Convincing a sceptic
For a few months Dave has been looking at what Generative AI could do. He believed that he could build software from scratch without having to write the code himself. He had built a prototype of a new language and a prompt generator that could take detailed requirements and turn them into working software.
I was sceptical, so I asked him to prove it.
Posing a problem
I asked Dave to create a program for me that could turn a photograph into a Lego-style mosaic. I didn't just want a picture, I wanted to be able to build the picture using base plates and bricks. The first working prototype of a mosaic picture was generated in less than 90 mins. It took a couple of hours of refining things to get to what you see below.
Once I had sourced the bricks and base plates, I created a colour palate for the bricks I had and updated the colours in the JSON config file.
The results were amazing!
The results
Here's the original photo and the computer-generated sketch of what the mosaic would look like - it's worth standing back from the screen a little to see the full effect:
The software also generates a "picking list", showing how many of each tile is required, and construction plans - here are examples of both (the example construction plan is for the top-left quadrant of the image):
And finally, after about 10 hours to build it, here's the finished mosaic, stuck to the whiteboard in Dave's office:
Fast forward to Metaphor
The prototype language has changed quite a lot since then. It's now called Metaphor, and it's the basis of what we're now doing at M6R.