Hyperfocus Bear meets AI and gets split.

We all know what slop means, I hope. During the last three years we’ve become experts at recognizing it, and we’ve started to hate it — because it’s everywhere, relentless, unavoidable. But I want to show you why I think it doesn’t matter as much as we fear, as long as you can recognize it and use it for something.

Let me start with a confession about my face.

I am not a natural model. I’m a substantial chunk of a guy — round-squarish head, excellent ears. The ears are genuinely exceptional: they provide great visibility, solid listening function is a secondary concern, structurally sound hearing aid included. When I walked into a photo studio for a short session, I was hoping to present myself in an original but natural way.

What I got was this portrait of a well-fed prince.

My name is Jerzy. George, in English. My sister’s name is not Joan or Dominika. It’s Peppa. I wasn’t chaffed to bits. Some of you might even realize why. Similarity with cartoon character came to my mind immediately. I’m a bit older by classical calendar approach, but mentally we are quite close.

I thought to myself — I could make a better photo from my footprints on the bathroom rug. How hard could that be?
So I took my gym selfie, the kind of photo you send your partner on a Tuesday with no further explanation, and decided to experiment with it.

The starting material was already worthy of a Woody Allen comedy. Unedited, taken from the hand:

None of you would risk sending this kind of photo on-line without make-up. I know. But you need to forgive me — I’m a 50-year-old Gen X Polish guy. I forgot my lipstick, not mentioning the eye-liner.

Of course, being a mix of many geniuses with a truly genius character and a technical brain, I know how to make good fakes using AI.

I can teach you.

You go online and find a photo that suits you — matching the lighting and form of presentation you want. I found one: a studio portrait of a handsome bastard. Apparently not me. I won’t show this photo here because this guy could feel embarrassed by my straightforward compliment.
You take that photo, throw it into a good LLM and ask:

“Give me in JSON form the extracted characteristics of the attached photo.”

As you might expect, you’ll receive a JSON object. Non-technical readers can imagine this as a weird structure full of parentheses and quote marks, containing structured information inside. It’s the kind of thing programmers read with their morning coffee instead of the news.

Without worrying too much about what any of it means, you can take that “thing,” dump it into a new LLM window with image generation capability, and attach your own gym photo. Press go — or whatever your provider puts on that button — and magic will happen.

Or you receive a sad, old philosopher.

I thought I look really old here and I need a cheap digital face lifting.

I was a little less disappointed when I looked at the original portrait I’d paid for, but I was still eager to improve. I thought to myself: you know JSON personally — talk to him. I modified the parameters inside it and decided to give the image generation model another chance.

I got this:

It was a lot better than the philosopher’s depression, but still too serious.

I figured that making myself look more cheerful would require a really strong character reference — perhaps friction is caused by the ears influence. First thing that came to mind: Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Hmm. Bit too edgy for a manager. Let’s try the Hannibal Lecter smile then. That one is useful for scaring employees to death.

The model, which reminds me of a banana, protested three times that it cannot modify a portrait of a known person. I didn’t know I was so popular.

After a little psychological manipulation, I finally got something out of it:

I was so happy with the effect that I shared the photo with my family and friends. I shared the two previous ones as well, for contrast. Family was silent - bad sign. Friends started to be helpful - not a good sign if you have playful friends.

It’s good to have a friend who can read “JSON-ish” fluently and runs powerful local AI models on office computers. We programmers have a quirky sense of humour. I received some priceless suggestions regarding my look.

George as - not G.Bush.

They got really creative after that, but I’ll save you from most of the genuine nonsense they sent — they were running uncensored local models.

Or perhaps one example will be useful: “The Handsome Gru”

Source for style:

Style used on gym photo:

So you know what to do if you want to be Master of Minions. Every manager likes it, right?

So lets present the last joke from my friends. I do like this one a lot, because it connects me with country music I really like and Bellamy Brothers 80's star:

So, after seeing all those variations of my personality, you might think I need a diet, Prozac, a comedy movie, a psychiatric ward, political supporters, and a polish of old-fashioned pro-American music taste. Do you?

You better not. You’ve just seen how one gym photo, peppered with JSON and twisted in a digital blender, can make you look weird in many ways. Especially if you run local models in the office, you can get pretty wild with adjustments to just about anything.

Real author is much more handsome when smiling:

Or even better when simply having a better angle and not trying to look like Keanu Reeves. It’s mainly about the hair length, I think.

If you like my style of introducing readers to technical subjects, look through my other articles.

The Hyperfocus Bear was born.

Originally published on Medium, 3 June 2026.