Using AI: Helping My Kid Make a Birthday Card

My daughter was invited to a birthday party. Instead of buying a card to attach to the gift, we decided make one.

I drew her friend’s name, cut it out, and glued it to the front of the card. I was about to draw a picture of a cake and a unicorn (per my daughter’s art direction) when I had a thought - let’s use Dall-E in ChatGPT to do the art, and then glue that to the front of the card.

Here was our first prompt, and the results:

“Please create a coloring book page style image for me. Bold black line art on white background. I need to see a fancy birthday cake with a unicorn poking its head up behind the cake.”

“That was great! But it went off the page. I need the entire image to fit inside the bounds of the graphic so that I can cut it out and glue it to a birthday card. Make the cake shorter, maybe a single layer, so that the unicorn can pop up from behind it instead of beside it.”

“That was good but it was as if you took a photo of a coloring book page. I just need the line art graphic. And make it more basic, less detail please.”

“That was great! but now it’s too simple. A little more detail please.”

And this was our final design that Isabel coloured using crayons and glued to the front of the card.

I really enjoy teaching my daughter how to use AI. Here’s looking forward to 20 years from now when we try to talk about a time when we couldn’t just speak and have everything we want just appear out of nowhere in front of us.