Happy Artichoke Day!

When I saw this day appear on the calendar, I couldn’t help but think of Thom Yorke’s lyrics from the song Atoms for Peace on his first solo album The Erasure:

“Peel all of your layers off, I want to eat your artichoke heart…”

Not sure why that line has stuck with me for almost two decades. Maybe because it’s so weird yet metaphorically spot on? But I digress…

I thought about asking for an artichoke wedged into a Bonne Projection, but … I’ve already done a heart-shaped Bonne projection, so I’m kind of over it.

I decided to go the gourmet chef carving a world map into an artichoke vibe. And then I decided to pit LLMs against one another. I was just offered a year of Google Gemini Pro or Plus or whatever the lowest paid tier is called, for free. And they name Google Gemini’s image creator after bananas, which are not totally unrelated to artichokes, as they are both real foods, (And I’ve been watching the World Baseball Classic now that Wallander is done, which reminded me of the Savannah Bananas… so it all started adding up in my mind…)

Why not pit Google Gemini against ChatGPT to see which creates the most satisfying artichoke map image using the same prompt?!

Note, I was never a fan of the Robot Wars TV show that used to be on television in the US, where mad engineers would create robots and put them in a ring and have them tear each other apart. Seemed like reprehensible to me somehow, but I must admit, that my mind went there as I imagined pitting LLM versus LLM in an artichoke map showdown.

So the event went down, and here are the images. I don’t know if there is a winner, it was such a bizarre request. Maybe both are losers for actually trying to do it? Surely, a winner LLM might say: this is absurd?

Both outputs were decent given it was a single prompt with a follow-up prompt about adding world regions. You can decide which you prefer. I’m probably siding with Google Gemini on this one.

Note, I did not bother checking the veracity of the regions. I don’t really care. I mean… it’s artichoke day… 😉 ChatGPT did to a better job of making the growth regions look realistic and organic across state (i.e., nation-state) boundaries. Whereas Google Gemini went with the very common color by socially constructed polygon route.

Prompt 1

Create a map image of the world in a classic Bonne Heart Projection. Show the landmasses only, no countries. However, instead of making this a standard map, I want you to shape the map like an artichoke and make it look like an artichoke. The landmasses (sans Antarctica) should be engraved or naturally appearing on the artichoke. (This is a world map to celebrate international artichoke day.)

Prompt 2

ChatGPT 5.4 Output

Google Gemini Pro