Uncanny alley me
I needed a new portrait photograph for my linkedIn account. The one I had I took as a screenshot from a video, and it looked a bit crappy. I have very few good photos of myself, especially for a business profile. I haven’t worn a business suit in years. I thought — perhaps I can take a recent picture of me and ask ChatGPT to make it into a business portrait.
Here’s the picture I chose initially. It’s a screenshot from a recent video test.
Not great, a bit blurry, but it’s me. Let’s see what ChatGPT can do with it:
I need a new portrait image for my LinkedIn account. Attached a recent image from a video. Can you make this more suitable for a LinkedIn portrait. For example, you might put me in a smart suit.
OMG what is that? It’s me, but also not me. There is something wrong with it, but it’s very hard to pinpoint what it is. The face is a bit longer than mine, perhaps? It’s weird, when I look at individual features it’s me, but the whole thing, it just isn’t.
This is why artists practice by painting faces and nude bodies. Because it’s so very hard to get right. Our brains are incredibly sensitive to tiny changes to faces. We need to be able to be good at reading faces so we can tell when someone is behind honest, or dishonest, or whatever. We just see faces better than we see any other thing.
Let’s try with a different photo and a different prompt. I don’t want something too formal, I want it to be a little more creative. Let’s try with this photo (as I said, I don’t have many photos of me):
Here's a different portrait of me. Can you do something a bit less formal, perhaps a little bit maverick and creative, but still professional.
Again, sort of me but not quite. My nose is wonkier. I don’t have brown eyes. If you look at the source photograph my eyes are clearly blue so it’s odd that ChatGPT has made them brown.
Can you make it look more like me? It doesn't look quite right.
WTF. Well that definitely isn’t me. The eyes might be the right colour but the nose is completely wrong, in fact it’s all wrong. The faded Sagrada Familia in the background is a nice touch though.
About three years ago I ran a creative group, and one afternoon we all got together and took portraits of each other. It was great fun. Here is one of the photos someone took of me:
Let’s see what ChatGPT does with that. I started a new chat to we have a completely fresh context, and prompted thusly:
I need a new portrait image for my LinkedIn account. Attached a recent image. Can you make this more suitable for a LinkedIn portrait. The style can be creative and a bit maverick, but professional. Can you try to alter the image as little as possible, especially the face.
OMG and also WTF. It’s clear I’m not doing to get anywhere with this method.
A change of method. Rather than getting ChatGPT to make the whole portrait, which it seems it is unable to do, I will get it just to create the background.
I started a new chat and:
Can you create a background image to put behind a portrait that I am going to upload to linked in. I will add the portrait of myself in Photoshop. The background should:
- suggest technology, especially computers, web and AI
- suggest creativity
- perhaps suggest a bit maverick
I quite like that. After a bit of Photoshopping I got this:
I quite like it! The only problem is that the lighting doesn’t really match the photograph I am using. I uploaded my edited version with the prompt:
That is great! But the lighting doesn't really match the photograph I am using. I have attached your image with the portrait superimposed on top. Can you try again? I liked what you did, but it doesn't quite work.After multiple iterations I eventually ended up with this:
That’s ok. Not brilliant, but passable. Good enough, for now. Most importantly, it doesn’t look as if it’s been created by AI.