Phun with Photos

In the previous post for the monthly featured Flickr photo, Enhanced Chess Art (March 2025), I asked and answered,

Why put 'photos' in inverted commas (' ')? Because I didn't understand how they were done.

That could just as easily apply to this month's 'photo', shown below. At first glance it certainly could be a photo, but the first clue to the contrary was the unnatural arrangement of the pieces on an 8x7 board.

Playing chess keeps you fit! // This is an AI image... © Flickr user Günter Hentschel under Creative Commons.

The second clue was in the title: 'This is an AI image'. So how was it created? Here the first clue was the start of the description; it said,

ChatGPT generated this image based on a text description that I had entered.

The second clue was a tag that said, 'Luminar Neo'. What's that? Wikipedia to the rescue in Luminar Neo (wikipedia.org):-

Luminar Neo is a photo editing software application developed by Skylum (formerly Macphun) available for Windows and macOS. [It] was released in February 2022. It works as a standalone application and as a plugin for Adobe and Apple products.

Macphun? Thus arose the title of this post.

Beating a Dead Horse?

As announced in a post on my World Championship blog, It's Later Than You Think (April 2025), I've temporarily suspended posting on that blog. The reason I gave was,

Since I'm not seeing an easy fix to the technical problems, I'll skip posting to [the WCC] blog until I get my affairs in order.

For the same reason, I'm going to suspend the Monday series on this blog. Since the beginning of the year it has been mostly been used for exploring AI comics, last seen in The Most Conceptual of the Conceptualists (March 2025). I have a big stockpile of AIC images to use, but I'll close with this one...

'Dead horse plays chess.'
AI Comic Factory

The Most Conceptual of the Conceptualists

In last week's post, The Most Surreal of the Surrealists (March 2025), I wrote,

I once explored conceptual art in a post mysteriously titled (... drum roll ...), Chess in Conceptual Art (March 2017). Maybe it's time to turn the subject over to AI comics.

Unfortunately, the AI software doesn't seem to have 'conceptual' in its vocabulary. The half-dozen examples it created had nothing to do with anything except the royal game itself. Then I remembered a trick used in Color the Proteins (January 2025), i.e. 'Demis Hassabis plays chess with a green protein.' While 'protein' is a noun, 'conceptual' is an adjective. Can you color an adjective? I tried coloring it both green and red, and here's a sample of what I got.

'Marcel Duchamp plays red conceptual chess.'
AI Comic Factory

Can you color an adjective? No, you can't. The software applies the adjective to one of the nouns, which are Marcel Duchamp and chess. Next post: Get as far away from this nonsense as I can.

The Most Surreal of the Surrealists

The previous post, MW Plays Chess -or- Call Me Clueless (March 2025) was an experiment in name recognition. What does our AI comic software do when it doesn't know who or what the subject is? I concluded,

The experiment yields more questions than answers. The next post in the series will return to subjects having greater name recognition.

We've already had a couple of posts about surrealist chess. The previous post was Surrealist, Cubist, Dadaist Chess (February 2025; 'Marcel Duchamp plays surrealist chess.'). The best known surrealist artist is undoubtedly Salvador Dali.

'Dali plays surrealist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

It turns out that we've already seen both artists in a non-comic setting a year ago in Conceptual Artist and Surreal Artist (March 2024; 'Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali playing chess') I once explored conceptual art in a post mysteriously titled (... drum roll ...), Chess in Conceptual Art (March 2017). Maybe it's time to turn the subject over to AI comics.

MW Plays Chess -or- Call Me Clueless

In the previous post in this series, Dadaist Chess (March 2025), I ended with an observation and a promise:-

Like the [AI comic] software, I'm clearly struggling here, so I'd better end this post now. • Next post in the series: Call me clueless.

Let's try an experiment. What does the software display when it has absolutely no idea what its designated subject look like? Since there are no photos of me on the web, other than the one at the top of the navigation column on the right, I'm the perfect subject and the experiment can continue. Even that photo dates back to 2008, so it won't help much.

