I have written before about how tedious I find the majority of my LinkedIn travels these days.
Maybe I really am just too cynical these days, but it is depressingly rare that I find myself genuinely enriched by anything that I read / see on LinkedIn. Please refer to my previous post for reasons why this is the case, as all the points remain valid, but I have a new pet hate – the endless ‘action figure’ images that seem to adorn most people’s feeds at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong – it is just a bit of fun, which is definitely a good thing in a generally troubled world, but the novelty wears off after a million several exposures to the same thing and I cannot avoid feeling that it is now just a lot of sheep following the herd rather than anything remotely inspirational. In my humble opinion, this particular trend is most definitely something where first mover advantage is important…
It does, however, introduce the very interesting debate about just how good AI image generation is getting. I have always maintained that AI is just a tool and it is the art of the tool’s user that will ultimately determine the quality of the output. I still hang on to this belief, but there is no denying that AI is getting seriously capable.
Rather than go down the action figure route, I wanted to share an example that started as a joke but has got me thinking very hard about the power of AI image generation and what it means for creative agencies.
The trigger for my reflections was actually a photo of a lawn that a friend sent to me on WhatsApp. I know, I lead a rock and roll lifestyle. In my defence, I am 50yrs old and have always loved a good mow. He then sent me a photo of a series of mole hills…
Another crucial piece to this jigsaw is Peggy – my beloved German Wirehaired Pointer. She is adorable but has a prey drive that is truly impressive. Although she hasn’t, to my knowledge, ever caught a mole there is no doubt in my mind that she would have a good crack at it and my lawn mowing friend knows her well, so I knew that he would appreciate the offer of borrowing the GWP mole killer.
Perhaps it was the torrent of action figure pictures that I had seen that morning, but I decided to see how good ChatGPT would be at depicting Peggy as a mole killer to send as a reply on WhatsApp.
I didn’t really spend any time looking for the perfect photo to start with, but took this photo of Peggy last week on an evening walk:
I then asked ChatGPT to add a dead mole to the photo. I cannot remember my exact prompt, as I was actually in the middle of doing something else, but think it was something as simple as ‘please put a mole in the dog’s mouth’. Which it duly did:
My immediate reaction was that it did a very good job of helping me joke about Peggy being available for hire, but the more you look the photo, the more impressive it actually gets. If I had spent 5mins in Photoshop, I know that I would not have done anything like as good a job with the image.
Yes, her mouth was open (partly why I chose that photo, other than it just being a recent photo and I was in a rush), so it should be fairly easy to insert a mole in that space, but Peggy has been completely recreated and it looks very realistic considering how little time was spent. Not only does the mole look genuinely limp / lifeless, Peggy’s head has turned to the left, very realistic back teeth have been created and her left leg has been redrawn to give a much more powerful stance. Whilst I don’t think it looks exactly like her, as a lot of her face ‘furniture’ (hair!) has been removed, it is an extremely good effort and enriched my WhatsApp reply.
Please note, no moles were harmed in the process of creating this blog post :-)
This was all just a bit of Monday morning fun but it was a timely reminder that AI has come on in leaps and bounds. It is hugely powerful and actually starting to feel ‘intelligent’ rather than just good at doing exactly what it is told.
We have always embraced AI at Browser Media, although I think we all share the sentiment that, when push comes to shove, it is simply not as good as actual humans for written content, assuming that said human is a skilled copy writer. Although it is getting increasingly difficult, you can normally spot content that is the direct output of the AI machines. It tends to be too repetitive or there is just something that feels fake about it.
Does this mean that you should not use AI?
Not at all – it is a great time saver for many tasks and, when used appropriately, is a great starting point for most content. I am increasingly using it for initial research – at the expense of the search engines. For us as an agency, I still hang to the belief (hope?) that, like any tool, there will be the need for the skilled operator, but I am increasingly fearful of the existential threat that AI poses to many job functions.
With imagery in particular, my fear is for the creative agencies who make their living from generating visual assets. This include photographic agencies – the days of long product photo shoots must surely be numbered as you can now just let AI do its thing with a couple of good quality product images. At the click of a few buttons, you can help a whole library of lifestyle photos of your product. Similarly, I simply cannot see how agencies who spend their days resizing assets have a bright future. With the right prompts, AI can do all that re-purposing of assets that is needed for different platforms. Not only is it likely to be much faster, it will certainly be far cheaper. Whilst cheap is not always good, it does make sense where scale is involved.
In many ways, I find AI incredibly democratic – it is accessible to all and allows tiny brands to really punch above their weight, thanks to the potential scale at which AI can be deployed. That is a good thing, but it also creates the inevitable tidal wave of content that creates overload and actually makes it much harder to stand out / be found. That is for another blog post.
But, to answer the initial question of whether ChatGPT’s image generation is actually any good? Yes, I think it is. Very good in fact.
The challenge is to be creative with it. Be the shepherd, not the sheep.
