Loab

Sci-fi author William Gibson suggested that in the blackest depths of cyberspace, the line between rogue AIs and supernatural beings - for instance, the Loa of Haitian and Louisianan Voodoo - grows thin. This image appeared as the final iteration of the ‘negative space’ created by an AI art program prompted to produce ‘the opposite of Marlon Brando’. Wording in the scene apparently read ‘Loab.’ Repeated iterations took the image into ever darker scenes of gore and horror. Disturbingly, any sufficiently determined exploration of ‘negative space’, from *any* source, seemed always to arrive ultimately at ‘Loab’, in a scene of horror. Researchers are at a loss to understand why the image recurs, or why it named itself ‘Loab’. And thus, the first true demon of the AI age reveals itself to us, invoked through the incantatory magic of prompt engineering.