I don’t know about you but I’ve become a bit disillusioned with the internet of late. I mean, great, you can get a low-paid worker to bike a tepid Big Mac round to your house with a couple of swipes. It feels like a small consolation for the hours we have lost distracted and depressed; for fake news and sur - veillance capitalism; for Donald Trump and Andrew Tate; for Snapchat dysmorphia and Facebook politics.
So, I will admit I emitted a small squeal of delight when the first pictures from Dall-E 2 began to circulate online last year. Here, it seemed, was a glimpse of the wild, creative future we had been promised. Here, I thought, was something new. If you haven’t had the pleasure, Dall-E is one of a new wave of programs showcasing the wonders of ‘generative artificial intelligence’, the latest Silicon Valley craze. You can type just about anything into Dall-E’s text box and it will generate an image of it for you: ‘Banana eating itself.’ ‘Martian landscape in the style of Canaletto.’ ‘Bowl of soup that looks like a portal to another dimension.’
