Having Too Much Avatar Fun... With AI

Or, as I titled this post when I published it on my personal blog yesterday:

"Generative AI Made Me Do It.”

Having lived through countless cycles of artificial intelligence hype (I mean promise) over the last few decades, I naturally couldn’t avoid getting sucked into the latest hotness: generative AI. The attention this new flavor is getting lately is almost deafening. And that includes tons of startup funding and rich valuations in recent months, both of which have been declining in other sectors of the technology industry (to say the least).

With my insatiable curiosity for all things tech, I’ve been seeing and reading a lot about generative AI, both as it applies to written content and to art. (You can read some articles I curate regularly on the topic here.) In particular, I was struck by what the popular new version of the Lensa app was doing — specifically, offering AI-generated avatars for anyone willing to sign up on its app and pay a nominal fee. You just submit 10-20 selfie or portrait shots of your mug, and — voila! — get back a whole bunch of AI-generated avatars. Most are what I’d call photo-like illustrations. Actually, it wasn’t all that “voila” — it takes a while for Lensa’s computers to generate these things. It was hours for me. I suppose it greatly depends on how many people are signing up on a given day.

Anyway, most of the 200 that I got back were… well, the word crap comes to mind. But I pulled out six that were kinda nice. And, ta-dah, here they are below — how generative AI sees Graeme. (Yes, this is an entirely self-absorbed post!)

What am I gonna do with all these? I dunno, but it was crazy to see what AI could create in a very short time that, just a few years ago, would have taken an illustrator days or weeks to accomplish. Do I feel sorry for artists? Yeah, I guess. But AI is coming for us writers, too!

What do you say: are the machines winning?