In many ways, we live in fascinating times. Not all ways, of course, but there is something to be said for existing in an era where you can have the collective knowledge of the world or filthy pictures delivered to you via a small oblong in your pocket and there are no fewer than six Cheez-It varietals available to nearly everyone with minimal effort. It’s a glorious age. It is also an age where you can send a far-away computer a string of text about a car, and that computer, using arcane and unknowable algorithms, will create an image of that car, just based on what you typed. The artificial intelligence system that does this is called DALL•E 2, and people have been asking it to create some incredible cars. I’d like to show you some of them now, so please set down your opium pipe or hang glider or struggling alligator and pay attention.
I should note that I’ve dabbled in this sort of thing before, but I have only had access to a much more basic version of this software, once known as DALL•E Mini but now called Craiyon. The samples I’m going to show you now were made with the full version of DALL•E 2, which produces substantially better results than the crap I was playing with.
That better version is invite-only access, and I’m just on the waiting list. So I can’t play with the good toys yet.
For example of what the limited version can do, here’s the results I got when I asked the limited version for a “1960s photo of futuristic Corvair”:
See? It’s impressive, and you can tell what it’s going for, but it’s very wonky. Let’s try another prompt, this time one that’s the exact same as one used by someone with access to the full DALL•E 2 system. So, here is “A 2025 Citroen DS Concept, studio lighting.” from the cut-down version:
Okay, that’s evocative, sure. But look what that same prompt gives you with DALL•E 2:
That’s a much more coherent and detailed rendering of a Citroën concept that doesn’t exist. That same experimenter, named Jakub, also tried out two other imaginary 2025 concept cars, including a wonderful-looking Trabant:
…and this genuinely stunning Jaguar E-Type concept:
That looks great! I think the rear quarter is especially nice. This could actually pass as a 2025 Jaguar concept car, I’d think.
Some users have gotten really creative with this; here’s an animation of “unmodernizing a Tesla”:
Unmodernizing a Tesla with #dalle text diffs pic.twitter.com/DBxb0Gb8UI
— Aditya Ramesh (@model_mechanic) April 18, 2022
What I love about this one is how well the AI seems to give the illusion of “understanding” (it doesn’t, but still) the visual vocabulary of different car eras, while still keeping some crucial Tesla-design markers intact. You get skinnier tires and chrome bumpers and more upright proportions but never a grille, all of which keeps the older versions of the cars looking plausibly Teslerian.
I mean, look how great some of these look! I love the ’50s/’60s one on the middle right, and the two in the bottom row feel a bit like some 1930s European rear-engined car that Porsche stole ideas from while designing the Beetle. There’s definitely a design lineage demonstrated here, and that’s incredible.
Speaking of Tesla, there’s some fun, kinda snarky prompts, like “Tesla pickup truck but instead of being a massive eyesore it looks as beautiful as the rest of their cars, 3d render, unreal engine” which results in something that looks a bit like a Ford Ranger Lightning, if that was something that existed, along with some other more Tesla-like designs, even if doors and door handles really seem to confuse the AI: 
To be fair, it’s never used a door, so I get it.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of people trying Tesla stuff, but I want to show one more example, because these results are especially good. The prompt is “Steampunk Tesla Model X, digital art”:
Okay, let’s get away from Tesla and on to more open prompts, but still involving the past, and evocative. Something like this one: “a 1920s photo of a futuristic car, sitting beside an old house.” That gives this result, which feels like a film still from a documentary about a largely forgotten inventor who could have changed the world if not for some kind of scandal involving, oh, a Poseidon-based sex cult or something:
That doesn’t just feel like a futuristic car, it feels like what a futuristic car would have been imagined to be in the 1920s, which is the sort of nuance that makes all of these truly incredible.
Okay, let’s look at one more. This one is also a great prompt, from a Redditor named RifeWithKaiju: “Silent film version of the Deloreon [sic] from Back to the Future”:
Again, we have this black box of an AI doing some quite complicated and subtle things; the car is clearly a 1920s era, but it’s laden with the same sort of extra equipment that the actual Back to the Future DeLorean is to make it into a time machine, and that equipment even feels more 1920s-appropriate as well.
At this moment, so much of AI is a black box, and I’m not sure anyone, even the people behind DALL•E 2, really, really know what’s going on amongst all those if-then statements and branching decision trees and sparks and whatevers. But. the results are at once impressive and thought-provoking and maybe even a little shocking, and I’m delighted to see that, and I hope to see much more.
Also, I hope I get off that waiting list. I want to try this thing out myself!
Great, now not only are car companies teasing us with beautiful concept cars that have zero chance of being built but now the computers are doing it to. The fact that that Jaguar doesn’t exist is a real shame.
Jason, I just want to to see this thing does with taillights!
