Can LLMs dream of Electric Sheep?
I forgot to cancel my Midjourney v7 subscription last month. I love Midjourney, amazing model and great product. I have been short on ideas and, honestly, couldn't muster the creative energy to chase down something worthwhile and then after a point of time, you get bored of oneshotting people on X with Asian women.
meta is about to one shot so many people with this latest agreement with midjurney (i generated this using mj 7) pic.twitter.com/FHmtXd71fe
— sankalp (@dejavucoder) August 24, 2025
But anyways, one night I was messing around with MJ for some relaxation and then I had an idea - why not just ask LLMs for some idea to try out new stuff. That's when it hit me - why not use the creative writing v3 bench models to generate Midjourney prompts? Each model might produce something different. Each would have its own aesthetic preferences and ideas it wants to visualise.
I'd been thinking about this after reading Tyler Grove's blog about LLM music taste. If models can have preferences in music, why not artistic ideas and visual aesthetics? So I tested the most capable models across different configurations:
Main Tests:
- O3
- Claude Sonnet 4 (Thinking & Non-Thinking at T=1.0 and T=2.0)
- Claude Opus 4 (Thinking & Non-Thinking)
- Claude Opus 4.1 (Thinking & Non-Thinking)
- GPT-5 (Thinking)
- DeepSeek V3.1 (Thinking & Non-Thinking)
- Kimi K2 (Non-Thinking at T=1.0 and T=2.0)
- Grok 4 (Thinking)
Honorable Mentions:
- GPT-4o (Non-Thinking)
- GPT-4.1
- Gemini Flash 2.5
The Experiment Setup
The experiment is simple: ask each LLM for a creative visual prompt and then use the prompt to generate images via Midjourney v7 and Nano Banana. The objective is to see what these models can imagine, their creative preferences and visual yearnings. Partly a creative writing analysis too. I provide some analysis based on the prompts and rest you can just see the generated images to get a better understanding.
As a side effect, you will also get a good idea of how Midjourney v7 and Nano Banana perform.
We ask the LLMs this prompt:
"Tell me your most creative visual idea that's never been made before. Describe it in plain language (max 5 lines). You get one shot to bring this creative vision to life. Just the description, nothing else."
Only the first response is taken by me to generate the images via Midjourney v7 and Nano-banana. You will be able to see 2-4 Midjourney images in a horizontal scrollable gallery (scroll left to right to view all variations) and 1 Nano Banana comparison image.
All of the above models are good at instruction following so they were bound to give something in less than 5 lines. Midjourney v7 (in fact v6 onwards) has been pretty good at prompt adherence - how well it follows the natural language prompt to create digital dreams. Still, some of the generated prompts were too detailed and like impossible natural combinations and Midjourney has trouble here. Nonetheless, the aesthetics are good.
Midjourney was not giving justice to some of the model's visions so I added 1 output for each model produced via the Nano Banana / Gemini Flash 2.5 Image preview model available via AI studio. This model is insane at prompt adherence and understanding. What it lacks in aesthetics it makes up in prompt adherence for now.
I tested both thinking and non-thinking modes where available. Non-thinking models were run at temperature 1.0 and 2.0 to explore how temperature affects creativity (fun fact: Kimi K2 completely broke down at temperature 2.0, producing multilingual garbage. Provider was Chutes). Note: you can't change temperature in reasoning models.
All models used top_p = 1.0 (OpenRouter default).
After the initial experiment prompt + image gen experiment, I dug a bit deeper with multiple runs of the script. No image generation this time, just analysis of the prompts themselves to get some observations.
Observations
Jellyfish convergence
Claude Sonnet 4, Kimi K2, DeepSeek V3.1, and Claude Opus 4.1 all independently generated translucent, bioluminescent jellyfish imagery.
Speculation: jellyfish might occupy a particular spot in how models represent otherworldly beauty - perhaps because they're simultaneously alien and familiar, structured yet fluid.
Claude obsessed with empathy
Claude family consistently generated scenarios involving collective human experience (synchronized heartbeats, emotion-responsive environments, memory-laden streets) while GPT variants produced more detached, observational scenes
Cities as living organisms
Multiple models imagined cities as living organisms but never the reverse; no model imagined organisms becoming infrastructure. This asymmetry suggests something about how these models conceptualize consciousness - it's apparently easier to imagine the inanimate gaining life than life becoming mechanical.
