It’s weird. I know it’s weird. Before I even knew what some of the capabilities of CHAT-GPT were, I had been wanting to see what kind of doll that these smart bots would create. I was simultaneously impressed and a little uneasy with the generated results. The more photos that I generated on DALL-E, the less friendly they looked. But I knew I wanted to create with my hands, something that had been generated with AI.
HOW I DID IT:
I first went to CHAT GPT. I conversed with it about dolls for an hour and then decided to ask it to ‘Act as a doll maker. Describe a doll that everyone would love.’. This was the response:
I copied the above response and pasted it into DALL-E 2.
The first dozen were odd and cute, but I wanted more, so I hit generate until I ran out of credits. suddenly, I found some that I wanted to make. I narrowed it down to one and got started.
I tried to match fabrics with the same textured look as the image. I mixed Gesso with beige and white on the plush face. I sanded it in the direction it was going on the image, then sanded and painted again. The arms were tea stained and baked. The head pattern I used was from a doll pattern available at Mustard Seed Originals. All other parts were my design.
The hair was made using remy hair extensions. I tried sewing it on at first, then cracked out the hot glue and used it for the best results. I don’t like to use hot glue, but it was the most permanent solution that I could think of.
Overall, I’m super happy with the doll. I love creating dolls with just an image to go by. It opens my mind up to all of the textures and fabrics that I can use. It is not exact, of course, but I feel like it’s close, and I achieved my goal of following through with my idea.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
There are a few things that made me feel uneasy about making the doll. My first concern was worrying that I would be stealing someone else’s work. I pride myself on making original and unique dolls and this was no different. I did google search and reverse image search the image for a very long time. I could not find anything even a little bit close to this design. If you have ever seen a doll that looks similar at all, I would love to know. Secondly, I worried what people would think. I could only imagine the comments on youtube or facebook if the doll was something that everyone hated. It would be ironic that I would make a doll that everyone loved, only to find out that everyone hated. I took A-I Doll1 to a pop up booth inside Larry K Hill Studios. I sat it high on a chair with the original picture next to it, and I waited for the comments.
By the end of the evening I heard two girls call it disgusting, a child called it weird and a teen boy said it was cool. The fact that it got any comments at all, that anyone even noticed it, made me happy. I decided that I’m ready for any online comments now. I can take all the good, bad and weird opinions. There was no end goal to making the doll, I just knew that I needed to create it. It’s not my design, after all, it’s a computer generated image.
I am so happy that I followed through with this experience and completed the doll. I truly hope each person that views it will feel something,…even if it isn’t love.
