So I had this tiny idea:
“Hey, AI, make me a manga-style, black-and-white drawing of a badminton player. Focused. Ready.”
You know — just a normal request. Nothing weird. Nothing extreme.
Just a humble shuttle warrior, getting ready to receive a shot.
What did I get?
Well… let me walk you through this Picasso-misfueled fever dream.
The Request
My prompt was clear (Or at least I thought it was).
- Manga style.
- No shuttle.
- No net.
- Racket should be real. Straight. Held.
- Focus on the face.
- Make it landscape, please.
I even said please. That’s how polite I was.
The AI Attempts
The drawing?
It looked like a badminton player… but drawn by someone who have no sporting understanding of it, only a fashion idea of it.
I said, “ok. It looks badmintoney, but actually dumb. In a competitive environment, a player is never focusing in this stand, showing his back to the net. I need something life-like. Actually the drawing is pretty amazing.”
So it made this, based on the picture of Lee Chong Wei, when he is ready to receive:
I was like, “remove the net please, it is just looks ridiculous like that. No need for a shuttle. The racket should be longer. Could you make a landscape picture please? We are getting there…
And then it created this:
And after that I was like, mate… Why do you want to make me a website-like picture? With broken English? Are you making a fun of the Hungarian me? I have pasted the same link of Lee Chong Wei…
…And then it did this:
I was not being completely unhappy about it but look at how the racket looks… It realized that it will stick out of the picture, so it bent it to fit. Looks like an instrument to flip the pancake… Ehh…
So I was like:
“Look, that is actually great and useful! But as I can see, you altered the head of the racket on a way now it looks off. Keep the whole picture and the drawing, only change the racket head. It is okay if it is leaning out of the picture a bit, but has to be straight, not bent. Thank you”
When the thing hits the fan…
Apparently “keep everything and straighten the racket” translates to this, like it adhered to his thumb:
Look at that grip as well… I have to tell you that at this point I started to lose my passion to a simple AI created great picture, and decided to enjoy the ride with it! It was already hilarious on its own, I wanted to see how this will play out even further…
So what I have done, I have put the link about a picture of Lee Chong Wei again into the text field, pressed enter and waited for the next laugh.
I have got this, better version, but the grip is still off. Where is the pinky? You can’t hold it like that without the last 2 fingers! It offered me that it can alter couple of things, gave me a list what it can do now, and I selected 1,3 from the list, which were as per below:
1️⃣ Want the racket angle adjusted slightly for cleaner symmetry? –> Yes
3️⃣ Do you want more contrast in shading to deepen the dramatic feel? –> Yes
And it gave me that picture:
I was like: “This is a tennis player mate. Badminton. My game is badminton.”
It said, “Okay, you are right, let’s fix that…
Well, it did
It was beautiful.
Because it made a girl.
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD Oh my god! :DDDDD I laughed myself down the chair…
Was in sport appropriate clothing? Yes.
Had Epic focus? Just what I wanted.
I was asking for showing the lines of the court, it ignored it, but that’s fine.
The shuttle is on again, flying to a totally dumb direction, no connection with the game, okay.
But the absolute ridiculous thing is the relationship of the girl and the racket. What the girl is focusing on? I have no idea but it made my day. Wow…. :DDDDD
The racket? On a solo journey into the sun.
The shuttle? Not again?!?
I laughed so hard, I nearly choked on irony.
Lessons Learned
Here’s what I now know:
- AI can draw.
- AI will ignore your platonic understanding of badminton. It has its own and not being afraid to persuade you that you should believing in its vision.
- AI loves making rackets as floating entities.
- If you say “no shuttle,” AI hears: “launch it at a 47-degree angle into the nearest black hole around Earth, no matter what.”
Honestly? 10/10 experience.
Not what I asked for. Not even close. But was it art?
Well, yes.
Bonus Tip
If you ever want to see a weaponized misunderstanding between human and machine, just ask AI to draw sports pictures.
You’ll get drama, chaos, and maybe a girl in sportswear intensely focusing on her… taxes? Her gases? Quantum physics?
But not the shuttle. Never the shuttle.