Last month, I did a blog post on AI art and its advantages and pitfalls. More recently, I have also talked about really bad armor designs in video games, T.V., books, etc. With those two being set up, I think it’s time that we see how well AI can produce images of armor. Will it be historically accurate? Will it look aesthetically pleasing?
I don’t know. Let’s just see what pops up.
#1: Medieval Armor
To start, I gave the AI prompt a pretty simple suggestion for your standard medieval armor. Nothing fancy. Just medieval armor. For a first attempt at this, I think AI did a pretty good job. The only thing I can tell that’s wrong with this picture is the sword’s pommel is really weird, the handle is way too long and skinny while the actual blade is too short, and the fact that the shield seems to be floating or glued onto the knight’s wrist. The hands are also a bit weird since one of them seems to have six fingers but other than that, I would give AI a good score of 9/10 for this image. It needs to fix the hands and sword, but other than that, it’s fine.
#2: Ancient Egyptian Armor
Just like with the last prompt, I didn’t tell AI to go crazy. I just asked for some ancient Egyptian armor and um…well…this is what I got. For some reason, AI seems to think that armor from ancient Egypt all looked like King Tut’s tomb and it is horrendous. Don’t even ask me what the spikes on the shoulders are; I’m not sure. All I know is that this is garbage and upon the second run of the prompt, it just got worse:
I don’t even know what to say with this one.
What with the shoulder pads?
Why’s he all gold?
What in the hell is coming out of his head?
Why is AI like this?
This is a 1/10 from me.
#3: Ancient Greek Armor
Unlike with the Ancient Egyptian armor, this one is mostly accurate. While he still gives me video game vibes and don’t understand what’s going on with his spear (why does it have leaves growing out of it?) it looks okay. Despite the super muscular breastplate looking hokey, the Ancient Greeks did have those, and they could be decorated to be pretty ornate, same with the shields. With that in mind, I’ll give it a 8/10. It looks like it’s from a videogame but is mostly accurate.
#4: Samurai Armor
Just like with the medieval armor that AI generated, this is pretty good except for a few things. For one, the sword is way too long. As someone who has seen real life katanas before, no katana is as long as whatever that is. Maybe it’s a naginata, but I highly doubt that, especially since those don’t look anything like that. The mask is also off because while it has slits for the eyes, there is nowhere for the person wearing it to breathe, which would not be good. This means that while I would like to give it a higher score, I’ll have to give it a 6/10 and even that might be a bit generous.
#5: Celtic armor
I think I may have found something that was worse than the Egyptian armor. For one thing, AI seems to have a big problem with generating swords, and this may be the worst one I’ve seen yet for obvious reasons. Additionally, Celtic shields did not have that type of metal work on them at all and that armor is god-awful. While the Celts did have horned helmets, they did not look like that and they usually only had chainmail, not plate armor with a million ridiculous spikes all over it. This happily deserves a 1/10. Not only is it not historically accurate, but it looks stupid too.
So what have we learned today? Is AI good at generating armor? The answer is: it depends on what armor you want. I think the vaguer the prompt is, the worse it will look, especially if the armor you’re looking for doesn’t have a ton of pictures that you can go off of. However, even with that says, AI still has a long way to go before it comes anywhere close to being a reliable source of pictures of historically accurate clothing.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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