Tag Archives: ai

My understanding is that AI software is bad for the environment because it is so energy inefficient but I allowed myself to experiment because I needed a new head shot for my LinkedIn profile. I used a service called Aragon.ai, it asks a few questions like your age and hair color, you upload six photos of yourself and you get 100 AI generated head shots in return. The experience is uncanny (pun intended).

I sent a handful of them to friends and family. Unfortunately, everyone knew me well enough to know I didn’t do a professional photo shoot, hair, and makeup, all for a new head shot, so they had their suspicions, but they were unanimously impressed with the realism of 95% of the photos. Only a handful didn’t seem to look as much like me, or looked more obviously artificial to us.

See exhibits A – C below and try to guess which is which.

One is AI generated. One is Photoshop. One is just hair and makeup.

Not that hard to figure it out. But I still find the takeaway interesting. I like the middle photo the least. I don’t know what they did on Photoshop but I don’t think it looks very much like me. I actually like the first photo the best, even though it’s AI generated. The last photo was a very flattering photo of me when I was younger, but my family and I could not stop staring at the AI ones. They were so compelling.

I was blown away by the technology.

Psychologically, the experience of seeing these photos hit me differently than seeing photos of myself that I took using filters on Snapchat for example. I don’t know if that because I didn’t see the photos made, or simply if it’s just been a very long time since I even played around with that sort of technology, etc. But the AI photo made me feel motivated to keep up my skincare, and look into learning how to blowout my hair because it felt like I was seeing the best version of myself, instead of just a different version. What I could look like if I learned how to do my makeup better, instead of plastic surgery, for example.

Anyway. This has all been a bit self-indulgent. Even for me. But I think a little vanity is good for motivation, so my recommendation would be to try out Aragon.ai. I can’t speak to other services. I’m sure I could have looked around a little longer and found a free version that would have done the job well enough, if not just as well, but I didn’t so here we are.