I completely accept AI will rule the world and I use it tepidly. Mostly because I don’t know how to access it. I am on Flickr and Facebook and anything AI there I completely ignore. Some of it is frankly creepy. It’s not real, but hey, whatever makes you happy…
I am on various acting/model related platforms and recently got an email about a headshot sale. $25. I figured, what the heck, I’m interested. A photoshoot opportunity for such a great price, why not? Well, it ended up being a local theater community that would take a bunch of photos you provide and create various headshots using AI. Skeptical, I dipped my toe in the water. These are the photos I submitted:
A wide variety of pictures. All very recent. This is the example I got back:
That really kinda looks like me, with the exception of the perfect chin. The hair is mine, the necklace is mine, the single dimple is me and that smile is certainly me. The lips are me, the bags under the eyes, how the makeup is done, all me. It is the essence of me.
So, I tell them, show me what you can do. They then sent me quite a few more, with watermarks. If I wanted the finished product, I would have to pay. I ask, are they $25 per photo? No, it’s $25 for all of them. I then figured WTF, let’s do it.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I bought.
Money well spent! Yes, a few of them look (I am creating a new word here) very AI-y, but a few are actually very representative. The dour picture is definitely not me. Sure, they are perfect, but I have had professional makeovers where I did look perfect, given the tools I have been given to work with (big honker, shaving-ravaged chin, well-earned eye bags). I know my assets and yes, that smile, rarely seen in any photo pre-2014, is my calling card. It is how I get away with everything I get away with.
I am torn about using these for professional purposes. I don’t want to be tagged as an AI creation and therefore excluded from casting. I have been extremely fortunate with the most recent two casting calls, with submissions from my selfie-taken catalog. I have been selected by two different productions to be a paid BG (background). I will admit, these do look like me, not an animated version of sort-of-me. Some of them show the flaws I have, the reality of being a human being.
Anyone interested in who did this for me can reach me through the Contact page here and I will provide the information. I cannot recommend them enough. Nice work!
Recently I was bouncing around on the TV (Roku) and saw the YouTube app. I am not a big YouTuber, but I went on and pulled up my YouTube channel. I have done nothing with it in about 3 years. I watched video after video of myself on the TV as I only saw them before on my PC (yeah, we all have egos) and was in tears looking at some of the things I posted. Check them out here! I have to do more of this, but for the life of me, I have no idea how I edited everything together (as amateurish as it was). The video of my adventure to walk New York Fashion Week was such a trip down loss-of-memory lane! It was an out-of-body experience, not believing I had actually pulled that off and that it was as amazing as it really was.
