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# Pictures from a Bad Dream
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pictures-from-a-bad-dream/
- Published: 2022-08-18T17:54:47.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:55.000Z
- Description: This morning I fed a robot a few sentences from the novel I'm writing, and it generated some startlingly accurate pictures.
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

Clear skies in the Middle West. The sun goes down at 8:25pm, and the moon is in its last quarter. This morning I [fed a robot](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/?ref=jamesreeves.co) a few sentences from the novel I’m writing, and it generated some startlingly accurate pictures. It also generated a complex headrush of emotions.

On a visceral level, it was unsettling to suddenly glimpse a fictional world I’d spent years imagining—and struggling to build with words. This uneasiness mingled with an undeniable wow factor, and I briefly imagined using this technology to create stunning mood boards and bleeding-edge pitch decks. But most of all, I felt a little dirty, as if sneaking a peek at someone else’s private dream.

There are knotty ethical issues to untangle, such as [Charlie Warzel](https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/62fc502abcbd490021afea1e/twitter-viral-outrage-ai-art/?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s observation that these systems are “trained on the creative work of countless artists, and so there’s a legitimate argument to be made that it is essentially laundering human creativity in some way for a commercial product.” And while this doesn’t sound much different from the advertising industry since the beginning of time, it’s another reminder that we’ll only have a worthwhile internet once we’re [paid for our data](https://www.thedataunion.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co).

But I’m more interested in how quickly I grew bored with this technology. I spent ten minutes conjuring fanciful scenes that my mind’s eye thought it would never see. Then I drifted back to editing my manuscript and organizing my mp3 collection. If you had told me twenty years ago that I could instantly illustrate anything that popped into my head, I would have burst with excitement at such a far-out future. Now that it’s here, I meet it with a shrug. I don’t know if this speaks more to my age, my character, or the world we’ve created.

Meanwhile, China is firing rods into the sky to [make it rain](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/17/asia/china-heat-drought-climate-yangtze-intl/index.html?ref=jamesreeves.co).

#### [Arpanet – Wireframe Images](https://arpanet.bandcamp.com/album/wireless-internet?ref=jamesreeves.co)

###### Wireless Internet | Record Makers, 2002 | [Bandcamp](https://arpanet.bandcamp.com/album/wireless-internet?ref=jamesreeves.co)

[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Wireframe%20Images.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Wireframe%20Images.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)