Do you make AI portraits of yourself? You might be a giant loser.

What an interesting time to be alive; we've reached the height of technological advancements as they relate to our phones, the cameras attached to them, and their quality. Yet, as we've begged and pleaded for each new $1,000+ iPhone year after year, based on a new lens or .0002 megapixel resolution improvement, it seems the general population just realized that yes, the sharper your camera's resolution, the more the pores and wrinkles will show on your face, and that simply must be combatted with an equal, opposing force - that force being a completely idealized, unattainable, or downright cartoon version of ourselves (not me, but still).

If you hadn't gathered from the title, that force I am referring to is AI. So what exactly are we seeking in the end with these images of ourselves in a stolen Studio Ghibli style, or one of thousands of others in the style of an artist you probably have never heard or never will because they were never asked if their work could be used, much less credited for it. Do you think you're ugly? Do you want your boring day to day job to look cuter than it is by prompting ChatGPT to show the world what you would look like wading through capitalism as an Animorph? Are you out of tourist traps in exploited underdeveloped nations to take new selfies? If I could get an answer from you, I would genuinely like to know, but instead, I'm going to assume it's some combination of the above.

When we have an outlet that will allow us to shove all of our insecurities into a machine, ask it to shave off the bits we don't like, and then place us anywhere other than the place we really are, we are dealing with a coping mechanism in the guise of an efficiency tool. Let me tell you, if you are ugly, the only thing you need to know is that "ugly" is subjective, and the problem is, 9 out of 10 times, lurking closer to your personality, your confidence, and your lack of committment to a better world. If you are, despite its environmentally catastrophic, art theiving, corporate billionaire profiting mechanisms, completely incapable of stopping yourself from asking a robot to make you pretty or cute or interesting, I will be the bearer of bad news on this particular matter, and it's bad news indeed. If this glove fits you, you are not only objectively ugly on the inside, but you are a huge, giant, massive, loser.

Now I have friends who do this, and I go no easier on them than I am going on you. It doesn't mean I don't love them, but it does mean I like them a little less every time I see them do it. Hell, my own mother uses ChapGPT to make cartoon images of her pets. Why? Because she's perpetually discontent and the 2 dogs sitting on her lap begging for attention while she invents new versions of them in an AI model are simply not enough. Your middle class job? That's not enough - let's put it in a cartoon to make it more palatable. Your biceps you've been working on since 8th grade? Not big enough - lets turn you into a roided out freak so you can catfish himbos on Scruff. It all boils down to you hating yourself and your surroundings enough to torment planet earth and its inhabitants for the sake of piece of content nobody cares about anyway.

I don't want to hate, but this is an issue that, for the few remaining artists left in the world, is do or die. I studied art my entire life before joining corporate America. The point I'd like to drive home to you is that your insecurities and discontentments are your own. They do not entitle you to the property of others. They do not provide you a hallpass to exploit the talent and labor of a painter living in another country. They will not grant you forgiveness when you are fighting your neighbor for fresh water, now a scarcity because data processing centers for AI models are energy sucking, water consuming, catasrophes. And when the inevitable time comes to survive, and you've spent the last decade of your life forking your thoughts, ideas, selfies, identifiers, and any last scraps of dignity over to a robot, you will have nothing and nobody to turn to. Your robot will not be there to get you through a global catastrophe, it won't pay you, it won't feed you, and it won't save you or the ones you love in times of need. What it will do, tangibly, realistically, here and now in this very moment, is pad the pockets of billionaires that wants to see the end of the world as you know it, both in the moment you try to change your world through an AI prompt, and in the moment your real world can no longer be cloaked in a generated illusion, and the walls really do come caving in on you. If this week's AI prompt trend is worth all of that, and more unlisted tragedies, you are truly a loser, and I want you to know it.