Dungeons & Dragons Characters Created Using AI Are Perfect For Your Next Session

thegamer.com:

We might soon be living in a world where you can just describe to an AI the characters you want to add to your next D&D campaign and then instantly have stunning character portraits generated out of thin air.

Alex Hay, indie app developer and documentary film editor, has been toying around with Dall-E 2, the AI image generator that’s responsible for some funny yet slightly off-putting pictures you’ve seen making the rounds on social media. Using Dall-E is simple: you tell it what you want, and then it creates it from nothing like magic.

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Well, not entirely from nothing. The AI needs an internet connection since it combs through millions of pictures using similar search terms to generate its images. Dall-E first-generation images were somewhat impressionistic, but the upgraded Dall-E 2 seems capable of generating images that are of much higher quality. Hay’s prompts have been able to generate absolutely stunning character portraits of fantasy characters that would be perfect for use with something like D&D beyond or for creating custom character sheets. For example, the image below was loosely based on Minsc from Baldur’s Gate 2 using the following prompt:

"A portrait of a giant bald barbarian with purple face paint. A hamster sits on his shoulder. The scene is at sunset and he wears armour made from leather. Epic fantasy art, sharp, award winning on Artstation, 4k HD."

Or take this prompt which created a cool rogue character. Hay has used similar prompts to fill an entire Instagram account with what he’s managed to generate using Dall-E, and it’s all absolutely fantastic.

Dall-E isn’t quite ready to roll out on something like D&D Beyond, but you can sign up