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Terrify Children with These AI-Generated Bible Story Trading Cards

When I think about the story of David and Goliath, I like to picture David as having an extra leg instead of a left arm, ready to throw a whole torso at Goliath, who’s standing behind him amorphously in Sauron-style armor. And thanks to the power of AI, now my imagination has become reality:

AI-generated picture of David and Goliath.

Not really. I gave an AI the text prompt: “David fighting Goliath by a river,” and then it created the image by itself. The AI in question is WOMBO Dream, a new app that generates a trading-card style image based on text you give it. While this image was the most horrifying of all the images it generated for me, it did a decent job on many Bible-related prompts. Below is a gallery of my favorites.

The AI did best with prompts relating to the angel announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds:

AI-generated image of an angel appearing in the sky to shepherds.
prompt: Angel Gabriel appears to shepherds and sheep in a field at night
AI-generated image of an angel appearing to shepherds with a star in the background.
prompt: Angel Gabriel appears to shepherds and sheep in a field at night

The star in the last image shows up again in this rendition of the adoration of the magi:

AI-generated image of the adoration of the magi.
prompt: adoration of the magi

Gethsemane captures the essence of the scene, with a somewhat abstract robed figure collapsed while others pray:

A robed figure in the foreground falls down while figures in the back pray in a garden.
prompt: Gethsemane

The creation of the world shows the waters above and the waters below:

Two primeval spheres separated by the sky.
prompt: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Perennially favorite Bible verse Jeremiah 29:11 gets a literal rendering with a giant eye in the sky:

An eye watches over someone with outspread arms,
prompt: I know the thoughts that I think toward you saith the Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil

Here the rainbow in the Noah story becomes an instrument of vengeance:

A rainbow cloud attacks the earth,
prompt: Noah ark flood rainbow

I call this one “The Kiddie Table at The Last Supper” (are those French fries?):

A table in front of a traditional Last Supper scene.
prompt: The Last Supper Jesus

What it’s really doing here is representing the related scenes multiple times in the same image, which is actually quite common in historical artistic depictions of biblical stories. That’s how I interpret what’s going on in this scene of Elijah being fed by ravens, where I think he appears both in the foreground and in the background:

prompt: prophet Elijah being fed by ravens

Finally, here are two images where the AI came up with a conceptually interesting (to me) idea that a human artist could polish and make something thought-provoking. First, here’s a representation of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness about turning stones to bread. Here there are stones that look like bread to heighten the temptation:

Bread-looking stones among rocks.
prompt: Jesus temptation in the wilderness turn these stones to bread

And finally, the Tower of Babel made out of words. That’s just clever:

The Tower of Babel made of what looks like words on paper.
prompt: tower of Babel confusion of languages

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