ChatGPT, draw a picture of a parrot in ASCII art(chatgpt.com)
19 pointsby doener13 hours ago6 comments
  • tills133 hours ago
    One of the most frustrating parts about "AI" in its current form is that you can challenge it on anything and it play dumb, being like " oops I'm sowwy I was wrong, you're right"

    I wish it would either: grow a spine and double down (in the cases that it's right or partially right) or simply admit when something is beyond its capability instead of guessing or this like low-percentage Markov chain continuation.

  • throw31082210 hours ago
    Nice. It looks like it's not really focusing much on the task and just drawing something by heart; then when asked for the third time it finally produces a much simpler and smaller design that actually resembles some kind of bird. As if this was the actual real effort.
    • ziml778 hours ago
      You say that like it has an understanding. If I could have forked the conversation after it gave a unicorn I would have, but I was able to start my own and ask for ASCII art of a parrot. On the first try it gave me a sitting penguin (probably Tux art from the training data)

      When I then asked it if the image was really a parrot it told me that it was "more of a generic 'ASCII bird' (often used as a generic owl/parrot placeholder), not a true parrot."

      A sitting penguin is certainly not a generic bird.

      • throw3108223 hours ago
        Yes. Well, it doesn't really "see" the ascii art it's producing because it's blind and it's just reading and writing it as if it were text- so the task is much more complex than it seems to us. I do notice a difference between the first attempt (and your sitting penguin) and the small art at the end. If you've used gpt5, it's possible that it decided to engage its full capacity only at that point, and that the previous answers were less thought through.

        But yes I do believe these things understand. There is no other way for them to do what they're doing.

      • firesteelrain7 hours ago

           __
  (o)>
  //\
  V_/_
        • ziml776 hours ago
          That's what you might expect a generic sitting penguin to look like, but this is what it actually gave me

                .---.
     /     \
     \.@-@./
     /`\_/`\
    //  _  \\
   | \     )|_
  /`\_`>  <_/ \
  \__/'---'\__/
  • ravila48 hours ago
    It looks to me like it’s regurgitating training data. The biggest success I ever had with drawing ascii art was with the GPT 4.1 model a while back.
  • pulvinar9 hours ago
    Ask ChatGPT to explain what it's drawing as it adds parts. It's usually more successful. Or at least entertaining. Reminds me of how a young child draws.
  • homeonthemtn9 hours ago
    The emojis are painful.