Getting Creative With AI

USING AI - A CONFESSION OF SORTS

I'm still not sure why everyone is afraid of AI? Instead of working with it, finding new ways to use it, new ways to make our life easier - they ignore, put their head in the sand, and murmur phrases like "there goes my job".

When AI turns evil

Just a small observation, but haven't computers been taking over our jobs for years? They've automated things and do all the crappy jobs that seem mind numbing. Imagine hand calculating a big old accounting spreadsheet? Hell, handwriting all your correspondence and sending it by snail-mail? It's impossible to imagine in today's world. 

Now I'm not being an idiot here, I can imagine those extreme dystopian scenarios; AI becoming too smart for our own good and destroying the world as we know it. But, what are the odds of that happening? Probably slim to none. How about we focus on the good things here. How about we get AI to work for us, make us more productive, take away more of those mindless jobs that nobody likes to do? 

I know for me, I've been using AI to help me do things I would never have been able to accomplish on my own. I use it to save time and brainpower, which I then apply to more creative and satisfying tasks. Here comes a sales plug: if you don't know, I create notebooks, spreadsheets, and other digital products that I sell on Etsy (see Magnetic North Press). Coming up with product descriptions and SEO keywords is time consuming and really taxes my brain power. But, with a prompt into the old AI chatbot I'm given a head start. The wording may not be perfect, it is typically very generic and repetitive, but the best part is that it is started. Like a first draft. Then I go in there and add the finishing touches. Instead of an hour or two brain draining paragraphs, I can be finished in ten minutes.

Same process for SEO keywords. AI is great at brainstorming. I can get a list of ten, twenty, a thousand (if I want) ideas to use for keywords. Again, they are not perfect, but they are a wonderful starting point. They are the motivation to keep going. Ten minutes later I have a great list of keywords I'm inputting into the sales description. I could have come up with many of the same keywords, but it would have taken time and energy. It's something I do not really enjoy doing either. So, I save time and frustration this way and probably come up with a better selection of keywords than I would have on my own. 

Using AI to respond to emails - funny meme

Even after months of using AI to spit out pictures, product descriptions, or responses to emails, I'm still shocked at what it can do. 

The other day I asked it to come up with a fake interview with a robot that doesn't like new technology. Then I used that conversation as the background to a picture I was working on. I kind of felt bad when I ended up covering most of the text with pictures and other stuff (it was only a part of the background), because the writing was actually pretty funny.

Using AI generated text in a creative work

There are so many things you can use AI for. It's not going to replace the creative part of life, but only add to it. It's another tool that can be used to speed things along, to give you a leg up on things you might not be good at or things you hate to do. It could turn into some devil machine that takes over humanity, but the odds are almost non-existent. So go take some control back and use it like you'd use a shovel instead of your bare hands.

AI - Ain't nobody got time for dat.

Using AI to Write

 Using AI to Write A Blog Post

AI generated image of our future

There has been so much hype about CHAT GPT and other AI lately; that a future of AI means an end to writing! And end to creativity! And end to what makes us human!

Is it true?

I've taken on the task of testing out a few AI systems. Nothing too in depth. You know, kicking the wheels, lifting the hood, just to get an idea of how good they really are at writing.

Perplexity AI

I've fiddled around with this AI, attempting different prompts and questions. Asking it to write me a blog post, asking it to write me a scene in a story, asking it to write me a cold call email for a big charity donation.

I was surprised at how well Perplexity wrote the email. It sounded professional, well thought out, persuasive, and ready to copy and paste.

The other requests - make up a scene in a story, and write me a blog post - were utter crap.

The request for a blog post gave me a few bullet point ideas and a very weak introductory blurb. I do have to say the ideas were decent, and Perplexity does give you links to the sites it used for research. So, I can't complain too much. It gave me a solid foundation for a blog post, but I would have to do a bit of research to flesh it out. It was far away from an easy cut and paste. I thought AI was supposed to eliminate all the work? 

The creative writing request was a pile of dog shit! I asked it to write a short scene where my character finds a hidden panel in the wall. Behind the panel is a safe. I asked for excitement and suspense. What I got back was two paragraphs full of repetitive, short sentences, and cliche lines ... "her heartbeat quickened", that kind of thing. The writing felt exactly like an AI wrote it. If I were actually trying to use this to help me write an actual short story or novel, I would have used maybe one sentence...and that's a stretch.  

Rytr.me

It's pronounced 'writer'. With a name like that you'd think this AI bot would be the new Hemingway of the digital revolution. 

It's not, but does an okay job of 'creative' writing. A similar prompt of 'write me a scene...' gave me a readable, yet still cliche filled, page of prose. However, it still felt very stiff and robotic. There was actually some dialogue, which sounded vaguely human. But the chatter had little character or personality, however, it wasn't that far off something I might write in a first draft.

Where Rytr did shine was when I asked it to write me a blog post.

First Rytr came up with a few ideas / topics I might want to add. From there I could 'expand' the ideas I wanted and Rytr took on the time consuming job of writing a little blurb. This non-fiction type of writing was great. It flowed nicely, the facts were there, and even the casual tone (which I asked for) rang true. Much, much better than the 'creative writing'.

 

So if AI is the future of writing, then us humans can feel pretty confident that we will still have plenty of job security in the areas of writing, especially writing anything creative. Non-creative writing will be made much easier if you treat AI like a tool to do the foundation work, and you just come along afterwards and add the finishing touches.