131: Seeing in weird but useful new ways
A second final AI project using Firefly, Midjourney and data + lots of AI+Creativity links
đ§ Written to Re-TROS live on KEXP. Thanks, Rick! And then Louis Cole Sucks (live) with John Scofield and Mono Neon. Thanks, Jake!
We had a really awesome book club discussion last week about Ethan Mollickâs Co-Intelligence. Thanks to all the academics and marketers trying to make sense of culture and tech disruption by reading books! Weâre going to regroup again in a few weeks. Stay tuned.
đ€đȘ AI for Artists and Entrepreneurs: Steve Bonoff
Last semesterâs class included four Continuing Education students mixed in with the undergrads. I love this blend of ages and perspectives in a classroom. One of our CE students, Steve Bonoff (LinkedIn), came into final projects with a compelling business case:
âHow do I help interior designers see in a way theyâve never seen before?â
In the realm of custom furniture designâcould generative AI help expand and expedite creative decision for a new fabrication substrate while simultaneously reducing the cost of personalized rendering? Questions like these sit at the heart of many âAI + Creativityâ scenarios. We want to use AI to increase the volume of a specific creative activity, and/or unlock the narrow application of a specific creative activity.
In Steveâs presentation he spoke about Adobe Fireflyâs âStructureâ setting and its corollary within Midjourney as the secret sauce to his solution. I give Steve a lot of credit for researching visual prompting techniques on YouTube, discovering someone who seemed to have figured it outâand then hiring that person to help hone a solution. As Steve discovered, the current state of AI isnât merely turnkeyâin his use case, a custom database and structural reference images became necessary to fuel his generative approach. Hereâs Steveâs presentation:
And here are the two key slides from Steveâs talk.
Congrats, Steve, on your work! Interwoven Studio launches June 17.
AI+Creativity Update
đđœ I regret missing the second annual BrXnd AI conference, but am grateful they posted Tim Hwangâs 16 minute talk. Weâre 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 usâwhich helps explain why those âtake a deep breath and solve problems and requests step by stepâ or âhelp me solve this and Iâll give you a tipâ prompt tips actually improve outcomes. This video is definitely worth your time.
đ€đ ElevenLabs released âtext to any sound imaginable.â Pretty useful if you need sound effects. Expect something like this to become normalized inside Descript, Adobe or Appleâs production platforms.
đ€đ¶ Sunoâs v3.5 is now available to everyone and includes âtext to 4-minute songâ generation. I have to admit both surprise and concern with this tool. If my creative need includes speed and low-creative fidelity (i.e. âgood enough to make the point is good enoughâ) then this approach to music creation works pretty well. The question remains: Will enough people need and want this approach to music creation to sustain the business model?
đ€đ€ Berggruen Instituteâs Noema publication hosted this interview (video version) with Former Google CEO Eric Schmidtâuseful for outlining three fast-evolving AI capabilities: 1) an infinite context windows, 2) chain-of-thought reasoning in agents, 3) text-to-action (specifically within coding). Consider take his sense of urgency (and China-fearing) with a grain of salt.
đ€ Prompt engineering has always been kludgey at best, and tricky for most. Now we have Anthropicâs new Prompt Generator (which utilizes their Claude LLM). Anthropicâs approach suggests the era of âAI will write your prompt for youâ might be at handâbut donât get too excited just yet. Hereâs âBrandNatâ from TikTok describing the outcome. And hereâs my quick demo, focused on brand strategy:
After clicking âGenerate Promptâ I got kicked over to the console with Claudeâs more robust and specific prompt expanding on my input. If you didnât know an LLM could function this way or didnât know how to instruct a chatbot for an elaborate request, this âprompt refinementâ is both illuminating and useful. We went from my ~55 word instruction to this lengthy prompt.
Then I clicked âRunâ (upper right) to see how Claude would respond to Claudeâs prompt of myâŠprompt đ€·đ»ââïž.
Which triggered a modal window requesting variables, i.e. what do I want for {emphasis}? Clearly, risk. And Claude asked me to name {Companies} but I want the LLM to do that for me, so letâs see how âsearch the web for retail-sales leading shoe, mattress and knife retailersâ works outâŠ
Okay, not great.
The markdown didnât apply, and there appears to be an output limit.
But I can see how a console like this points to a more useful future in which you or I having to comprehend arcane prompting techniques will disappear. Hasnât make the technology invisible always been the point, anyway?
đ Just getting up to speed on Adobeâs apparently weird new ToS which suggests they want the right to scan all of your data. Which quite a few on social media quickly inferred to mean even work under NDA. Notice the hard line: Agree, or Donât Use the Product.
Hereâs one TikTok on it. I currently license inside MCADâs agreement, and have not seen the new terms popup in any of my Adobe apps. I got the screen grab above from a lengthy VentureBeat article including Adobeâs response đđŸ If youâre going to read anything, read that story. Long story short: Legal terms are storytelling. They can build or destroy brand equity. In the race to âclarify,â as Adobe claims, its position on cloud content, AI, and training data theyâve set themselves up for interpretation that harms their brand. Here are Adobeâs ToS.