AKA: Exploring AI’s Anatomical disasters in Mythical creatures

Wyverns. Wyverns are fun. Don’t get me wrong, dragons are cool too, but for some reason I’ve always loved the look of Wyverns, probably because they remind me of the Fellbeasts from Lord Of The Rings…

But, here’s a thing I’ve noticed.

AI art generators have a thing against Wyverns, and I don’t know why, but it’s annoying.

For those confused, Wyverns are a mythical creature, similar to the classic European dragons, but with less legs. Typically, according to most hard core myth and fantasy nerds, dragons have 4 legs and Wyverns have 2.

That’s right, technically, according to quite a lot of folks, the ‘dragons’ in The Game Of Thrones TV show, are actually wyverns, but you know, details.

Now, AI Art generators are fairly well known for making mistakes in some key anatomical areas, such as hands and fingers. And at least the ones that I’ve used seem to have some trouble with assigning people the correct number and placement of limbs.

E.g. Pirate Fashion Models. Note the legs.

See also: Man drinking, look at those arms. Look at them.

Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, and they are getting better. Some things seem to work better than others, and images might have other odd things going on here or there, but for the most part they aren’t too bad.

But, here’s what happens when I ask the AI to draw me a Wyvern.

Note: Not a Wyvern. That definitely has more than 2 legs. But it’s okay, sometimes this happens, lets try again.

And again…

Still not a wyvern.

There are some that could be technically-kind-of-close-ish, in the number of legs department, but they still don’t really say ‘Wyvern’. Such as the mess below. I can see 2 legs, but I don’t recognize the rest of it.

It looks kind of like someone tried to draw a cross between a dragon and a chicken in google sketch up and something went horribly wrong…

No matter how many times I try, I never get the classic Game Of Thrones not-a-dragon that I’m looking for.

This one is fun, but not quite.

And this one is basically just a dinosaur.

Creative, but no dice.

Not a Wyvern.

Sometimes It gives me a mess, other times it just gives up and gives me dragon. All from one single word ‘Wyvern’.

It doesn’t get better if I specify the number of limbs.

I said 2 legs, I promise…

A quick dive into other mythological creatures gives us some interesting additional insight.

It seems to have no problems with the Unicorns.

Dragons it gets right most of the time, but we still seem to have some issues with the correct arrangement of limbs, and things joining in the right places. They still look a little funny, but it’s nowhere near as bad.

Griffins it likewise has a problem with. Ask for a Griffin, and you get one enormous bird. You’re missing bits.

Most likely the AI art generator will similarly struggle with some of the less common mythical creatures, simply because they are less common, and therefore the AI has fewer examples to draw from.

But… knowing that isn’t exactly helpful.

The Dragons and The Griffins, get a little better if you specify ‘fantasy’ or ‘mythical’ in the prompt.

Sometimes…

But for Wyverns? Not so much.

Finally we get one that looks almost acceptable, technically speaking.

He’s still ugly, but he’s less deformed than the others. Still looks more like a chicken than a Fellbeast, but points for trying.

Lets throw in some more specific examples in the prompt, like ‘game of thrones’, and see if we can’t make him look better.

So close! But apparently conflicted. They really like those extra limbs.

I try again, but now we’ve lost it. The chicken-saur or the 3 legged wonder might be as good as we’re going to get.

Putting it in specific scenes or settings does nothing good to improve things.

Trying to add more detail to the prompt does initially look okay, but it still has that classic chicken shape that I’m not fond of, and that’s including the Game Of Thrones reference inside the prompt.

But one quick refresh and we’re back with the extraneous limbs. Nice try.

I even tried breaking out the Latin and using fancy science terms like Bipedal. But that really doesn’t help with the anatomical situation. It seems AI is really attached to those extra legs.

In fact the only way I can get anywhere close to the image I want, is by using AI to basically copy someone else’s Wyvern art, except that feels like cheating, and 9/10 times it doesn’t work anyway.

Maybe I’m just being picky.

I know that technically if you look up Wyvern on Wikipedia, the classic Wyvern symbols from flags and things do indeed resemble the mighty Chicken-saur style wyvern. So, technically, goal achieved?

It is possible to get something that is technically a wyvern, or close enough. But still the vast majority of the time it’s strangely deformed, or has too many legs. And even the chicken-saur is not the beautiful and threatening beast from Game of Thrones or LOTR that I so admire.

I’m at the end of my mythological rope by this point. Even if I abandon the ‘wyvern’ part of the prompt and flat out ask for a game of thrones ‘dragon’ flying through the skies, this happens.

So close and yet so far. The background is nice though…

Alas, no.

No prompt I try seems to work when it comes to generating these types of wyverns, despite how popular the design seems to be in modern fantasy.

It seems that I’ll just have to wait, and put up with the classic chicken-saur or the dragons and their extraneous limbs. Such a sad day.

AI 1 : Wyverns Nill.

One day Wyverns, one day.