'Mark Weeks plays chess.'
AI Comic Factory

The white haired fellow in the lower right frame is not far from reality, but the other three frames are pure fiction. And what's that attempt to spell my name in the upper left? After all, I gave the correct spelling in the prompt. Then there's 'CHAISS MES' underneath my name. If that's supposed to be 'CHESS MESS', it makes a least a little sense.

The experiment yields more questions than answers. The next post in the series will return to subjects having greater name recognition.

Dadaist Chess

In the previous post, What Is Dadaist Chess? (February 2025), I quoted from Wikipedia,

Dada or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War [aka WWI] and the earlier anti-art movement.

Adding that to an earlier post titled, Cubist Chess (February 2025; 'Marcel Duchamp plays cubist chess'), generates yet another view of Marcel Duchamp playing chess, shown below.

'Marcel Duchamp plays dadaist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

While those faces all look like Marcel Duchamp, where's the Dadaism? An even more fundamental question is how do you depict an 'anti-establishment / anti-art' movement? Our AI comic software is clearly struggling with the question.

One trick the software uses when lost for an appropriate image is to create a meaningless comic sequence, like the one shown in the upper left frame. Another trick is to put stuff on the wall, like the two frames on the right. Maybe the framed pictures relate to images well known to Dadaism. Then again, maybe not. What do I know?

Like the software, I'm clearly struggling here, so I'd better end this post now. • Next post in the series: Call me clueless.

Cubist Chess

The title of the previous post on AI Comics, Surrealist, Cubist, Dadaist Chess (February 2025; 'Marcel Duchamp plays surrealist chess'), suggests the theme of this current post. I ended that post saying,

That gives me at least two more avenues to explore -- (1) conceptual art and (2) Salvador Dali, not to overlook cubism and dadism.

Cubism I understand -- at least I think I do -- Dadaism is a mystery. Let's go with what I understand.

'Marcel Duchamp plays cubist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

So cubist means breaking up surfaces into a patchwork of smaller, rectangular pieces. A chessboard is inherently cubist; chess pieces are not. Next on the agenda: dadaist.

More Text to Art

While creating the short list for this month's Flickr Favorite post, I saw many photos similar to the one in the upper left of the composite image below. See, for example, the photo directly beneath it (leftmost image second row). When I tried to look at that family of photos together, I discovered that the photographer frequently used 'chess' as a theme. The image in the lower right looked familiar and, sure enough, I had 'faved' it sometime last year.

Upper left: Chess-esque © Flickr user Leo Reynolds under Creative Commons.
Bottom right: Chess mosaic © [same as upper left]

The descriptions of both photos were identical:-

Artwork created by Midjourney from a sequence of text.

No prizes for guessing that Midjourney (wikipedia.org), is an AI image generator. That Wikipedia page starts,

Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Francisco-based independent research lab Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. It is one of the technologies of the AI boom.

The last time we saw a Flickr chess image of this genre was No Hunk-o'-Junk Here (April 2024). Although the generator of that image wasn't explicitly identified, a piece of additional info informs,

This photo is in 1 album: AI Gen Sci-fi (Midjourney).

Midjourney again. So there we have it.

Surrealist, Cubist, Dadaist Chess

Continuing to explore the bizarre, parallel world of AI chess comics, it's been a month since the post on Surrealist Chess (January 2025; 'Rene Magritte plays surrealist chess'). Perhaps the best known chess artist is Marcel Duchamp, so let's see what the AI software thinks about him and his work.

'Marcel Duchamp plays surrealist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

While that's unmistakably Marcel Duchamp, the images aren't nearly as compelling as those in the Magritte post. What went wrong? Wikipedia, in Marcel Duchamp (wikipedia.org), says,

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art.

