April 12, 2023
Pssst…Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the episode, we wanted to let you know we have a new facebook group for this podcast! 🤗
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This is a big conversation and it’s a discussion that is happening globally. This AI revolution is going to affect all industries across the board.
We want to quieten down a little bit of the noise and talk directly to our beautiful designers, as you may have lots of unanswered questions or are feeling a bit scared about all this. And that’s okay — it’s perfectly normal to feel like that when things are unknown and uncertain.
So let’s diffuse some of the fear and confusion you might have.
We are far from experts, and what we share here might be obselete by next week. That’s how fast it’s moving! But we are fascinated and have researched and have had quite a big play with the technology.
The idea of Artificial Intelligence is so fascinating (and exciting!) to us. It’s basically this incredible technology (an algorithm) which comes up with new, complex content within a few seconds.
But this new AI technology is next level. All you need to do is ask it a question or give it a simple command and will create written pieces, images, videos, art, 3D models, computer coding etc.
So a really simple example is to ask ChatGPT to write a note to your partner telling them how upset you are they didn’t make dinner for you. 😊
And it will write out a response for you, which you can then finesse if it’s not quite right. You can say, ‘make it kinder’, or ‘make it more friendly’. Every time you tweak the algorithm gets smarter and smarter.
And, the more people use it, the smarter the algorithm will get. Because what it’s doing is it’s crawling the web and referencing billions of pieces of content from around the world that’s already been published, and it’s putting it all together in a new generative form. Where talking conversations, articles, reports, blog posts, social media posts, all of it.
It can actually create stuff that might not have been possible otherwise. However, is this new, never-seen-before stuff actually good? Currently, not really, however it is still early days yet.
The technology that is underpinning all the AI generators you’re currently seeing online was built by a company called OpenAI.
OpenAI was initially a non profit but has had some huge investors join in (Microsoft has reportedly invested a billion into it, Elon Musk was initially involved, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman to name a few). Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI — you’ll soon know his name if you haven’t heard of him already.
ChatGPT is the main offering from OpenAI and it’s pretty incredible. It’s a chatbox software, great for all written communications. And all the other software developers are using OpenAI’s technology to create their offerings. There is niche software popping up every day, such as AI specifically for content writers, AI for podcasters and now AI for designers. Canva and Adobe released their new offerings within days of each other (at the time of this recording, it was only a matter of days that these were released).
We can imagine the teams behind these organisations scrambling behind the scenes, determined to be the first in their field, desperate to be on the cusp of this huge innovation.
We’ve been around the block a few times and over the past few decades we’ve seen new technology weave into our lives and business. The design industry was threatened by the introduction of design software. We’ve experienced the world with and without computers in our homes.
Back in the industrial revolution, the fear was real for many people, as they watched their livelihoods being replaced by machines. When the camera was first invented, the art world thought it undermined artistic integrity.
Disruption happens and as a society, we shift and adapt.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI said in a recent interview:
“…with every great technological revolution in human history, although it has been true that the jobs change a lot, some jobs even go away and I’m sure we’ll see a lot of that here. Human demand for new stuff, human creativity, is limitless and we find new jobs. We find new things to do. They’re hard to imagine from where we sit today I certainly don’t know what they will be. But I think the future will have all sorts of wonderful things we do that you and I can’t even imagine today.”
As optimists, we like to believe this too.
There’s a great video from Wired where 20 people with different jobs try AI and see if their career is going to be affected by it (and one is a graphic designer!). For almost all of the people interviewed, they could see that AI was going to make an impact on their career, however it was still wasn’t picking up the nuances and the emotional connection that humans provide. For the most part they said ‘No, AI cannot have my job just yet.’
Sam Altman also discussed how there is a common arc when people hear about ChatGPT for the first time. This was certainly our experience — our first reaction was: ‘Sigh. Another new techy thing we need to wrap our heads around’. Then we learnt a bit more about it and it felt monumental and not in a good way: ‘Oh crap, are we all going to be replaced? Will we become irrelevant?’. And then we had a play and could see its incredible potential. What AI can output in mere seconds, would have taken us hours and hours (days even) to produce previously.
Overall we believe the graphic design profession is safe, and your business is safe, if you are offering a high-end experience. People buy relationships and connection. They want to be nurtured and looked after by a human. We’ve said it in a recent episode — you are not a commodity. You are not just another avocado in the grocery store.
Bottom line is, just because your clients have a fun new tool they can use, it doesn’t make them an expert. AI is just a tool, like Photoshop or a paintbrush. With practice and experimentation, you’ll get more skilled using this new tool. And if you’re good at what you do, AI is only going to make you better.
We really like Clay Hebert’s take on this:
Remember, as a graphic design business owner, it’s your job to lead and guide your clients through their branding process. AI can’t lead — only you can do that.
Let’s talk about some of the benefits of using AI in a design studio. This is the stuff we love about it (and gets us excited!)
Think of it like your brainstorming buddy! We believe AI will help you streamline your creative process and hopefully save you a ton of time.
Of course only a human mind can inject the level of sophistication that a design solution needs, and for us designers, it’s based on understanding the subtle nuances of the brief and the client. And a lot of the gold we create as designers is based in intuition too.
Here are some examples of what you could ask AI to help with brainstorming:
– What are symbols of integrity? (one of our beautiful Academy students, Paul, shared this one in our community).
– What are images associated with customer service in the beauty industry?
– Do a word association for the words ‘Alfresco Cafe’
– Create a fluffy pink letter K
– Create 5 icon variations from this sketch
Here’s some visual ai generators to try:
Adobe Firefly
Canva (Canva is calling their offering ‘Magic Design’)
DALL-E
For a good article that has a round-up of the main AI art generators, click here
Note that these apps are generally in beta and they are being finessed all the time. For example, on Adobe Firefly there are a lot of ‘coming soon’ and ‘in exploration’ notes.
One thing that we didn’t realise ALL those years ago when we first started our design careers is how much we would be required to write! It’s a skill we’ve definitely honed in on over the years. But oh my how much fun we would have had using ChatGPT for the past 2 decades.
We used Chat GPT to map out our last few podcasts (including this one). It’s such a great starting point for writer’s block – we all know the overwhelm of staring at a blank page!
If you have the starting point for an idea, you can ask AI to expand upon it. If you’ve got a piece of writing that’s too complicated, you could ask the app to refine it.
Here are just some of the things you can use it for:
– Blog posts
– Emails
– Social media posts
– Design proposals (mapping out goals and objectives)
– Branding audits/reports
– Design briefs
– Design rationales
– Onboarding materials (Welcome Guides etc)
Here are some writing apps to try:
– ChatGPT (the OG)
– Jounce
– Jasper
We’re always banging on about the importance for graphic designers to create blog posts and send out emails regularly. Hopefully this will make it easier for you!
Using AI can help minimise decision-making fatigue by helping you to break down a complex subject into more manageable bite-sized chunks. For example, you could use it to plan out a business development day or map out a marketing plan.
So add AI to your toolkit, have a play, and learn how to use the tool to is best abilities. Just know that no-one is an expert at using this technology yet. You’re not lagging behind.
As we mentioned at the beginning, this is such a fast moving technology that no doubt this won’t be the last time we talk about AI. We might even have a chuckle about this episode in the future because of how outdated this info may sound.
We’d be so fascinated to hear your thoughts around AI. Do you think it’s a good thing? Are you worried about it? Let us know! Send us a DM over on Instagram and let’s chat.
Stay tuned for part 2 of our AI discussion, releasing next week.
For full transcript click here
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