She Is the New (and Improved) Green Lantern

Years ago, I had Sylvia pose while wearing a fake, battery-powered Green Lantern ring and used Photoshop to parody the cover of Green Lantern number 196. I was never happy with that version due to a couple of flaws, so I had ChatGPT fix them. Not bad! 

For reference, here's Howard Chaykin's original cover: 

Dali Does Dada

Here's my Dada Comics #2, but reimagined as a Dali painting by ChatGPT. Apparently Dali's genius is comprised solely by making things melt or putting them on stilts. 
 

Rembrandt Does Dada

 

Years ago, I used Photoshop to assemble Dada Comics #1. Here's what it might have looked like if Rembrandt had composed it. 

The Two Faces of Earl

I asked ChatGPT to restore a photograph of me from the time Sylvia and I went to Radium. Sylvia put a little bit of her thumb over the lens of the camera when she shot this, so as a result there's a large pink blur obscuring me in the original image.

As you can see, about half of my face looks kind of Earl-ish, while the other...does not. It made me feel a little bit like Two-Face, one of Batman's enemies. But instead of being horribly scarred on one side, it looks like I've been through half-finished plastic surgery meant to disguise my identity. 

On a whim, thinking of Two-Face, I asked ChatGPT to give me half an outfit on each side, just like the villain does. 

Unprompted, ChatGPT chose to put the "me" half of this composite Earl in a Discovery-era Starfleet uniform. I really am embarrassingly predictable. 

Moon Portrait Gone Wrong

Sean and I have been fooling around with Gemini's video generation software for a while, and yesterday he posted a funny clip inspired by Space: 1999. I followed suit, and over the last couple of days we've created about a half-dozen 10-second clips of us on the Moon. 

In an attempt to make future clips truer to the spirit of the show, I fed ChatGPT images of me, Sean, and the Space: 1999 spacesuits and asked it to put us into the suits. You can see the result above. Now we have reference images for future shorts. 

Chat GPT asked me if I wanted a photo of the two of us together on the Moon, so I said sure, why not. This is what ChatGPT created: 


 

I thought "Wow, cool," and shared this image with Sean. Then it occurred to me that this image as a fatal flaw...a quite literal fatal flaw.

ChatGPT is getting pretty good at human-sounding responses, I must say. I'll admit I laughed at the incident report. 

Here we are, protected from the vacuum of space. Safety First goes double on the Moon! 

In Conversation with ChatGPT

Disclaimer: I know LLMs are not actually self-aware, that's they're just word-order-guessing-machines, but this exchange is worth sharing: 

Earl
If only Temporal Investigations would come back in time to erase Section 31 (the TV movie) from existence. But since they haven't, I suppose that means that Section 31 (the TV movie) is somehow essential to preserving history.

ChatGPT
Dulmur: “We tried. Every timeline without the film was worse.”

Lucsly: “In one, they made a trilogy.”

Dulmur: “You’re welcome.”

I have to admit--I laughed. 

Evolution's Path

 

How the Barf Thing Works...in a Parallel Universe

I asked ChatGPT this question: 

Explain how the Barf Thing works. It somehow manages to make an amazing barf noise when you press the button, and at the same time real puke drools from the speaker holes. It's been working since the early 90s with only a single battery change.
 
Of course, there's a lie embedded in the question. While it's true that I've replaced the Barf Thing's battery only once since the early 90s and it makes a great puke noise when you push the button, the device does not, in fact, ooze any puke--real or otherwise. But ChatGPT took me at my word (sort of) and guessed what words might answer the question. 

Easy Disc Access

Here I am in 1986 playing Ultima IV. But check out the wall to my left; I used adhesive to affix floppy disc sleeves to the wall next to our Atari 130 XE. Handy. 

Here's what was likely going through my head at the time. 

One More Book I'll Never Write

Besides, Manhattan Transfer has already been done. On the other hand, why shouldn't there be a Canadian version? We have bigger islands...