I finally gave in and tried some AI.
There has been so much talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) lately. It is in politics, it is in news. And.. there is an explosion of advertisements on Youtube about how AI can make your business better, your life better, your money better … etc. etc.
I guess I succumbed to all the marketing and finally did some tinkering with AI.
I cranked up three different online AI Programs and I was pleased while also dismayed and shocked at the same time.
I had to give some thought to what I actually wanted to use AI for. I had no idea. But after some deep thought I came up with a manageable idea.
The cover of one of my books has always been a bit of a disappointment for me. I have never been satisfied with it. The book is “The Left Handed Sword”. One of my early novels.
So I figured I would see if AI could make a better cover for me.
And I was pleased/shocked with the results.
Here is a brief overview of how it went with all three AI’s.
The first thing I asked for was “Create a book cover for me that shows a left hand holding a sword.
And they all gave me a nice image with one glaring problem….. All the hands were right hands! Here is one example:
It’s a nice image and makes for a nice book cover. It is definitely an improvement over the old cover. But the fact that “left-handedness” is a very important part of the book. I can’t really use this cover as it is!
And it seems to me that this is such a simple error. How can something like this be missed or misinterpreted?
It makes you wonder about how deceptive AI can be and how dangerous it really can be. We can spend trillions of CPU cycles training it and teaching it and it can do amazing things 99.9 percent of the time. But, one unexpected mistake can have profound ramifications. Is it possible to be prudent and plan for every possible contigency and every possible path of action?> NO.
If you are curious here is the new AI generated book cover for the Left handed sword. Oh and I had to open up a Paint program and manually flip the image of the hand and sword from a right hand to a left hand by mirroring it. :
