Jason Kottke writes:
In June 2021 (pre The Bear), New Yorker cartoonist Zoe Si coached Ayo Edebiri through the process of drawing a New Yorker cartoon. The catch: neither of them could see the other’s work in progress. Super entertaining.
Jason continues:
I don’t know about you, but Si’s initial description of the cartoon reminded me of an LLM prompt:
So the cartoon is two people in their apartment. One person has dug a hole in the floor, and he is standing in the hole and his head’s poking out. And the other person is kneeling on the floor beside the hole, kind of like looking at him in a concerned manner. There’ll be like a couch in the background just to signify that they’re in a house.
Jason Kottke uses that prompt to get ChatGBT to draw a New Yorker-style cartoon.
Jason then asked the artificial intelligence to create a gag caption for its cartoon.
Is that AI drawing a recognizable art style for a particular New Yorker cartoonist?
Like we say in IT: Garbage in, garbage out.
I don’t remember the quote about the talking dog exactly, but something like it seems appropriate here: it isn’t whether he does it well or poorly, but that he does it at all!
A little misogynism from Samuel Johnson: ‘Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’