“Tesla pickup truck but instead of being a massive eyesore it looks as beautiful as the rest of their cars”
Tesla only makes one good looking car, the model S, and they made that worse with the refresh.
The rest look like a formless suppository like a late 90’s minivan (In papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear sizes)
OMG thank you so much, as I have been shouting that ever since that WTF 3 came out. Tesla’s are very unpleasant to look at. Their idea of a pickup truck from a 1960’s SciFi short story (with pictures) is so godawful it makes me wonder if the entire design staff was smoking weed with Elon at the time.
Before reading the article, I assumed the lead image was an AI mashup of 2 vehicles. A cross between the E-type and a Z3 or Z8.
But this is vastly much more interesting.
[tabs out of article to immediately google types of Cheez-its]
Wait, they’re making wait like us plebs?
I seriously can’t wait for the invite. DALL-E Mini is cool but it’s definitely limited. Very curious about the crazy Renaults I’ll be generating with the new version.
That E-type concept passed muster as an actual car, for me. I saw the headline and the image, and assumed I was going to hear the story of a beautiful one-off that had enjoyed great publicity in its day only to mysteriously vanish, or something like that. When I look closer I can see the bits of the rendering that aren’t quite all there so to speak, but it took that second, closer look to notice them. Very impressive.
Also, that thing is gorgeous and Jag should go ahead and build it. I don’t care if the hood is implausibly long, stick a straight-8 in there or something, that thing would rule the world as a GT car based on looks alone.
It looks like what a modern take on a Marcos would be IMO. Not that I’m complaining, that would be great.
Straight 12, maybe a straight 16 while we’re at it
I have an account on Dall-E and its been pretty amazing and fun to play with.
Carl Sagan driving an S2000 on an ice moon produced some trippy results.
I’d buy the Trabant giant wheels and all if it was an EV. Bring back the weird!
This is out of this world bonkers awesome. As-in, inspiring awe. Very, very cool… and I likely wouldn’t have seen this without your (detached thru the internet and impersonal) involvement in my life Torch. Thank you so much for this content!
Also not only am I eating sour cream and onion Snap’d Cheez-its, but I was thinking about looking up some filthy pictures! Get out of my head man!
In closing, I feel like I’d buy the hell out of that Jag if I could (but let’s face it, that’d be $250k or more), the 1920s future car picture looks like a slightly dystopian Edward Hopper, and the Tesla pickup is just bad ass.
Is there any way we can use this tool? I’d like to have it create images of a car that is a cross between a Milan SL velomobile and a Porsche 917 just to see what it comes up with.
Other combinations I’d like to try:
-ADU1B LeMans Triumph Spitfire with a Milan SL velomobile
-McClaren Speedtail with a 1967 Panhard CD Peugeot 66C
-Lotus Europa minitruck
-Stella solar car with a 1st gen VW Beetle
-National Lampoons Family Truckster with a Mercedes Vision EQXX
-Modern Yugo GV streamliner
-VW Karmann Ghia modernized with front styling cues of a Ford F150 Lightning
If only we could post pictures here!
Some of those look fun to run through the old noodle box.
When you get the invite, you get access to a very limited set of queries, like 5 or 6 or something like that. After that, you have to pay per search.
you can play with Craiyon for free – https://www.craiyon.com
PASS THE DOOOBIES MAAAAN!!!!
So you’re saying NOT all hypothetical cars need enormous wheels? Man, Adrian is gonna be pissed.
I’ve also learned that, objectively, I prefer all fictional Teslas better than all real Teslas.
Computers can’t argue with commenters like I can though!
How do we know you’re real? Maybe you’re just another A.I. built specifically to comment on blog forums. You have the same last name as Arthur C. Clarke, so for all we know, you’re just some M.I.T. grad project built by some HAL fans…
Sketch some normal sized wheels Adrian…
I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that…
Love your work Adrian, screw that haters!
“Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”
Only in my dreams.
Damn. I’d buy that Jag. Take my money, DALL-E.
I feel like the meta point of this article may be “see, even the computers that will one day subjugate us/roll over piles of our skulls really like the outrageously large wheel thing so deal with it already ya mugs!”
“ so please set down your opium pipe or hang glider or struggling alligator and pay attention.”
Well two out of three, I’m impressed.
I often find the struggling alligator interferes with my glide path.
Have you tried giving the alligator the opium pipe? I always find it reduces the struggling almost instantly.
You have a better-designed pipe than I do. I end up blowing the smoke directly into the gator’s nostrils (since he lacks fleshy lips to smoke it like a civilized lizard), which gets us both coughing and then the captain turns off the Smoking sign and everyone blames me.
This whole thread must have been written by an AI with an Opium pipe. Too strange, but very funny. These are my people, even if they don’t really exist. At least I know I’m on the right node of the simulation.
Opium for an alligator? You made of money?
Around here, the gators get meth just like the rest of us.