In theory, the Mumbled Artist's Instructions puzzles were a challenge to figure out some absurd thing an AI had tried to draw. Reverse-engineering …

In theory, the "Mumbled Artist's Instructions" puzzles were a challenge to figure out some absurd thing an AI had tried to draw. Reverse-engineering an AI is a fun challenge.

But it turns out AI is not good at drawing absurd things. It draws unguessable nonsense when I was hoping for guessable nonsense. So for the past several weeks, I've been manually adding elements to the AI-generated art. That is much less satisfying.

This week, I was determined to use fully-AI-generated art. If one set of absurd punny "instructions" didn't yield something guessable, I'd try another set of instructions, no compromise. So I tried a bunch of things and… none of them yielded anything comprehensible.

I give up. I give up on this whole puzzle gimmick. As consolation, please enjoy these pictures allegedly of

ball dixie (Baltic Sea)
bullet surprise (Pulitzer Prize)
florid estate (Florida State)
rid lease caught (Ridley Scott)

[image: ball dixie, which looks something like a minimalist steamshovel made from plastic toys]

[image: bullet surprise, except it looks more like a can of spraypaint falling out of a malformed box]

[image: florid estate, which looks like a Miami mansion with a nice garden out front. I don't think I'd go so far as to call it 'florid' though]

[image: rid lease caught, which looks someone holding up a fish they caught; no sign of a rid lease]

Is it weird that the "florid estate" picture looks like it's in Florida (with palm trees) but doesn't have a lot of flowers? Does the AI not know the difference between "florid" and "Florida"?

Anyhow, good news, artists: your jobs are still safe from AI.