NZ-Pacific Xmas, according to AI

You might not be dreaming of an AI Christmas, but as the world continues to develop and debate Artificial Intelligence (AI), we wanted to know if AI could draw Pacific families to engage in the season's festivities.

We prompted various AI to make images of Pacific families based in New Zealand.

Here’s the AI software we used:
Open Art AI
Canva (Pro)
Leonardo AI
Midjourney
Craiyon

We’ll let you be the judge of each photo.

Sāmoan family enjoying a Christmas dinner*:

Yeah nah? Or eughh, le’ai fa’afetai? Photo /Open Art AI.

Fijian family enjoying a Christmas dinner:

Photo /Open Art AI.

A Tongan family opening presents, by Leonardo AI*:

Photo /Leonardo AI.

A Niuean family opening presents by Canva AI:

Photo /Canva AI.

Rotuman family decorating Christmas tree, by Canva AI:

Uh, less decorating and more a family photo, Canva also generated a black-and-white image, an inadvertently stylistic choice probably stemming from its algorithm of online research of Rotuman families. Photo /Canva AI.

A Kiribati family decorating Christmas tree, by Midjourney*:

Not the most Pacific choice of wall art but alas, AI is learning. Photo /Midjourney.

Cook Islands Māori family, based in Aotearoa, baking Christmas cookies, by Leonardo AI*:

No pun was intended in the making of this image. Photo /Leonardo AI.

And Craiyon generating an image of a Tuvaluan family doing the same*:

Those cookies look uncomfortably plain. Photo /Craiyon.

This was somewhat uncomfortable and uncanny. Some look like a product advertisement on a billboard or the side of the bus.

The glaring mistakes in certain photos, such as the additional leg in the Kiribati tree decoration, were more hilarious than disturbing.

Overall, as fun as this little experiment was, the best photos, especially of our people, will always be made by us and of us, rather than the creation of a motherboard with circuits.

Because under AI image generation, the word “candid” bears no presence in what it captures.

The food looked great, at least.

*Some AI-generated images in this article were expanded via Canva AI to fit our 1600x960 resolution.