The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich AI Experiment

Written By Tela Gallagher Mathias , COO and Managing Partner, PhoenixTeam

Part of the scope of our MVP was to create storyboards, which was actually really hard. I highly recommend running your own peanut butter and jelly experiment. It’s super easy. Here are the steps:

1. Open up ChatGPT.

2. Enter the following prompt: “describe the process used to create a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”.

You’ll find that chat GPT provides an awesome answer, very thorough and just right. Perfect grammar, with all the steps described. Now the fun part.

3. Enter the following prompt: “create a storyboard illustrating the process”.

I’ve run this experiment a dozen times and it is always fun, but the best result remains the one achieved by Tom Westerlind.

What I love about this experiment is how profoundly it reveals both the awesome power and the hilarious limitations of the “today” technology. I say “today” technology because the tech is moving at a breakneck pace. I’m sure the absurd (and at times, disturbing) deficiencies will resolve in months, but I love discovering and overcoming these problems.

The more you stare at this image, the weirder it gets. It starts great – every hungry person ever, staring out the window posing the constant question to themself – “I’m hungry, what am I going to eat?”

As the steps progress, you can see the AI is trying to get it right, it has hints of the process it described so well just a moment ago, but what’s up with the cigarette in (the first) pane three? And those bowls of peanuts and fruit – are we doing tableside PB&J? Why would we use such a huge knife and a spoon to cut our sandwich? It goes on and on.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments on what you see, also feel free to post your image results.