“Ha ha ha! Did you see the photograph in the Economic Times?” Lulu, my parrot asked me.

“Let me see it” Nina, my Myna said, and she looked at the Eco times which Lulu was holding. Nina could not control her laughter.

I snatched the paper from Nina. The photo showed Trump and Xi holding a mug of beer, munching nuts, with both dressed casually like Goans when they help themselves with beer.

I kept looking at the picture and asked, “Hey how did they make this pic?”

“Old man, have you ever heard of AI?” Nina my myna asked

“Air India? What has it got to do with the beer drinking chieftains?”

“Not Air India. Artificial Intelligence. They use AI, I mean Artificial Intelligence to create such pics.” Lulu said with a contemptuous tone.

“He is an old man, Lulu; we have to explain him how it works.” Nina my myna said.

“When you need a picture, say for a blog post, a poster, for a best wishes card, what do you do?”

“My source is Google. Sometimes sites like Pixabay. A friend informed me that there could be copyright issues, so I would choose one from my photo albums”

“Would you always get what you wanted; in the photographs I mean?”

“Rarely. Usually I did not get what I had in mind.!” I said.

“Oh, AI makes it simple for people like you”

“What do you mean by ‘people like you’?”

“Those not tech savvy”

“Oh, shut up”

“Sorry, I was pulling your leg,” Lulu continued. “Now, you can tell a machine what you want. And AI will make it for you. From your idea.”

“Are you telling me that I can give instructions and the AI will create a picture?”

“yes”

“A picture which never existed before? A new one – made to order?”

“Yes Sir”

“From my idea will it create a picture? I can’t believe this!”

“Yup”

“Can it make in the style of Michael Angelo or van Gogh?”

“Yes”

“Nah, I can’t believe this …”

“Stop arguing. Are you willing to try? Experiment and learn?

“Yes”

“Go to Google AI app and type what kind of picture you want”  

“You mean describe details?”

“Yes.”

“You must think first. Then describe. Then generate.”

“Like?”

“Create a picture of a three-year-old girl with happy face wearing yellow dress holding white and red flowers in front of a white door”

“Hmmm …”

“Think first, describe and then ‘generate’. Two-step process as they say.”

“Do artists think? I thought they do it instinctively!”

“They do both. AI simulates them”

“Wow”

“Step one is to sit with a language model — that is a tool like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, the kind you type a conversation into — and develop your idea in words. Describe the mood. The colours. The setting. The feeling you want someone to have when they see it. Ask the tool to help you write a proper image description”

“Got it”

“Step two is to take that description into an image generation tool. Tools like Google. Or Ideogram, which is good for images with text in them, or Midjourney, which produces painterly, artistic results”

“I will try these ….. it isn’t difficult”

“Easy actually”

“Hmmmm …. I mentioned copyright problems. Who owns copyrights when Google et al make pics for me?”

“Well things are in a flux there. The rules are still being worked out across different countries. For personal use, education, and experimentation, most tools allow free use. But check before you publish or sell”

“Great. Happy! Any more words of caution?”

“Yes. Sometimes AI images reflect biases. They may default to certain kinds of faces, body types, or settings based on what they have seen most.”

“In the picture you produced the girl is European. Not Asian. Or African.”

“Oh yessss”

“If you ask for “a doctor,” many tools will show a man. Not a woman doctor. You must watch for it. Spot it, correct it. Say what you want. Clearly.”

“I am aware of biases of people. And now you are cautioning me to be weary of bias of AI! Phew!!

“Don’t give up. I am going to tell you more exciting things about AI. In our next meeting.”

“Thanks. How do you know so much about AI, Lulu!” I asked.

“I taught him to work with AI” Nina said winking at him.

“Oh, shut up” Lulu shouted.

Vivek S Patwardhan with Deepa Premkumar

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” All matter copyrighted.

“तुम्ही जो वारसा मागे ठेवून जाता, तो म्हणजे दगडी स्मारकांवर कोरलेले शब्द नव्हे; तर तो वारसा म्हणजे इतरांनी आयुष्य विणताना विणले गेलेले तुमचे धागे होत.” सर्व मजकूर कॉपीराइट-संरक्षित आहे.