Artificial Intelligence has been all the rage in recent weeks, from neural networks that create images like the one below, to chat-based platforms that write better than many (most?) Actual Humans™. Since we’re in the automation business here at CUBEX, we felt like we should get some firsthand experience.
First – pictures! The search for engaging new imagery never ends, and while we regularly receive (and post) pics of happy customers with their new CUBEX system, our marketing team also draws a lot from stock photography houses. The problem with these images is that every other company in animal health is also searching the database for “veterinarian examining a dog in an office setting,” and when you see another company using the same image you are for their booth at VMX, let’s just say it’s embarrassing.
Fortunately, our Creative Director, Chris Eves, has access to DALL-E, a deep-learning model that can synthesize images from a simple text prompt. First, we tried the photo realistic approach: Chris prompted DALL-E with “photograph of a blonde veterinarian examining a dog in a doctor’s office” and here’s what we got:
So, maybe not exactly ‘photo realistic,’ and they’re definitely sort of. . .. weird 😅? But we might be OK using these for marketing purposes. Most of the time you don’t look at images in ads for too long.
Next, we thought we’d spice things up a little and add “in the style of an oil painting” to the end of the prompt, removing ‘photograph’ from the beginning. This would (hopefully) give us some eye-catching images that stand out from other photos you’re likely to see. Results:
I’ll admit, the longer you look at these, the more it becomes clear that there’s something a little ‘off’ about them 😬 These aren’t putting any humans out of work (yet), but, again, might by OK for commercial use depending on the context, especially if you acknowledge that they were created by AI.
Then we tried a more situational prompt. Since CUBEX manages medications, we’re always looking to show veterinary staff in context with meds, and stock photos with this as the subject matter usually just look super cheesy. Manually managing inventory can be frustrating! So, we prompted DALL-E with “frustrated veterinarian carrying an armload of medication bottles, in the style of a cartoon” and here’s what we got back:
Again, weird. But cool! Probably fine for use in, oh I don’t know, a blog post about AI art? And after seeing these, we’re probably more likely to pay a human artist to create better versions of these styles of art.
What do you think of all this? How would you feel about seeing yourself represented in an ad created by artificial intelligence? How should AI artists be credited – if art all?
Next time we’ll see what advice a language-based AI has for running your veterinary practice.