114: Generative AI is merely a tool
[During - Part 1] You need an idea, you need a point of view, and it helps if you've got experience with language
All of us were invited to the generative AI starting line 16 months ago; some have been curiously sprinting forward since. Yesterday our AI for Artists and Entrepreneurs class at MCAD met two artists who are exploring, testing, and revealing fresh ways to express their view of the world. Both of them landed on a central theme:
Generative AI is merely one of many tools to help artists express their ideas. But the art begins inside, and it requires a point of view.
Thank you, Kelly Boesch
“I’ve never felt more creative.”
I first encountered Kelly’s work on Instagram. Her goal is to ship something new every day, which requires her to postulate new concepts, to ask “what if?” then stretch the boundaries of the available tooling. Kelly uses a mixture of ChatGPT for prompting exploration, thematic development, and concept scripting; Midjourney and DALLE (2 and 3) for image generation, and Runway for motion. “I’m only limited by my ideas,” she explains. When an idea proves challenging to express, she might use a tool like DALLE to reveal a more effective approach to prompting which she’ll employ in Midjourney. Her point is to keep pushing herself, and the tools, to discover fresh ways to get what’s in her head out into the world.
Thank you, Mark Smith
“You still need good eyes, some sense of heart.”
Mark Smith grew up among print makers and artists. He spent 30 years innovating special projects at Nike. He recalls working with early stage generative design back in 2014. Using these tools to create is as natural for Mark as using clay, or paint, or pencil—which he still uses daily.
“Everything starts with drawing,” Mark told us. His creative process begins in his sketchbook. If he can draw it, he’ll have a much better chance of figuring out the language needed to prompt generative AI. And a critical part of Mark’s process is language—understanding the words which imply, infer and connote specific outcomes from an LLM. “AI is a synthesizer,” he says. “But you [the artist] still have to have the song in mind.”
Mark’s Instagram account documents a diversity of generative exploration from product design to illustration to painting—his Normark Smithwell acrylics are a fascinating journey. They begin in the sketchbook, transition to generative AI for ideation and Photoshop for assembly, get printed, then Mark paints over the printing to add the expression only a brush can deliver. Last step: Ask ChatGPT to evaluate the painted image as if it were a critic writing for Art in America. A show of the nine Normark Smithwell paintings is coming soon.
AI+Creativity Update
🎙️ The Brief Bros, Henry and Howard, have a fabulous podcast on the entire world of creative briefing. But in episode 158 they take a 24-minute breather to focus on AI. It’s worth a listen.
💡 The Cannes Lions organization is launching its Creative MBA program. Seems a wise venture, if in fact you’ll learn, “how to set the conditions for creative success and nurture a culture of creativity in your team.” 10 weeks. Just under $3k. Seems reasonable. We need more of this in the marketing world.
🥊 Film production company Tool North America has authored a “making of” microsite for their recent Under Armor spot “Forever Is Made Now.” The ad incorporates “over 5,256 AI images and thousands of AI video clips (curated to 52 AI shots in the video).” This approach will become very normal very soon (where it makes sense, conceptually).
🙄 “Do as I say, not as I do.” Or something like it from brands attempting to limit risk by telling their ad agencies to not use AI, via AdAge. Sigh.
🚫 I really admire the musician Jason Lindner. Got to see him play with Mark Guiliana here in Minneapolis last year. He was part of that bonzo Nate Smith improv with Kokayi recently. A very talented pianist and composer. Now the bad news: Bad people are using AI to create and release music as “Jason Linder.” It’s dumb. It sucks. Sadly inevitable. Lindner’s joined a growing list of musicians advocating through groups like the Artist Rights Alliance.
🪦 RIP Daniel Kahneman. Thinking Fast and Slow, his seminal work, is the infrastructure of so much modern persuasion, marketing and conceptual thinking. Here he is speaking at Google. Obits: New York Times, Washington Post, and perhaps most importantly—his autobiography for winning the Nobel Prize in 2002.