I showed the photos to a family member. She didn't like it. She said she didn't like it, because it didn't make me look as old as I was. Thanks for that, I guess. I showed it to my dad later on in consternation over her comment and he told me he didn't think it looked like me at all. Well, gee. I guess my inner ego needed some humbling! It was already late at night, and I was having a hard time going to sleep, because I was so upset over their comments of what I thought was a really good portrayal. Also, consider the fact that this person is older and not sold on AI yet. She's very traditional and struggles with change. It's the same with Dad. I'm not sure he even understands what AI is.
As I lay there crying over the rejection, it dawned on me something that I should have realized years ago. Both of those family members, and likely a few others who weren't present, looked at the world in a much different perspective than I did, and it began to make sense to me why things they occasionally say makes me feel misunderstood. I began to realize that they were concrete thinkers. They rely on physical the physical and tangible in the present time and direct experience to see the world around them. I, on the other hand, do not look at the world this way. I look at the world abstractly. I see life in metaphors, symbols, emotional interpretations, and representations. As a result of this difference, sometimes our perspectives clash. In this case, they wanted the real me physical. In my case, I saw it as the real me, but in more symbolic terms. To me, it expresses my artistic tastes. In my mind, that is as much a part of me as the physical attributes, and sometimes I feel like that side is more of who I am than the physical aspect.
I'm not blind of what AI does to photos, so I have some understanding what they are saying. I was playing around with it the other day on a photo of me. Sitting back and looking at the generated result, I knew something was off about the picture. I did a mirror flip, because it was a mirror reflection, but that's the most drastic request that I made. It looked really off. I stewed over it for several minutes until I noticed a detail I hadn't notices at first. AI had made corrections to my skin by taking out imperfections. As good as I looked in that picture, it felt fake. I will have to instruct AI in the future not to mess with those things.
AI has been useful in other ways, though. I have old photos that are poor quality, and I know photo editing terminology well enough to instruct AI exactly how to correct the photos. I tried it on a photo I've been fighting for a while now. Its quality is poor, but it was a picture of me as a child and I wanted it fixed. AI fixed it up nicely, and I was so pleased that I was able to finally see my little face clearly! AI isn't my primary go-to, but it's been a good help for things like this when everything I've tried hasn't worked. Perhaps AI will be the thing in the future, but for now, I'm preferring to try things myself first and using AI as backup.
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