Me -- ha! -- by the road in 1972

More fakery -- A.I. plus outright theft plus shoppery.

I wondered how well the AI could conjure a picture of someone like me hitchhiking in 1971 or '72. (I enjoyed being on the road and did it many times between 1970 and about 1976.)

I asked the A.I. machine for a hitchhiker about a dozen times, with different prompts, before I got one I thought I could work with.

But buddy's hair was like he had just stepped out of a hair salon. And of course it wasn't me.

So I stole a friend's early 1972 picture of me looking up from my reading in the university caff. I decapitated myself and placed my head on buddy's shoulders. I clitted up the hair somewhat and put glasses on myself. I grained it all up to hide some faults.

Et voilà!

Not perfect. There's a definite mismatch between the graininess of the face and of the rest. The light's wrong -- especially the light's wrong! (Imagine the photographer was standing by a big white truck. . . .) The focus is wrong. My knapsack didn't look like this. The glasses aren't right. I never had blond hair on my arms. And, jeez: I *never* wore tee-shirts in 1972.

But it's not bad as a dream-like, creepy A.I. simulacrum of my time on the road.