Doom or Deliciousness: Challenges and Opportunities for Visualization in the Age of Generative Models

Generative text-to-image models (as exemplified by DALL-E, MidJourney, and Stable Diffusion) have recently made enormous technological leaps, demonstrating impressive results in many graphical domains—from logo design to digital painting photographic composition. However, the quality of these has led existential crises some fields art, leading questions about role human agency production meaning a context. Such issues are central visualization, while generative yet be widely applied it seems only matter time until their integration is manifest. Seeking circumvent similar ponderous dilemmas, we attempt understand roles that might play across visualization. We do so constructing framework characterizes what technologies offer at various stages visualization workflow, augmented analyzed through semi-structured interviews with 21 experts from related domains. Through this work, map space opportunities risks arise intersection, identifying doomsday prophecies delicious low-hanging fruits ripe for research.