I’ve long considered augmented reality apps to be “realtime Photoshop”—or perhaps more precisely, “realtime After Effects.” I think that’s true & wonderful, but most consumer AR tends to be ultra-confined filters that produce ~1 outcome well.

Walking around San Francisco today, it struck me today that DALL•E & other emerging generative-art tools could—if made available via a simple mobile UI—offer a new kind of (almost) realtime Photoshop, with radically greater creative flexibility.

Here I captured a nearby sculpture, dropped out the background in Photoshop, uploaded it to DALL•E, and requested “a low-polygon metallic tree surrounded by big dancing robots and small dancing robots.” I like the results!

I’m suddenly craving a mobile #dalle app that lets me photograph things, select them/backgrounds, and then inpaint with prompts. Here’s a quick experiment based on a “tree” I just saw 🤖: pic.twitter.com/Sx3LAACOVs

— John Nack (@jnack) May 27, 2022