Just two summers ago, I was showing off one of the earlier versions of Dall-e to some family members at a get-together after just discovering it myself. And, while “I can’t believe I can ask a robot to turn my words into actual pictures” was the phrase that I kept saying to everyone as I repeatedly checked my phone for the results of the prompts that the aunts and uncles around the table suggested, the results were always less than stellar. Sure, I could draw up fantastical landscapes or futuristic architecture with just words and a few minutes of patience, but there was always something…wrong. Maybe a beautiful mountain range with slightly disturbed proportions in the distance. Or a man made of broccoli standing on a street corner (perfectly normal) with far too many fingers on his hand (perfectly not normal). Faces, eyes and mouths especially, were disturbing and broken windows into the reality of the algorithm piecing things together behind the scenes. And putting a prompt to useful work was (and still is) a challenge, less in word-smithing and more in trying to explain what was in my head from the perspective of an alien who has no concept of humanity, or how food works.

Things have come a long way since that initial toe-dip into trying to generate an image of Ringo-Starr as a road warrior in the Mad Max universe (a real, early prompt I tried to perfect again and again). AI is now, and has been, a mainstream talking point --- from fearmongering media already reporting the early death of entire job titles to industry trade show speakers and seminars trying to make sense of the impact that things will have on their specific corner of the world.

I don’t have any insight unique to the globulous mass of articles, hot-takes, social media posts, blogs, or local news coverage on the impact of our new Artificial Overlords. But, as a member of a very niche creative field, I just wanted to briefly share some of the perspective that we have on how things are developing and how AI is worming its sticky tendrils into some of the things we do. Hint: We’re (generally) excited.

The Boring and The Obvious

Like any other disruptive technology, Artificial Intelligence (I think we should be coming up with a new term for what we’re currently encountering) has initially created a bevvy of imminent creative, social, and moral questions that is stirring some really interesting conversations about art, media, and education.

• How are schools going to combat students from using chat GPT to do their homework and write their essays?
• Great question! I’m not sure…
• What are the copyright implications of generated art drawn from real-life sources?
• Uh…
• Is the future of digital human communication going to be boiled down into AI bots talking back and forth on our behalf?
• You know...

As a human being getting to see this exciting new technology get unleashed, I have these questions as well. It’s confusing, a little scary, a little amazing. As a member of a creative marketing team, I’m grateful that I am not a teacher or student.

It’s All Just A Tool

World-bending, moral implications aside, the advancements in Artificial Intelligence and integration of it into so much of what we use everyday online has already started to completely refine workflow and process. In the case of OhmCo --- it, in all of its forms, has been a tool to weed out the menial, tiny tasks that swallow so much time. Let me walk through a few of the integrations I use on a daily basis.

1. I recorded the audio for a client meeting with a bot that sits in the call with us. Following the call, I had a full transcribed record to refer back to at any time that was automatically compiled and summarized for me. Crazy.
2. I used ChatGPT to draft a skeleton outline of a letter I needed to write.
3. I generated some unique background elements in Midjourney and used them in a social media post.
4. I recorded a tutorial video for an internal process instead of creating a written guide. After recording, the AI tool I was using automatically transcribed the entire video, wrote its own description for the video based on my audio, removed some of my massive amount of “ummms”, and made timecodes for each new topic. *Chef’s kiss*

As geeks and nerds, we stay on top of the latest technology not just as a best business practice, but because it’s something we legitimately enjoy. And, again, our experience with the latest slew of new intelligent features being added to platforms and products that we’ve used for years, or brand new software altogether, has been extremely exciting from the perspective of its time saving (and in a lot of instances, creative) implications. Spending less time on the initial wind-up of establishing a starting point with an idea and just getting to spend the time writing or designing has been a noted change in how some of us operate.

Anyways…

Seeing these tools and integrations develop further is a net positive from our perspective as a creative agency --- and we’re here for it all. Looking forward to what’s to come!