The Perfect Holiday Gift

We are in the midst of the holiday gift-buying season and if you are currently paralyzed with what to give someone special in your life, take a tip from your younger self.

As a kid, you didn’t have money. You couldn’t shop on Amazon or buy a gift card. To give a gift, you had to make something. And do you know what? The things that you made were pretty bad. BUT it was extraordinary for the receiver. Why? Because your six-year-old self put effort and work into that… ashtray? Or was that a cereal bowl with holes in the bottom? Well, whatever it was supposed to be, it was still special because you were thinking of the recipient and taking the time to make something for them. Collectively, we recognize that effort as love.

Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean that must stop. A deeply personalized gift is less expected now, which may make it even more special. (If you want to dive deep into the research of gift giving, Hidden Brain did an excellent episode recently.)

This brings us to AI. Using AI to generate a picture, you can make something exceptional for someone you care about. You will create something that didn’t exist previously. And that gift was made just for them.

All it takes is a little thoughtfulness and a little time. Here’s how you can do it.

Step 1- Brainstorm About Your Recipient

Think of what you want to create. This is the most challenging part. The simplest way to go about it is to ask: How would you describe the person you are giving to? What shared experiences/interests do you have with them?

If it were someone doing me, they might say, “Mike’s into superheroes, wearing flip flops, The Golden State Warriors, Foo Fighters, and lives in Silicon Valley.” From that, you have more than enough information to generate some AI images.

Step 2- Generate Images

For the best quality images today, I’d recommend Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion, in that order. Midjourney is a pain to start, especially if you are unfamiliar with Discord, but there are helpful guides to get you going. But once you’re in there, if you use the newest version 4 prompts, the outputs are almost always beautiful. ?DALL-E is easy to sign up for and has a simple UI. It typically understands prompts better than Midjourney but doesn’t have the same level of art quality for most things. I’d use something like PlaygroundAI, a website that uses Stable Diffusion. However, you can download a copy of Stable Diffusion if you have a high-powered gaming PC and run unlimited, free images. Although the latest update for Stable Diffusion, in my experience, doesn’t seem to be as good as Midjourney or DALL-E. But ultimately, using ANY of these services will work. All of these sites will give you some FREE images to start before you eventually have to pay (typically $10/month).

Once you’re logged in, start making prompts. You can type in basic phrases, like “golden state warriors superhero“ or “designer flip flops featuring images and designs of squirrel girl.” Ultimately you want to keep iterating and changing the prompts until it begins to generate what you are looking for. Don’t be frustrated. It might take a while to render what you want. Explore and experiment.

Step 3- Turn the Picture Into Something Real

This may be the most fun part of the process. Now that you have your AI artwork, turn it into something tangible. Something fun, something funny, something your recipient will appreciate.

You can make T-shirts on Zazzle, puzzles on Etsy, Pop-Tarts from Kellogg’s, custom socks on Amazon, or magnets at Shutterfly.

In the end, don’t worry about being perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It is the effort that matters.