Sunday, February 18, 2024

K-AI-lash

Somehow the algorithm that sends uninvited TikTok-aspirant "reels" to my FaceBook account discovered I had an interest in Mount Kailas. It's a very special mountain, no doubt, which means many things to many people, but still the variety of images is a little confounding. The fourth and sixth of the images below show Kailas as I saw it. All the others are, at the least, AI-enhanced, giving the sacred mount different shapes - pointy, symmetrical, crowned with special clouds - and often attended by vast numbers of (mainly Hindu) pilgrims,  


almost none of whom are dressed for the altitude. But how did the AI generate a mountain which - like the first - looks so like a snow-covered temple? In the vast world of images on which AI trains, realistic images of Kailas may be outnumbered by stylized devotional ones, easily rendered "photographic" by AI. But they're not just bunk. As I once suggested, you need to approach Kailas with something already in mind - and maybe that's what you (are) then (able to) see.