I use Image Playground and Pixel Studio to make the laziest holiday cards

This year I did not manage to organize a photo series with my family. In the beginning we all wore tracksuits and stuck in front of my car in honor of my Balkan ancestors water-cooled data centers do my holiday offer I’ll wish the people I care about a happy holiday by sending something created by artificial intelligence.

Google and Apple made a lot of noise about the inclusion of artificial intelligence on their flagships. Google was the first to praise its capabilities and spend most of the year convincing us that Gemini was the way of the future for Android. Pixel Studio: has started Pixel 9: smartphone. It’s good for making up images of things in different art styles and renders them as if they were pre-polished in Adobe Photoshop. It’s also pretty good at creating standard text, though it shows limitations if you try to deviate from the script :

iOS 18.2 is out iPhone 16:and: Image playground It’s part of the pack. It’s Apple’s take on all the other AI experiments. Like Google, the art created by Image Playground also shows off Apple’s art style, particularly the one the faces of people you’ve uploaded to Apple Photos. Image Playground will select the people it knows you’re most interested in, and then let you put in a photo for inspiration. From there, you can add background details, customize clothing options and adjust facial features to your liking.

I used Google’s Pixel Studio and Apple’s Image Playground to create my annual holiday newsletter artwork We’ve heard from Google and Apple about the innovation behind these imaging packages available in our pocket computers, so why not put them to the test in the rough?

Image Playground. Use it for faces

Ironically, Apple Intelligence, run later Much more human-like friendly than Google’s Pixel Studio (Google says on its support page that it’s “working on the ability to create human images, as well as the ability to edit existing images with humans”). ) Technically, Apple wins this challenge because I can create a picture of my family without physically positioning ourselves in front of the camera. The only downside is that it wouldn’t capture us all together in one photo. currently it can only process one face at a time.

I already previewed such as using the Image Playground until iOS 18.2 came out. That experience taught me that it’s better to start with a few variables and then slowly build on them. So I started with the person you want I submitted that Apple Intelligence had already identified my child. I then selected the pre-populated offer for “winter holidays” and let the AI ​​do its thing created her with brown eyes, so I asked her to switch to blue eyes to match her in real life, but that doesn’t mean the resemblance isn’t there. Then I asked her for a scarf to complete the winter scene.

I agree with my husband, her birth father, about the accuracy of the Image Playground photo. “That’s pretty cute. Looks like him.” Really though the mouth part is messed up in most of the photos. Just don’t zoom in. The way Apple Intelligence made his teeth look a bit creeped out in one picture , and I can see where the AI ​​has tried to fill in. In some cases, its eyes also struggle to materialize, and I’ve found this to be a common problem with all of Apple Intelligence’s generated images by

The good thing about Image Playground is that it keeps your image prompt phrases organized so you can add and subtract as needed. to initiate more Christmas cheer.

I was unhappy with the snowman sculptures in the background. Image Playground would do a great job of putting together a generic looking snowman, like the kind you can buy on bulk greeting cards. But the snowman couldn’t catch a break in some cases he had his eyes and mouth, but nothing else.

Image Playground is not great for creating text in an image. It just didn’t work when I asked Image Playground to write “Merry Christmas” instead. I tried to force it several times. for it to at least create something social media worthy, but most of what Image Playground came up with looked like the header image at the top of the article.

Pixel Studio. Use it for stickers

Google’s Pixel Studio is better if you’re trying to get away with art that’s a little less obvious, though still obviously artificial.For starters, it still can’t create an image that looks like other people, so you pretty much you’re limited to what you suggest the app to start with. Some helpful prompts currently offered include “cats,” “dogs,” and “christmas tree inspiration.”

Pixel Studio’s suggestion to create a cat or dog can be effective if you have a pet at home that can be the focus of your artificially generated joy in intelligence (and inside the box above the mantelpiece) I asked Pixel Studio to make a “sleepy, tuxedo cat with green eyes and a pink nose with a Santa Claus hat behind them There is a text below that says “Catmas.” I’m honestly shocked at how well it’s rendered.

I tried the same prompt in Apple Intelligence. I first found out that the entire phrase I entered in Pixel Studio didn’t fit in the image description prompt. It included everything up to “There’s a Christmas scene behind them “. I added another line asking to include text below that said “Catmas”, Image Playground immediately replied that it was an unsupported ability. It created a black and white tuxedo cat with a hood, although the cat also wears one actually tuxedo Pixel Studio kept the feline likeness and managed to write “Catmas.” The lesson is that you shouldn’t be shy about focusing your annual holiday letter on your pets, even if it’s generated by AI.

I was hoping to be able to avoid asking Pixel Studio for help in creating stickers in other languages. name. But no matter how many times I asked the AI ​​to parse something in Romanian, Pixel Studio would spit out something unreadable. I could see it was a struggle also to clarify the traditional Romanian aesthetics. In some cases it made the text similar to the Cyrillic script used in Russian and Greek languages ​​with Slavic accents.

Apple Intelligence worked best for the manufactured holiday experience, as it evoked the likeness of my family without overdoing the creep factor.While there are enough AI artifacts left, the image is passable as it looks like an artist’s attempt at caricature. Like I said, don’t zoom in. Pixel Studio is better if you’re looking for something more specific to include people in. It’s not perfect at creating text, but if is a phrase that Google Gemini has seen many times, such as “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas,” then it seems appropriate.

In the end, both Image Playground and Pixel Studio’s Christmas renditions left something to be desired because of this uncanny valley effect. I’m interested in sending this out to friends and family to see what they think of our AI-generated likeness as a way for an annual Christmas photoshoot.I’ll let you know when I hear back.