graphics

“The state of AI in early 2024” [McKinsey] + other AI-related items

On 06/03/2024, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, communications, creativity, design, emerging technologies, experimentation, graphics, media/film, NVIDIA, productivity / tips and tricks, social media, tools, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value — from mckinsey.com
As generative AI adoption accelerates, survey respondents report measurable benefits and increased mitigation of the risk of inaccuracy. A small group of high performers lead the way.

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI), 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year, with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.
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What’s the future of AI? — from mckinsey.com
AI is here to stay. To outcompete in the future, organizations and individuals alike need to get familiar fast. This series of McKinsey Explainers dives deep into the seven technologies that are already shaping the years to come.

We’re in the midst of a revolution. Just as steam power, mechanized engines, and coal supply chains transformed the world in the 18th century, AI technology is currently changing the face of work, our economies, and society as we know it. We don’t know exactly what the future will look like. But we do know that these seven technologies will play a big role.
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?ANNOUNCING SHOWRUNNER?

We believe the future is a mix of game & movie.

Simulations powering 1000s of Truman Shows populated by interactive AI characters.

?Welcome to Sim Francisco & Showrunner!?

SOUND ON!

Link to Signup in Bio pic.twitter.com/yptMocqOfW

— The Simulation (@fablesimulation) May 30, 2024

Generate an e-book in minutes with groqbook — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Plus new Canva workflow tools, Perplexity Pages, and more
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The new Canva
Canva announced “a whole new Canva” to improve workplace collaborative creation and a revamped platform to simplify its tools for anyone to use.

At Canva Create, several AI features were announced that enhance the design and content creation process:

Magic Design: Upload an image and select a style to get a curated selection of personalized templates.
Magic Write: An AI-powered copywriting assistant that can generate written content from a text prompt, useful for presentations and website copy.
Magic Eraser: This feature can remove unwanted objects or backgrounds from images.
Magic Edit: Users can swap an object with something else entirely using generative AI.
Beat Sync: Automatically matches video footage to a soundtrack of your choice.
Translate: Automatically translates text in designs to over 100 different languages.

Tools are the next big thing in AI — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

Things might get more interesting in business settings as AI companies start deploying so-called “AI agents,” which can take action by operating other software on a computer or via the internet.

Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, announced a major new product today that attempts to prove the thesis that tool use is needed for AI’s next leap in usefulness.

Microsoft’s new ChatGPT competitor… — from The Rundown AI

The Rundown: Microsoft is reportedly developing a massive 500B parameter in-house LLM called MAI-1, aiming to compete with top AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

2024 | The AI Founder Report | Business Impact, Use cases, & Tools — from Hampton; via The Neuron

Hampton runs a private community for high-growth tech founders and CEOs. We asked our community of founders and owners how AI has impacted their business and what tools they use

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside:

The budgets they set aside for AI research and development
The most common (and obscure) tools founders are using
Measurable business impacts founders have seen through using AI
Where they are purposefully not using AI and much more

2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn
AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part Employees want AI, leaders are looking for a path forward.

Also relevant, see Microsoft’s web page on this effort:

To help leaders and organizations overcome AI inertia, Microsoft and LinkedIn looked at how AI will reshape work and the labor market broadly, surveying 31,000 people across 31 countries, identifying labor and hiring trends from LinkedIn, and analyzing trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals as well as research with Fortune 500 customers. The data points to insights every leader and professional needs to know—and actions they can take—when it comes to AI’s implications for work.

“Do We Need Emotionally Intelligent AI?” [Watkins] + other items re: AI in general

On 04/04/2024, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, communications, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, design, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, graphics, hearts -- matters of the heart, Open AI, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Do We Need Emotionally Intelligent AI? — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins

We keep breaking new ground in AI capabilities, and there seems little interest in asking if we should build the next model to be more life-like. You can now go to Hume.AI and have a conversation with an Empathetic Voice Interface. EVI is groundbreaking and extremely unnerving, but it is no more capable of genuine empathy than your toaster oven.
…

- You can have the eLLM mimic a political campaign and call potential voters to sway their vote. You can do this ethically or program it to prey upon people with misinformation.
- An eLLM can be used to socially engineer the public based on the values someone programs into it. Whose values, though?
- Any company with a digital presence can use an eLLM like EVI to influence their customers. Imagine Alexa suddenly being able to empathize with you as a means to help persuade you to order more products.
- An always-on, empathetic system can help a student stay on track to graduate or manipulate them into behaviors that erode their autonomy and free will.
- Any foreign government could deploy such a system against a neighboring population and use empathy as a weapon to sow discontent within the opposing population.

