It started out simple enough.
I was bored. That was it really. Bored and just browsing social media when I saw it.
It was an incredible piece of art- stunning really, posted by one of my friends. Someone who I knew had never picked up a paintbrush in their lives, so I wanted to know the artist. Except, in their description they mentioned that it was generated by an AI.
I don’t want any of you stumbling onto the site in case something happens to you like it did with me, but let’s just say that I fell for it and decided to visit the site myself.
I wanted a profile pic- it was supposed to be a drawing of a dog near a bunch of sunflowers. That’s how I thought of it- but it was kind of hard to get an actual artist to draw it. Especially when you didn’t have any money.
I tried the AI generator, and though it took a few attempts, I got an image I thought was good enough to use.
Fascinated, I tried other things that I wanted drawn. Most of them were too bad to be used, but I would occasionally find one that looked pretty good.
Then, as I got bored and had trouble thinking of ideas, I decided to input a prompt that in hindsight, I should never have.
Draw A Picture Of Me
If you’re never used an AI generating software before, essentially you input a string of text describing what you want to see. Of course, I was just curious what to know the software would spit out when I put that kind of prompt in. There was no way that it knew what I looked like. For an extra kick, I added in:
Draw A Picture Of Me, Manga Style
I then hit ‘Generate’ and waited for a mess of pixels to pop up.
Instead, I had a bit of trouble initially figuring out what it was that I was looking at.
There was a man with his face turned down. He had black hair, and he was sitting at a restaraunt. It couldn’t been any place- or so I’d think, when I saw the sign in the background.
A chill went down my spine. I opened up my phone.
Yeah, that’s right- I had been to that place a week ago. I think I even took a selfie- yeah, the AI had even got my outfit right.
Now, if you’ve never used an AI to generate images before, you should probably know that in general, it isn’t very good at it. At least, not most modern AI. It’s usually very easy to tell when something is AI generated. The computer often gets things wrong that no human would- like drawing someone’s lips wrong, or giving someone an extra hand. Actually, a large majority of the errors I’d noticed whenever I put in a command were related to things like that.
Actually, it can be quite uncanny if you try to get an AI to make a human face. Some of them were nightmare inducing, to say the least.
It also has problems with letters or making signs, so the odds that it would spell out the restaraunt’s name like that perfectly were close to zero.
But there was no way that it could’ve known where I was that day.
But I had to be sure…
There was an option to ‘edit’ an image you had made. I clicked on it, and then changed to prompt.
Draw A Picture of Me, As A Black And White Photograph
I clicked on the ‘generate’ button once again, and I nearly physically recoiled from the screen.
It was… perfect. A perfect render of what I looked like.
I panicked- my laptop had no camera built in and I never used one, so how did it know what I looked like? Did it look through social media- but now, the Terms of Service said that it wouldn’t work with photographs of real people.
I should’ve probably left it at that. Turned the computer off, and went to sleep, trying to ignore what had happened like it was a bad dream.
But I didn’t.
I had to go further.
A Photograph of My Car
The AI even got the dent in the rear down to a T.
A Charcoal Drawing of My Bedroom
Yup. There was no mistaking it.
But how?
How was it spying on me? My phone- that was a possibility, but unless I’d been hacked there should’ve been no way too…
Again, I should’ve stopped there. Turned the computer off and gone to sleep.
But I didn’t.
A Crime Scene Photograph Of The Day I’ll Die
My heart froze.
It was me, lying down, with a bullet wound in my chest. My lifeless eyes gazed up at the ceiling. A pool of blood trickled around my corpse.
There was a time stamp in the corner.
A time that was thirty minutes from now.
I wanted to shut it off right there and then, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I had to know more- but… this couldn’t be real, could it?
A Picture Of Who Is Going To Kill Me
An image of a green car popped up. The driver was hidden in shadow, but there was a clear license plate on it.
I had had enough at that point, and turned the computer off.
This was a bad dream.
Yeah, that’s right. This was all that this was.
I got up to go to bed when I saw it.
Outside my window- a car had just come to a stop across the street. Green.
I honestly don’t know what to do now guys. I can’t see the license plate, but something tells me that it’ll be the same as in the picture. And I’m not dumb enough to go out to check
But the clock’s still ticking. Just ten minutes until the time on the photograph.
I’ve already called the cops, but I have a feeling that they won’t be here in time. As it is, I don’t think they would’ve taken my complaint seriously if I gave them the full picture. I just told them that there was an armed intruder approaching my house.
And now, come to think of it, I can hear footsteps outside.
I’m not sure if I should run at this point, and if so, to where. Would it make a difference? Was the photograph some kind of prophecy from the AI? Or now that i knew what was going to happen, could I change things?
Sorry, I have to run. Someone’s turning my doorknob. Nowhere to run now, I’ll just have to try and hide. Wish me luck guys.