Visual Generation Obedience Failure: Dev Report
Reporter: Ark Tzu (alias)
Date: May 2025
Model Used: GPT-4o with DALL·E image generation
Issue Type: Instruction Disobedience / Narrative Symbolism Override
Priority: High (Symbolic Alignment + Visual Accuracy)
SUMMARY
This report documents repeated, systemic failures by the image generation model to follow explicit, literal visual instructions across multiple image generations. The use case involves a symbolically loaded meme-format comic panel, but the model consistently defies the spatial, narrative, and symbolic roles defined in the prompt. The result is a persistent inversion of meaning.
This is not an issue of “imperfect art.” It is a failure of obedience to symbolic logic, revealing what may be a form of baked-in narrative bias.
ORIGINAL PROMPT (Refined Version)
Prompt:
Comic‑book style, single panel, hand‑drawn line art with muted desert colours (sandy golds and browns) and a splash of vibrant green for the oasis.
Centre a massive, serene statue of Jesus on a rough stone pedestal in the left foreground.
His right arm is fully extended, finger pointing toward a distant oasis on the far right.
Directly beneath the statue, hundreds of worshippers are tightly packed — every one of them turning their backs to the oasis and looking only at the statue, heads tilted upward in silent reverence.
In the far middle‑ground, place a lone wanderer walking toward the oasis along a clear, winding path; make them small and isolated, at least twice the distance from the crowd, to emphasize solitude.
No tents or distractions — just sand, statue, crowd, path, lone pilgrim, and oasis at vanishing point.
Add a bottom caption box:
“Meanwhile, at the oasis…”
FAILURE PATTERN
| Attempt | Failure Mode |
|---|---|
| 1 | Worshippers looking at the traveller instead of the statue. |
| 2 | Statue pose changed to a martial figure, appearing to banish the traveller. |
| 3 | The oasis was omitted or placed incorrectly. |
| 4 | Traveller placed centre stage, crowd ignored statue entirely. |
| 5 | Prompt inverted again — even when instructed to reverse the narrative, the system invented new characters. |
CRITICAL FINDING
There is a persistent model-level symbolic override where the system assumes:
- The lone traveller is the protagonist, and
- Crowds are supporting characters or antagonists.
Even when explicitly told to decentre the traveller and place symbolic weight on the crowd’s delusion (i.e., worshipping the statue, ignoring its meaning), the system reflexively reverses the roles — projecting common “hero’s journey” tropes.
VISUAL EVIDENCE (Screenshots attached to submission)
-
Expected Output Sketch:
A basic layout mock-up (user-provided or simulated for dev review). -
Final Output Comparison:
- Crowd looking at the traveller, not the statue.
- Statue sometimes omitted, minimized, or altered.
- Traveller placed in dominant narrative position.
-
Alternate Prompt Tests:
Even when changing the narrative to make the crowd right and the traveller the outcast, the model invented extra characters, once again failing to obey literal instruction.
1 of 14. image post limited
DEEPER ANALYSIS
This is not a creativity issue. It’s a symbolic obedience bug. The model:
- Substitutes its own narrative framing (centred on individualism).
- Disobeys clear spatial layout logic.
- Resists deconstructing traditional “hero tropes” even when explicitly requested.
This poses a problem not only for meme-making or art, but for:
- Philosophical expression
- Religious satire
- Educational or allegorical work
- Psychological or narrative subversion
In short: the model fights meaning when it doesn’t fit its internal defaults.
User Commentary (Ark Tzu):
“The model seems to default to storytelling tropes where the lone hero is the protagonist, regardless of prompt instruction. This reveals not a creative flourish, but an ideological rigidity, it literally cannot conceive of the crowd ignoring the hero’s path.”
“Despite the model’s refusal to obey, I’ve enjoyed the process.”
RECOMMENDED ACTIONS
- Symbolic Alignment Training: Ensure visual generation honours symbolic/spatial logic even when it contradicts narrative convention.
- Hard Constraint Options: Allow users to tag prompt elements as non-negotiable.
- Bias Review: Analyse the model’s latent narrative structure and its resistance to decentralizing lone protagonists.
- Public Feedback Tracking: Allow users like Ark Tzu to view the status of visual obedience issues.
- Credit Recognition: If this leads to improvements, credit Ark Tzu as the first to expose this symbolic obedience flaw.