Creating AI Images

 I have an idea in my head, sometimes even a fairly clear picture. I put it into words that I think a machine mind will understand, keeping it simple, and then offer it as a prompt to my AI collaborator.

This first prompt is like the first cast of a fly over a trout stream. I hardly expect it to be successful.

The image the AI comes up with may approximate my idea- or it may be way off beam. Sometimes it's an improvement. Usually it's something I can work with.

And then comes the process of refinement and adjustment. It may be a matter of "evolving" the image or it may be a matter of rewriting the prompt, taking things out, putting things in. Like any creative process it can be laborious and frustrating. 

Sometimes I have to abandon the process and approach the subject from a new angle.

 I hate to be beaten.

 Just one more try....

 Oh alright, just one more and then we're done.....

 But that hand has an extra finger. That won't do......

Eventually my collaborator and I arrive at a result we can live with....

Poppy Day

 I passed through the town centre at around a quarter to ten and people were beginning to assemble for the ceremony at the War Memorial. I say "people" as if they were Joe and Jill Public but they were mostly a particular kind of person- young people in uniform- cadets, scouts- and the older people who train them. Somewhere a bagpiper was practising a lament.

Were Joe and Jill Public wearing poppies? Not that I noticed. I've been attaching white poppies to my lapel- and having them keep dropping off. 

Elizabeth, who lost her father at Arnhem, was going to miss the ceremony for the first time in God knows how long. She said that this year she was just too tired. 

The men and women who wore uniform in the Second World War are almost all gone- and now the generation of their children is fading out too- in which company I suddenly remember I must include myself.