Cyber Heist

How did you use AI?

We wrote this book in its entirety. However we did use AI in two unique ways…

1. Creation of primitive picture objects.

2. Research into various topics - e.g. supplementing google search that would direct you to Wikipedia with a summary of what AI knows.

Do we think it’s ironic that we used AI to help us in a book about AI? Answer: Yes

Base Picture Creation

Dan spent almost as much time on the pictures as we did writing the original text. He used AI (Microsoft Copilot) to create many of the picture primitives (e.g. a character standing a certain way).

Picture Creation Process

1. Brainstorm what we want to show in the picture based on text in the book

2. Open your picture editing tool. We used GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is an open-source tool for image manipulation program. Think a free version of Adobe InDesign. Gimp allows you to have Layers and manipulate every aspect of a picture or even draw something new.

3. The basic AI picture creation process is:

   1. Ask Microsoft Copilot to draw something.

   2. Review what Copilot gave you. Save it (because you save everything. You never know what you might Frankenstein together)

   3. Ask Copilot to make some change to a feature you didn’t like. Sometimes it gives a totally different picture. Sometimes it latches onto the wrong thing. Sometimes it continues to give the same picture in the wrong way. Once it goes wrong, or if you want something completely different, then start a new conversation and feel free to give it the same prompt or a similar prompt. If you did a lot of back and forth with copilot, it is sometimes good to ask copilot to give you a description of what you asked it to draw so you can give that same description the next time

   4. Tips:

      1. When asking to create characters. Ask to draw them on a transparent background. This will make life easier when you are merging everything together.

      2. Sometimes if you have gone back and forth with copilot refining a character, you may have to tell it to put on a transparent background again because it imagines transparency but really puts it on a checkerboard.

      3. You can paste in a picture of some character and ask it to show the character in some different pose. Unfortunately, sometimes it changes details about the character such that they don’t even look like the same character. If they gave you a good pose but the wrong face, I’ll use GIMP to cut the head off the new picture and bring in a previous iteration (remember I said save everything).

      4. Microsoft Copilot likes to make outsized heads on their clip characters. I like more real so I found myself always copying and pasting their heads (in GIMP) and using the scale layer to bring the head in better proportion. then erase the head and you can merge down the layers to get the new character.

      5. If copilot is having trouble the entire scene to your liking. take parts out and have them drawn separately. Then combine them in GIMP

      6. Save early, save often. GIMP does crash and you could lose all your work.

4. For the rest of the steps, we will assume you did the basic AI picture creation process.

   1. Ask Copilot to draw the base scene

      • Example: Please draw me a picture for my book that I'm writing. I would like a clipart picture of a view of an internal warehouse that is fancy'd up to be more like that of a night club. The inside of the warehouse had an open layout reaching from ground level to the roof thirty feet above. speakers mounted throughout the space. There is a catwalk that goes around the warehouse at the second level. . Down on the first level was what looked like a fancy computer lab with eight-foot-tall server racks with a mix of red and green blinking lights. There were about eight empty computer stations with each station holding four large screen monitors and keyboards that had aqua blue backlights.  There is a table in the center. Each computer station had an advanced gaming chair. Around the edges of the room were cots for the regular workers to sleep at. a twenty foot by forty-foot shipping container at the back of the warehouse. The container was painted black. The end of the container has a jail cell door. Mounted above the server racks on the far side of the room was a large neon green sign that read “Welcome to the Blackout’s Duat. Our Underworld is Your Underworld.”

   2. Import the base scene into GIMP

   3. Ask Copilot to draw a character. Manipulate the character as needed in GIMP. Paste the character into the base scene and adjust the scale based on where they are in the base scene. The closer to the user, the bigger.

      • Example: Can you take this character and change her to be standing up looking to the right. put her in a more stylish outfit. give her a light blue blouse and skirt above her knees. Make her hair down. she's got her arms down and is observing something with a little surprise. Keep the same hair color. She has a necklace and matching earrings. keep her on a transparent background

   4. Continue to add things until you are happy

   5. Export the picture to a png.

Research

We used AI (Microsoft Copilot) in researching a couple topics.

1. AI was instrumental in helping us determine how to hack a computer which is a vital part of the story. Although AI didn’t write the text, we queried it about the process of hacking a computer and what programs they might use.

2. AI helped us determine valuable Egyptian artifacts to use in our heist