Middle finger problem, about the value of human colleagues in a world with AI

"Watch out for the dead cat." I learnt that 15 years ago. We made a booklet with a cat on the cover, sleeping by the water. Wonderful we thought, the ultimate relaxation!

For the layout, we sent the booklet to a communications agency. But the editors changed our special cover photo with another one. They also ignored our repeated requests to use this particular image. Only on the phone they finally told us about their problem with our gorgeous photo: "Why do you want a dead cat on the cover?".

Lesson learned: from now on, I always let at least one other person check my pictures before use. Along comes DALL-e and a hefty dose of personal technological enthusiasm. DALL-e is an AI-driven system that has skimmed the entire internet to learn how to draw. It creates drawings or photos based on images that already exist on the internet, without literally copying them.

This technology might be a death sentence for stock photography. Because instead of searching madly for prints that more or less fit the subject you are writing about, DALL-e creates what you ask for: a man taking a class in his garden about Python, tadaa... or a woman who looks like Shrek enthusiastically giving a webinar? Et voilà, you can even choose from all sorts of styles and angles. It seems to be that simple.

So, when colleague Jeroen said he was looking for tutors, I went to DALL-e for the first time and made an attempt to recreate Uncle Sam's famous ' We need you' poster, using a robot.

After several failed attempts, I got this:

The result still needed some fine-tuning.

• A friendly robot please:

• • More color and less know-it-all:

Oh dear, now I had to track back to each location where I had used this robot. It proved impossible to revert everything immediately: once set "for Facebook" and "for Twitter", it takes hours for the old illustration to be replaced by a new one.

Meanwhile, I was trying to create a new image and came across the very real AI phenomenon of "garbage in = garbage out". DALL-e has learned its skills from the internet and produces more of the same. After this exercise, I strongly suspect that the internet contains more images of middle fingers than index fingers because in many shots the "index" finger bore a strong resemblance to a middle finger.

Wonderful though, what DALL-e is capable of, and no doubt I need some practice on the right "prompts". But I have also learned to have my "creations" checked by a human, just a matter of not spreading dead cats or middle fingers around. Clearly, AI will not replace humans right away: a colleague with sharp eyes remains necessary!