Erik Is Awful
Don’t worry, I’m fine. You might have heard that Netflix has a new season of ‘Black Mirror’ and the first episode is called ‘Joan Is Awful’. There is a companion promo site where you can upload a photo of yourself and allow Netflix to use your personal likeness. If you’ve seen the episode, you’ll know why it’s so important to read the fine print.
AI Powered Consulting Strategies
If you run workshops or design sprints for a living, you should probably check out how the Board of Innovation does it with their AI Powered Innovation Sprint. It’s a five day sprint, but with a lot of new generative tools and the promise that you’ll receive much better insights. I’ve been following their work for a year now and they have a ton of free resources that I’ve shared with my students, so I feel this is a trend worth following
Google and Omnicom to Team Up with Generative AI Platform
Instead of text-to-image it’s now text-to-finished-ad. Omnicom is planning to train the machines using data from brands’ marketing copy archives to develop custom AI models. If you work in advertising, you should really read this if want to keep of the trend.
Our partnership with Omnicom deepens this commitment as it allows marketers to create studio-grade images with mask-free editing for any business need, in a platform where they are already familiar, with only a few typing prompts.
The Dark Underbelly of The AI Factory
Once again it seems like thing’s haven’t improved since Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle”. If you’re concerned about the ethics of Ai, you should really read this article from the Verge about the international teams of low-paid workers who spend tedious hours cataloging and labeling data for shiny new AI tools. Warning: Depressing.
Consequently, there are no granular estimates of the number of people who work in annotation, but it is a lot, and it is growing. A recent Google Research paper gave an order-of-magnitude figure of “millions” with the potential to become “billions.”
Midjourney 5.2 is Here…And it’s Huge
On Thursday, with no advance warning, Midjourney launched version 5.2 (and it’s now the default in your settings) and it’s amazing. Most importanly, it now has a Zoom feature which is there answer to out painting. While not as flexible as Photshop’s generative fill or Stable Diffusion, it’s a huge leap forward. Read about it here. Or watch the Video from Christian Heidorn, below.
Midjourney Tutorial Roundup
If you’re already an advanced Midjourney user, you can just click on the links. You’ve probably noticed that most of these are medium links and you might be hitting a paywall by now. My advice? Pay for a Medium membership. I spend at least an hour a day on it and I think it’s a fantastic value.
How To Produce Similar Images in Midjourney
How to Use Image Weights in Midjourney
So You Want to Be a Prompt Engineer?
Surely you’ve seen the articles that promise over $300k a year and you’re thinking “Why not me?” . What exactly does a prompt engineer do and how do I get those skills? This is the best article I’ve read so far.
Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You
Just in case you’re concerned that the consolidation of power at the top of the tech economy pyramid might warrant extra scrutiny, you should probably read that Meredith Whittaker thinks it’s being ‘deployed as surveillance’.
I would say maybe some of the people in this audience are the users of AI, but the majority of the population is the subject of AI . . .This is not a matter of individual choice. Most of the ways that AI interpolates our life makes determinations that shape our access to resources to opportunity are made behind the scenes in ways we probably don’t even know
That’s it for this week, thanks for reading. If you’re getting value out of this newsletter, please consider subscribing or sending it to a friend.
Zoom Out & the Shorten command are huge updates!