SPRING 2024

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THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
ERIC DUDAS PROMPT ENGINEERING FOR DISTRIBUTORS from page 10
Cartoonish? Yes. But with that simple description,
Chat (I call him that now for short.) came up with a
grandfatherly looking guy in a white coat, standing in an
industrial appearing warehouse where it was somehow
snowing. And he is holding a large fully threaded fastener.
Sure, you can argue about the head and point types,
but just look at this picture and think how you would feel
if you were in the graphic arts business.
I decided to make some improvements.
ME: “Add a white goatee to the Colonel and change
to a southern style tie.”
Chat processed for a while, and then returned a link
with all the Python code I would need to overlay on top
of the picture to make the requested changes if it was
on a web page. That was very interesting, but not what I
was expecting. I wanted a new image with the requested
changes made to it.
You can tell I’m not a Python programmer, because
those guys are sweating right now.
I decided to start over and make a new image,
prompting Chat with an improved description.
ME: “Imagine Colonel Sanders with a while goatee
and a southern style black string tie holding a giant fully
threaded cap screw in a blizzard next to a warehouse rack
filled with boxes of fasteners.”
Is it strange that by this point I started feeling a little
rude for not saying please as I issued these requests?
That’s another column for another day.
Chat processed for a few seconds.
ChatGPT: “The image has been created according to
your description and is displayed above.” (Figure B)
Wow, it actually sort of looks like the Colonel now!
And I mean Colonel Harland David Sanders of 11 herbs
and spices fame. The whole picture was re-imagined and
it looks much closer to what I had in mind with the original
recipe, so to speak.
I decided to leave my exploration of Chat’s basic
graphics capabilities in due amazement and to probe
elsewhere. Where to start? Oh, I know. Leo wants a story
FIGURE B: CHATGPT RE-IMAGINES THE IMAGE WITH BETTER
PROMPTING, AND THE COLONEL BEGINS TO LOOK MORE
LIKE THE COLONEL.
about the podcast.
ME: “Tell me about Fully Threaded Radio.”
This began a very long process of me asking Chat
about FTR and adding questions about Brian and Eric,
specific details of the podcast, and Brian’s honorary
Texan status. In a nutshell, Chat gave extremely wordy
answers that seemed to approximate vague answers in a
general way with plenty of extraneous detail.
Did that sound obtuse?
I decided to do what I did with the picture drawing
exercise and supply Chat with some of the answer within
the question, expecting Chat to feed that information back
as part of the answer. And that’s just what happened. In
a few minutes, Chat seemed to know, or “learn”, quite a
bit about the podcast and its hosts.
At certain points during the process it seemed like
Chat was making more progress than I could account
for based on the information I was giving it. Then this
exchange took place, with Chat’s replies truncated for
readability:
ME: “Are you searching the web for any of this
information you are providing about the podcast or is this
knowledge stored elsewhere?”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 128