I have been playing more and more with AI. Lately I have been asking AI to write the prompts for me when I am trying to solve something. For example, I wrote a blog post using AI. I then asked the AI for a prompt to write an image to go with the article. This is what it wrote, which is much more detailed that what I would have come up with.
Create a split-screen photorealistic image that illustrates the contrast between AI perception and reality:
Left side: A warm, human-like robot face with expressive eyes and a gentle smile, appearing to solve a mathematical equation written in glowing text (5 + 25 + 4.3 = 34.3).
Right side: The “behind the scenes” reality – reveal the same robot’s head partially opened to show a complex network of circuits, data matrices, and flowing vectors. Inside, visualize flowing streams of numbers, tokens, and activation patterns rather than human-like thought processes.
The image should have a clean, modern, slightly dramatic lighting with blue-toned technology highlights. The transition between the two sides should be seamless yet distinct, suggesting the viewer is seeing past the anthropomorphized surface to the actual computational mechanisms underneath.
Style: Photorealistic digital art with detailed textures, subtle reflections, and professional lighting. The mood should be thoughtful and slightly cautionary rather than dystopian or threatening.
I then submitted this prompt to two different AI image generators, ChatGPT and Copilot. What was interesting to me was how similar the two images were. Even down to the mistakes the AIs made. Both could not output the number 34.3, but instead replaced the decimal point with a comma: 34,3. This illustrates the problem with image generation AIs, they are only manipulating pixels, starting with random pixels (noise) and refining the image until it statistical comes close to what its training data says. It doesn’t understand any context or what is actually in the image.
It reminds me of what Douglas Adams wrote: “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
That being said, I am finding it more and more useful to ask the AI engines to write prompts for me, whether it is image prompts or prompts relating to write code. Other places I use AI to enhance AI is in writing. I often let one AI critic another’s writing or coding.