Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Blogging

A Great Way to ‘AI Enhance’ Your Headshots

February 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It’s no secret there are far too many really bad headshots all over LinkedIn, and everywhere else online for that matter.  Wouldn’t it be great if something came along to help us normal people solve that problem? Talk about a huge market opportunity! Well, something did — and you can probably guess it would be… yes, we can thank our favorite new friend, AI.

Specifically, a startup called The Multiverse AI  has brought us what they describe as an “AI Headshot Generator” that lets you “turn your selfies into professional headshots” to “boost your professional image.”  Who can’t use some of that in this day and age of… yes, friends, I’m going to say it: Personal Branding. Some examples provided by The Multiverse AI are shown here (click the image to enlarge). some examples of AI enhanced headshots

Actually, it doesn’t have to be just selfies you submit — it can be any photos that include you, by cropping into those images to show just your head and shoulders. I know, I got to test it, and I don’t think any of mine were selfies. I hardly ever shoot a selfie! But I have lots of photos that include me. (Those cropped sections, however, have to be a minimum of 512 x 512 pixels, which was a bit of a challenge for me.)

If you follow my blog, you’ve seen me write about this topic of headshots since AI became such a hot thing in 2022 — namely, in the following two posts.

Generative AI Made Me Do it

I Couldn’t Help Myself – I Did It Again

But that was about avatars, which was sort of a plaything for a while — and I created a bunch with an app called Lensa. I sure had fun with it! This new service from The Multiverse AI, however, is a big step up from that, because it produces photo-realistic images that don’t look fake,  or created by… a bot?

How Good Is It?

Well, ta-dah — I’m debuting my favorite new headshot, courtesy of my experience with The Multiverse, right here on my blog today. It’s the one in the upper right under “About Graeme.” That image replaces the one I’ve had there for more years than I can remember. So, kudos to The Multiverse for finally getting me to update that old one!

And here’s a much larger image of all the best ones I got back after my submission, so you can see the variety their service produces. (Click to enlarge.) 12 headshot images of Graeme Thickins

So, What’s the Story on This Startup?

I learned it was launched on Product Hunt back in September 2023, with good success. Who’s behind it? Well, three cofounders you can see here. And a hat-tip to Tanya, who found me on LinkedIn and requested a connection. I thought it sounded interesting, so I took her up on it. Glad I did!

By the way, another interesting way to use The Multiverse — also a much-needed service — is to create AI-generated professional headshots for your team. There are so many startups — and for that matter, larger companies — who have horribly inconsistent headshots of their teams, or their executive lineup, Well, here’s a way to fix that. Yay! I’ll be recommending it — or using it myself for certain clients.

So… how’s your headshot?

Who Made the List of ‘The 120 Top People in Minnesota Tech on Twitter’?

January 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Well, for one, me! A Google Alert showed up the other day on my name. It was for a post published on Webbiquity, the blog of a fellow named Tom Pick here in the Twin Cities. Gee, thanks, Tom! My profile pic was even featured in his graphic… the only one shot on a beach, I might add — haha! (By the way, the list is alphabetical, so I’m way down toward the end of the list.)

some of the people of the 'Top 120' list

I’ve known Tom for some years, being in the same general business (marketing). He’s an accomplished B2B marketing consultant and strategist. And he’s been blogging about as long as I have — maybe longer. I officially started writing a blog (meaning on an actual blogging platform) in 2005.  I’m now up to 690 posts! But Tom seems much more serious about his blog. He even has ads! So, maybe he’s making some money from it.

Tom was also early to jump on Twitter, probably about the time I did — in 2007. I resisted starting to tweet in 2006, after the much-hyped launch of Twitter at SXSW in March of 2006. But, several months later, I couldn’t resist “micro-blogging” any longer, so I gave in to the temptation in early 2007. Fast forward, I’m now well beyond 35,000 tweets — and I just can’t stop, haha!  (By the way, have you noticed that Twitter recently dropped that stat on all its user profiles? Why?? That’s too bad.)

Anyway, Tom did an admirable job — I’m sure that compiling the list was a lot of work. (And I thanked him.) I thought it was kinda strange that several people on the list had only 2 or 3 tweets in the last 90+ days… are you kidding? But not to judge here — hey, maybe those tweets were really, REALLY good ones? But I think about 10 or more of us were  listed as having 100+ tweets in the past 90 days. And I know for me it would have been more like 200. Just sayin’! Of course, sharing content of value is what I think Twitter his all about, and that’s really all I try to do.

Tom explains his methodology in his blog post (linked above). He had to walk a fine line and not make anyone mad — including some people he felt a need to mention, even though they aren’t very active on Twitter(??).  Maybe they like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn  better? Or even Pinterest? Or they’re dancing on TikTok. Each to his own, I guess.

I will say that a lot of us active Twitter users on Tom’s list are very active on LinkedIn as well. In my case, I joined in August 2003 when there were only 18,000 of us there. Now, there are more than 700 million!

Another good thing Tom did in compiling his Twitter list: he left out those who are tweeting a lot about politics. Good call, Tom!

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