Having Fun While Testing AI's Growing Sophistication

The cornucopia is a common symbol of Thanksgiving, and Sprocket has used it before in our holiday greetings. This year, it was generated by Artificial Intelligence.

Do you know why the cornucopia is associated with the autumn season, and therefore, with Thanksgiving? An ancient Greek myth tells of Baby Zeus accidentally breaking the horn off a goat. The horn becomes magical and is filled with a never-ending supply of fruits, an encouraging metaphor for celebrating harvest time.

Don, who provides much of the imagery for our clients, proposed years ago to use a cornucopia of sprockets on our Thanksgiving greeting card. Since there were no cornucopias or piles of sprockets in the office, he worked Photoshop magic on a couple of professional photos. It took some time and skill, but it looked pretty realistic.

As AI became more mainstream, Don experimented with some of the creative tools being introduced. Initially, the AI tools didn’t know what a cornucopia was. Putting on his “Prompt Engineer” hat, Don tried various descriptions and suggestions, but with no success. “AI tried to make various baskets, but it failed,” he says. “I had to go back to Photoshop.”

Last year, Don played around with Midjourney, a realistic image generator. “Midjourney knew what cornucopias were and did a nice job displaying gears,” he says. “We used that image in our Thanksgiving greeting.

AI has evolved in leaps and bounds over the past few months, so Don decided to try making a video of sprockets spilling out of the cornucopia this year. He used a tool called Invideo AI, which not only delivers visuals, but can add voices and text as well.

“I asked it to pan across the cornucopia’s mouth as the sprockets tumbled onto the table. It made a valiant effort,” Don reports. “It starts out nicely with the sprockets rolling out of the mouth of the cornucopia, but then the wicker basket starts spewing sprockets out of the sides and back as well!”

Fortunately, the beginning of the video was enough to work with, and he was able to use an editing tool to clean up those few seconds and add the text and logo.

Here's the final result:

AI-generated images and videos are everywhere today, but most of them are like our sprocket-spewing cornucopia: a little bit off. The best AI effects take a lot of effort and still only approximate realism. There can be uses for AI in design, but AI won’t replace the creative work of humans quite yet. One good use for AI imagery, however, is for mocking up what your website could look like, which we do for clients. Give us a call to learn more about what we can do for you.

One final cornucopia story:  Have you heard about the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia that never was? Even though many, many people remember the logo as fruit spilling from a cornucopia, it is a false memory called the Mandela Effect. Fruit of the Loom has always been just fruit and leaves, no horn of plenty.

That’s a little tidbit you can share at the dinner table on Thursday! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from the Sprocket team!

Image by Don Gingold

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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Full biography

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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