Imogen’s phone pinged as soon as she had closed the front door. Her thirty minutes of peace ending as abruptly as it had began. She set her coffee cup, the one with the cute cats, on her desk and flung her scarf over the arm of the sofa. Spring had come but winter’s icy fingers refused to let go. Imogen hung her coat on the back of her apartment door and wheeled out her work chair. It clattered along the hardwood floors, a must-have she was assured, and dropped into it. Her phone pinged a second time. She groaned and blew the steam from her coffee as she opened her work emails. Of course it was her “manager”, Laura, with another job. No sooner had she finished the last one and had a little breathing room in her schedule than something came to fill her time again. Shouldn’t complain, she thought, a drought could easily follow a flood when working freelance. Imogen sipped steaming coffee while scanning Laura’s email.
‘Huh,’ she said to herself. Not even a cat would be able to share her one bed apartment. She read the email again to make sure no details where missed. That’s my name, she thought, and that’s a magazine cover job, a big deal. She’d be competing with others but pay was guaranteed, odd, she thought. Only one clause was attached with the brief, “you need to use AI first.” Imogen sipped another mouthful of sweet coffee.
Laura had linked to a couple of the top AI image generators and the magazine, Trend, had accounts with them all. The art engines had become overnight sensations and the internet was ablaze with excitement, anger, and argument over this hot new tech. Imogen didn’t care whether it was art or not only that the images it spat out made her feel uncomfortable nine times out ten. Something about them was just… off. But here was a job that would put her name on a magazine cover and pay the month’s rent. She set her coffee down, penned a quick reply to Laura, and opened the first link on her computer. She silenced her phone, set the brief to one side of the screen, the AI on the other and set to work plugging in prompts and sorting through the creations.
A lazy orange sky with red and purple hues glistened outside. Cold coffee stewed in her cat cup. Imogen sat bleached by her 5K screen agonising over a handful of AI generated people at house parties, on the beach, in the city, all wearing next seasons fashion. Or at least the AI’s approximation of it. She zoomed in on one of the house party “photos” wondering if the merging hands of a few drinkers mattered. I could edit it, but was part of the charm the weirdness? Trend hadn’t dictated how much, or little, editing they wanted. Maybe none, she grimaced as cold coffee slid down her throat. The couple on the beach looked more like a holiday ad than a fashion magazine cover. Sea and sand dominated the frame and the sunbathers on the left were merged into the sand. Delete. The city image lacked excitement, movement, as had all the urban scenes. Women sat at aluminium tables staring at their phones while their legs blended with the table’s. Indistinct cars drove by and a man, sort of lumberjack-ish, walked by with his dog. At least Imogen thought it was meant to be a dog. The AI had made a tiny cloud with legs and a snout. Maybe if I alter the prompt, she thought. The house party caught her eye. A woman smiled in the background. Teeth white and perfect. Pretty but not supermodel pretty and wearing a loose fitting sheer shirt with a gold bra underneath coupled with a short leather skirt. Very this summer, Imogen thought. Her eyes were almost cat-like and seemed to stare right through her. Imogen shivered, her, she snorted, that girl doesn’t exist. But that was her cover, she knew it. She deleted the beach image and began cleaning up the hands of the men in the foreground clinking beer cans. The other house party images would wait and more than likely she’d merge a couple together or create a collage of them all for the final piece. First they needed cleaning up.
It was well gone midnight before Imogen fell onto her bed. Soon enough she was asleep dreaming of AI generated people at an AI generated party.
Imogen awoke to her phone squealing its high pitched alarm. Her mouth tasted of sour coffee and her hair was nest atop her head. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned wishing someone would serve her breakfast and tea. As always, it would be her and not a dashing man fresh to the city. She rolled out of the duvet, twisted around her legs, and dragged herself to the bathroom. Thirty minutes later she emerged refreshed, her stomach rumbling. Wrapped in a dressing gown she crossed her living room, her computer humming away. She stopped at her desk. ‘I thought I’d switched you off,’ she said wobbling the mouse. The screen flared to life. Imogen startled as the AI image appeared full-screen. The woman’s eyes bored into her from the background, the men’s too. She exhaled slowly and shrank the image to a controllable size in the centre of the screen. Did the men stare at the camera yesterday, she wondered grabbing the cat cup and heading to the kitchen. She rinsed it out, opened a cupboard, and tossed a teabag in the cup. I can’t remember, she decided filling the kettle.
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