There's no mention of 'surrealism' there, so maybe I got my wires crossed. The rest of Duchamp's Wikipedia page mentions variations of 'surreal' more than a dozen times. One of the first mentions says,

The [Dada] movement influenced later styles, such as the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art, and Fluxus.

The most recent post on this blog featuring Duchamp was Conceptual Artist and Surreal Artist (March 2024). There I quoted the UK Royal Academy of Arts,

Take another look at two artistic giants: father of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp, and larger-than-life surrealist Salvador Dali.

That gives me at least two more avenues to explore -- (1) conceptual art and (2) Salvador Dali, not to overlook cubism and dadaism -- in the bizarre, parallel world of AI chess comics.

Playing Chess with Money

One of the insights from my recent explorations into AI Comics was that people's likenesses are best rendered using the '3D Render' style. Consider the images produced for the recent post Color the Proteins (January 2025; 'Demis Hassabis plays chess ...').

Another insight was that AI Comics are perfectly happy to create images of inanimate objects playing chess. Consider the following images inspired by the world of economics and finance.

'Kenneth Rogoff plays chess with money.'
AI Comic Factory

Now I don't know what you think, but I think those are pretty good likenesses of one of the most famous GMs who became much better known in a real world profession (is there another?). Photos of {GM/Dr./Professor} Rogoff have appeared many times on this blog.

The earliest appearance was Kenny Rogoff as You've Never Seen Him (February 2012). Note the contrast between the photo of young Rogoff in that post and an older Rogoff in Wesley So & Kenneth Rogoff (February 2015). Since there are many more photos of the older Rogoff on the web, it's those photos that have been used as the base for the composite image shown above.

As for 'plays chess with money', the only frame where money is obvious is the lower left. The round thing behind the board looks to be based on the seals you find on U.S. dollar paper bills.

***

Later: I received a message from A.L. saying, 'In the upper right frame, he appears to be tossing a gold coin.' It took me a few minutes to see it, but yes indeed, there is a gold coin near the center of the upper right frame. I missed it before because it is nearly the same color as Professor Rogoff's tie.

Color the Proteins

Let's combine a recent video post, The Noblest Prize (January 2025):-

Nobel lecture with the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2024 Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK. [...] "for protein structure prediction"

with a derivative of that post, Proteins Play Chess (January 2025):-

I started to wonder if proteins play chess. It turns out they do, at least according to AI comics.

I constructed a series of test images using the phrase 'Demis Hassabis plays chess with a protein'. While the likenesses of Dr. Hassabis were very good, at least by my standards, the proteins were missing. Maybe, I thought, the proteins will be visible if I color them. Sure enough, it worked.

'Demis Hassabis plays chess with a green protein.'
AI Comic Factory

It turns out the proteins were there all along in my test images, but I didn't recognize them, because they were represented by chess pieces. In the 'Proteins Play Chess' post I noted that proteins were often depicted with 'pointy protusions' on their heads. Here we see the same in the lower left frame. QED?

Proteins Play Chess

A week ago, in Surrealist Chess (January 2025), I wrote,

Continuing with the weekly series on AI comics [...] we return to aimless wandering around various topics.

After that post about Magritte, I intended to continue with another artist known for an interest in chess, but I got sidetracked by yesterday's post, The Noblest Prize (January 2025). It featured a video about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, awarded:-

half jointly to Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK and John Jumper, Google DeepMind, London, UK "for protein structure prediction".

That amounts to a 25% share for our favorite chess-playing DeepMind employee. While I was working on the post, I started to wonder if proteins play chess. It turns out they do, at least according to AI comics.

'Proteins play chess.'
AI Comic Factory

In all frames except the upper left, there is a protein-like humanoid or molecule visible in the image. In the bottom right frame, the central, green 'protein' has a pointy protusion on its head. That was a common element of the half-dozen (or so) composite panels that I created.

Even in the upper left frame, there is a rectangular head in the center of the upper left quadrant of the frame -- white face looking to the right, green eye, red hat (or hair) -- with a pointy protusion that is topped by a yellowish Pawn. Is that our missing protein player?

