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Show HN: Convert sketches into images using ControlNet (clio.so)

76 points by herval ↗ HN
Hi HN!

We're working on an AI studio product, and have been experimenting with the recently-released ControlNet (https://github.com/lllyasviel/ControlNet)

After wasting hours with it, we decided to put together a quick fun project. "Sketch" allows you to draw anything (works w/ touch inputs on mobile too), enter a prompt (it can be as simple as "drawing" and it'll try to guess) and you get something out fast. Keeping it all on a public feed as well, to serve as inspiration.

Hope anyone here finds it fun :-)

34 comments

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gus_massa
Try to change the title to exactly "Show HN: Convert sketches into images using ControlNet", so it's shown also in the special section.
herval
thanks! Just did that :-)
gus_massa
It needs an space between "Show HN:"
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gus_massa
I tried to made a few tables. Regular tables are fine, but triangular tables are very confusing for the AI :)

I tried to grab a permalink, but there it's not supported https://imgur.com/a/lMcl77S Also, it would be nice to be able to retrieve my original drawing to see how horrible it is.

dylan604
"I know there's meant to be a fourth leg on this thing damnit!!"
gus_massa
It's strange because one of the common problems of this type of AI is that it can't count, so hands may have an unusual number of fingers.

I think my original drawing has only three legs. Two "long" legs in the extremes and a "short" one in the middle.

chr-s
"A very racist caricature of the prophet Mohammed"
22c
Yes a suggestion to OP would be to remove the public feed ASAP, it's too juicy a target for abuse.

Even if you try to ban certain terms, people will find a way around it and you'll be in constant game of whac-a-troll. Remove the public feed and they are likely to lose interest.

[dead] _scat
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jackblemming
You know, people used to be ok with having a bit of fun on the internet. Not everything needed to be censored or sanitized, even if it meant you saw a naughty or mean word occasionally.
techdragon
More people… more assholes.

It’s an unfortunate situation that we can’t all just be better people on all fronts, better at not abusing systems, better at taking a joke, better at accepting the failures of others, better at holding ourselves to account…

But at the end of the day, prevention beats cure and it’s not too hard to do, even if it does take a little bit of the spontaneity out of things.

rpastuszak
> You know, people used to be ok with having a bit of fun on the internet

They still do, but their definition of fun is different than an equivalent of doodling a swastika on a bar urinal. I’ll tell the manager to stop cleaning those.

Perhaps spend a moment asking yourself next time what’s so fun here, and at whose expense.

Vulgarity is fine, xenophobia isn’t.

22c
I think you misremember the internet.

There were and are still very few places on the internet (outside of hosting your own platform) where you can post whatever you want without recourse.

No woodworking forum would allow a thread of "black man assaulting asians on the subway".

You wouldn't see "jews stealing money" in comp.lang.perl.

Removing a submission from your own website that goes against the spirit of the site is not censorship any more than cleaning swastika graffiti off your front door is censorship.

dylan604
I think it's less about the intent of people having fun, but other people's reception of that fun.
gedy
Thanks for this. Super cool but the public feed shows the true hearts of mankind... lol may want to hide that.
fastball
Are you also using Stable Diffusion under-the-hood? Because the results in the public feed look much less... coherent than the examples in the ControlNet Github repo (including examples using sketches as the control system).
herval
yes! there's some new params added to the controlnet demo which I didnt have the time to incorporate yet, will do that later today. Makes the images much more coherent.
numpad0
It seems public feed isn't updating for an hour, maybe backend is down or rate-limited?

0: https://imgur.com/a/nwqUZHT

pfoof
By looking at public prompts, I believe the reason is different...
pfoof
Very cool tool but the public feed looks like every day on 4chan.
SillyUsername
By fast do you mean >3 mins and not showing progress, updating or returning after 4+ minutes?
herval
It got overloaded with juvies posting dick pics and went OOM. It takes ~1-5 seconds to generate, normally
thrdbndndn
As an automation engineer, I'd say ControlNet is really an unfortunate name.
dylan604
would Skynet have more to your liking?
herval
Thanks for the load-test, HN! Time to improve the public feed (and the sketch engine) :-)
Larrikin
Would be nice to have downloadable images of the original sketch as well, or a side by side. There doesn't seem to be a way to share what you drew and the results with someone
herval
working on it :-) thanks for the feedback!
KomoD
Every time I visit the site I get: "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred"