138: AI+Creativity Update 90-Day Recap
Looking for useful things to read, listen to and view this long weekend?
Ever since I started this newsletter I’ve tried to end each post with a collection of links with reasons to click and read further called “AI+Creativity Update.” Sometimes an entire post serves that same purpose. It’s a part bookmarking and part curatorial exercise—especially with the diversity of AI perspectives available. I’ve found myself returning to various posts to help prep for a class or corporate AI training session. Given the long weekend ahead, I thought I’d revisit the previous 90 days and select ten topics which remain useful, salient and maybe even inspiring. Enjoy!
1️⃣ Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence - Living and Working with AI
It was published almost 90 days ago. This book is, for the moment, the foundational test. Strong recommend. If you’d rather listen, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviews Ethan Mollick for an hour about the book and its contents. My favorite highlight from Mollick’s book is the Boston Consulting Group test (read the research paper here), which is highlighted by the BCG Henderson Institute in an interview with Mollick.
2️⃣ The Dove Real Beauty Prompting Playbook
I wrote about this in mid April. (Here’s the 72-page PDF download.) Around the same time, Google released its own 43-page prompting guide. Point being: There’s a keen opportunity for brands to think about prompting from their unique perspective, in the same way a brand might think about its creative briefing process.
3️⃣ The AI lawsuits that really matter: RIAA vs Udio and Suno.
Given the history of legal problem solving that’s occurred in the music business, I suspect this is the realm in which creator rights—the basis of generative AI training inputs—begin to be addressed with actual consequence. (Cleo Abram’s video above dives into the “inputs vs outputs” issue at the heart of generative AI content.) These suits were preceded by Sony Music Group releasing its “Declaration of AI Training Opt Out.” Also of note: A few weeks earlier, journalist Taylor Lorenz spoke (Apple/YouTube) with New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica. They wind up asking an important question—what if Generation Alpha makes AI music their music of choice? Related notes from much earlier AI+Creativity Update archives:
Sept 6 2023 - U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - “rejected copyright protection for art created using artificial intelligence, denying a request by artist Jason M. Allen for a copyright covering an award-winning image he created with the generative AI system Midjourney, citing…it was not the product of human authorship.”
Dec 27 2023 - The New York Times Sues OpenAI, citing “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” “It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.”
Fall 2023 - Independent artists sue GenAI companies for copyright infringement. “The Authors Guild and 17 well-known authors like Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult filed the lawsuit alleges OpenAI ‘copied plaintiffs’ works wholesale, without permission or consideration and fed the copyrighted materials into large language models.”
4️⃣ Generative AI video is taking off
The 2nd Annual Runway AI Film Festival occurred in early May—the panel discussion embedded above is illuminating. This came right around the same time as Adobe’s “Generative AI in Premiere Pro” preview, which is also worth a look. Even more recently, there was a nuanced conversation around “GenAI in Hollywood” with Doug Shapiro, Robert Fishman and Michael Nathanson. AI technology is not new in Hollywood, they just called it CG (“computer generated”) for decades. And much like the music business, you can bet the film industry and its lawyers will find ways to define standards and contracts.
5️⃣ Tim Hwang at BrXnd AI 2024
I regret missing the second annual BrXnd AI conference, but am grateful they posted Tim Hwang’s 16 minute talk. We’re segueing into weirder territory when it comes to LLMs; in the sense we humans are struggling to place, associate and relate with a technology built entirely on our own behavior. All that training data is us—which helps explain why those “take a deep breath and solve problems and requests step by step” or “help me solve this and I’ll give you a tip” prompt tips actually improve outcomes. This video is definitely worth your time.
6️⃣ “We have not yet achieved that magical robot tutor.”
Educator Michael Feldstein writes, “We can’t just sit by and let AI happen to us and our students. Nor can we let technologists and corporations become the primary drivers of the direction we take.” His long-read on the evolution of AI tutors, Toward a Sector-Wide AI Tutor R&D Program, is filled with smart perspective.
7️⃣ On integrating external data into a frontier model
Shelly Palmer offers some useful ways of thinking about classifying, weighing and integrating external data into one of the major frontier models (ChatGPT, Gemini, et al). The more you engage with AI, especially for strategy, the more this type of information will prove essential.
8️⃣ Most business and creative problems boil down to writing well
Neil Perkin is one of my favorite strategists and newsletter authors. He also hosts fabulous conversations for Google Firestarters, especially this one featuring Ann Handley, where she talks about the necessity and utility of writing well (even in the age of AI).
9️⃣ Meta launched its Llama 3 AI for a billion+ users without any training
This penultimate item speaks to an attitude and its consequences. What happens when over a billion people are given access to generative AI without any instruction or training? Meta launched Llama 3 inside Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram but didn’t bother with so much as a guide or FAQ. Casey Newton wrote an extensive review which asks all the right questions. My friend Greg Swan also wrote about this curious circumstance.
🔟 So much has changed, except human nature
Which means it’s a wonderful time to be professionally curious. Back in late May I had the opportunity to revisit a conversation (47 minutes long - listen here) with Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Farrell alongside Kelly Groehler, CEO of Alice Riot, about the impact of AI on the Arts in general. As Kelly put in during our conversation (and I’m paraphrasing): The gallerists, record labels and publishers are not going to do the artist’s work for them this time. If artists want to succeed amidst an age of AI, they must get involved in it firsthand. No one else will do the hard work for you.