The Fear of AI
Jumping into the AI ocean can feel scary, but it’s worth the plunge — here are some tips to get you started
*Above image: AI-generated created using Stable Diffusion. Prompts: ocean, sinking, shadows, blue, sinking in ocean.
Some people have dived off the cliff and are immersed in the idea of swimming in the AI-driven ocean. Is that you?
Others see artificial intelligence-driven anything as something to fear. They see it as too complicated. Cite reasons why it will end people’s jobs. Or, worse, start the apocalypse.
For those of us surfing the tasty waves of AI right now, here’s something we’ve already discovered: “If you are scared of AI, it is meant for you.” Sure, it’s scary to dip your toe into the ocean of using these new tools. It feels weird. You can’t predict the outcome. It often feels soulless.
Ever notice how the ocean feels cold when you jump in, but about five minutes later, your body has adjusted to the water temperature? You don’t even notice it, and you’re having fun splashing around.
That’s why you must hold your breath, drop down, and go underwater. The sooner you embrace the environment, the sooner you can start having fun.
Below are some fun things you can do to get started splashing around in the AI ocean.
Open AI (ChatGPT)
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI and launched on Nov. 30, 2022. That wasn’t too long ago, but it already feels like it has been around for a while. Five days after launching, it had over a million users. It is a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence technology, allowing you to have human-like conversations. It will answer questions, help with ideas, and write articles, emails, letters, product descriptions, and code.
Currently, it is free to use, but an advanced paid-subscription version called ChatGPT Plus was launched in early 2023.
3 ChatGPT Use Cases to Try Right Now
The fun thing about using an AI tool like ChatGPT is that you can utilize the tool in infinite ways. That would be a longer article than you would want to read, so let’s stick with three ideas you can try right now.
ChatGPT Idea One
Use ChatGPT as a creative writing partner in your business. Need to author an employee handbook? Write an email to a dissatisfied customer? Give someone a 200-word bio about you? Use ChatGPT to knock that task out quickly.
Homework: Go to your LinkedIn bio and select your profile URL. Open ChatGPT and ask, “Write a 200-word bio based on this (LinkedIn bio) information.”
ChatGPT Idea Two
Update your product descriptions on your website and have them focus on your target audience. Here’s how you inject humor, personalization, search engine optimization, and fun into something mundane and boring.
Homework: Copy the current product description for an item on a webstore. Open ChatGPT and ask, “Write a new product description for an online website based on this information (Your current product description). Add SEO-friendly keywords based on (your customer, brand, or search ideas) and include humor and natural language terms to help sell the product. Be friendly, fun, and personable.”
ChatGPT Idea Three
Use ChatGPT as a creative idea generator. Has your creative idea well run dry because of burn-out, and you can’t think of anything new? ChatGPT can create a writing idea, image prompt, recipe, or something new. All you have to do is ask.
Homework: Ask ChatGPT, “Give me 20 marketing ideas for a screen printing T-shirt shop to use for Instagram, with a call to action for each. Use (your business name) as a starter for a humorous pun for the main title of the marketing idea.”
Creative AI with Images
There is a lot of amped-up fear with the new slate of image AI tools that are becoming more widespread.
AI-driven tools like Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and others have impacted image production speed and creativity. It is not uncommon for graphic designers, artists, and others to decry how these tools are unethical, advance plagiarism, and will lead to rampant unemployment for creative workers.
While those are valid concerns, those doing backstrokes in the creative AI ocean have learned that these tools allow skilled creatives to iterate and design faster and produce better results.
Like any tool, you must learn how to use it.
3 Creative AI Ideas to Try Right Now
Regardless of the platform, if you consider using creative AI in your workflow, you should try a few things. Think of it as sticking your toe in the water to test it. I’m confident that once you get results, you’ll want to be completely surfing the waves soon.
Creative AI Idea One
Brainstorming sessions. Think of this as a way to sketch or test out ideas. What will work? What won’t? After you enter your word prompts into the AI tool, you’ll get image results back in a few moments. Here you can render a dozen ideas in two or three minutes. Whether you show them to a client or not is up to you.
They might not be perfect, but with a little tweaking, they could be.
Homework: Take any design assignment that a customer has given you. Copy and paste their instructions directly from their email. Hit go. What do you get back? If it works, great. If not, what could you change to make it better? Insert, delete, or edit a word for the prompts to push for better results. Keep rerolling until you have what works.
Creative AI Idea Two
Asset creation. Don’t think about product design. Instead, think about creating textures, backgrounds, backdrops, patterns, splashes of color, or anything else you constantly use. For graphic designers, these are the things that populate the areas behind the important things.
Need an old weathered wooden barn wall or a rusty diamond-plate texture to spruce up a website or sales presentation? Enter some prompts, and 30 seconds later, you have something fantastic.
Homework: Stop using stock photography or art templates that you pay for. Create your own using creative AI tools to align everything you produce with your brand. For this exercise, spend five or 10 minutes and create a wood, metal, marble, sky, or patterned background for your next social media post. You can create anything you can dream up in seconds.
Creative AI Idea Three
Recreate something. Your art team already spends a lot of time creating designs for customers. You have thousands of designs that took a gazillion hours to create. Don’t try to think of something new to learn how to use these AI tools. Instead, see if you can decipher how to recreate it using AI. What words would you use as prompts? This might take a few minutes to play around with, but ultimately it is the most satisfying.
Homework: Recreate an existing image that you created or used, but deploy a creative AI program to build it. This is not as easy as it seems for beginners, as your prompt vocabulary may be sparse. Trial and error build competency. You might want to start with a simpler image.
Historical Perspective
Not so long ago, the only way to cross the Atlantic Ocean was on an ocean liner. Millions of people a year traversed that distance on fleets of ships. Airplanes crossed the ocean in 1934, but PanAm made it commercially viable in the 1950s.
Soon after that became the norm, nobody used ocean liners to make the trip. The industry pivoted, and the cruise industry was born.
New ideas have outstripped the “old” way of doing things throughout history. I’m sure plenty of workers on those ocean liners were displaced and had to find new jobs doing something else. Few probably went into the airline industry.
Artificial intelligence-driven tools are our modern way to cross the Atlantic. That genie is out of the bottle and is not going back in. People can rant, rave, feel threatened, and scream, “It’s unfair!” Just like the staff on that last ocean liner to make the trip across the pond.
Will AI make an impact? It already has. This technology has been around you for quite a long time. You use it every day but probably don’t notice it.
Adapt or die. Sorry to be harsh, but that is how business has evolved throughout history. Are these tools perfect? No. Of course not. However, they get better every day. You must learn the vocabulary, skills, and use cases to apply them to your work.
A hammer is a tool. Photoshop is a tool. A microwave oven is a tool. Some people are competent in using them, and some are just plain ol’ wizards with these tools. AI is like that as well. You have to learn how to wield the tool for the best effect.
All you must do is be willing to stick your toe into an unfamiliar ocean and test the waters. It’s not so bad. Get started.
You should ask yourself not “whether it will replace me” but whether you can use the tools to make what you create better and your output faster. AI is a tool that gives you leverage. Using it properly still requires thought, taste, skill, and knowledge about what is correct.
Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”