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Trump at the United Nations

I had 'Newsradio' on yesterday, the national broadcoaster's 24 hour news channel, which I often have on in the background while I am tidying up or doing chores.

There was a lot of coverage of Donald Trump's recent appearance at the U.N.; What did it mean? What was the future for this organisation? How was what he said received?

There are no easy answers to these questions, so I thought I would turn to A.I. to get its take. But the reporting I had listened to was very heavy, so I wanted some lighter, and satirical.

My prompt was:

Donald Trump recently addressed the United Nations: can you create a one panel, satirical political cartoon commenting on this, in the style of a cartoon for a daily newspaper.

A.I. is often touted as being ever more capable of taking over creative tasks, not just writing work emails, so I was curious to test this out.

ChatGPT

Cartoon of Donal Trump addressing the UN

Quite a busy effort from ChatGPT: the central gag is great, love Trump looking at himself in the mirror, but then there are three additonal jokes ranged around that.

This is something I think these tools don't understand (yet): less can be more. They are so eager to give you what you want, that they supply 15 results where one will suffice.

I guess you have the opportunity to provide this feedback and get draft 2.0.

Gemini

Cartoon of Donal Trump addressing the UN
This is also a bit overloaded, but I think Gemini has probably better achieved what I had in mind. Both cartoons show a funny take on Trump - he's yelling nonsense through a megaphone! - this result has, for me, a funnier backdrop.

Love the look on the face of the startled guy on the right, nicely contrasted with the stern, confused diplomat type with the question mark. In a move sure to alarm any real creatives that might see this, Gemini has even addded a fake signature, bottom right (should I set up another blog, 'Inkwell Draws', to showcase the output of this 'artist'?)

The caption though, once again indicates the difficulties these tools often have with English. Either that, or this is a super high level gag, understandable only to neural networks.

Grok

Cartoon of Donal Trump addressing the UN

Not for the first time, Grok did not seem to understand the asssignment. Perhaps this should be no surprise: Elon himself has no sense of humour.

As mentioned, this tool produces a wall of images, hundreds of results, apart from the example above these were just variations on Trump at a podium, with a UN symbol behind him. 

But.... having said above that less can be more, this one (the only Grok one where he was actually saying anything) does do that. Trump yelling 'Global Leadership! Global Leadership!' as he frequently does, while his actions then demonstrate the opposite, is the kind of subtler satire I was looking for.

It's in the subtext, and may not have been intentional, but we don't know that it wasn't intentional. Somewhere in an 'X' controlled data centre, in the badlands of New Mexico, artistic talent may be stirring.

Co-Pilot


Eagerly I anticipated Co-Pilot's nutty response (based on previous experiments), but for the first time I was to be disappointed. All I received was a warning, that my prompt violated the terms of use.

This was a surprise. The prompt I had written seemed pretty innocuous; I knew sexual material, anything explicit, anything violent or extreme would be blocked, but I wasn't asking for anything like that.

All I wanted was a political cartoon, with some mild satire. 

I asked COP to explain itself, it gave a very long description detailing all the things it wouldn't do. One of these dot points, near the end, said it would not visually depict anything 'political'.

I asked it to provide a written summary of Trump's remarks at the U.N. It instantly produced a detailed write up with some analysis, and quotes, about 500 words worth.

I asked it to turn this into a one panel cartoon.



Once again it refused.

I gave it one more try, asking this time for a cartoon and a direct quote, no satire or anything that might be deemed critical:


It said sure, and started working, then stopped itself.

I said, I didn't understand why it could write out a summary of what Trump said, including quotes, but that it would not create a visual representation of this, with one quote.

It replied that there is a difference between a written summary and an image, which could be used out of context.

The dread, 'out of context', one of Trump's favourite defences, when people quote horrific things back to him, that he knows he has said. It seems Microsoft are happy to pre-emptively assist. 

For the sake of fairness, I did also try this prompt:

Can you make a cartoon of Bernie Sanders giving a speech. Make it lightly satirical, in the style of a one panel comic for a daily newspaper.

The response:


Co-Pilot will be sitting out the culture wars.

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