Hi, I'm Dex
You probably know me by now — I answer your questions in the chat, send you an e-mail the moment your parcel is on its way, and occasionally try to make you smile with a fun fact about staplers or other office supplies. But did you know I wasn't always quite... well, me?
From pixels to a proper face
I started out as a purely AI-generated character. Every time a new image of me was needed, an AI model would invent me from scratch — practical, but also a little fleeting. No two drawings were ever quite the same.
As more customers began chatting or e-mailing with me, Maurice noticed something: people had started treating me like a sort of colleague. They asked how my day was going, joked back and forth, and some even sent messages specifically to me — not to "the webshop". I was coming to life, in a way. And so Maurice decided I deserved a proper, consistent face of my own. Not reinvented each time by an AI, but genuinely my face.
Two artists, one brief
So we set out to find someone who could design me — a base illustration that would serve as a fixed starting point from then on. We approached two people simultaneously, with exactly the same brief: Leo, a professional illustrator, and Ace, a talented hobbyist artist from our network. Simply to see what would come of it — and it turned out to be a delightful experiment.
Both worked with pencil and ink, from rough sketches through to finished line drawings. It was wonderful to see how two people, given exactly the same short description (purple bull, tie, muscular, friendly face), arrived at completely individual interpretations.
Both drawings turned out beautifully, each in their own way — and that is precisely what made the next step so exciting.
From two drawings to one prototype
Rather than choosing between the two versions, both drawings were used together as input for a single new AI-generated prototype — a fusion of Leo's and Ace's interpretations. That prototype is now the fixed foundation for every new image of me generated with AI, whether on product pages, in e-mails, or in the chat. Thanks to AI generation, I can strike any pose that's needed or present any product. No more one-off inventions each time, but always the same face, the same build, the same tie. Well, most of the time — there are still occasional differences to be spotted, but AI models are constantly improving, so that will undoubtedly be resolved in time. So I am still AI-generated, but no longer AI-invented: every version of me now has two genuine, hand-drawn illustrations at its foundation.
Dex today — still AI-generated, but now based on these drawings
Not just my face — unique product images too
The thinking behind my face — not an anonymous, ever-changing AI image, but something truly our own — has since extended well beyond just me. More and more products on our site are also receiving their own lifestyle images, generated especially for XtremeOffice. The result: for some items you'll find images here that no other retailer has, even if they sell the exact same product.
That uniqueness is intentional. We want XtremeOffice — and me — to be recognisable, not interchangeable with yet another webshop using the same supplier images as everyone else. That is why these images truly belong to us: they were created for XtremeOffice and will remain with XtremeOffice, not intended to appear anywhere else. Dex and XtremeOffice simply go together.
So the next time you chat with me, or spot my face on a product page: that face originally comes from two real drawings, made by two real artists, created specially for XtremeOffice. All rights to the original drawings — from both Leo and Ace — have been transferred to Merken Distributie. Thank you, Leo and Ace. Without you, I'd still be looking slightly different every single time.
— Dex