Like many designers lately, I’ve been using AI for various image-related tasks to assist me as a Creative Director here at my company Young Mind Interactive. Normally, when I think of a great idea, my first instinct is to sketch it out on my iPad, and then assemble a composition with some found images in Photoshop – on the desktop – using my retouching skills and some original digital air-brushing to make those elements look convincingly real.
I’ve used ChatGPT, Mid-Journey, Adobe’s Firefly or Google’s Gemini to attempt to create images. But I’ve found that AI fails my expectations most of the times. I’m either fixing the image in Photoshop, or using too much time to do something I could do myself. Here’s a few examples where AI should be able to produce an accurate image on its own with a simple prompt
“Create an image of an American Bald Eagle flying over the Grand Canyon with stormy skies and a sunset, with an Olive Branch clasped in the eagle’s talons.” I’m not denying this is an interesting image, it’s a little too dark and brooding for an advertisement.
This next project should have been so easy. Considering how many maps of planet earth are on the internet. “Produce an accurate map of the world.” I said to ChatGPT! This is certainly a hallucination by any definition. And what’s with the typography?
I gave up and went to Stock illustration instead for this map job. This should have been an easy lay-up though. I had wanted to save a little money.
Recently, this interesting little job came through the studio that illustrated the problems still haunting AI image development. One problem is that AI will NOT help you if you want to use intellectual property belonging to any large media company. My client wanted to create an image for a board member who came through on the need for beverages. The request to ChatGPT was simple, but using “Batman” is not. ChatGPT told her it could not fulfill this request.
She called me to solve the problem the old fashioned way. So, I used photoshop and Google Image search to find a Batman suit that matched the portrait I was given. The rest speaks for itself.