The Noblest Prize

Although we've seen Demis Hassabis on this blog almost a dozen times, it's been a few years since the last time -- Beyond AlphaZero (September 2019) -- and even then it was just in passing. What has the chess player turned entrepreneur been doing since then?

Accelerating scientific discovery with AI (29:01) • '[Published on] Dec 16, 2024'

The description of the video says,

Nobel lecture with the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2024 Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK. Introduction by Johan Aaqvist, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. From: The Nobel Lectures 2024, 2024-12-08.

The description then points to a press release from early October: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024: They cracked the code for proteins' amazing structures (kva.se; 'The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences'). It starts,

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 with one half to David Baker, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA "for computational protein design" and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind, London, UK and John Jumper, Google DeepMind, London, UK "for protein structure prediction".

That introduction is followed by an explanation of the science involved:-

The diversity of life testifies to proteins’ amazing capacity as chemical tools. They control and drive all the chemi­cal reactions that together are the basis of life. Proteins also function as hormones, signal substances, antibodies and the building blocks of different tissues.

[More, much more] Follow the downloads...

Surrealist Chess

Continuing with the weekly series on AI comics, after a brief detour for the year-end holidays last seen in Is 2025 a Dystopian Year? (December 2024), we return to aimless wandering around various topics. Here the previous post was World Class Asian Players (ditto).

This current post started with some recent news from November 2024: Magritte painting fetches record $121 million at auction (brusselstimes.com). Which painting was that? The article informed,

A painting by Belgian surrealist René Magritte was sold for a record-breaking $121.16 million (€114 million) at an auction in New York on Tuesday evening. The painting, titled L'empire des lumières ('The Empire of Light') dates back to 1954 and features a solitary lamp post illuminating a darkened street, juxtaposed with a bright blue day-lit sky. It is one of 18 versions painted by Magritte in different mediums (oil and gouache) and with slight variations.

Somewhere in the back of my head was a factoid that Magritte played chess and sometimes incorporated the game into his paintings. Sure enough, I found this from July 2022: Hidden Belgium: Greenwich Modern (brusselstimes.com; Derek Blyth). The lead sentence of the article informed,

The Surrealist painter René Magritte liked to visit the creaky old Brussels bar Le Greenwich in Rue des Chartreux. He would join the local men to play chess and try unsuccessfully to sell one of his paintings.

In the 1980s and 90s, I sometimes played chess in the Greenwich. I'll come back to that in a moment, but first let's see what AI comics have to say about Magritte.

'Rene Magritte plays surrealist chess.'
AI Comic Factory

The 'Greenwich Modern' article continued,

The café closed in 2009 to allow the Ghent architects Robbrecht & Daem to renovate the beautiful Art Nouveau interior dating from 1907. It relaunched two years later as an upmarket brasserie. The chess players were politely asked to leave.

I passed by the Greenwich some time after that and noticed that the chess sets were gone. Apparently they're back again, so next time I'm in the area I'll peek inside the café to see for myself.

An early post on this blog, Le Greenwich (July 2006), pointed to some pictures, but they are also long gone. Maybe they still live in the Internet archive.

Is 2025 a Dystopian Year?

A week after this blog's Christmas post, Inside Santa's Workshop (December 2024), let's follow up with a New Year's post. Maybe 'double down' is a better description of this post than 'follow up'.

'2025 plays chess.'
AI Comic Factory

Last year's New Year AI image, Father Time and the New Year Baby (January 2024), was filled with bearded old men, clocks, and babies. This year's image has a dystopian look to it. The two panels on the left show futuristic cities, while the bottom-right panel shows Big Brother watching two men play chess.

As for the top-right panel, the player on the left shows a younger version of the player on the right. Is the player maybe GM Ken Rogoff? See 'At the Center of AI Research' (August 2023) and follow the links for before/after images of the genial GM.

