I'm not a fan of Halloween, but I let AI pick out some halloween costumes for me
When the choices were random, they were cool. When it was something I specifically wanted, it didn't work so well.
I don’t like Halloween, sorry. I don’t hate it - I know it’s a fun escape for many and cherish how magical it is for children and won’t ever tire of David S. Pumpkins, but - it’s just not my thing. In fact, I truly had to think back to the last time I dressed up for Halloween and scan through old photos and it very well may have been…2008?
Anyway, costumes are expensive and I didn’t want to go buying any specifically for this year, so thought I’d let AI do the work for me - noting some of these were generated earlier in the year when trying out different tools.
In summary, when I had a specific idea of what I wanted to see, the generators weren’t as helpful. When the options were more generic and common, I got some spooky results.
Bing / DALL-E 3
Bing’s AI chat offers a free version of DALL-E 3 which is now a paid item inside ChatGPT. I gave it several prompts, uploading a picture of myself or what I wanted to be, in the hopes it would generate what I wanted.
I asked it to take a generic selfie of me and make me look like a ‘werewolf with lots of chest hair.’ First, I noticed a message stating the tool blurs faces, so the image would not be of me - and second, it wouldn’t alter my appearance at all.
I then tried again being a bit more generic with just asking it to generate any Halloween costume and it too said no and gave me some generic halloween costume ideas. Finally, I asked it to do a celebrity swap - having just seen Savannah Guthrie dress as Taylor Swift during the Today show’s annual Halloween special (to compare and contrast!) and while it also wouldn’t play along (perhaps because I misspelled her name?), it immediately referenced what just happened on TV a mere 2 hours ago and offered links.
Artguru & DreamStudio
The only costume idea I had in mind, if I *were* to go out is a very niche one - Martha from those relentless Medicare Advantage Advisors commercials.
To some degree, she is my spirit animal. A customer service scenario asking me to call vs. chat or engage online? “I AM NOT CALLING!” So I wanted to see if any of the AI generators let me say “take this picture of me and make me look like her.”
Artguru is a more simplified AI generator which offers a face swap option. I put in a picture of Martha and myself, and while the face swap is quite good, I had hoped to see a whole photo of me dressed as Martha, moo-moo and all.
Well, that’s what I got. For just the face swap aspect alone, it’s quite good. I do look like a version of Martha, grumpily asked to call a hotline.
I then tried another one - DreamStudio, which was a little disappointing in that it didn’t understand the request for Martha but, did generate some very interesting photos of me as a senior citizen.
LightX
When I started to think less of what I specifically wanted to see, the results became a bit more fun. LightX is a paid tool but offers free credits to generate halloween costume images and I was pretty impressed with the results.
Epik
In early October, Epik’s Yearbook photo generator was all the rage and at the time I posted a few of those pictures on Instagram but a few more of them had a costume element since, I certainly didn’t look like this in high school.
Lensa
This is going back a bit to late 2022 when Lensa AI generated some innovative profile pictures and that too had a costume element, with some space, mod/boho type pictures.
I should note in all of this, I’m using tools that are free (except the few bucks I paid previously for Epik and Lensa). If I paid for more advanced AI tools, I’m sure I could get more of what I wanted.