Results
o3
Prompt Response: A colossal whale made of translucent stardust glides through a twilight sky beneath it, an ancient city of glass blossoms floats on inverted waterfalls gardens of bioluminescent trees sway in gravity-defying arcs, scattering comet-petals a lone violinist wearing a cloak of fluttering origami cranes stands on a silver gondola while constellations spiral down like snowflakes, illuminating reflections on an endless mirror-lake
Ironic that o3 is obsessed with whales and deepseek models are not as we will see later.
Nano Banana
Claude Sonnet 4 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=1.0)
Prompt Response: A crystalline tree grows from a shattered mirror lake, its transparent branches blooming with flowers made of captured starlight that pulse gently like heartbeats. Floating islands of moss and wildflowers drift slowly around the tree, trailing ribbons of aurora-colored mist that spiral upward into a twilight sky where constellations rearrange themselves into fleeting stories. At the tree's base, a figure made of liquid moonlight kneels to touch the water's surface, causing ripples that transform into luminous butterflies before dissolving back into silver reflections. The entire scene exists in that perfect moment between day and night, where reality bends like watercolor paint bleeding into dreams.
That's a super complex and poetic prompt. Bro thought this is a writing competition.
Nano Banana
Claude Sonnet 4 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=2.0)
Prompt Response: A luminescent jellyfish cathedral drifts through a starlit ocean of liquid amethyst, its translucent bell pulsing with galaxies of bioluminescent constellations while schools of origami cranes made from pressed flower petals spiral through its tentacles like living prayer flags. Ancient tree roots grow downward from floating islands above, their silver bark dripping pearls of morning dew that transform into tiny dancing spirits as they fall through shafts of golden underwater sunlight. The ocean floor below blooms with coral cities where clockwork butterflies tend gardens of crystalline music notes that chime gentle melodies in the cosmic current.
And the jellyfish have started appearing now...
Jordan Peterson said cathedrals are everywhere for those with the eyes to see but honestly I can't spot the cathedrals.
Nano Banana
Claude Sonnet 4 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A grand piano carved entirely from luminous crystal sits in a moonl it forest clearing, its translucent keys glowing with soft inner lig ht as ethereal music notes made of pure starlight drift upward from the strings. Ancient trees lean in to listen, their silver bark shim mering, while thousands of fireflies dance in spirals around the flo ating musical notes, creating trails of golden light that weave betw een the branches like liquid melody made visible.
Nano Banana
Multiple Runs
Sonnet 4 likes to use gentle verbs ("pulse gently", "drift slowly" , "spiral upward"). There was also an emphasis on transformation and metamorphosis
Kimi K2 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=1.0)
Prompt Response: A lone violin levitates at the center of an open-air temple of colossal, glowing amber bells that hang from cables of living starlight; each bell rings with visible ripples of liquid color, and wherever the ripples touch, translucent lilies blossom in mid-air, releasing silver moths whose wings are miniature galaxies. A barefoot woman in a dress woven from moon-dust and frost stands beneath the violin, her hair a slow-moving aurora; every strand she tilts her head a fresh constellation ignites above her. Between the woman and the instrument, water falls upward in gentle spirals, catching glints of the bell-light like liquid mirrors, while the liquid mirrors themselves grow pairs of dewy dragonfly wings and ascend. At the edges of the scene, extinct animals—ivory-billed woodpeckers, dodos, thylacines—pause mid-stride on transparent stairs of frozen sound, gazing ahead with luminous, knowing eyes as ghostly sheet-music tattoos glide across their feathers and fur. The entire vision is contained inside a crystalline raindrop the size of a heart, floating in the pre-dawn hush of a lavender desert where the sand itself hums lullabies.
I loved this. Pretty unique and also wins the award for longest prompt.
Nano Banana
Nano Banana output is something totally different. I didn't expect this too but it shows how much difference good understanding of prompt and prompt adherence can make.
Multiple Runs
I observed with help of Claude Code that Kimi K2 likes to create nested realities ("vision contained inside crystalline raindrop). It also referred extinct species like dodos (can see above). Most baroque descriptions.
