Manic defenses, or Mage.space

I have a lot I want to write about – hell, I have a lot I’m in the middle of writing about.
I finished a draft of a work-related thing this morning.
I couldn’t have finished it without a lot of manically defended porn-surfing.

Often, in the past, my porn-surfing has been dissociative, empty. Like, maybe I just went to MetArt.com or to OnlyAllSites.com. Or to Vipergirls.to. And just trawled for images, videos, etc., that struck my fancy.

But we’re in a whole new world, baby – the world of AI.

I think I’ve hinted at this elsewhere, but I’ve been totally, monomaniacally, consumed with AI since last Fall. Initially, with ChatGPT. Then, with the Open AI API. Bard. Perplexity. AutoGPT. And others. I’ve learned some Python. Set up some automated workflows in Pipedream. Make.com. And so on.

And, I’ve been using ChatGPT all over the place, in all kinds of interesting and creative ways. I’ve been really enjoying figuring out what it’s great for (brainstorming!) and what it’s terrible for (actual information). I’ve been honing my prompting, getting better and better.

A few weeks ago, a friend had a 40th birthday. I was stumped as to what to get her. I went on ChatGPT and asked for some suggestions. Then for more. Then for more. Soon, I had a list of 50 or so suggestions, and I had them categorized into different types of suggestions: experiences, objects, etc. And lo and behold, one of the ideas – a game – resonated with me. Not like the actual, specific game, but rather, the idea of a game, which, in turn, I used ChatGPT to create. We iterated back and forth, coming up with concepts, rules, titles, and then, using Stable Diffusion and Discord, images for the game. Or really, games. There were something like eight of them by the time I was done. Not to mention, the gift itself: a Powerpoint (or really, Google Slides) presentation, laying out all the prompts, all the game titles, artwork, and rules.

The gift was a success.

But back to the current moment: I decided, since I have such a hard time finding porn I really like, it might be… interesting… to try to use AI to create it. There are, of course, obstacles. First off, there’s the fact that the primary means of access to AI art I’ve found – MidJourney – doesn’t permit NSFW prompting, and unless you spend LOTS of money, it all happens in public, on Discord. Add to that: the more NSFW-friendly parts of the AI art universe are tough to penetrate. Hard to figure out. Confusing.

But that didn’t stop me!!! I found myself, soon enough, at Mage.Space, and img2prompt, experimenting. It didn’t go so well.

First, I found this picture:

It’s not perfect, by any means. There’s lots I don’t like about it. But it does have a few things I fucking love, that are hard to come by in porn:

A group of women
No nudity
Sexual availability
Thighs
Panties
Women who aren’t girls

Those all are big things by me, and there’s just nowhere near enough porn of that. So I uploaded that picture. Fed it into “img2prompt,” and got back…. “a group of women sitting on top of a couch, a jigsaw puzzle by Apelles, dribble, assemblage, 32k uhd, 4k, feminine.” Huh.

So, just to see, I fed that into Mage.Space (and the “Liberty” model, with some tweaked settings). Here’s what I got:

Interesting. Uncanny valley. Creepy. NOT what I was looking for.

I won’t go through all the steps through which I went, but I will share with you some of my highlights – and lowlights – as well as a few of the lessons I’ve learned.

Asking for older women gets better, less crude, hotter results.
Different nationalities push in different directions: Russian? Tends to lead to porn. Pakistani? Less so.
Different professions push in different directions: grad students? They’re all sluts. Not so much lawyers! But never mind nurses!
What’s much hotter for me than any artificial images produced by some porn machine? The process of chasing my high, iterating to see how what I want responds to what the machine produces in response to the words I write, and round and round and round.
Duh. ChatGPT helps. I put in a few prompts to ChatGPT, articulated my complaint, asked for help, and BANG! I got back much better results.

Here’s another sample I put through img2prompt (before on the left; and 2 after on the right, with the prompt “in the caption”a group of women in black lingerie posing on a bed, a jigsaw puzzle by Tintoretto, trending on pinterest, superflat, black background, photo, creative commons attribution”). This one was better, I’d say.

Here are some other things I came up with…..

A presidential debate between a group of beautiful female candidates in tiny black dresses, ((very small breasts)), ((legs open)), ((legs apart)), ((revealing inner thighs)). Insanely detailed, very pretty face, hyperrealistic, featured on cg society, 32k uhd, 4k, ultra-feminine, camera angle head-on

A group of the cutest, hottest, prettiest, most beautiful, sexiest women in their 30s and 40s and 50s in the world, wearing short shorts and tight crop tank tops that shows sideboob and underboob. Hyperrealistic faces, perfectly detailed faces, smiling with friendly seduction, including all of her perfectly detailed, hyperrealistic perfectly proportioned hourglass figure body from head to toe, 8k, HD, cinematic

At a certain point, I started getting stuff that looked more like stuff that actually appeals to me. And, I should say, that’s a very specific thing I just said: stuff that looked more like stuff that actually appeals to me. The search was hot; what I found? Not so much.

A diverse group of women’s college soccer players in the locker room. All are ((in lacy boyshorts and topless)). All are beautiful, pretty, hyperrealistic, very detailed faces. 8k HD.

With this one, I started to understand that there are some elements to what appeals to me that I can begin to specify: activity/occupation (women’s college soccer players). Clothing. Diversity. Not that any of that really worked. But it started moving in an interesting direction.

Every so often, things would go wildly, wildly wrong: