How I made my new LinkedIn picture
I need a good LinkedIn profile picture, as every student and soon to be graduate does. Now I do have an ‘I Will’ picture that is slightly outdated and an interest in technology. For this reason, I turned to generative AI.
At first I tried to create a professional image using Midjouney, Dream Studio and Nightcafe by inputting a few examples of pictures of myself. However I found the images to be cartoony and surreal. I tried to clarify further using negative prompts however the resulting image was indistinguishably AI created. Generative AI has become exceptional in understanding natural language, however prompt design is still extremely important and curating a prompt that produces the wanted outcome is a skill in itself, one that I myself am still getting the hang of. Even uploading more images of myself resulted in ‘fake’ looking images, either they looked off or they didn’t look like me at all. Generative AI’s difficulty with exact duplication of faces doesn’t come as a surprise, as human have evolved with a focus on communicating and reading each others emotions it has become a second nature to detect irregularities and imperfections in face structure and facial expressions.
For this reason I decided to adjust my approach. I would choose a picture of myself and use AI to create a professional version of the image. I used Canva’s ‘Magic Studio’ and after getting used to the instructions I am impressed with the ease of use of this application. There are many features such as grabbing objects from the background and moving them, animating objects and expanding the picture. The commands are intuitive and I encountered very few glitches in the picture. The image quality was also adjustable with blur removers and stabilization options. Using these technique I was finally able to create a suitable professional picture of myself.
