Scrambled plastic eggs: Using Dall-E for the first time.

Scrambled plastic eggs: Using Dall-E for the first time.

Spark represents a patented, eggshell-derived bio-calcium (GEX) that can be used to reduce plastic content in all sorts of products by up to 50%. You can read more about the wonders of GEX here and here. When we sat down to develop a strategy to promote GEX, we decided that we needed to include some snazzy social media images in addition to the forthcoming press releases, LinkedIn articles, and technical and scientific-leaning posts. We wanted to create posts that would catch the eye of a brand head or non-engineer type to help familiarize them with the idea of eggshells being used to reduce plastic and achieve their sustainability goals or meet reduction mandates. We had a couple weird things to connect, really — eggshells and plastic products (jars, bottles, toys, packaging… anything plastic). We also wanted to include the idea of sustainability, reducing plastic, keeping plastic out of the ocean, and so on. That is what lead us to play around with AI, which we heard could create images based on specific prompts. We looked at a few, but settled on DALL-E to create some striking social media images.  

If you are not familiar with what it is, we will let Chat GPT introduce its AI cousin DALL-E (prompt = very briefly introduce DALL-E):

DALL-E is an AI model created by OpenAI that generates unique and creative images based on textual prompts. It uses deep learning techniques to translate descriptive text into visual representations, enabling the generation of a wide range of images across various categories.

Learning Curve

When using DALL-E to create social media images, we found that it was best to be as descriptive as possible. This was after some successes, as well as some dramatic (and disturbing) image failures. These will be highlighted below. We also LOVED playing around with different image styles you can use in your prompt, like retro, pop art, modern comic, etc. You can even prompt with an artist’s style (“Matisse-style painting”) or a general technique or style (oil painting, pencil sketch, impressionist, abstract, etc). Here is the general process of using DALL-E to create an image and some editing tools you can use to make it better.

1. Create the first image. One image we wanted to create was a plastic bottle breaking or exploding out of an eggshell, trying connect the origin of the bottle to the egg. After you enter a prompt, the system will give you four results, and you can choose the one you like to either edit or see similar variations. This was the best result from the prompt we used, which you can see in the caption:

2. Edit the results. The result was OK, but we didn’t like the mess or “guts” imagery of the splattering egg yolk. So, we used the erase feature to take out the yolk:

At first, we kept the same prompt as it was to see how it would be replaced, and we got even more explosions and some fun comic book BLAM type words. We wanted to simplify it, though, so we pared down the prompt to just “fill with the blue color in the background,” and we got this:

We had another idea to create some fun posts of philosophers contemplating an egg (examples below), with one result being:

We didn’t really get the plastic jar like we wanted, so we erased the urn (?) and then used just the prompt: Holding a plastic bottle in his left hand. Then we used Canva to add some text, the speech bubble, and our logo:

Here is the group of philosopher posts we made, using similar prompts:

 

FAIL!

Using DALL-E to create social media images can create some hilarious results. As promised, here are some fails, with prompts in the captions:

What the cluck?

With these, the idea was to connect the plastic bottle to the source of the egg. The last image below is truly disturbing.

At ease, soldier.

With these, we wanted to create an image to go with the message: “A new way to fight plastic pollution is emerging!” It never got the army man quite right, even when we uploaded an image for it to use.

Success!

Here are some that we liked, whether or not we could use it to make a social media post.

And here are some social media posts we can use with them:

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The DALL-E platform really is spectacular. The above was all accomplished in the first hour or so of playing around with it. It is sure to have improvements in coming versions, and there are probably also many functions we haven’t yet mastered. Regardless, any program that can create the image below is OK with us: