Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DallE - What's the Difference?

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The differences between stable diffusion, midjourney, and Dali can be likened to using different tools in a similar domain. It is comparable to switching from Excel to Google Sheets, where the principles are similar but the nuances are slightly different. Going from Dali to midjourney can yield amazing results, but going back may be disappointing because midjourney does much of the heavy lifting. Each tool is trained on different sets of images, with stable diffusion having a larger dataset. It is like driving different cars, where the acceleration varies. Overall, the tools have their own strengths and creative decisions.

With every new technology, some jobs are lost while others are gained. People often focus on the former, but in this episode we chose to highlight the latter – a highly creative role that emerges alongside AI: the prompt engineer.

Until AI can close the loop of its own, each tool still requires a set of prompts. Just like a composer feeds an instrument the notes to play, a prompt engineer feeds an AI a map of what to produce. And if we know anything from music it’s that composing great music takes great skill!

In this episode we explore the emerging importance of prompting with Guy Parsons, the early learnings of how to do it effectively, and where this field might be going.

Will the prompt engineer be more like the highly sought after DevOps engineer, or a proficiency like Excel that you find on every resume? Listen in to hear Guy’s take.

Interested in the prompt competition? Email us at podpitches@a16z.com.

Resources:

DALL-E 2 Prompt Book: https://dallery.gallery/the-dalle-2-prompt-book/

Find Guy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyP

Guy’s combining image experiment: https://twitter.com/GuyP/status/1612880405207580672

Guy’s amorphous prompt experiment: https://twitter.com/GuyP/status/1608475973300948993

Guy’s space duck: https://twitter.com/GuyP/status/1601342688225525761

Prompt base: https://promptbase.com/

Lexica: https://lexica.art/

Topics Covered:

0:00 - Introduction

01:49 - DALL-E 2 Prompt Book

05:29 - Parallel skills

06:51 - 80/20 prompting

10:16 - New ways of prompting

13:44 - Pulling the AI slot machine

18:09 - Comparing models

21:04 - Requested features

26:34 - Learning with AI

27:58 - Practical use cases

32:08 - A top 1% prompt engineer

36:17 - The most popular images

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