For Jesse — American Alchemy, restaged

I make these for fun, even did two lookbooks. Playing with the new AI tools is a genuine @seanivore pastime. In fact, I was actively in the process of staging some satirical "iconic band tees" for my portfolio from when I was Art Director for a web3 founder, when I happened to click through to your merch store. All of it is legit leading trend cusp. It is beautiful and I want all of it. It took me ~20 minutes to create this whole set. I had a formulaic prompt ready to go that I altered for each product photo and hit generate. Then ran a script to rapidly crop, resize, and web optimize the entire batch of images in a minute (the magic that AI teaches you!). I wanted to make sure the lettering, hands and faces land clean, so I chose one image per group and ran it through a more powerful model. The result was much crisper detailed lettering, clean hands, and clear facial expressions. I was actually surprised that the quick, smaller model that made the rest pretty much nailed the details from the start though. These tools are improving by the month, it is insane. Oh and FYI, the tools I used carry no licensing and no royalties. They are good for commercial use, with no limits.

The reason it's worth doing at all: on Shopify, swapping flat product shots, like your current merch, for on-model lifestyle imagery increases purchase conversion rate by 30–40%, the purchase intent by 40%, and, surprisingly, even cuts returns by about 22%.

I like to think about AI use PR when using these tools. I've long considered myself an artist. And obviously it is all still controversial (though all engagement is good engagement heh, but) I would have a disclaimer that says the difference in revenue from increased sales using our staged AI models is earmarked to specifically be used to pay for an actual photographer and models for real photo shoots of all the merch. It is a rad angle because it shows that you can USE AI to get humans work. That's a line worth being able to say out loud. It makes a brand more trustworthy because you're both being transparent and innovative. There will still always be haters, but engagement is king and they are just opportunities to respond with something witty, but polite and informative because they're creating earned media value.