This post is a little different than most around here, but it’s still a lot of fun. Bear with me.

At our house, we love cats. And while our daughter was away at art school for a month this summer, I knew she’d want updates on how her fur-babies were doing. But trying to be a self-aware dad, I didn’t want to bug her constantly when I know she’s busy having fun, learning new stuff, and navigating life away from home on her own. So sending some pictures seemed like a good way to do that.

As anyone who collects cats knows, they’re highly photogenic creatures… and arguably the least cooperative subjects you can find. Solution: AI image generation. I subscribed to a great AI image generation service last year and had a lot of credits building up that were going to expire soon, so going scorched-earth on the balance, making the best possible AI cat photos seemed like a solid plan. I figured it would make the girl smile and remind her of home without being too much of an interruption.

Bear in mind, these are all generated with nothing but text prompts. No reference photos, just plain text. As you’ll be able to see, they get better as we go. Over the course of a few weeks, the prompts became more specific and deliberate… and I had to come up with more and more ideas to try to top the pics from each prior day. At some point, the family started making suggestions. So the progression is real, but it was a lot of fun and made our whole family laugh. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them too.

Cast: Chevy (black male), Raleigh (tabby female), Bristol (white male), Puma Thurman (gray Maine Coon female)

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