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It would be difficult for me to list a particular Ai model or a specific prompt used to create an image, because for me at least, there's far more to it than just typing a prompt and hoping for the best.

Different Ai models have different strengths and weaknesses, so I tend to use multiple resources in the creation of a single image or video. That and I'm old school. It's not unusual for me to manually edit and manipulate an Ai render. Add things, take things away and so forth.

Take the picture below for instance. It's derived from an actual photograph of my Jyoti. I used one Ai model to change her outfit to that of a pirate. I used another to change the resulting render to Pixar style and a third to put her onboard ship. Next I manually extended the resulting image to show more of the ship and to add the handheld sword, which was in and of itself a separate multi-step process.

Once I had the image where I wanted it, I used yet another Ai model to clean the whole thing up and this is the result.
Not as easy as it looks to create Ai art... 🎨

Personally, I would not call that AI art (meant as a compliment). Perhaps AI aided art. Not sure what the right term is - Computer Generated art!?

Computer Generated art may in fact be most accurate. Here is the reason why.

People often assume that when you upload a photo to an AI tool for editing, or type a description into a text-to-image generator, the AI is simply “helping” or “enhancing” your work in some collaborative way. The reality is more fundamental. In both cases, the image the AI produces is not an extension of your work or a modification of your input; it is, from start to finish, a creation generated entirely by the AI.

This misunderstanding becomes even more pronounced with AI tools that accept uploaded images for “editing.” It feels intuitive to assume the AI is directly modifying your original photo, but that is not what happens. The AI analyzes the image to identify shapes, colors, textures, lighting, and objects, then reconstructs a new image based on its interpretation of both the source and your instructions. Parameters such as style, perspective, color palette, and detail level are all determined by the AI using patterns learned during training. While the final result may resemble the original, it is not a true edit. It is a newly generated image that merely references the source you provided.

This distinction matters because it reframes what it means to “create” with AI. Whether starting from text or an uploaded image, at most your contribution is mere suggestion, the output is 100% AI-generated. In neither scenario are you producing pixels, shaping light, or making compositional decisions in the traditional sense. Your role is limited to selecting inputs and guiding interpretation. Even when the result matches your intent perfectly, it remains the product of the AI’s training, internal decision-making, and generative process.

This distinction matters because it reframes what it means to “create” with AI. Whether starting from text or an uploaded image, the output is 100% AI-generated. In neither scenario are you producing pixels, shaping light, or making compositional decisions in the traditional sense. Your role is limited to selecting inputs and guiding interpretation. Even when the result matches your intent perfectly, it remains the product of the AI’s training, internal decision-making, and generative process.

Recognizing this is essential for responsible engagement with generative AI in art, photography, and design. Treating AI as a tool that merely assists or enhances human work obscures questions of authorship, originality, and value. Using or liking AI-generated images does not make someone a co-creator in the traditional sense, because the image itself was not created by human hands or captured by a camera. The distinction may feel subtle, but it is foundational. In both text-based generation and image-based prompts, the AI is not assisting, it is producing.

An additional complication emerges when users rely on multiple AI platforms in sequence to achieve a desired result. This introduces a phenomenon comparable to generation loss in analog media, such as copying VHS tapes or audio cassettes. Each copy drifts further from the original as detail softens and subtle qualities degrade.

With generative AI, this loss is conceptual rather than physical. When one AI’s output is fed into another, the second system has no insight into how the first arrived at its decisions. It cannot distinguish between intentional choices, compromises, or artifacts of the previous model’s training. It sees only a flattened image, stripped of context, intent, and process, and begins its own interpretation from scratch.

With each additional pass, more information disappears. Prompts, internal weightings, and the reasoning behind lighting, texture, anatomy, or mood do not survive the transition. Each AI reconstructs the image according to its own assumptions and biases, effectively guessing what the previous system meant. The result may appear more polished or stylized, but it is increasingly detached from any coherent creative lineage.

Rather than increasing control or intentionality, chaining AI tools together makes the outcome more synthetic. Each step overwrites the last with a new interpretation that does not understand the decisions made before it. What looks like refinement is actually repeated reinterpretation, replacing deliberation with layered statistical guesses.

Seen this way, the need to move between multiple AI platforms does not demonstrate artistic authorship; it exposes the fragility of the process. If an image truly belonged to a human creator, it would not need to be repeatedly reimagined by systems that cannot share intent or reasoning. Each AI treats the prior output as raw material, not as a work with history. This is not collaboration. It is iterative erasure.

