Nature is my “Prompt Engineer”

Here is the original phone (Google Pixel 6) image taken on a recent hike. Nature has already produced an nearly infinite array of textures that can be inspirational to play with in the context of testing, and even training, an AI, or specifically a Large Language Model (which ChatGPT is an example)

Submitting this image to an AI (in this case MidJourney) for a variation image I need to give the AI an indication of what I would like it to do with the image. That is basically called “prompt engineering”

What is a “Prompt Engineer”

I asked ChatGPT v4 to define this….

A "prompt engineer" is presumably someone who specializes in prompt engineering, i.e., someone who designs, tests, and improves prompts to get the best possible performance out of language models.

MidJourney is an example of a massive GPU array tuned and trained to understand common (English only) descriptions that direct it to “interpret” those commands, sometimes paired with an image (like I have done here) to produce something different.

This is the resulting image.

I was looking for something whimsical, as that often produces a fantastical, but slightly believable image.

After about 10 iterations I was satisfied with this image.

my prompt: whimsical --no people hyper-realistic, professional photography, professional color grading, perfect lighting --ar 16:9

*** Nature, as usually the case, offers us opportunities in so many fields, and AI art is certainly one.