This morning I watched a video about artificial intelligence and the bleak future that is in store for us once human creativity is replaced. I laughed to myself and decided I had to check it out. What happened was not at all what I expected.
My experience up until today with AI has been the chat bots that the banks use when you have a problem. I have yet to have one solve an actual problem for me. Typically we go back and forth in circular conversations as they suggest links in the knowledge base that have nothing to do with the problem I am experiencing and I keep trying to explain the problem statement. A few years back, when Microsoft release their AI on twitter it had to be shut down because it started spouting offensive tweets that violated the terms of use. So, let's just say that my expectations were low and I was completely unprepared for what I was about to experience.
If you don't know, you can sign up at openai.com and test out some of the AI that Elon and his crew have been building. I signed in to one called DALL-E 2 which is an AI system that will create original works of art based on various requests that you plug in.
I love the mountains, craft beer and vintage national park signs so I entered the following into the description field: "bigfoot in hiking boots, wearing dark sunglasses and drinking a beer in the style of a vintage postcard".
Here was the result:
I was stunned. The above original artwork was generated in less than a minute. This is a cool image and actually something that I wouldn't mind putting on a tee shirt or hanging on a wall.
Once the image was created, the AI system allows you to edit it. By using an eraser tool and the extension functionality, I was able to extend bigfoots landscape and add another mountain and treeline. Total time, about 10 seconds once I figured out what the tool options were:
Why not add a lake:
In the third image, bigfoots boot disappears. That wasn't DALL-E 2's fault, that was mine. I was messing around with the eraser tool and didn't replace the boot.
I'm still kind of mentally processing this and will probably post on this in the future. I started this experiment by watching a video about how AI is going to change the world over the next decade. This particular video focused on the cultural changes, and it painted a pretty bleak picture. And I wasn't buying it.
But after spending a half hour taking a peek at what is coming our way, I cant help but wonder what happens when information... even creative expression... becomes a commodity. I'm not ready to go Mad Max yet, but I will say that the next ten years will be nothing like the last.
