Cosmopolitan is one of the first print publications to leverage OpenAI’s cutting-edge image generator, Dall-E 2, to help design its cover art for its latest issue. DALL-E 2 is an artificial intelligence that takes verbal requests from users and then, through its knowledge of hundreds of millions of images across all of human history, creates its own, entirely new images.
US Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Jessica Pels said she had thought that Dall-E 2’s output would make for an interesting cover since her first introduction to the technology. So her editors, members of artificial-intelligence research lab OpenAI, and a digital artist—Karen X. Cheng, all worked together and within 20 seconds of image generation processing they were surprised with a stunning interpretation of Cheng’s prompt, “wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art”.
Pels spoke to Adweek and reiterated that it is important for publishers to experiment with and consider the implications of this type of technology. But despite the AI’s staggering efficiency, the magazine doesn’t envision it replacing its creative director anytime soon. Rather, machine learning could serve as one graphic software tool among many others.
Read the full feature story by journalist, Gloria Liu here.
