I use Image Playground and Pixel Studio to create the laziest holiday cards

I didn’t have time to set up a family photo shoot this year. At first, we were all dressed in tracksuits and standing in front of my car in a squat position in honor of my Balkan ancestors. But no one feels that way this year. Alternatively, I may allow the computer and remote Water cooled data centers Doing my vacation bid. I wish people I care about a happy holiday by sending them something generated by artificial intelligence.

Google and Apple have made a lot of noise about including on-hardware AI in their flagship phones. Google was the first to praise its capabilities and spend it Most days of the year To convince us that Gemini is the way forward for Android. then, Pixel studio I set off on Pixel 9 Smartphone. It is suitable for fabricating images of objects in different artistic styles and presenting them as if they were polished in Adobe Photoshop beforehand. It’s also a good idea to create standard text, although it shows limitations if you try to deviate from the text.

iOS 18.2 out for iPhone 16and Photo playground It is part of the package. It’s Apple’s attempt at everyone’s attempts at generative AI. As with Google, the art generated by Image Playground also references Apple’s artistic style. The app is good at creating photos of people, especially faces of people you’ve loaded into Apple Photos. Image Playground will select the people it knows you care about most and then let you set an image for inspiration. From there, you can add background details, adjust clothing options, and adjust facial features as you see fit.

Instead of taking a photo with a family suffering from illness, I used Google’s Pixel Studio and Apple’s Image Playground to create my artwork for our annual holiday newsletter. I’m still not convinced it’s a substitute for actual photo shoots. But we’ve been hearing from Google and Apple all year about the innovation behind these image generating suites available on our computers in our pockets. Why don’t we put them to the test while they are in dire straits?

Image Playground: Use it for faces

Ironically, Apple’s intelligence, Launched later On the timeline of the year, it’s more human-like than Google’s Pixel Studio. (Google says on its support page that it’s “working on the ability to create human photos, along with the ability to edit existing photos with people.”) Technically, Apple wins this challenge because I can create a photo of my family without actually locating them. Us in front of the camera. The only downside is that it won’t show us all together in one photo; Currently, it can only process one face at a time.

I’ve already seen it What it looks like to use Image Playground Before it was released on iOS 18.2. That experience taught me that less is more. It’s best to start with a few variables and then slowly build from there, so I did that. I started with the face of the person I wanted to represent that Apple Intelligence had already identified: my child. Next, I selected the pre-packaged view of “Winter Holidays” and let the AI ​​do its work. I was born with brown eyes, so I asked her to change to blue eyes to match her in real life. This may be a synthetic photo, but that doesn’t mean the resemblance isn’t there. Then I asked him for a scarf to complement the winter scene.

I agree with my husband, her father, about the accuracy of the photo I took at Image Playground. When I asked him what he thought, he said, “It’s so cute. She looks like her.” In fact, despite the botched mouth area in most photo products, the photos are acceptable. Just don’t zoom in. The way Apple Intelligence made their teeth look scares me a little; In one photo, all of her teeth appear to have fallen out, and I can see the place the AI ​​tried to fill them. Her eyes also struggled to render in some cases, and I found this to be a common problem with all Apple Intelligence-generated images of specific people.

The nice thing about Image Playground is that it keeps your collection of quick image expressions in order so you can add and subtract as needed. I ended up sticking with the terms “winter holidays” + “scarf” and then adding the term “Santa hat” to kick in even more Christmas cheer.

I wasn’t satisfied with the snowman sculptures that were created in the background of my photos. Image Playground will do a good job of putting together a generic-looking snowman on its own, like the kind you can buy from dozens of greeting cards in bulk. But the snowman couldn’t catch a break as a background object. In most cases, he had charcoal eyes and a mouth but nothing else.

Image Playground is not great for creating text within an image. In all the cases I tried, it simply didn’t work. When I asked Image Playground to spell “Happy Birthday,” I typed pure gibberish instead. I tried several times to get him to produce something at least social media worthy, but most of what Image Playground conjured up looked like the title image at the top of the article.

Pixel Studio: Use it for stickers

Google Pixel Studio is better if you’re trying to pass off less obvious artwork, although it’s very clear that it was created artificially. For starters, it can’t create an avatar that looks like other humans yet, so you’re pretty much limited to what the app suggests you start with when you launch it. Some helpful prompts currently offered include “Cats,” “Dogs,” and “Christmas Tree Inspiration.”

Pixel Studio’s offer to create a cat or dog can work if you have a pet at home that can be the focus of artificial cheer. My cat disappeared five years ago but lives on in memory and AI (and inside a box on top of the mantelpiece). I asked Pixel Studio to make a “sleeping tuxedo cat with green eyes and a pink nose wearing a Santa hat. There’s a Christmas scene behind them. At the bottom, there’s text that says ‘Catmas.'” I was honestly shocked at how good the delivery was.

I tried the same claim on Apple Intelligence. I first learned that the entire statement I had previously typed in Pixel Studio didn’t fit into the image description prompt in Image Playground. It included everything even “There’s a Christmas Scene Behind Them.” I added another line, asking it to include text at the bottom that says “Catmas”, and Image Playground immediately responded that it was an unsupported ability. It has produced a black-and-white tuxedo cat wearing a Santa hat, although the cat is also dressed actual evening. Pixel Studio kept the cat’s animal likeness and was able to spell out the word “Catmas.” The lesson is that you shouldn’t feel shy about focusing your annual holiday letter on your pets, even if it’s generated by artificial intelligence.

I wish I could ask Pixel Studio for help in creating stickers in other languages. Pixel Studio performed well when I asked it to parse “feliz navidad,” which is “happy birthday” in Spanish and also the name of a popular Christmas song. But no matter how many times I asked the AI ​​to parse something in Romanian, Pixel Studio came up with something unreadable. I could see that it was a struggle to figure out which traditional Roman aesthetic to adhere to as well. In some cases, he made the text appear to be trying to use Cyrillic, used in Russian and Greek, with Slavic dialect accents.

Apple Intelligence worked best with the manufactured holiday experience because it generated a resemblance to my family without overdoing the creepiness factor. Although enough AI tools are left behind, the image is acceptable because it looks like an artist’s attempt at drawing a caricature. Like I said before, don’t zoom in. Pixel Studio is better if you’re looking for something more specific outside of including people. It’s not perfect in text generation, but if it’s a phrase Gemini sees from Google frequently — like “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” — it seems appropriate.

In the end, Image Playground and Pixel Studio’s Christmas specials left something to be desired because The valley effect is strange. I’d love to forward this to friends and family and solicit their thoughts on this AI-generated likeness as an alternative to the annual Christmas photo shoot. I’ll let you know when I get feedback.