Meta Concept Tool Would Let Artists Create Works From Text Prompts

An exploratory AI research concept from Meta would let users create a digital painting “without ever picking up a paintbrush" or instantly generate illustrations to accompany a storybook's words, the company blogged Thursday. The Make-A-Scene tool “turns ideas into art,” enabling people to create images using text prompts and freeform sketches, the company said. Previous imaging-generating AI systems used text descriptions as input, but results could be hard to predict, it said. The text input “a painting of a zebra riding a bike” might not reflect exactly what the creator envisioned; the bicycle could be facing sideways or the zebra could be too large or small, Meta said. Make-A-Scene captures the scene layout to enable nuanced sketches as input. The model focuses on learning key aspects of the imagery that are more likely to be important to the creator, like objects or animals, it said. Make-A-Scene isn’t just for artists, Meta said: “We believe it could help everyone better express themselves.”