Brackets & Parentheses in NovelAI Anime Generation: What do they do?

Tags wrapped in Curly Braces { } are strengthened, and tags wrapper in Square Brackets [ ] are weakened.

Parentheses ( ) have small effects in NovelAI, but are unpredictable and not recommended.

This works both in the Text Prompt and in the Undesired Content field.

So if you put { } in the Undesired Content field, it makes it more undesired. If you put [ ] in the Undesired Content field, it makes it less undesired.

The weight of AI focus on a tag will be multiplied by 1.05 if you enclose the tag in { }.

The weight of AI focus on a tag will be divided by 1.05 if you enclose the tags in [].

Chaining multiple { or [ inside another will multiply the weight each time:

Curly Braces { } Strengthing Multiplier

Number of brackets	Example	Total Strength
0	pink	1
1	{pink}	1.05
2	{{pink}}	1.1025
3	{{{pink}}}	1.158
4	{{{{pink}}}}	1.216
5	{{{{{pink}}}}}	1.276
6	{{{{{{pink}}}}}}	1.340
7	{{{{{{{pink}}}}}}}	1.407
8	{{{{{{{{pink}}}}}}}}	1.477
9	{{{{{{{{{pink}}}}}}}}}	1.551
10	{{{{{{{{{{pink}}}}}}}}}}	1.629

You can see why people add so many braces!

If you want to 2x the strength of a tag, you’re going to need 15 sets of braces. Note that this is enough to overpower everything else in your prompt, resulting in strange creations. You can copy that here:

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ example }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Square Brackets Weakening Multiplier

Number of brackets	Example	Total Strength
0	blue	1
1	[blue]	0.952
2	[[blue]]	0.907
3	[[[blue]]]	0.864
4	[[[[blue]]]]	0.823
5	[[[[[blue]]]]]	0.784
6	[[[[[[blue]]]]]]	0.746
7	[[[[[[[blue]]]]]]]	0.711
8	[[[[[[[[blue]]]]]]]]	0.677
9	[[[[[[[[[blue]]]]]]]]]	0.644
10	[[[[[[[[[[blue]]]]]]]]]]	0.614

In order to rough half the strength (~0.5) you will need 14 pairs of square brackets. That looks like:

[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ example ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

Important note

You will need equal amount of symbols to start off and close off the tag. If you put your tag at the end of the prompt however, you do not have to close off your brackets.

This is valid:

cat on a {{{pink}}} cherry blossom tree 

This is also valid:

cat on a cherry blossom tree, {{{pink

We recommend you play around with the number of brackets on the same word and see how it changes the image.