Fussing about with AI (specifically ChatGPT) to create bespoke images has reminded me that sometimes I prefer the edited version of my own photography. Unquestionably there are AI renditions which are incomparable. But I recall – no matter how inadvertently – that many of my iPhone creations (admittedly with the benefit of technology) are compelling. Frankly the same applies to what I write and what AI “refines” of what I have written. Preferences pertain.
ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the American company OpenAI and launched in 2022. It is based on large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o. ChatGPT can generate human-like conversational responses and enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language.
The ability to generate images directly with GPT-4o (rather than through DALL-E 3) was added in March 2025
Below (in the frame) is an AI re-creation of a photo (immediately below) taken by me. When requesting Ai (I call him Hal after Hal 9000 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey), I asked that the production have a traditional antique motif and that a corresponding frame be added.
Below is one of my own similar numbers for further comparison. It is easy to see the cleverness of the AI production above; but at the same time there is value in the human model. I might easily have added a frame expropriated from a collection by Keepsake.
While the world debates the utility and authenticity of AI – and rants of its abuse for misinformation and creation of toxic communications (even to the point where some countries have banned its use) – I comfort myself to know that I do not rely upon AI for anything either material or critical. AI is for me but another device I use to express myself. I haven’t any tests to answer or theses to produce; nor have I any important investigative questions to be answered. Indeed it is part of my enjoyment of AI that I can predict an uncertain result.
Nonetheless I confess that not having a particular objective somewhat detracts from the meaning of AI. For example, I have over the past numbers of years (say, since 1985 or thereabouts) adapted to the use of computers for email, messages, literary composition, moderate research and of course the mobile phone and its alliance with the banking system. By contrast, AI for the time being remains in the realm of a toy rather than a practical addition to the filing cabinet of technology. Nonetheless the amusement lingers.
I am oddly reminded in this instance of an encounter I had in a subterranean bar (probably on Atlantic Avenue) in Provincetown, Cape Cod many years ago. The chap was from New York City. He had an inexpressible sense of humour, dry and witty. He was a writer; and, I subsequently trailed him when he conducted an interview of one of the performers at a night club on Commercial Street. His on-line “blog” was called Random Thoughts (which admittedly was the inspiration for the title of this piece). Accompanying the author was a gentleman from the posh part of town in Washington, DC called Georgetown.
Georgetown is a historic neighborhood and commercial district in Northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River. Founded in 1751 as part of the colonial-era Province of Maryland, Georgetown predated the establishment of Washington, D.C. by 40 years. Georgetown was an independent municipality until 1871 when the United States Congress created a new consolidated government for the entire District of Columbia. A separate act, passed in 1895, repealed Georgetown’s remaining local ordinances and renamed Georgetown’s streets to conform with those in Washington, D.C.
Looking back upon those salad days is highly distracting. I am animated however not to relive or repeat the adventures, rather to be thankful for the blessings they have afforded me. It is this genre of reflection which has captured my idle mind today. Commensurately Apple Music is doing a good job of entertaining me as well. Whenever I listen to the algorithmic productions of Apple Music I inevitably signal certain of them as “Favourite Songs” which automatically compiles them in a separate collection which later I may reproduce at will. It is but another example of the manifest ways in which technology has insinuated the popular vernacular.
The national media has lately been ablaze with politics following the federal election of the 24th Prime Minister Mark Carney of the Liberal Party of Canada. The triumph of intellect and determination heralds a new era in our worldly associations, specifically as we begin to remove ourselves from what has historically been the primary commercial alignment with the United States of America. At the same time, the USA is currently in a state of flux, suffering from a number of maladies which it alone feels it can remedy in its own way. Though I have no doubt Canada welcomes anything it can do by way of cooperation with the United States, there remains the settlement of its current president to refashion its traditional treaties for what he believes to be the sole advantage of the USA. I will avoid contributing any of my thoughts to this unfolding drama. I am not competent to do so. I have however convinced that the commercial networks in Canada, both nationally and globally, are about to change. By necessity we have chosen a new future above an old past.
Tomorrow we brunch at the golf club, the first day of the season. So many things on the horizon; so many things yet to come. And I am settling into my now beloved custom of glancing from my desk across the cultivated fields and upriver.
