What Happened to that Dog?

One day, I saw a man walking five Golden Retrievers at the same time. I didn’t even try to get a picture because it didn’t feel appropriate to gawk and take out my phone. I thought I had at least taken a picture of the street, but here is what Firefly came up with when I started with the man playing his mobile electronic keyboard…

“Five Golden Retrievers” was always in the prompt, but four is the most that appear. My favorite is when there is one dog off on its own. Maybe that means we just can’t see all of them in the other options?

This isn’t even all nine options Firefly produced. One had a car completely on the sidewalk. I’m not sure why there is suddenly a crowd of people in another.

The leash seems to consistently be an issue. And the more options I requested, the less dog-like some of the dog’s faces became. It’s like perspective, proportions, and lighting are good at first glance (except the crowd of people), but none of them are about to be mistaken for real.

Just when I thought that this means I would have to get an animal wrangler and five real dogs if I wanted to recreate this set up, I tried Nano Banana. My prompt: “Create an image young white man in cool, casual clothing walks 5 golden retrievers down sidewalk in an urban setting with no other people because so early, bright morning light cinematic.” It’s a pretend version of the app to practice on, but its human and dogs seem to be vibing.

The fact their paws are all muddy doesn’t really make sense, but I appreciate that they are all there and seem to be connected. The first two versions when Nano was working a little too hard to produce an urban setting, the human and dogs weren’t as believable. Here, the dogs’ tails are doing different things to help sell they are not one dog from different angles.

The signs kill this one. They’re so distracting I don’t spend much time analyzing the dogs.

Why are four out of the five dogs so in sync with their steps? Why is he holding all the leashes in one hand? This first iteration feels extra fake even if nothing is physically wrong.