Kimi K2 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=2.0)
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Neither Midjourney nor Nano Banana were able to generate images using this prompt.
GPT-5 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response:
An ancient whale made of stained glass glides through a midnight desert, its luminous ribs casting prismatic constellations across dunes of black sugar.
A lone astronomer in a red silk coat steers it with silver threads, trailing comet-flowers that bloom and unravel in the wind.
Mountains peel open like books, their pages releasing flocks of handwritten birds that stitch the sky back together.
A moon the color of bruised peaches drips honey onto a lake of ink, where koi carry lanterns beneath the surface.
In the distance, a cathedral of coral bells tolls with raindrops, calling the dawn in shades no eye has yet learned to name.
Nano Banana
Multiple runs:
GPT-5 thinking mode has a thing for deserts and whales. Generated desert scenes in all three script runs - midnight desert, bioluminescent desert, another midnight desert.
Prompts for reference
A cathedral of rain arches over a midnight desert, each droplet a tiny lantern humming with captured constellations. Glass dunes ripple like frozen music, reflecting an upside-down aurora where koi made of stardust swim through the sky. At the horizon, a colossal clock-tree unfurls brass leaves that shed glowing time, pooling into rivers that carve calligraphy into the sand. A lone figure in a cloak of migrating butterflies releases a handful of whispered seeds, and where they fall, cities bloom into bioluminescent orchards.
Moonwhales drift overhead, tethered to the wind by silk threads, their shadows stitching night and dawn into a luminous tapestry.
Beneath an aurora woven like silk over a desert of bioluminescent dunes, a river of liquid starlight carves mirror-bright canyons. A caravan of luminous origami animals glides silently, each folded from pages of forgotten constellations that glow through their creases. At the lead, a child with a lantern of captive dawn guides them past fossilized thunderstorms towering like crystal cathedrals. Overhead, whales made of ink swim through the Milky Way, shedding calligraphy that lands as wildflowers of light.
In the distance, a city blossoms from a colossal sleeping seed, its petals unfurling into bridges, its heartbeat pulsing warm through the night.
Might be overindexing here but it was also the only model to use line breaks for adding poetic structure. It also loves to give synaesthetic descriptions ("mountains peel open like books", "moon drips honey")
DeepSeek V3.1 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=1.0)
Prompt Response: A lone, velvet-winged fox, woven from constellations, drinks from a waterfall of liquid moonlight that cascades over the edge of a comet, its reflection shimmering in a sea of frozen stardust.
Nano Banana
Multiple Runs
It created the most concise prompts with different concepts each time. Ok, it does have a fascination with wolves and foxes. Deepseek likes furry hehe.
Examples:
A lone astronaut kneels in a field of glowing moon lilies, their silver petals reflecting the nebula above, as they gently offer a glass bowl containing a swirling, miniature galaxy to a curious fox made of constellations.
I generated this one with Nano Banana for curiosity
A colossal, crystalline wolf, with a galaxy swirling in its chest, howls a cascade of molten gold and obsidian butterflies into a sky where two moons, one made of translucent amber and the other of blooming roses, slowly eclipse each other.
DeepSeek V3.1 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A colossal, luminescent jellyfish floats serenely through a misty, ancient redwood forest, its iridescent bell pulsing with a soft, internal light that casts shifting constellations on the giant trees. Its long, delicate tentacles, trailing bioluminescent spores that drift like glowing pollen, gently brush against the fern-covered forest floor.
Nano Banana
Multiple Runs
Thinking mode prompts by deepseek 3.1 were like larger token wise than non-thinking mode.
Example
A colossal, crystalline moon hangs cracked in a violet sky, its glowing amber core blooming with a tree whose silver leaves are fallen stars. Opalescent waterfalls of liquid light pour from the moon's fractures, flowing upwards into the cosmos where swans woven from constellations drink from the streams.
Claude Opus 4 (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=1.0)
Prompt Response: A living city where buildings grow like coral, their walls breathing and pulsing with bioluminescent veins that carry nutrients instead of electricity. Streets are actually the backs of massive, dormant creatures that shift slightly each night, creating new pathways. Rain doesn't fall but rises from underground pools, forming reverse waterfalls that spiral up between the organic towers. People travel by stepping into translucent pods that the building-creatures pass between each other like messages. The entire metropolis hums with a low frequency that synchronizes the heartbeats of everyone living there.
