God is a Pumpkin

Disclaimer: When I started designing my website (with no previous experience), and before I had taken a long look into the moral and ethical considerations of using AI (or "AA" as I now prefer to call it, and I'll elaborate on that later!) I dabbled with the idea of using it to "enhance the saleability of my products"!

News flash! Aaaaagggghhhh!! It turned into one the most fuckstrating 2 days of my entire life!! I did learn an awful lot though, and I'm pleased to say that the picture you'll see at the end, that explains how "God is a Pumpkin", is the only AI generated image you will ever see on this website. All my product photos are shot by me, on my camera, using a photo light box and my own eye for what I hope is a "good enough" but definitely TRUE representation of the exact product you will be buying.

With all that said, it's time to explain. 

I soon learned that the language you use when instructing AI is absolutely key, and it appears that it doesn't like being told what NOT to do. I started simple, with the generic example instruction - "professional studio package, seamless grey backdrop, neutral lighting" - and for a while it felt like I was getting some amazing results.

Then all of a sudden it took a picture of my Christmas Candle Jar, removed the wooden plinth, slanted it slightly and cast shadows underneath that gave the impression that the jar was magically suspended in mid air! Then it randomly added a miniature wizard alongside my "Man in the Moon" tealight holder. Then it tried to fill in the top of my Mushroom Candle Holders, because instead of seeing the hole for the candle, it saw an incomplete mushroom and decided "that's not right - it should look like this"! And every time I laid my Wave Bowl on it's side, so-called AI knew best and insisted on turning it the right way up!

(This is when I started to refer to it as AA - Artificial Arrogance. And I don't know about you, but it feels like we've more than enough genuine arrogance to contend with in the world today, with artificially adding more!!)

After hours trying to establish the right language to use, to stop it from making additional changes that I hadn't asked for, I ended up asking Google AI what I needed to say to the photo AI to get the results I wanted. I realise that most people would probably have given up by now, but I was determined not to be beaten by the machine! Although I now know that the only way to not get beaten by it, is to not go to war with it in the first place. But like I said, I learned a lot!

So I learnt that the correct terminology was "subject must remain fixed, subject must remain identical" and with that I started getting good results again, and I was beginning to feel slightly smug that I might finally have broken down the will of the machine, until.....

I uploaded a picture of my Pumpkin Jar, gave it the same instructions as before, and lo and behold, despite telling it to "keep the subject identical" do you know what AA decided my Pumpkin Jar needs? Of course, a huge scary Jack 'o' lantern face!! So now I've had it up to here🤦 and I lose it. I keep the instructions "subject must remain fixed, subject must remain identical" and I add "do NOT add any additional features", and this is the image that it gave me:

Wowsers! Now I'm not usually lost for words (as you might have realised if you've read this far into my blog) but this image sent me full on existential for quite a while. It was at this point that I started to research more fully the wider moral and ethical implications of using AI to be "creative" and on doing so, I immediately removed every single picture that had been AA'd, and found faith in my ability to do a "good enough" job on my own!