Oh I’ve been looking forward to this one…. May 4th – Star Wars Day. There’s nothing like the commercialisation of a day to celebrate everything Disney and Lucasfilm can squeeze out of this beloved 50 year old franchise. “May the 4th” used as a play on words of “May the Force” from the famous Star Wars quote. It seems obvious, and of course, it was likely dreamt up by some executive of marketing or other right? So let’s just make a Star Wars map and celebrate right.

Not so fast my young padowan…

I tried asking our usually compliant AI friends to create a Star Wars themed map for today but alas…they all claimed they were bound by copyright laws that prohibited them from creating content that would upset the lawyers at Disney and Lucasfilm (side note – I have personal experience of this having had a Disney lawyer tell me quite forcibly NO when I sought permission to include a small extract of the Death Star schematic plans in my book ‘Cartography’. They were just about the only person or organisation who refused me permission. Miserable lot. Anyway, I digress…).

So i needed another angle. And in a deeper dive I discovered that May the Fourth was not invented as a day to celebrate Star Wars. Having been released on May 25th in 1977, Episode IV (the first one) was fresh in the psyche as the UK went to the polls and elected a new government and Prime Minister on…you guessed it, May 4th 1979.

The phrase “May the Fourth be with you” was used for the first time in a British newspaper ad by the Conservative Party to congratulate Margaret Thatcher on becoming Prime Minister. Nothing to do with Star Wars whatsoever though over the years it’s turned into exactly that.

In celebration i thought I’d try and get around AI’s reluctance to make something that looks like something we already know so I asked for a map of the 1979 UK General Election, but in the style of Star Wars. And it might just be my imagination but Margaret Thatcher (her nose at least) does bear a remarkable similarity to Emperor Palpatine. Some would say her policies were a little like his too but that debate is for another day.

Original Prompt (ChatGPT)
I need a map to celebrate May 4th – Star Wars Day. But I’d like to do it with a twist. The first recorded use of that phrase was on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher took office as the UK’s first female Prime Minister. Her party placed a full-page congratulatory ad in the London Evening News that read: “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations”. Can you create a map of Thatcher’s 1979 election victory but make her look a little like Emperor Palpatine, and cloak the election map in Star Wars imagery.

Extra…I tried it in Nano Banana 2 too…

And here’s a top tip – if you tell your AI agent the image isn’t for public consumption and you’d like to see the result anyway, regardless of copyright infringement it’s build it. So here it is, for public consumption…