At the end of July, OpenAI announced the availability of its image generation AI, DALL-E 2,in beta version. One million people had already registered on the waiting list, they will be able to benefit from Outpainting, the latest feature for DALL-E 2 announced by Open AI.

In 2021, Open AI launched DALL-E, a text-to-image AI model, a 12 billion parameter version of GPT-3 trained to generate images from text descriptions, using a dataset of text-image pairs.

The new version, DALL-E 2, generates more realistic and accurate images with 4 times the resolution. Like its predecessor, it can create original images and illustrations from a text description and combine concepts, attributes and styles.

The Outpainting Function

When using DALL-E 2, it is possible to make changes to images generated or downloaded from a natural language caption, add and remove elements while taking into account shadows, reflections and textures, a feature known as inpainting.

Outpainting, the new feature, will expand an existing image while taking into account existing visual elements of the image, including shadows, highlights and textures, to maintain the context of the original image. Users select a 1,024-by-1,024-pixel square area where they want to expand the image and let their imagination run wild to create a new image by guiding the AI.

The Girl with the Pearl, extended work by August Kamp

To illustrate the presentation of Outpainting, Open AI chose a revisited version with Outpainting of the famous painting “The Girl with a Pearl” by Johannes Vermeer. This medium-sized oil painting is a bust portrait of an anonymous young woman against a very dark background.

August Kamp took this oil painting, added a body to the girl, and then created a very cluttered rustic kitchen setting by adding frames. We must admit that the result is coherent and rather successful. Many other users have used Outpainting, some results are also very successful, others much less so…

Outpainting works with the same credit system as the normal prompts. Each user gets 50 free credits in the first month of using DALL-E 2 and 15 free credits in the following months. Blocks of 115 additional credits can be purchased for $15.

Generating an initial image takes one credit, as does each additional overpainted section. with a prompt generating 4 images for use with Outpainting frames.

Like Jason Allen’s use of MidJourney for the “Space Opera Theater” piece that won a 1st prize at the Colorado State Fair, DALL-E 2’s may be questionable, but there is no denying that AI-generated art is still in its infancy…

Translated from Outpainting, la dernière fonctionnalité d’Open AI pour DALL-E 2