Valentine’s Day cards are a weird tradition when you think about it. We pay five bucks for someone else’s generic sentiments printed on cardstock, sign our name, and call it romance. So I figured, why not skip the Hallmark industrial complex and see if artificial intelligence could help me make something actually personal?
Spoiler: AI and I nearly broke up over this project.
I tested Photoroom, a platform that promises personalized Valentine’s Day cards in seconds using its proprietary AI model. The company launched in 2020 and offers a free plan alongside premium tiers at $90 annually. To access the AI Tools function, I needed the free one-week trial of their Pro version.
The Promise vs Reality
The concept seemed straightforward enough. If this worked, I could theoretically use it for birthday cards, thank-yous, holiday greetings, and more. The kind of technology that saves you a Target run at 9 PM on February 13th.
Photoroom offers pre-generated prompts like “you make my heart smile” and “you complete me.” Standard fare, nothing groundbreaking. I picked one just to test the design capabilities, fully expecting something basic but functional.
What I got instead looked like a high school student’s first attempt at graphic design. Butterflies everywhere. Birds. Then came the cats, rabbits, penguins, and inexplicably, dragons. Nothing says romance like a fire-breathing reptile, apparently.
When AI Doesn’t Listen
The real fun started when I tried customizing. My card category was set to “Naïve Cuteness,” which honestly explains everything. I attempted to pick versions with the least obvious AI-ness and started tweaking.
Simple request: replace the heart with an infinity symbol without moving the text. The AI either added the symbol and scrambled everything or just deleted the heart entirely. Pick a struggle, Photoroom.
After multiple regenerations, I managed to get something close. But then I asked for a bigger font. The AI decided that was the perfect time to completely ignore my existence. It generated the exact same image repeatedly, then started adding random words that made zero sense.
At this point I was ready to just buy the damn Hallmark card.
Starting Over (Because Why Not Torture Myself)
I wanted to at least make my wife laugh, so I scrapped everything and started fresh. This “custom card” wasn’t any more personal than what I could whip up in Canva in five minutes.
New prompt: “Create an image of two women, one with curly brown hair and the other with blonde hair, holding their baby while walking the streets of New York City.”
Not bad, actually. I requested a text change and miraculously, the AI listened for once. The final result was better than a generic store-bought card, but getting there felt like negotiating with a stubborn toddler who kept misunderstanding basic instructions.
The Verdict Nobody Asked For
Was it more personal than Hallmark? Technically yes. Was it worth the headache? That’s debatable. The process took way longer than the “seconds” promised, and I spent most of that time fighting with artificial intelligence that seemed determined to misinterpret every request.
My wife wrote me a poem when we first started dating. She took one line from each of my favorite songs and wove them into something that made me cry. Real thought, real effort, real love.
No amount of AI sophistication can compete with someone who actually knows you, who remembers what matters to you, who puts in the time because you’re worth it. Maybe some things should stay analog, even if it means braving the Valentine’s Day card aisle at the last minute like everyone else.
