Happy Hog Rot

Bear with me here.  I am going to walk you through a series of steps in my first-hand experience last night with what is known as artificial intelligence (AI).  Let’s lead off with some background about my friend, Jim Friedman.

1. The resplendently handsome Mr. F has been a frequent and favored photographic subject for me, dating from our first acquaintance in 1973 as students of Ansel Adams at Yosemite.  Picking up again during the Covid pandemic, our contacts have all been virtual, connecting via online expedients such as FaceTime and Zoom.  As some of you know, I often communicate online via such technology.  And, of course, as one of my frequent correspondents is Jim F.,  I often document our exchanges by capturing screen images of Jim (with his consent, of course) which I rework to my own peculiar tastes.  Some of these images are previewed on this blog, some are sequestered for various publishing projects, others fall into a queue for future consideration.  Last March, one of these image captures triggered my recall of the 1977 David Lynch film, “Eraserhead”, so I was inspired to process a few variations, among them this item:

2.  Fast forward to this summer,  a day or two ago, when Jim and I were working online to edit and compile a new book.  He then saw yet another of my other variations, also based on the image of him inspired by the Eraserhead poster.  Here is that backlit image:

3. Yesterday Jim and I discussed further possibilities for the above image, wondering if AI might be used to bring it more closely in line with the depiction in the Eraserhead movie poster.

4. So I uploaded the image to Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash AI processor (also known as “Nano Banana”), and gave it the following prompt:

“subject wears white shirt and tie under dark suit and hair has exaggerated Eraserhead effect”

5.  The AI response was:

“The photo you uploaded is of Jack Nance in his iconic role as Henry Spencer from the 1977 David Lynch film, Eraserhead.

The film is a surrealist body-horror movie, and Nance’s character, Henry, is known for his signature, wild hairstyle, which gives the movie its name. The black and white, high-contrast look of the photo is characteristic of the film’s unique and unsettling visual style.”

And Google, apparently ”thinking” that I was uploading a copyrighted or off-limits image, did NOT generate a new image.  (Note that I did NOT upload the version juxtaposed with the poster, but used the single blurred image.)  But it was interesting to note that Google took off running with the suggestion that my upload was triggered by a David Lynch vision.

6.  So I had to reply to Google AI with:

“no this is my original photo which I want to present with an Eraserhead appearance”

7.  Google replies:

“Understood! My apologies for the misunderstanding. I’ll apply the exaggerated “Eraserhead” hair effect and have the subject wear a white shirt and tie under a dark suit, as you requested.”

8.  But Google still failed to generate an image in response to my prompt.  So I hit the control to try again …

9.  Once again, nothing generated by Google.  So I tried one more time, re-uploading my original image:

10.  This time Google announces that:

“Ah, my apologies! It seems I misunderstood again and didn’t apply the changes. Thank you for clarifying. I will now apply the exaggerated “Eraserhead” hair effect and have the subject wear a white shirt and tie under a dark suit.”

11.  And the result:

12.  As of this writing, Mr. F has not seen the above result.  He may be as astonished as I as to how Google took it upon itself to “remediate” the deliberate blurring and other effects, and yet unwittingly render something with an uncanny resemblance to the real-life person in question.

13.  And so it goes.