Working With AI is a Struggle

So, I'm brainstorming for my next novel, which is coming together better than I imagined, considering I only started coming up with a basic idea less than a week ago. I'm going to start in earnest, next week, when my job of nearly 19 years wraps up.

In case you missed my earlier post, I was laid off, along with my entire documentation team, on Monday.

But I digress. This post is about my newest writing project, a crime novel, set in Ottawa.

I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that the story starts with the discovery of a body that is floating in the Rideau River, just downstream from the Vimy Memorial Bridge. The dead body is that of a woman, whose identity is introduced shortly after she is recovered from the cool water.

Even before I've actually written a full paragraph, I have an idea for the book's cover. Not being artistically inclined in any way, I decided to see if I could use AI to come up with the cover. To that end, I entered the following into ChatGPT:

Create a book cover for a murder mystery. A woman is floating, face down, in the Rideau River, Ottawa, below the Vimy Memorial Bridge. Overhead, a full moon lights the night sky.

This is what the AI engine gave me.

First of all, this would be the Ottawa River, not the Rideau River. There is no bridge that spans the Ottawa River and looks like that, and the Vimy Memorial Bridge is also nothing like that bridge.

Contrary to instructions, the woman is not face-down in the water. And while it's clear that this is a night image, there's no moon.

I typed in more suggestions:

Remove the Parliament buildings. Turn the woman so that she is face down.

Again, the tool produced an image.

Frustrated, I wrote, Remove all buildings.

Nope.

Include only a river, the woman, and the moon.

This time, ChatGPT became confused. It replied, I wasn't able to generate the updated image due to issues with the request. If you'd like, we can tweak the description or adjust the approach. Let me know how you'd like to proceed!

So, I suppose, it was my fault.

I tried a new approach, keeping it simple:

Create an image of a dead woman in a river with the moon overhead.

I have to admit, I felt quite uncomfortable trying to ask a program to create several images of dead women. It's unnerving, which I guess is how I'm supposed to feel, so at least I know there's nothing wrong with my moral compass. I'm supposed to be disturbed about mentioning a dead woman and describing the condition she's in.

Here's the image that was finally created.

It's still not what I want, so if and when this story is completed, and should it make it to a publisher, I'm hoping I can describe the cover that I want to a human being.

Preferably, someone who knows what face-down means and what the Vimy Bridge looks like.