Operation: J-CAI (Joe and Cobra Artificial Intelligence)

May 3, 2023 GenFlagg

The term “Artificial Intelligence” either scares or excites people. While “AI” doesn’t just mean “robots”, that’s what we usually think of. Traditional sci-fi yarns often take a dark, pessimistic, stance. Think: 2001’s HAL or the Terminator’s SkyNet. “Egads! Robots and computers will take over and replace us”. Heck, Marvel’s Ultron has made a career out of this. Yet for every Ultron, there’s a Vision.

Optimistic sci-fi yarns have also given us happy AI stuff like WALL-E, R2-D2 or even the real-life Mars rovers. Perhaps the more realistic side of AI is that it currently allows less processing time and enables software developers and creative personnel to get sh*t done.

Enter Adobe’s new Firefly Artificial Intelligence image generator. Currently in its “beta” stage, I can see how it can be improved to enhance productivity and help out creative personnel. I’ve been employed as such, continually, since 1997, but I wouldn’t classify Firefly as something that can truly help me with “getting sh*t done”, just yet.

Maybe it’s the name “Firefly” (which makes me think of a certain Cobra Saboteur in a cool camouflage ninja costume) but it’s great fun and an awesome time waster. Whenever I’m waiting somewhere, nowadays, I skip my silly word games and mobile apps, and hit Firefly.Adobe.com on my phone.

I don’t wanna’ man-splain or Option-splain the nuts n’ bolts of AI images to you, but you basically enter a text phrase and Firefly will create a custom image for you. It can be “Art” or “Photo”. The more info you provide, the better result you’ll get. Yeah, that’s it. No sketching, rendering, or even mouse operations. Simply type some words and you get a picture. Being like any well-adjusted adult, I immediately entered descriptive terms of my favorite fictional comic/cartoon/toy/plastic characters from the G.I. Joe world.

I used some basic consistent, parameters as I was “creating” these. I entered a few unique words to describe each character. I found that some words were against Firefly’s terms-of-service, such as words like “gun”, “soldier” or anything that might sound lethal. That makes sense, and I get why they do it. Yet there are millions of alternative ways to describe our favorite G.I Joe and Cobra characters. Thus, behold…. Operation: J-CAI!