Ethan B. Holland

This week’s covers honor the passing of musical great Sly Stone. I asked GPT-o3 to create a rubric I could use for batch-producing category covers in the spirit of various Sly and The Family Stone albums.

The main cover is a hybrid of the Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits album and the Figure and Optimus humanoid robots. In the background is a repeating ElevenLabs logo.

Separately, GPT-o3 created a rubric that allowed me to give it 43 one-word category names, and from those 43 single words, the API returned 43 album covers inspired by Sly Stone. These turned out pretty well.

I wished I’d given it more variety, and I’m working to improve that for next time. Overall I’d give it a C- and blame operator error more than the AI.

o3’s Rubric

Below is a first-pass “Sly & the Family Stone” prompt pack that follows the flexible template we agreed on.
You’ll see three parts:

1. Theme core & variant bank – 12 instantly recognizable cover-art motifs we’ll cycle through for variety.
2. Category-cue dictionary – the visual hook that whispers each AI topic.
3. Ready-to-paste prompt lines – one per category, in the plain Category | Prompt format your scripts expect. Feel free to tweak any cue or wording; just keep the pipe (|) separator intact.

Everything is deterministic (index % 12) so the mapping will reproduce exactly unless you reshuffle. If you’d rather randomize on each run, just swap in a random choice for {THEME_VARIANT} before you emit the lines.

1 ▪ Theme Core + Variant Bank

Core style phrase (always first in every prompt):
vintage Sly & the Family Stone album-cover style

#	Variant cue (rotates)	Album / year
0	psychedelic collage of band members, swirling neon tie-dye backdrop	A Whole New Thing (1967)
1	bold rainbow typography bursting from center, dancing silhouettes	Dance to the Music (1968)
2	electric-blue monochrome photo with overlay of daisies and the word LIFE	Life (1968)
3	sepia photo of band atop dusty hillside under vast sky	Stand! (1969)
4	diagonal rainbow stripes over black silhouettes of horns and guitars	Greatest Hits (1970)
5	distressed U.S. flag in muted reds & blacks, gritty vinyl texture	There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971)
6	clean white background, Sly leaping mid-air in red boots	Fresh (1973)
7	warm pastel picnic scene beside lake, candid family vibe	Small Talk (1974)
8	close-up portrait on fiery orange backdrop, soft grain	High on You (1975)
9	glowing neon marquee sign reading I’M BACK	Heard Ya Missed Me… (1976)
10	train tracks stretching to sunset, funky lens flare	Back on the Right Track (1979)
11	cosmic starry highway sign pointing ONE WAY	Ain’t but the One Way (1982)

---

2 ▪ Category-Cue Dictionary

(quick reference – edit anything that feels off)

Category	Cue snippet inserted into scene
Agents	sleek humanoid android holding clipboard labelled “AI Agent”
Alibaba	orange Taobao bag with Alibaba logo
Amazon	smiling Amazon parcel glowing with Alexa ring
Anthropic	copper Greek column etched “Constitutional AI”
Apple	translucent glass iPhone displaying Siri waveform
AGI	infinite light-bulb icon morphing into brain circuit
Audio	floating holographic headphones emitting sound waves
ARVR	person in futuristic AR visor projecting UI
Autonomous	self-driving Tesla with roof-mounted LiDAR
Benchmarks	scoreboard showing AI benchmark scores
Business	Wall Street ticker tape wrapping a microchip
ByteDance	neon music note shaped like TikTok logo
Chips	gleaming silicon wafer under studio lights
Cohere	inter-linked colored circles forming word vectors
Consumer	shopping cart overflowing with smart gadgets
DeepSeek	submarine periscope scanning digital data ocean
Education	glowing AI tutor hologram above open textbook
Ethics	digital scales of justice balancing code
Figure	humanoid robot Figure-01 extending handshake
Finance	stock-chart hologram overlaying dollar sign
Google	primary-color Google “G” hologram
HuggingFace	smiling emoji hugging a heart icon
Images	camera lens sprouting rainbow pixels
Inflection	glowing voice orb labelled “Pi”
International	world map grid with flowing data lines
Llama	stylized llama wearing VR goggles
Local	small-town skyline lit by Wi-Fi beams
Meta	blue infinity symbol hovering in mid-air
Microsoft	four-color window logo projected in light
Mistral	gust of digital wind swirling code fragments
Mobile	foldable smartphone mid-unfold
Multimodality	collage of text, image & audio icons overlapping
NVIDIA	green spiral-eye GPU logo neon sign
OpenAI	black-and-white OpenAI swirl hologram
OpenSource	padlock opening to reveal colorful code
Perplexity	question-mark search bubble with sparkles
OpEds	newspaper opinion-column masthead
Publishing	stack of AI-authored hard-back books
Qwen	letter-Q circuit ring emitting light
RAG	chain of documents feeding glowing brain
Robots	assembly line of small helper robots
SSI	digital self-sovereign ID card hologram
Science	Erlenmeyer flask emitting DNA-data plume
Video	retro film reel with play-button icon
Twitter	blue bird logo chirping binary stream
Tech	towering motherboard cityscape

(Categories from your upload)

o3’s Images