Being a sometime dive down the rabbit hole of the craft and business of writing.
The Great and Powerful KelseyG is the reason all my social media looks as good as it does, including the Roadhouse Report, my monthly newsletter you’re all subscribed to.*
In this month’s RR I wanted to give you an update on the Harvey Girls books. I asked The Great and Powerful KelseyG:
Would you like to try your hand at phonying up a cover for the first one? Maybe a young woman (22ish) in Harvey Girl uniform carrying a loaded tray on one hand shoulder high and the other carrying a Philadelphia derringer with the other held low, against her skirts. Google doesn’t show me any images of Harvey Girls actually working, other than this one at the coffee urns (https://bit.ly/3y7WwW3). But here’s images of the derringer: https://bit.ly/3Ws0JOe.
The Great and Powerful KelseyG never, and I mean never, says no to anything I ask, because she can literally do everything I can’t except write the books, and I wouldn’t put that past her, either. But this time she replied:
I’ve tried a few different methods to pull together a cover like you described, but without much success. Without similar source images to photoshop, I even tried AI — which had disturbing results (I put one of the images in the newsletter temporarily as a placeholder so you can share in the horror).
Well of course, because me, the next thing I asked her was if I could share the horror with you. So this is the image the AI generated when she asked.
I really don’t think we have that much to fear from AI, do you?
The Great and Powerful KelseyG is going to work on it while I’m on vacation. I’m sure we all wish her the very best of luck.
*You aren’t? Tsk. Here you go.
Update Friday evening: Via Kottke–
AI is, very simply, a totally shameless technology. It does everything badly and confidently.–Paul Ford