Ye Olde Sloppe Sign recreated from a personal image titled Ye Olde Stoppe Sign. Credits to Google Gemini for helping to generate this recreation, and Marchela Mozhyna for providing decorative vector elements via Vecteezy.

I guess I could have recreated this without AI, especially as it appears only one letter was changed from STOPPE to SLOPPE. In the first STOPPE version, I had also overlaid a rust texture for adding some realism to what was otherwise a plain vector sign. Mission accomplished I thought to myself back in the day, but flash forward a few years, and I couldn't resist the temptation to recycle this as AI SLOPPE 🤭

Nothing too special to look at, it's a red stop-style sign isolated on a plain black background. Mind you I thought the single letter substitution was pretty clever, and I appreciate how much more realistic the texture appears on this AI-generated SLOPPE version. The subtle rust texture in the other version was ok, but here you can see meticulous details like wear & tear around the sign edges. There's just no comparing the level of realism between both images. Gemini did a much better job than me of selling the illusion of a realistic looking sign.

I feel some caution should be exercised though whenever trying to present the illusion of something real with AI. All too aware of the deep fakes out there being used for malicious purposes, but I would call this image more like some harmless fun.

If I'm deepfaking anything, it's my own quirky STOPPE sign to begin with, and of course I give myself permission to deepfake my own work. It sounds silly saying, but I think it's important for responsible AI use. Nothing wrong in my opinion with trying to present a convincing illusion of reality as long as it's done honestly, and in good faith. Like a TV show or magic performance where you know ahead of time it's not real, but still expect to be tricked into thinking it's real.

That's not so different than my objective here. Never trying to convince anyone this sign actually exists, in fact I explicitly mention it was recreated with the help of AI. But I still wanted something that looked better than my original STOPPE sign. That's where Gemini came in handy to deliver a level of a realism I honestly never would have had the patience to achieve by myself.