I’ve taken up drawing lately. I attended a continuing-ed-type drawing class for beginners and have been messing around on my own. I’ve played around with drawing various fruits and vegetables, plants, animals, and people. Many of the results so far have been disasters, of course, some have been mildly pleasing, and there are a few that I’m rather proud of.

But as I struggle (enjoyably) to improve my artistic skills, I’ve been struck by a nagging thought: what is the point, in this new age? Is drawing now just an outdated parlor trick? What object could I ever render, with my own two hands and my little box of supplies, that anyone in the world couldn’t do better than me, just by uploading a photo to an AI engine and supplying the right prompt?

Or could they? Let’s see.

A few weeks ago I sketched the face of a marble bust, from a photograph I had taken in a museum with my phone. (The bust, representing the historical Roman figure Servius Sulpicius Galba, a first-century AD Roman statesman and, briefly, emperor, is in the Torlonia collection of marbles, currently on display in Fort Worth.) I thought it turned out quite nicely… So I uploaded the same photo to ChatGPT (the basic, free version, to be clear.). I then prompted ChatGPT as follows:

render the photo I’m going to upload as a pencil sketch by a professional artist

I included “by a professional artist” to ensure that the AI engine didn’t intentionally render the sketch as being done by, say, a child, or as a casual doodle. The bot finished its job in a few minutes (at the very least it’s lightning fast compared to my labored effort of a few hours), even helpfully labelling the result “aging wisdom.”

How did I do against the machine? Well, here is the photo we both used:

And here are the competing sketches. One is mine, with my signature removed. The other is ChatGPT’s entry. If you follow me on Facebook, you know which one is mine. But if you don’t already know, make a guess. Which one is mine? Which one is “fake” (if “fake” even means anything in this context)? And, which one do you like better? Cast your vote in the comments.

As for me…well, I’ll just say I feel pretty good about my limited human capabilities.