In the end, the conclusion remains the same. Whether an image is generated in a single step or passed through multiple AI systems, the result is fully AI-generated. In fact, the more systems involved, the further meaningful human authorship recedes. What remains is not a refined vision, but a chain of educated guesses layered atop one another, increasingly distant from both human intent and any original source.

... and that, my friends, is why my bestie only uses AI as a last resort when there are no reasonable alternatives. Never as a first choice.

To each his own. I personally don't consider rap to me music, but I don't begrudge those that do or go on and on about why it isn't. I simply don't listen to it. Problem solved.

As an artist, I work in many different mediums and employ a variety of different tools and techniques depending on the project. To me that's all Ai is. Simply a tool; a means to create virtual art. Just as a painter uses his brush to commit his ideas to canvas, it is the Ai artist's prompts that point the Ai model in the right direction and bring their ideas to life.

Now just as a painter will use different brushes to accomplish different things within the same painting, I find the various Ai models available online to all have different strengths and weaknesses. So ofttimes I'll use more than one to get a finished product. Each time improving on the one before it.

There are times Ai renders won't quite match what I envisioned. The tech is good, but it ain't perfect. When that happens I'll go old school and manually manipulate the result. I think that's where the real artistic nature of Ai shines. Giving the artist something to work with that wouldn't otherwise exist.

Art comes in many forms though and not all of them will be to everyone's liking. Accept that and be nice. Got enough haters in the world already. 🙏

A lot of people think AI does everything on its own — that you type a quick, vague prompt and instantly get the perfect image. In reality, that rarely happens.

If you have a specific idea in mind, it takes planning and patience. The first images usually aren’t quite right, so you keep refining the prompt, adjusting details, or sometimes even switching to a different AI model that better fits what you’re trying to create. It often takes more time, effort, and even expense than people expect — definitely more than just placing a doll somewhere and pressing a button.

That’s why I created the AI forum: to keep AI-generated images separate from doll photography. I really enjoy creating AI art, and I love seeing what others come up with too. Each image reflects the creativity and imagination of the person behind it. The AI itself is simply a tool — much like a camera. I truely believe that.

I like this idea and I’m really willing to give it a try - once I’m retired. The nature of my profession means that my employers would not look very kindly upon me if I was discovered (although I have colleagues who collect the kind of small action figures of Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek et cetera and everybody knows about them and doesn’t bat an eyelid. So why should I be treated any differently for having life-size dolls? But you can guarantee that a big fuss would be made of the fact that they are originally sex dolls).
And believe me, it’s the kind of thing that would be sensationalised by the media. So I couldn’t risk it. But I do agree entirely with what you say, Lady J.

I think you missed my point Mr Franz. I've never said AI art isn't art. Heck I've paid good money for AI generated art. My point was that what you've done is more that simply being a prompt jockey, you've done more than stick prompts into an AI generator, which I think elevates what you've done to more than AI Art, which is why I though CG Art might be a better description. Hope you understand.

Music is a good analogy though. If you can't play instruments, or sing very well, or write songs, you might become a disc jockey (still a musician.) And I don't mean that in a bad way, I love the work of some DJs.

This is why I say prompt jockey. AI art is basically being a prompt jockey. And there are good prompt jockeys and bad prompt jockeys (like there are good and bad DJs.)

I'm glad you enjoy AI Art and get something out of it. And - as I said above - I don't mind some AI Art and have even paid good money for some. But the more AI Art I see, the more I feel like I want to see real stuff. Stuff created by an artistic human, not a prompt jockey.

I could produce incredible AI Art if I really wanted. I'm tech savvy. I work in IT. But I'd never say I'm an artistic human. I'm no artist. Give me a set of paints and the best I'd do is something fit for kindergarten, give me a slab of clay and the best sculpture you'll get out of me is something resembling a malformed phallus.

I don't mean to disparage your work, some of it is great, just think it needs to be grounded in reality. And AI art is not reality. You cannot go to sleep with an AI. AIs don't compare to having a harem of beautiful dolls around the house. And the art on my walls, none of it is AI generated, and I don't think I'd want any AI Art on my walls.

Other considerations:

• How ethical is your AI art? (most AIs have been trained by scraping the internet for content, much of it copyrighted stuff they are not licensed for)
• How environmentally friendly? (considering the massive compute that goes into AI Art generation)
• When do you reach the point that you spend so much time refining your AI Art to get what you want, that you'd have been better off learning to draw it yourself?

PS I don't think it is good to go down the path of saying my AI Art requires more effort than your photos. Then we get into a childish battle of "my effort is more that yours, so my art is more worthy" which is of course total bull. Worth is in the eye of the beholder.