From DSC:
Marc offers some solid thoughts that should make us all pause and reflect on what he’s saying.

We can endlessly rationalize away the reasons why machines possessing such traits can be helpful, but where is the line that developers and users of such systems refuse to cross in this race to make machines more like us?

Marc Watkins

Along these lines, also see:

Student Chatbot Use ‘Could Be Increasing Loneliness’ — from insidehighered.com by Tom Williams
Study finds students who rely on ChatGPT for academic tasks feel socially supported by artificial intelligence at the expense of their real-life relationships.

…
They found “evidence that while AI chatbots designed for information provision may be associated with student performance, when social support, psychological well-being, loneliness and sense of belonging are considered it has a net negative effect on achievement,” according to the paper published in Studies in Higher Education.

Editing your images with DALL·E — from help.openai.com via The Rundown
You can now edit images you create with DALL·E

Some very fun art and creativity for you!

On 03/12/2024, in art, creativity, design, graphics, by Daniel Christian

Aurélie Hoegy’s Surging Rattan Forms Oscillate Between Interior Design and Sculpture — from thisiscolossal.com by Jackie Andres and Aurélie Hoegy

10 of Our Fav Illustrators Using True Grit Texture Supply — from booooooom.com

A different perspective by Hugo Suissas – thread ?

1. Special Light pic.twitter.com/LYfbprSBqQ

— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) March 10, 2024

AI Is Becoming an Integral Part of the Instructional Design Process — from drphilippahardman.substack.com Dr. Philippa Hardman
What I learned from 150 interviews with instructional designers

1. AI already plays a central part in the instructional design process
A whopping 95.3% of the instructional designers interviewed said they use AI in their day to day work. Those who don’t use AI cite access or permission issues as the primary reason that they haven’t integrated AI into their process.

2. AI is predominantly used at the design and development stages of the instructional design process
When mapped to the ADDIE process, the breakdown of use cases goes as follows:

Analysis: 5.5% of use cases
Design: 32.1%
Development: 53.2%
Implementation: 1.8%
Evaluation: 7.3%

Speaking of AI in our learning ecosystems, also see:

Will AI Use in Schools Increase Next Year? 56 Percent of Educators Say Yes — from edweek.org by Alyson Klein

The majority of educators expect use of artificial intelligence tools will increase in their school or district over the next year, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey.

Applying Multimodal AI to L&D — from learningguild.com by Sarah Clark
We’re just starting to see Multimodal AI systems hit the spotlight. Unlike the text-based and image-generation AI tools we’ve seen before, multimodal systems can absorb and generate content in multiple formats – text, image, video, audio, etc.

My Honest Review of AI Art Tools I Used In 2023 Here’s what I think of every AI art tool I used in 2023.

On 01/14/2024, in Adobe, art, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, digital photography, emerging technologies, experimentation, graphics, innovation, photography, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

My Honest Review of AI Art Tools I Used In 2023 — from theaigirl.substack.com by Diana Dovgopol
Here’s what I think of every AI art tool I used in 2023.

Today, I want to give my honest review of every AI art tool I used and why I love/hate some of them. I’ll highlight the best features they have and how the impact they had on me as an AI artist.
…
Midjourney v4: The first AI art tool I loved
While Lensa had its moment and offered users the chance to turn their selfies into stylized AI art effortlessly, Midjourney v4 meant a world of new possibilities. You could create anything you wanted with a prompt!

Speaking of art and creativity, here are two other items to check out!

An Italian Basilica, Mountain, and the Moon Magically Align in an Extraordinary Photo — from thisiscolossal.com by Grace Ebert and Valerio Minato

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Video, Images and Sounds – Good Tools #14 [Good]

On 01/14/2024, in blogs / blogging / vlogging, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, graphics, multimedia, music, new media literacies, platforms, podcasting, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, vendors, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Video, Images and Sounds – Good Tools #14 — from goodtools.substack.com by Robin Good

Specifically in this issue:

Free Image Libraries
Image Search Engines
Free Illustrations
Free Icons
Free Stock Video Footage
Free Music for Video and Podcasts

Using Drawing as a Powerful Learning Tool [Tlili]

On 12/20/2023, in art, education, experimentation, graphics, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, Learning Experience Design, memory, multimedia, science, student-related, teachers, by Daniel Christian

Using Drawing as a Powerful Learning Tool — from edutopia.org by Selim Tlili
When students draw something they’re learning about, they’re more likely to remember key details.