Inside Santa's Workshop

After the previous post in the (wannabe) weekly AI comics series, World Class Asian Players (December 2024), I took a break from the series for a few weeks. Reason? Laziness.

Now we're in the year-end holiday period where, although sloth is acceptable, I'll try harder. Reason? I can't do much less than I'm already doing.

This week it's Christmas. Next week it's New Year's. After that, we'll see.

'Christmas elves play chess.'
AI Comic Factory

A year ago I was just starting to experiment with the AI Comic software as a tool for illustrating the blog; see Foxy Christmas Chess (December 2023). Next year, who knows? How about a full-length 'Chess Christmas Comics'? For that I'll need a story.

World Class Asian Players

The previous post in the weekly AI comics series investigated the burning question Why Are 'Comics' Rarely Funny? (November 2024). This post explores the World Championship match currently being played in Singapore, last seen on this blog in World Championship Yahoos 2024 (November 2024).

'Ding Liren and Gukesh play chess in Singapore.'
AI Comic Factory

Not very good is it? Although there are two Asian players, one of them maybe Chinese, there is nothing obviously related to Singapore. I tried a number of different styles -- Franco-Belgian, Modern American, ... -- and they all had the same flaws. Some of them showed two (probably) Chinese players in each of the four panels.

What went wrong? I suspect that the source dataset used to generate the images is older than the emergence of Gukesh as a recognizable name in chess, i.e. there are not many images of him. I also suspect that the keyword 'Singapore' might have skewed the software to over-represent Chinese players. I know the software understands the characteristics of (Asian sub-continent) Indians. See, for example, Real Chess Villages (March 2024).

For my first experiment on the name to face recognition of World Champions, see Rogues' Gallery (December 2023). There I wrote,

The following composite image is assembled from 18 times '[Name] plays chess', where '[Name]' is one of the World Champions.

In that image the likeness of Ding Liren is acceptable, if only so-so. It is better than some of the other, historical World Champions, which is not setting the bar very high. Maybe I'll come back to this in a future post, but there are other fish to fry in AI comics.

Why Are 'Comics' Rarely Funny?

This being Thanksgiving week in the USA and me wanting an easy post that continues the AI comics series, please forgive me more nonsense.

'Turkeys play Thanksgiving chess'
AI Comic Factory

For the previous post in the series, see Kings of the News Cycle (November 2024).

Kings of the News Cycle

First Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in Election Special 2024 (November 2024), then Elon Musk beat a troll in Elon Musk Goes Trolling (ditto). The two billionaires are slated to square off in a high stakes contest for the Championship of the One-Percenters.

'Donald Trump and Elon Musk play chess'
AI Comic Factory

If the match is tied after two games, the winner will be decided by a hotdog eating contest. Musk has an edge in the chess games because of his experience on his high school team; Trump has an edge in the tiebreak because of his appetite for winning.

Elon Musk Goes Trolling

According to the recent post, Where Was I? (November 2024), Mondays could be for a new series on AI comics. Sounds good to me, but on what theme?

While I was preparing that post, I browsed bookmarks that had accumulated since I cut back on blogging almost six months ago. One in particular caught my attention: Elon Musk criticizes chess... again! (chessbase.com; Albert Silver):-

In what is now a recurring theme, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, once again took to his now owned Twitter/X to rain hell and fire on the royal game, complaining once more about its many shortcomings, with comments such as "suddenly vaporize the opponent's king with lasers from space", and its inability to compete with the complexity of reality.

This works for me because the first post in the previous AI comics series was Elon Musk and Squirrels (December 2023). The Chessbase.com page opined,

When those 'jokes' (attacks) become sequential and unprovoked, the term to describe them is 'trolling'.

And voila! There was my theme.

'Elon Musk plays chess with a troll.'
AI Comic Factory

The same Chessbase.com page had a photo, 'Elon Musk with his High School's "A" chess team'. There are 11 players in the photo. I'm guessing that the future King Croesus wasn't playing first board.