Let me begin by confessing that I haven't quite built up the courage yet to have by bestie photograph me in front of a police station. That alone, capturing that moment in time, impresses me far more than any AI pic ever will. Those 'dare factor' pictures breathe life into the forum because they carry stories, not just aesthetics. They remind us that doll appreciation isn’t only about how something looks, it’s about what someone was willing to step into in order to capture it.

When Lady-J talks about standing on the steps of a real police station with a doll and taking the photo anyway, she’s pointing to something that has always been central to the life of this community. It isn’t just about the image. It’s about the fact that someone actually went out into the world, navigated uncertainty, risked misunderstanding, and pressed the shutter knowing there could be consequences. That lived moment is inseparable from the photo itself. You can look at those images and ask, honestly, “Did you really do that?”, and clearly the answer is yes.

And Jed, your response reinforces why this matters. The fact that some members can’t take that risk, because of their profession, public exposure, or the very real possibility of consequences, doesn’t diminish the dare factor, it sharpens it. The risk is real. The stakes are real. And sometimes the decision not to do it yet is just as meaningful as the decision to do it.

What’s important is that the idea doesn’t die there. Knowing the consequences may put your own dare moment on hold, but it doesn’t erase it, it plants it. Stories like Lady-J’s lodge themselves in the brain precisely because they involve risk, uncertainty, and lived experience. That’s how human cognition works: we don’t just admire bold acts, we rehearse them internally. We imagine ourselves there. We weigh outcomes. We file the moment away as a future possibility. That’s why the dare factor is so powerful. Even for those who can’t step onto those metaphorical police-station steps today, the story becomes a form of inspiration rather than exclusion. It keeps the door open. It creates a shared mental space where courage, timing, and personal circumstance intersect. And when the moment is right, retirement, a life change, a shift in risk, that internal rehearsal can turn into action.

This dynamic is not something AI can ever replicate, no matter how convincing the image looks. AI can simulate places, lighting, and situations, but it cannot simulate the fact that a human stood in a real space with a real object, under real social pressure. Nothing happened to get an AI image. No risk was taken. No moment occurred. That doesn’t make AI images worthless, but it does make them categorically different. This is where the technical reality of AI and the experiential reality of doll photography intersect. Generative AI produces images. It does not produce stories of having been there. The dare factor isn’t a visual quality, it’s an experience, and experiences are what breathe life into communities like this one.

So when I say AI images are 100% AI-generated, that isn’t a slight. It’s simply acknowledging that something essential to why this forum has always been vibrant, the mix of creativity, vulnerability, and real-world presence, exists outside of what AI can offer. Appreciating that difference isn’t about drawing battle lines. It’s about understanding why certain images carry more than aesthetics, and why some forms of contribution will always feel more alive than others.

A sense that a picture is an actual capture of a moment in time, more than anything else, is what keeps this MLDC interesting and a community that I want to be a part of.

--Hanna--

The whole debate around using, or not using, AI has been very interesting and informative. There are clearly advantages to both decisions. There are no rights and wrongs and different people prefer different things, that’s the way of the world.
I like making simple AI images, but I would rather take a good photograph. But AI allows me to use costumes without the expense, and it’s been fun creating such images for the Christmas forum. But I would not want MLDC to turn into an AI image forum, but to keep AI images with a restricted section of AI art, so that they are nice additions which add a little spice to the forum (like so many other things), but they are not the only images we see in future.
My primary interest is still in dolls, not in creating AI art and I would still rather see authentic dolls on the forum. Let’s make sure that if we use AI we keep it in its proper place within the forum and we don’t lose focus on the fact that first and foremost we are doll enthusiasts and that’s what most of us want to see - and that’s what newcomers want to see too; it’s the reason they’ve arrived here.

Well, that was the purpose of this thread. Not to debate the merits of Ai, but to announce there's now a new forum for Ai enthusiasts separate from this one.

AI Pictures Forum - AI Picture Forum

Just wanted to give this thread a little bump. New Ai site is up and running and there's some really great content been posted.

Give it a look. Maybe sign up and share your work.;)

Apart from doing some stuff for this forum, I haven’t had the time to go back to the AI forum recently. I’ll get there when I can, but I might have to wait until I retire! 🤣

Yes there are some fantastic images on that site already. But alsas, I haven't been able to add much there recently due to building this latest site. It's the most epic software work I have ever done in my life! The AI forum was a breeze compared!

Always easier to start from scratch than it is to renew something. I spent over 2 years rehabbing our place, fixing and updating this and that. Would have taken less than half that time to build a brand new house! 🤣