> image generation models is offloaded to the human visual cortex which is a very old evolutionary construct and thus had time to become very resilient
This is a very important point. A group of my colleagues (who are not tech people) are much more impressed with the image generation models than with the chat interface, even though the images are often whacky or just wrong. Yet the fact that it tried is impressive to them, with their minds managing to fill in the blanks.
I wonder how this compares to how a toddler speaks vs. paints/draws, which is typically better in the former than the latter. I'm both cases, we fill in the blanks in our minds.
Toddler speaking gets impressive/surprising quite fast, whereas the drawing usually does not. The most surprising thing about most toddler drawings is listening to the kid describe it or tell you about making it.
The consistency of descriptions is particularly surprising to me. Like you got a roughly circular collection of seemingly random scribbles, but they can tell you exactly which parts of it correspond to the person's nose, hair, arms, eyes, etc. And the descriptions seem to stay the same if you ask about the same picture on different days. Still not sure what to make of this phenomenon but it is fascinating.
This is a very important point. A group of my colleagues (who are not tech people) are much more impressed with the image generation models than with the chat interface, even though the images are often whacky or just wrong. Yet the fact that it tried is impressive to them, with their minds managing to fill in the blanks.
I wonder how this compares to how a toddler speaks vs. paints/draws, which is typically better in the former than the latter. I'm both cases, we fill in the blanks in our minds.