Beware of Hackers

My older daughter head her Facebook account hacked. We don’t know how they managed to do that because she had two-factor verification turned on in the form of facial recognition. But they locked her out of her own account by changing her password and it is taking a couple of days to get it straightened out. She did manage to get the hacker locked out of it also, so now her account is in limbo.

They posted ads for Taylor Swift tickets, which were undoubtedly fake, so they were counting on her friends to trust her and buy the tickets. I don’t think anyone was fooled, because she acted swiftly to lock it down. That isn’t easy to do. If it happens to you, search the web for solutions because the Facebook Help advice is not very effective. It is probably useful if your friends report your account as hacked, though.

I told her that her friends might have been fooled if the tickets had been for Taylor singing with a Grateful Dead band.

Do turn on extra security for any important accounts. I have the kind in which a website texts me a code to enter. It’s a nuisance and I hate it, but I would hate it more if someone hacked into my accounts. I have had my data stolen a number of times when entire databases got stolen, or perhaps sold illegally. There isn’t much I can do to protect myself against that happening, but I do keep an eye on my bank balance and credit report. 

Stylin’

Image generators let you choose the style, and most of them let you create a style. In StarryAI, you can create a style by uploading some pictures that have features that you like, such as colors, subject, details, or brushstrokes.

As an experiment (and everything in AI is an experiment), I uploaded pictures of artwork that’s on my wall. These results picked up on the color scheme of a painting that I purchased from an artist in Loudoun County. The results are probably brighter than anything she painted, but but I really like the second one.

I’ve noticed that I am drawn to paintings with orange in them. The purple was a surprise, though.

How I feel when I Read the News

 

AI imagines George Washington

As a Surveyor (which he was when young)

And ignoring my prompt to show him as a young surveyor.

 

Never gonna give you up

[Rickroll is an Internet meme involving the unexpected appearance of the music video to the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by English singer Rick Astley. — Wikipedia]

My daughter has tricked me with this meme a couple of times, so I made some pictures to text her now and then. (We may be silly.)

A Girl in Green

Peaceful Creations

Every morning I read an inspirational page from the Daily Word at breakfast. Often I paraphrase a sentence or two and see how the computer interprets it visually. StarryAI produces four images for each prompt, and usually there is at least one that I like. The results depend on which style I try. I enjoy experimenting with styles.

 

It’s Lincoln’s Birthday

Created in StarryAI. Some of these were edited or cropped in other apps.

It’s the Year of the Dragon

The Gorgeous Grackle

App: #StarryAI

Style: RealVisXL

Imitating American Masters, Sort of.

Sometimes I use AI as a learning tool. Here I was trying to become more familiar with the artist John Singleton Copley, so I included his name in the prompt. StarryAI lets me do this when I use their Argo style.

Oops! It shows some of the major shortcomings of imaging apps. One is the frequent problem with drawing limbs, and another is confusion when drawing more than one character. 

I also tried emulating a couple of American landscape painters such as Church and Bierstadt. This software imitates old masterpieces in their faded state, not understanding that they did not look that way when new.

Let’s see what happens if I bump up the exposure in my Photos app. 

 

I think they look better this way. Do you?

New Blog Introduction

Nothing is real. Enjoy what you see.