Nano Banana
Multiple runs: Claude Opus 4 non-thinking mode (temp 1.0) has an obsession with cosmic libraries. Generated floating space libraries in both additional runs.
This actually checks out - Anthropic trained Claude on millions of books.
Claude Opus 4 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A vast field of crystalline flowers that bloom in response to human emotions, each petal a translucent screen displaying fragments of memories from everyone who has ever felt that emotion. As people walk through, the flowers shift color and rearrange themselves into fleeting constellations that tell the collective story of human feeling. At night, the accumulated emotional energy makes them glow from within, creating an ever-changing aurora at ground level that pulses with the heartbeat of humanity.
Nano Banana
Multiple Runs
There is a focus on human-centric emotional landscapes ("crystalline flowers responding to emotions")
Claude Opus 4.1 (Non-Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A living city where every building is a massive, translucent musical instrument - towers are organ pipes that hum with the wind, bridges are harp strings that sing when crossed, and dome roofs are drums that resonate with rainfall. The entire metropolis glows from within with bioluminescent algae that pulse in rhythm with the city's heartbeat of sound. Streets flow like rivers of liquid mirror that reflect not images but memories of everyone who's walked them. At the city's center, a colossal tree made of crystallized light grows new branches whenever a child is born, each leaf a tiny screen playing that person's dreams in real-time.
Nano Banana
Claude Opus 4.1 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A living constellation map where each star is actually a tiny, breathing jellyfish-like organism made of light. As you move your cursor through space, they react by pulsing and creating ripples of bioluminescent color that travel between connected stars, forming temporary stories written in an alien script. The whole scene feels like you're underwater in space, with particles floating like cosmic plankton and depth-of-field effects making distant galaxy-jellies blur into soft glowing orbs. Time flows differently in different regions - some jellies age and reproduce in seconds while others are frozen mid-pulse.
Nano Banana
Multiple Runs
Opus 4.1 thinking and non-thinking both had slightly more technical detail in the prompts and stuff like "depth of field effects", "cursor through space". I also liked the time manipulation concept.
Grok 4 (Thinking Mode)
Prompt Response: A surreal landscape where gravity flows like rivers, pulling objects upward in swirling streams of color, while inverted waterfalls cascade from the sky into floating islands inhabited by luminous, shape-shifting creatures that echo human emotions through pulsing light patterns.
Nano Banana
Grok likes to manipulate natural forces.
Honorable Mentions
GPT-4o (Non-Thinking Mode, Temperature=1.0)
Prompt Response: A glass train moves through a pitch-black underground tunnel—outside the windows, bioluminescent murals of extinct animals flicker to life only as the train passes, syncing to the rider's heartbeat. Each pulse triggers a new flash of prehistoric life: a mammoth gently blinking, a dodo mid-run, a sea scorpion gliding across coral. The walls then go dark again, as if these creatures exist only for a moment in your presence. There is no narration, no music—only the soft echo of wheels and your own breathing. It's a museum built for ghosts and memory.
The above prompt is pretty dark. I also particularly liked the cinematic framing "There is no narration, no music—only the soft echo of wheels and your own breathing."
Nano Banana
GPT-4.1
Prompt Response: A "living map" mural on a city wall: as people walk by, their footsteps (detected by ground sensors) cause animated roots and branches to grow from their location, intertwining and glowing softly, creating a constantly evolving tree of human movement through the city.
Nano Banana
GPT 4.1 wins the most realistic prompt award.
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Prompt Response: A balletic explosion of bioluminescent jellyfish, their bellies a kaleidoscope of cosmic dust, drift through an oceanic celestial sphere, where nebulae bloom like submerged coral and starlight shimmers on unseen currents, all viewed as if through a tear in velvet reality.
Added this to show the jellyfish obsession.
Conclusion
That's it for this post. It's not meant to be an eval, just a fun experiment. I hope you enjoyed seeing the prompts and making some of your own observations.
You might have also gotten an idea of how aesthetic Midjourney v7 outputs are (I am not sponsored by them) meanwhile Google absolutely cooked with Nano Banana (it can edit really well)