A Dining Group Through the A-I Ages

 

The Steinbeck Society was founded in 2008 as a monthly dining group with 12 members, all of whom went to the University of Tennessee in the early seventies, many of whom had worked on the UT Daily Beacon, the student newspaper. 

The group has gone through several iterations and a pandemic pause. It is now a weekly lunch group of 10, with an average attendance of 6. 

I wanted to memorialize the group with an illustration depicting a typical luncheon. I can't draw so I turned to Artificial Intelligence, which has advanced rapidly and can now create credible illustrations. 

I began with a simple command: I asked ChatGPT 4.0 to create an image of ten old men, members of the Steinbeck Society, gathering together for a meal. (Click on an image to enlarge.)

 

 I realized they were dressed much too formally so I asked AI to revise the image with the men wearing casual clothes.

 

 AI obviously thought I meant a dinner meeting so I asked it to change the image to a lunch gathering.

 

 The men looked much older than our group so I asked ChatGPT to make the men ten years younger.

 

 Too much hair so I asked AI to make three of the men bald.

 

 This time I told the program to make the scene more cartoonish.

  

Now I wanted fewer bald heads and fewer beards.

 

ChatGPT obviously didn’t get the picture so I asked for the men to all be clean shaven. AI apparently thought I wanted them to take their shirts off.

 

 No, no, clean shaven! AI instead stripped off their undershirts.

 

 I thought if I asked AI to change it to a breakfast gathering, it might put the shirts back on. I also instructed the program to create the image with ONE bald man. AI made it FIVE bald men.

 

This time I asked to move it to a diner and make all the men clean-shaven. I don’t think AI has any idea what “clean-shaven” means.

 

 I asked for a return to the cartoon style with all clean shaven men and one bald. And I got this.

So I gave up.

 Incidentally this group looks almost nothing like the Steinbeck Society. 

But I think about A-I image creation as Samuel Johnson did about the dog that could walk on its hind legs, "It is not done well but you are surprised that it is done at all." 

 

I should add that in addition to not being able to follow directions, AI also can’t spell.