Hey architecture lovers, look at this Art Nouveau marvel, making rounds on tumblr lately:
Crazy what forms they came up with around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, right? The facade! The huge window! The organic ornaments! But wait, there's something a bit sterile in this image. And the perspective is a bit weird, at bit contorted, on a closer look. Is that street scene maybe not actually from Bucharest, but somewhere from Midjournistan?
Let's reverse search!
Ok, so we are officially witnessing a little turing moment here - a machine made image sneaks into the real world and Romania is one tourist attraction richer. But how did this happen? How did this image find its way out of the AI generation bubble onto some social media, innocently labeled with "Bucharest, Romania"? Let's see.
Google leads us to this FB post of a big architecture photography channel, where already we are to "Embark on an imaginary journey in an Art Nouveau world":
and from here, straight to the source, a Belgian photographer experimenting with midjourney on his Insta:
Still, the question remains: who first "liberated" this image from the AI context and labeled it with some real world location? One can only guess, but the original sin was probably the one of Architecture & Design, bringing generated images into a context of (mainly) real world buildings. And now, look at that mess!
it is a very beautiful image, I wish a building exactly like this existed for real, it is dreamy. Pity this image is getting around the internet and socials not linked at your page and not recognized as your work. I have seen it, realize it was digital artwork and decided to find out who made it, but around the web they write a lot of cobblers about it , then finally somebody had the decency to link to the artist . :)
here's another random example of how this is taking a life on its own now. How unfathomable and untraceable are social media's ways!
A house in Bucharest, Romania 🇷🇴 pic.twitter.com/RdbaJ8lMPz
— Collapsed … 🍁 !!! (@Iamirfan21) January 30, 2023