a company in Thailand, where there's a growing collector contingent as well.
I thought it only appropriate that a robot should write my response to this topic, so here goes. Some of the good doctor features, but the giant anime "McG" is not commonplace. Do they dress up? A brand can't be fired, and he believes it should be the ring of truth. Edit/Translation: Some of the features actually look nice, but I'm not a big fan of the "ugly" style of monster toy. Does he have praying mantis hands? The scales are nice, but the sprays are bad, and I wish he had a real mouth.
I see Longneck body meets PX x MVH Kraken head. AI generated art is certainly interesting but not for me.
Ooh! -skullbrainers band together and flood the AI sofubi generator with images from the fugliest toy thread -a massive amount of crap AI-designed sofubi floods the market -sofubi falls badly out of fashion with the nouveau riche high-rollers (they turn to collecting plastinated human bodies) -huge wave of full collections hits the secondary market at giveaway prices -suddenly every 'brainer has an extensive HxS collection -name of board changed to rolexbrain
It must be based on some point of market research... Though, It's QUITE NAGNAGNAGian. It makes me wonder where they pulled data from?
The weird thing is these are clearly just AI-generated IMAGES, not actual objects. That "sofubi" it shat out is just an abstract turd (although yes, frighteningly reminiscent of Olgashmombaflomba's "work"). If this is the future, just have one of them Boston Dynamics dogs kill me.
NPR's Marketplace did a piece on AI-generated images tonight. Here are some cats: https://aiweirdness.com/post/182633984547/gancats More here: https://thiscatdoesnotexist.com/
It would be a really interesting exercise to feed all of the standard sized kaiju from Saito's Beautiful Book of Monsters into the AI and see what it comes up with.
Working on some other stuff at the moment but if I ever pick up the crotchety traditionalist AI sofubot idea, I'll let y'all know or someone else can!
A human could make something akin to an “average” sofubi, but would anybody buy it? You could nerd out and do a survey of every aspect of the monsters we love: what color(s) should it be? Where do the sprays go? How many legs/heads/horns/bumps? How many PoA? How many CM? I would be interested to see the stats on such a creature, even if the molds were never made.
If anyone is looking for well done ai images look up scott eaton's recent work. He is known for his figurative drawings and depth of anatomy knowledge. I'm not going to pretend to know how it works, but there is clearly a lot of skill that goes into it. The image in the op looks a bit lazy, but I could see a toy maker running with ai designs done in a tasteful way.
"Sofubi designed by artificial intelligence. In a store near you very soon! Our app allows you to receive design ideas for many themes (including sofubi) , link in bio." So they are advertising this app as a tool to help talent-less hacks make unimaginative sofubi toys while the craze is hot? sorry guys you're a few years too late!
Oh..the possibilities! So are these going to be purchased by AI created "Fans" making AI created "Hype" for AI created "Flippers".
Looking at their recent examples it seems odd they are so focused on sofubi when other materials make more sense. And by odd I mean an obvious cash grab. The idea of creating your own network with your own ideas for ideation seems neat. The art world always gets up in arms over new technologies out of fear of losing their jobs instead of embracing them.