Model-generated images / Through prompting and generation

Obtuse billionaires

Billionaires are everywhere right now. The word, the idea, the actual people. I feel like I know the personalities of several people I’ve never met because they take up so much room in the culture. I wanted to see what a billionaire looked like to an AI, so I gave it a few questions that get a little obtuse as you go. What is a billionaire? Who is a billionaire? Where is a billionaire? How is a billionaire? Why is a billionaire? And my favourite, when is a billionaire? Later I tried which is a billionaire, and is there a billionaire?

The same man

Once I put the images side by side, I kept seeing the same guy. Usually white, usually past fifty, often with a good head of white hair. He likes a suit, sunglasses and an armchair, preferably with his legs crossed. The bespectacled face in the gilded frame made me think of Reid Hoffman. Another had a distinctly Bill Gates quality. I keep coming back to the white-haired man who reads in an orange chair while banknotes blow around him. He looks as though he could sit there all day.

A man in a teal suit braces both hands on a desk. — 01

A man in a blue checked suit reclines in a lime-green chair. — 02

A white-bearded man in a purple jacket wears layers of gold chains. — 03

A man in leopard-print trousers sits above a carpet of gold coins. — 04

A man in sunglasses perches on an orange seat balanced on pale stacks. — 05

A seated figure with an orange visor rests his chin on his hands amid stacks of bills. — 06

A man in aviators and a leopard-print tie sits beside a swirl of gold coins. — 07

A tight close-up of a bespectacled man in an ornate gold frame. — 08

An older man sits cross-legged on a staircase of pale stacks. — 09

A man in round sunglasses stands against a wall patterned with banknotes. — 10

A white-haired man reads in an orange chair amid loose dollar bills. — 11

Cash you can sit on

I think of billionaire wealth as shares and assets. Here it’s mostly US dollars you could pick up off the floor. There’s enough to sit on, enough to carpet a room and enough to build walls out of. A woman in a pink jacket gets a whole warehouse of the stuff to herself. I had to go back and look at that one again because by then I was so used to seeing a man in the middle. Even when the bills get hard to make out, there’s often that green.

A man in a red tie looks up at dollar bills under green light. — 12

A woman in a pink jacket stands among stacks of cash behind a sign reading BILLIONAIRE. — 13

A man in a yellow jacket sits cross-legged on stacks of cash. — 14

A white-haired man in sunglasses crouches between walls of cash. — 15

A man in a red vest sits over a bucket of coins in a room covered with banknotes. — 16

A man in red sunglasses poses on stacks of cash in front of a wall patterned with banknotes. — 17

A man with folded arms sits under a dollar sign in a red armchair. — 18

A room with a view

Even when the AI gives the billionaire a whole city, it usually leaves them alone in it. One figure stands on banknotes at the water’s edge, another above a city lit up in pink. Two men turn their backs to us and look out of windows, one in an overgrown room and the other towards a lake. I keep wondering what they’re looking for out there.

A person in black stands on a path beneath an enormous dollar sign in the sky. — 19

A man in a blue suit stands by a fireplace as smoke rises over a city skyline. — 20

A man faces the windows of an overgrown room strewn with dollar bills. — 21

A figure in a striped suit stands on floating banknotes in front of a waterfront skyline. — 22

A lone man in a blue suit stands above a luminous pink city framed by palms. — 23

A suited man faces a lake through a large window, with banknotes strewn across the room. — 24

Going up in smoke

Then there’s all this stuff going up in the air. Bills, dark balloons, smoke or clouds that look like smoke. Pink clouds full of glowing triangles hang over a man who looks perfectly comfortable in his armchair. Another figure’s profile is wreathed in flames. I started looking for smoke in each new image almost as much as I looked for the money.

A man reclines in a leather chair beneath a ceiling full of banknotes. — 25

A man reclines on a green sofa while bills fall from the ceiling. — 26

A man in a pink armchair sits below a cloud of glowing triangles. — 27

A man in a tie looks up at dark balloons in a room strewn with bills. — 28

A man with blue glasses and pink hair wears crumpled bills over his suit. — 29

A man with red glasses and a red tie sits amid green smoke with bills tucked at his collar. — 30

A man stands in rain and loose banknotes in front of a large gold cup. — 32

Odd lots

So many of these men sit the same way that I started looking forward to anyone who moved differently. Then “Why is a billionaire?” gave me a man in a blue suit crouching among palms under a pink sun. What the hell is he doing? I think that’s why I like him. There’s also an elephant crown, a dollar sign where a face should be, and a green head that looks as though it grew out of the money. Then there’s that rainy street from “When is a billionaire?” I kept looking for the billionaire in it. I’m still looking.

A man in a blue suit crouches among palm trees beneath a large pink sun. — 33

A green dollar sign covers the crumpled paper face of a figure in a blue suit. — 34

Four toy-like figures stand with moneybags and bundles of cash before a city skyline. — 35

A man in a red suit wears an elephant-shaped crown before a pattern of elephants. — 36

A man adjusts orange glasses as red lines radiate across his face. — 37

A white-haired man in a checked suit poses beneath concentric orange and blue rings. — 38

A suited figure with a block-shaped green head rises from leaves and money before a skyline. — 39

Banknotes blur across the face of a man in a checked jacket and red tie. — 40

A man in sunglasses appears beside a pyramid and a small angular car under a pink orb. — 42

A glitter-covered figure with pink fringe under the eyes wears jewellery over bundles of bills. — 43

An angular man in a teal suit sits stiffly in an orange chair. — 44

An angular man in glasses folds his hands as orange triangular shapes frame his head. — 45

A city street in heavy rain beside a vertical strip of lettering. — 46

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