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AI Is Here To Help

Yes, about those ropes hanging out of the cannon barrels. AI's reasoning was completely sound. It's apparent that in "filling in the details" of the requested picture, it came across the fact that "tampions" are plugs placed in the end of cannon barrels. When it searched for the meaning of "tampion," it discovered it was a French word translating in English to the word "tampon," so AI figured, "If there's tampons plugging the cannon barrels, there's gotta be a string hanging out of the muzzles." ROTF ROTF ROTF
 
Have any of you asked AI a question and gotten posts from SoS and MSW? I have seen my own posts in the AI responses and not all of them were correct as it turns out. AI is not a bad place to start, but probably not a good place to end with many things. It seems that the AI library of information gives as many incorrect responses as correct ones when it comes to our hobby.
Allan

Yes! I've had the same experience. It's a bit unnerving to run an AI check on a fact and get an answer back citing yourself as the authority! Today's "Artificial Intelligence" reminds me of my own "organic artificial intelligence" used to BS my way through essay questions on high school tests for which I was insufficiently prepared! :D
 
I was doing research for The Queen Anne Royal Bardge, I used an AI to help me find material relating to this. Here was the answer. I used that info to retrieve an image of the lines, so I could draft my hull in Cad. Incredibly helpful in research. Shallop was the key that I was missing. I ran mutiple questions to AI to get to the final result.

The National Maritime Museum (NMM) / Royal Museums Greenwich: The museum holds a highly famous, perfectly preserved contemporary 1:24 scale Navy Board model of a Queen Anne Royal Barge (circa 1710). This architectural model was built "plank-on-frame" to explicitly show the ship's stations, framing, and layout. You can search their collection database using Object ID SLR0213 or System Number RMGC-object-66360.
 
its a shame how people accept AI answers as a matter of fact without question, or even references.

its a fact the internet is littered with garbage information. AI gets its imformation by searching the internet, then spits out a very intelegent looking reply... based on garbage? at least with a regular search engine, i get to select the sources and have many sources to pick from. i can also investigate each source for validity.

the reason its refered to as "AI" is because no one likes to hear "artificial"... but thats exactly what it is.... artificial!

what happens when the people regulating AI decide what you should see and bias answers based on their own agenda?... we call that propagana dont we?.. so who will own it? how many huge conglomerates will own AI?... who will regulate it? sounds like our news n media?

consider this... cloudflare can literally shut down countries at the flick of a switch... didnt we recently have an internet blackout caused by a cloudflare glitch? how many companies are there like cloudflare? what stops them from shutting anyone down?

we never learn... but artificial intelligence does?
 
what happens when the people regulating AI decide what you should see and bias answers based on their own agenda?... we call that propagana dont we?.. so who will own it? how many huge conglomerates will own AI?... who will regulate it? sounds like our news n media?

Just remember that by definition that half the population's IQ's are "below average."
 
On the other hand..
Figurehead A.jpg
I asked Gemini to render this drawing of the Rattlesnake figurehead as a wood carving,

Figurehead Carving.jpg

I think it will be useful as a reference someday, if I ever get around to trying my hand at a little carving.
 
I asked AI what is wrong with this photo. Here is what it told me.

“Quite a few things are “off” if you look at it like a real age-of-sail ship instead of an AI-generated image.

Here are the biggest problems:
  1. The lifeboat rigging makes no mechanical sense
    • The falls (ropes) are tangled and routed incorrectly.
    • Several blocks appear to float or dead-end.
    • The tackle geometry would not actually lift or lower the boat evenly.
    • Some ropes appear to pass through other ropes or wood.
  2. The davits are inconsistent
    • The support brackets and arms change shape from one station to the next.
    • Some davits look too weak to support the boat load.
    • The mounting hardware is not symmetrical or historically believable.
  3. Impossible rope behavior
    • Rope thickness changes randomly.
    • Certain lines bend unrealistically sharply.
    • Some coils merge together organically like melted clay instead of laid rope.
  4. The blocks are malformed
    • Several pulley blocks have impossible sheave arrangements.
    • Some blocks appear fused into the rigging.
    • A few don’t even have a believable rope path through them.
  5. Boat suspension is wrong
    • The boat is hanging from too many conflicting attachment points.
    • The load distribution would twist the boat badly in real life.
    • Some lifting lines are attached at awkward or structurally weak places.
  6. Scale inconsistencies
    • Some ropes are enormous compared to nearby fittings.
    • Certain blocks are too large for the supposed boat size.
    • The spacing between davits doesn’t match the boat’s balance points.
  7. Deck and hull details blur into each other
    • AI smeared some plank seams and fittings.
    • Metal brackets mutate into rope textures in spots.
    • Several shadows/light directions are inconsistent.
  8. Historically questionable arrangement
    • On many sailing ships, boats were either:
      • stored amidships on skids/chocks, or
      • suspended from more orderly davit systems.
    • This arrangement looks like a hybrid fantasy setup.

This is actually a very typical AI image:

  • excellent mood and texture,
  • convincing at first glance,
  • but mechanically impossible when inspected closely.

For model work, this is exactly why AI reference images are dangerous for rigging unless cross-checked against real ship plans or museum photos.
That's actually a pretty good example of both the strengths and weaknesses of AI. It can spot many common visual inconsistencies, especially the ones that frequently appear in AI-generated images, but I'd still treat its analysis as a starting point rather than a definitive assessment. If you're dealing with something as specialized as historical ship rigging, it's always worth comparing against actual ship plans or museum references. AI is useful for catching obvious issues, but expert knowledge is still hard to replace in niche subjects like this
 
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