Browsing the supermarket shelves, you’ll find an array of flavour variations. Do you prefer the original, or one of the new and improved varieties? Choosing images to accompany a family history article is much the same. Let me illustrate.
This photograph from my family collection was taken on Christmas Day 1940 on an island in the Bismarck Archipelago. It is showing its age, well past its best-before date.
Here are some “new and improved” versions. The first was produced with ChatGPT, using the detailed prompt given by Andrew Redfern here, modified to produce a black-and-white monotone image.
The second used the same prompt with Gemini, which Andrew Redfern prefers.
Look at them carefully. Are there three people in the front row, or four? Are they wearing tops or not? What happened to the hats? The hallucinations are obvious.
Suppose you wanted an image to accompany your text, and you were happy to label any AI-enhanced images as such. Which of the three, the original or one of the two AI versions, would you choose, and why?