AI in 2025 - What it is actually (somewhat) Good At.

At my advanced age I am allowed some element of curmudgeonism with regard to modern technology.  I've seen a lot of it come and go in nearly 70 years.  Much of it is simply reinventing the wheel.  And the real breakthroughs are often pulled into the For Profit realm rather quickly.  But hey, I'm not such a tortoise that I am still using a rotary dial phone and a slide rule.

So, what is the much vaunted AI "good" at in 2025.

My initial answer is: Images.  Lacking any artistic talent to speak of I am able to come up with ideas for amusing pictures but I can't create them.   Here's an example.  I prompted Gemini - this is the maligned but free Google product - to create an image of a deer sitting at a computer studying trail cam images of hunters.  This is a remote possibility for my slow hunting season (up to gun opener), but you never know.  Here's the first draft:

Now that's not too bad.  But a closer inspection shows a problem.  The hunters are all wearing camo.  And they are all holding fire arms.

Some of the weapons they are hefting look like big sticks, others like generic sub machine guns.  One guy - and admittedly these are blurry images - appears to be holding a stuffed animal!

But for gun hunting season they should be wearing blaze orange.  When I pointed this out and asked AI for an update it said: 

Okay, let's get those hunters in proper safety orange! Here's the updated image:

And here's what it came up with:

Better.  It just changed the one detail and did so competently.  It's a fun image....if you don't look too closely at it.  Behold:

Our friend Mr. Buck has two full cups of coffee.  He's never going to manage the one on the right, not with that clumsy hoof.  But the other side.......  Yikes!  A hideous freak of nature "hand" with a thumb and dark, Goth fingernails.   

This sort of thing has been a problem for AI generation since the get go.  It does some body parts very well indeed.  Others....frightening mutations.  Here's another example.  The basic prompt was to show me a waitress at a German Beer Garden bringing me a stein of beer.

At first glance all is well.  AI does faces nicely.  The back drop is passable.  And, well, as this is a serious study of the matter, AI does breasts with great accuracy.  One minor quibble, that stein looks a bit outsized, unless the waitress is elfin, and it would never do to bring a customer something that is 35% foam!  But do we still have mutant fingers???

Subtle, but yes.  Count the fingertips.  Slightly crooked thumb, 1,2,3....

There seems to be a little parasitic finger grafted onto the back of the ring finger.  

This is a common feature of AI images.  Indeed, weird extremities - hands in particular - are one way photo sleuths debunk controversial AI "fakes".  So how and why is this so?

Here's my theory.

Picture a conference room.  Full of computer nerds.  It's an AI startup and the manager has this to say:

"OK, its crunch time.  Eric, Cheng, Bill, Rashid, Cooper,  get your entire departments working on Boobs.  Divide yourselves up into Left and Right working groups.  Feel free to hire up to 500 freelancers.  Try not to spend more than your usual amount of company time looking at naughty stuff on the internet."

"Oh...I suppose we need to do hands as well.  Where's the new intern?  Melvin?"

"Um, right here.  And its Milton, sir."

"Melvin, our AI informs me that (reads from his phone) the human hand is incredibly complex, and is a main reason why we invented tools and as a species took over the world.  See if you can knock something together this afternoon.  But you still have to sweep up, and don't forget the usual donut runs!"

"Yes sir, I'll do my best."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So how would AI depict that scene?

About as expected.  I'll make this a big as possible so you can see the Horrible Hands on several figures including Milton!  Maybe he trained the AI to model reality on himself!