Thursday AI Throw-Down
As the generative AI arms race escalates to a fever pitch.
Essential Reading About UX and AI From Jakob Nielsen
I’ve been speculating for the last six months that the AI gold rush was going to result in an increase in the amount of UX jobs, even as jobs would disappear from other areas. I read about a dozen different startups every week and the hundreds of millions of dollars being invested by venture capital. I’ve lived through several tech booms, certainly there must be a need for UX designers to make the endless screens and prototypes and revisions to get these new digital products launched? And yet, I know that my recent grads are struggling to find work. Well Jakob Nilsen, the OG Godfather of UX Design, says that UX hiring is low right now because it’s a backlash to the overspending days of the pandemic when everyone over hired just in case (I’m looking at you, Peleton). The good news is that in ‘24 and ‘25 the pendulum is going to swing the other way and there is going to be ahuge demand for UX designers that understand AI. Read his full account here
Why it Matters: It’s a great time to be a UX Designer…or it will be soon.
Quickies
The Pycoach shows us how to make an animated avatar with Midjourney, Chat GPT, Eleven Labs, and D-ID.
Nettrice Gaskins gives us a refresher course in Color Theory and how to use those named colors in Midjourney.
Dr. Brandeis Marshall offers some ethical guidance on choosing AI tools as well as four newsletters to learn more about AI ethics
Sabrina Ortiz, of The Verge, states that Generative AI can level the playing field for underserved students.
YouTuber of the Week: Curious Refuge
I’ve been watching their tutorials for a few weeks and I didn’t even know they were the talent behind those Wes Anderson ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ parodies that went viral earlier this year. I’ve been getting a lot of value out of their channel and they also offer a course if you want to upgrade your AI filmmaking skills.
Why it Matters: It’s a really exciting time to be an AI filmmaker
Bad News For Writers From Writer
Even though I’m optimistic about the opportunities for UX designers, I’m equally pessimistic for the career trajectories of copywriters. If I’m writing a longer analysis like this, it usually means I’m summarizing half a dozen articles and everyone this week was talking about the startup WRITER raising over 125 million dollars in venture funding to…well, this part is just my opinion because they won’t actually say it, let companies fire writers.
Writer’s platform is designed to help businesses use large language models to generate writing and content that can be used across different departments, such as operations, product, sales, human resources, marketing and more.
You can go ‘crunch’ the numbers yourself Crunch Base or Tech Crunch
Why it Matters: It’s a terrible time to be a copywriter
Dalle-3 Is Coming And It’s Going To Be Huge
A few weeks ago I wrote that the dozens of different AI Image tools would see a lot of flame-outs in the coming year and consolidate down to three, perhaps Adobe, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. I discounted Dalle-2 as an also-ran because it’s image quality was so inferior. Today there was a new announcement that it’s back with a vengeance, including Midjourney image quality, ChatGPT integration, the ability to produce text, as well as handle much more complex multi-prompt subject matter. Launching later this fall. Fasten your seatbelts.
DALL·E 3 is built natively on ChatGPT, which lets you use ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner and refiner of your prompts. Just ask ChatGPT what you want to see in anything from a simple sentence to a detailed paragraph.
DALL·E 3 is designed to decline requests that ask for an image in the style of a living artist. Creators can now also opt their images out from training of our future image generation models.
Why it Matters: The quality of AI image generators is escalating rapidly
Google Bard is Getting Better
Google Bard got a big upgrade in this week as it can now access all your Google information with something they call ‘extensions’.
Bard can find and show you relevant information from the Google tools you use every day — like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels — even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services.
If you were one of my students over the last few years, you’ll remember a first yearn assignment where I asked, “Why can’t an AI scan all my info and make a trip itinerary for me?” If you skip to 1:10 in this video you’ll see a guy named “Erik” planning a Grand Canyon Rim to Rim trip…one of my bucket list items. Coincidence? I think not.
Why it Matters: Google, and all the major players, are rapidly improving their products
That’s it for this week. I hope this newsletter enriched your week a little bit. As always, if you want me to cover something in depth, just send me a message.
Also, I’ve turned on payments because a few thoughtful subscribers have communicated that they’re getting some value out of this newsletter. Don’t worry, I’ll still be bringing you the same awesome content every week, but I’ll add a PRO level in the coming months.