Fun with Google Gemini
In our last issue of The Quill, student editors Sylvie Cavros, Alex Lopez, and Julia Hahn got creative with their “fantasy fight club” pieces; Sylvie pit the Road Runner against The Flash, Julia had Captain Boomerang battle it out with Wile E. Coyote, and Alex reimagined the Flash-Road Runner match-up as a D&D battle. Since time was of the essence, I decided to turn to Google’s Gemini AI tool to generate images for their pieces.
Gemini did pretty well with all of them. Until, that is, I turned to Julia’s Captain Boomerang vs. Wile E. Coyote battle. Up to that point, Gemini and I had been having a grand old time, but like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, my overconfidence would prove to be my undoing.
My initial prompts generated a few riffs on this concept:
The outfit wasn’t even close to what Captain Boomerang wears, with its adult diaper, waist bandolier, and Army-green tricorn hat. Also, this supervillain was apparently an idiot who mistook random pieces of metal for boomerangs. Judging from the words at the top of this image, Gemini garbled my prompt and generated Captain BOM-BARTHAANG instead of Captain Boomerang. An easy mistake. I tried again.
(I also wasn’t sure what that random guy was doing in the back, but pieces of his face appeared to be flying off. Perhaps making bits of one’s face spontaneously separate from one’s head is Captain BOM-BARTHAANG’s superpower.)
PROMPT: Take out the words and the guy in the back.
Gemini stubbornly refused to remove the words, and none of its subsequent attempts looked any more like the actual Captain Boomerang and less like Captain BOM-BARTHAANG. This despite the fact that Gemini is powered by arguably the smartest search engine in the world.
Respecting Gemini’s right to nurse an unhealthy obsession, I decided to take my prompts back to basics.
“DC supervillain, Australian, throws boomerangs for fun and profit,” I muttered.
PROMPT: Hugh Jackman in a navy blue supervillain outfit with a dark gray trench coat fighting Wile E. Coyote in a DC Comics illustration.
This looked promising! Face, hair, and outfit were close, but a slight tweak was needed.
PROMPT: Remove Hugh Jackman’s third arm and give him a boomerang.
Who needs a boomerang when you can have a boomerang-shaped Wile E. Coyote holding a pair of handlebars with legs? As one does.
PROMPT: Hugh Jackman should hold a boomerang.
As you can see, this attempt had him holding a giant hypodermic needle with a weird growth on the top. Captain Giant Hypodermic Needle is not a catchy supervillain name. But on the upside, everyone had two arms and two legs! I took a deep breath and went in for another attempt.
PROMPT: Take whatever Hugh Jackman is holding out of his hand. Hugh Jackman should be holding a boomerang.
I could show you what Hugh Jackman ended up actually holding, but I would probably lose my job. Needless to say, it was not a boomerang.
PROMPT: Make the boomerang curvier. It needs to look like a boomerang, not a [REDACTED].
Still not a boomerang, but at least this metal jump rope won’t get me sent to HR. Something seemed off with Wile E.’s hands and feet, though.
PROMPT: Make the boomerang look more like a boomerang. Wile E. Coyote should have only two arms and two legs.
Like Gemini with Captain BOM-BARTHAANG, I can’t let this go. I will have a boomerang. I will not shame Australia’s signature pastime after submitting one of the country’s best-known stars to numerous indignities.
I … kinda liked this one. Except this Captain Boomerang was so dimwitted, he replaced his boomerang with a deeply unsafe sword with no handle. Oh, and he had three feet, but maybe The Quill readers would be too distracted by his excellent supervillain suit-and-trench combo to notice. I unceremoniously gave up on the boomerang.
PROMPT: Use this same illustration. Take out Hugh Jackman’s middle foot so he only has two.
Spoiler: Gemini did not use this same illustration.
I was oddly distracted by the fact that Captain Boomerang/Hugh Jackman’s costume was Blue Beetle blue, not Captain Boomerang blue. But … was that …? Could it be…?
In my excitement over the actual, honest-to-goodness boomerang-shaped boomerang in this image, I almost missed the fact that Wile E. Coyote had a third foot growing out of his right toes, as well as a second tail inexplicably sprouting from his opponent’s left thigh. What in the name of Elisasue from The Substance have you wrought, Gemini?
I decided to distract Gemini by craftily veering in an unexpected direction.
PROMPT: Give Hugh Jackman a navy blue beanie hat with a white V on it.
Captain Boomerang does not have prosthetic chicken legs with clown shoes. Nor does Wile E. Coyote have a third floating arm or a reason to throw a boomerang, as his name clearly does not include the word “boomerang.” Spot-on with the beanie, though.
PROMPT: Hugh Jackman should not have prosthetic legs. Take away Wile E. Coyote’s middle arm.
PROMPT: This is a mess, Gemini. You should be ashamed of yourself.
PROMPT: I miss Captain BOM-BARTHAANG.
I logged off before Gemini could respond. I apologize to all of Australia for having to deal with this on top of the existence of Sydney funnelweb spiders.
The moral of this story? Take care when using AI for assignments, friends. Unless you want it to BOM-BARTHAANG up your class papers, in which case, vaya con Dios.
—Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, Faculty Advisor
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