Apprentice 2024 Original
Shared under fair use principles for critique and analysis. Credit: BBC
Dalle-3 Version - Prompt Used:
"an image of a formula e electric car in blue driving on a road that passes through what appears to be the parting of the sea biblical style. make it almost drawn like a web graphic/icon though rather than a photorealistic image." + correction was given after first image was produced "the waves look realistic - everything should look drawn. car should be all angular and modern looking. also drawn/icon style not photo style like this."
Apprentice 2022 Original
Shared under fair use principles for critique and analysis. Credit: BBC and DailyStar
Dalle-3 Version - Prompt Used:
"again noting your style instructions to make it 'logo style' not realistic etc etc in blue again design a picture of a human morphing with a wave in a relaxing yoga pose. try to capture luxury/cruising but don't lose focus on the main elements of the theme."
Apprentice 2022 Original
Shared under fair use principles for critique and analysis. Credit: BBC and Design By Darby TikTok
Dalle-3 Version - Prompt Used:
"a logo for Wizardy Brush - incorporate bright colours - and a brush in the logo (it's about toothbrushing)"
Editors Note: Some more work here would be needed to fix the Z etc but it's definitely more kid friendly than the original that looks like I just typed it out on Word and put in some clip art of a hat...
Apprentice 2022 Original
Shared under fair use principles for critique and analysis. Credit: BBC
Dalle-3 Version - Prompt Used:
"on a dark blue background. write 'FIRST TIME FOODIES' as a logo but include for the two O's in FOODIES a picture, viewed from above of a bowl of tasty looking baby food with one having a spoon in it. use all the style instructions you've had for the previous project. the bowls must appear as icons in place of the O's not anywhere else."
Editors Note: It's interesting that here the AI largely ignores the instructions - though that might be a good thing given that the original has the word 'DIES' in so clearly...
Not a win for following instructions but clearly a win for not looking quite as mad in the boardroom...
Methodology:
The Apprentice UK often features a segment where the 'design team' is placed with an 'expert human designer' from an agency to create their vision for the brand.
Often, watching the show, particularly those of us in marketing, can see in our heads straight away the vision the team has. Only to watch in horror as the designer mocks up some horrific mess, and the team ends up running out of time and having to just 'go with it'.
While it makes for some hilarious TV in the boardroom at the end of each episode I've often thought there's no way their instructions could really be interpreted that way. We wanted to see if today's emergent image generation models - in this case we used Dalle-3 by OpenAI - would interpret the instructions closer to human imagination or closer to the comedy versions the designers put together.
My hypothesis is the designers are told to take all instructions so literally and with so little creativity that comedy boardroom moments are inevitable - faking the whole process to an extent. Let's see how the AI did at proving our hypothesis. This is all done in fun, of course, and realising that the show is heavily edited, and some of the teams we've seen over the years are truly awful and may well have actually loved their final work from the designer. It's not meant to in any way denigrate the designers who featured on the show - we all know they can do much better work than these candidates inspire them to produce for the show.