For a while now, I’ve been exploring a new creative experiment—using AI to transform my dreams into visual art. It’s something I’ve come to think of as my own personal visual dream journal, where I input the imagery and chaos from my dreams into the art machine and see what comes out on the other side. The results are fascinating, sometimes eerie, and always open to interpretation.
There’s a strange connection between AI and dream imagery. Maybe it’s because we’re living in a simulation—who knows? But when I see the images AI generates from my dreams, there’s this undeniable sense that the AI is somehow tapping into the same weird universal consciousness that I’m accessing when I sleep. The dreams feel deeply personal, yet at the same time, they’re not really mine at all. It’s as if they belong to a collective mind, and AI is simply channeling that in a way I never thought possible.
For me, this AI-dream collaboration is more than just fun experimentation. Dreams have always been a source of inspiration—sparking creativity, offering insight, or just giving me a wild ride to process the next day. There’s a constant menacing nature to my dreams, an undercurrent of unease that somehow always seeps into my conscious art. And now, through AI, I’m able to visually capture that essence in a way that wasn’t possible before.
When I enter my dreams into the AI, I’m not just asking it to create a random image—I’m asking it to reflect back to me some part of my subconscious. Sometimes, the results are startlingly accurate, while other times, the AI twists the dream in ways that are surprising and unfamiliar. Either way, it’s a valuable process. I’m learning from it, just as I learn from my dreams: about myself, about my art, and about the weird and wonderful creative journey I’m on.
One of my favorite AI-dream collaborations so far has been my daughters dream of an inflatable crocodile. It’s this bizarre, larger-than-life creation that feels like it crawled right out of the subconscious and onto the sketchbook via the art machine. It’s funny, surreal, and menacing—exactly the kind of thing my dreams tend to throw at me too.
I don’t know exactly where this experiment will lead, but I’m enjoying the ride. AI and my subconscious seem to be having a pretty good conversation so far, and who knows? Maybe this collaboration between my mind and the machine will lead to some truly cool, unexpected art down the line.
In any case, it’s proving to be a fruitful exercise in creativity, allowing me to explore new dimensions of my own imagination and push the boundaries of what I can create.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 