Eerie experience with AI

It was the beginning of a horror movie

I’ve seen Electric Dreams; I know when to quit.

Maybe have some coffee or whatever you prefer to start your morning before reading this, if it is still the morning for you. This goes sideways.

I was actually looking around, just for fun, for a line converter, to see what it would do to my podcast logo. I drew my logo, to make it stand out, and it does. Here’s the original, in my commonplacebook, seven years ago this past January; I remember listening to Cyndi Lauper while I sketched the idea out.

Then I carefully drew, colored, and blended the one I use now with my Prismacolors.

That shadow to the left is the seam of my commonplace book; I faded out the square paper (but you can still see it) but left that in on purpose.

And this is how it looks in a podcatcher—this is Pocket Casts on my iPhone—see, very different:

hi, Jon Ronson, what’s up.

I like my logo. But my pain was high, and I was was fooling around waiting for my pain meds to kick in. That’s a special kind of liminal time, where the points don’t matter. So AI tomfoolery it is.

So I described my logo in text. I have blocked out which AI engine I used, because Something Bad Happened. Traumatic block. I’ll explain. But first…

These I am showing you are the good ones. The skull showed up when I changed the description from “books” to “horror books”. Okay. Then I removed it. This is important. No more “horror”.

There are…oddities. Scroll down to the gallery then come back. Because there are questions. Why are there holes in the first cupcake? Why are the ear pads hiding in the second one? How many ear pads are there in the fourth blue one? Why does the skull cupcake look like pancakes, complete with powdered sugar on top? Why do the next headphones disappear into the Nothing? And why are the last ones melting into their own cupcake coaster? Plus…look closely at the cherry. It’s not a cherry, it’s a cherry bomb. This is Wonderland, people.

I didn’t save the others. Because they frightened me, people. Remember, I removed the “horror” prompt once the skull showed up. So the prompt said something to the equivalent of “cupcake wearing headphones sitting on a stack of books”. That’s it. Nothing left to interpretation. Sometimes “blue headphones”. Nothing spooky. Very pedestrian. Much bland.

Here we go: I started repeatedly getting images of a decapitated female head wearing the headphones, grinning at the viewer, lying next to a cupcake and a stack of books. Over and over. I would get one image that was mostly correct, like the last melting one, then peekaboo SMILE FOR THE CAMERA YOU PODCASTING PSYCHO. After the fourth one, yes I said fourth decapitated head leering at me, I noped out, cleared my cache, touched grass, prayed, took some medical marijuana, and a nap. I haven’t touched AI since.

I should have known better. Siri spontaneously talked to me yesterday, and I was raised on Electric Dreams. No more AI for me. Until I forget this fever dream and try it again.

(Because the pink one is kinda cute.)