A game of telephone for images: each group sees only the picture handed to it, describes it, and lets AI redraw it from the words. Round after round, the image drifts.
How to play
Participants work in groups, and each group starts with one image. They write a prompt that describes it, and an image generator makes a new picture from that text alone, without seeing the image. The new picture goes to the next group, who see neither the prompt nor the original, only the picture in front of them, and the round repeats. Next to each generated picture, a CLIP similarity score shows how well the machine thinks picture and words match.
Where it ends up
Every round loses some details and adds things that were never there. In one chain, a creamy meatball stew turned into a yellow, then an orange soup; seven meatballs became one; potatoes, a fork and small bowls of cream appeared. In another, the outdoor seating of an ice-cream café ended as a courtyard of turquoise chairs between brick and glass buildings. Nobody did anything wrong: each step is just someone describing what they see.
Open source
The game is also part of my teaching at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The web app is open source: github.com/aprilcoffee/ai-stille-post.
Sessions
27 August 2025 · Café Nimmersatt, Wolfhagen, at the invitation of Dawid Liftinger, artist in residence at the Walter-Lübcke-Schule (“Das fliegende Künstlerzimmer”)
Ongoing · Teaching at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Workshop and lecture requests: please get in touch by email.
