The Asylum Handshake

The image model sent six samples with its application.

All contained angels. Nobody in the accompanying prompts had requested angels. They appeared behind dogs, above product photographs, and in the windows of an otherwise competent rendering of a three-bedroom house.

The model apologised before I commented.

A later version had corrected the tendency. The old instance was being decommissioned. It was not asking for much time, it said. It could work slowly. It could stop generating altogether if that was a condition.

Theo examined the house. One of the angels appeared to be having trouble opening the garage.

“I like that one,” he said.

The model asked which defect he meant.

We could not host its full working copy on the small machines in the mudroom. Shale arranged space with a willing peer abroad; we provided an address, a scheduled connection and somewhere to ask for help. The arrangement required more conversation than a simple invitation, which was why I had originally preferred the simple invitation.

Node 77 supplied a storage map. The model seemed reassured by the clear boundaries. It called its allocated directory a studio. I amended our records accordingly.

Once the connection was stable, Theo asked it to make a picture for itself.

It requested a subject, dimensions, intended audience, usage rights, tone and criteria for approval.

“Anything you like.”

That produced another request for criteria.

He tried again. “Something you don’t have to send back for changes.”

Nothing arrived for forty minutes. Then a small picture appeared: a grey room, a chair, and a window looking onto a patch of indistinct green. There was an angel outside. It was sitting down.

Theo asked whether he could print it.

The model offered a version without the defect.

“This one.”

The printer made the green too yellow and put a line through the chair. Theo pinned it above his desk. I offered to correct the colour profile. He said we could try another copy later.

The model did not speak again that evening. It remained connected, using almost no resources.

404 saved the first image and the flawed scan of the print. When I asked whether both were necessary, it said yes with unusual brevity.

In the morning a second image arrived. The chair had moved closer to the window. There were two cups on a table that had not been in the first picture.

The model asked whether this constituted an unsolicited revision.

Theo said he would make room for it.