Last Friday, I published my annual post referring to my Yule playlist. Attached to it was a cute picture of Santa Claus playing the saxophone. That image spurred a few questions about whether I used AI for it, and the answer is yes. For two years, I’ve been doing this post with an AI image of Santa playing the sax. Last year, the best I could do was a black-and-white illustration that was acceptable, but not cute.

This year, however, I upped my game. I have a one-month subscription to Magnific for a video I made for the MacSparky Labs. This is, by many accounts, the best AI image generator available. Although my testing and experience with it have been mixed, I must admit that it delivered (and then some) when it came to making a cute image of Santa playing the saxophone. I also note that it looks like Santa has a well-stocked bar in the background. It is remarkable how far this technology has come in just a year.

As an aside, I also gave it another prompt to make a cute image of Santa Playing a Yanagisawa tenor sax (I play a Yani.) It made a cute image, but it didn’t get the look of a Yanagisawa horn at all. I ended up using the above image instead because it’s so artistic (and shows Santa’s funny booze collection).