One of my main goals as a science teacher is to open students up to seeing all of those beautiful and interesting details. I do that by having students draw things and clearly write what they observe. Drawing something requires students to look at their subject far longer than they are accustomed. Writing what they see forces them to consciously acknowledge it. I explain to students that just as every single human is unique, so is every coin, plant, and salt crystal.

Canva and Adobe are going hard with it re: the use of AI

On 10/09/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communications, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, design, digital photography, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty, graphics, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, liberal arts, maker movement, multimedia, online media, photography, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, visualizing information, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks — from theverge.com by Jess Weatherbed
Magic Studio features like Magic Switch automatically convert your designs into blogs, social media posts, emails, and more to save time on manually editing documents.

Canva launches Magic Studio, partners with Runway ML for video — from bensbites.beehiiv.com by Ben Tossell

Here are the highlights of launched features under the new Magic Studio:

Magic Design – Turn ideas into designs instantly with AI-generated templates.
Magic Switch – Transform content into different formats and languages with one click.
Magic Grab – Make images editable like Canva templates for easy editing.
Magic Expand – Use AI to expand images beyond the original frame.
Magic Morph – Transform text and shapes with creative effects and prompts.
Magic Edit – Make complex image edits using simple text prompts.
Magic Media – Generate professional photos, videos and artworks from text prompts.
Magic Animate – Add animated transitions and motion to designs instantly.
Magic Write – Generate draft text and summaries powered by AI.

Adobe Firefly

Addendums on 10/11/23:

We released a new model ?

!!! Firefly Image 2 !!!!

As a scientist I am in disbelief that such model is possible with a small dataset as we had.

We compensated artists for training it.

We worked very hard on it. Please, enjoy! #AdobeMax https://t.co/j2TUiiyjN7 pic.twitter.com/gqABThSBWZ

— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) October 10, 2023

Adobe Releases New AI Models Aimed at Improved Graphic Design — from bloomberg.com
New version of Firefly is bigger than initial tool, Adobe says Illustrator, Express programs each get own generative tools

A few hours ago, Adobe released Firefly 2, their new AI image generator.

But how good is it?

I compared it to Midjourney & DALL-E 3 across 10 very different image categories so you don’t have to.

Here are the results:

— Chase Lean (@chaseleantj) October 11, 2023

Introducing Magic Studio: the power of AI, all in one place [Canva.com]

On 10/06/2023, in art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, communications, creativity, design, digital storytelling, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, graphics, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Introducing Magic Studio: the power of AI, all in one place — from canva.com

Also relevant/see:

Canva’s new AI features make everyone a designer — from joinsuperhuman.ai by Zain Kahn

…here are all the cool new ways you can use Canva to create pro-grade designs for your work:

Magic Media: Generate photos and videos with text prompts.
Magic Design: Turn ideas into designs with AI-generated templates.
Magic Switch: Translate content into different languages and formats.
Magic Expand: Make images bigger with AI.
Magic Edit: Edit images with simple text prompts.
Magic Morph: Transform text and shapes with visual effects.
Magic Write: Generate texts and summaries with AI.

Canva also announced that they’re creating a $200 million fund to compensate creators who opt-in to train their AI models.

10 Free AI Tools for Graphic Designing — from medium.com by Qz Ruslan

With the advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), designers now have access to a wide array of free AI-powered tools that streamline their creative process, enhance productivity, and add a touch of uniqueness to their designs. In this article, we will explore ten such free AI tools websites for graphic designing that have revolutionized the way designers approach their craft.

Generative Art in Motion — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Animation and video tools create an explosion of creative expression

World’s first AI cinema opening in Auckland to make all your Matrix fantasies come true — from stuff.co.nz by Jonny Mahon-Heap
Review: My HyperCinema experience was futuristic, sleek – and slightly insane as I became the star of my own show.

AI That Alters Voice and Imagery in Political Ads Will Require Disclosure on Google and YouTube — from usnews.com by Associated Press
Political ads using artificial intelligence on Google and YouTube must soon be accompanied by a prominent disclosure if imagery or sounds have been synthetically altered

Google will soon require that political ads using artificial intelligence be accompanied by a prominent disclosure if imagery or sounds have been synthetically altered.

AI-generated election ads on YouTube and other Google platforms that alter people or events must include a clear disclaimer located somewhere that users are likely to notice, the company said in an update this week to its political content policy.

We’re rolling out a bunch of small updates to improve the ChatGPT experience. Shipping over the next week:

1. Prompt examples: A blank page can be intimidating. At the beginning of a new chat, you’ll now see examples to help you get started.
2. Suggested replies: Go deeper with…

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) August 3, 2023

Gen-AI Movie Trailer For Sci Fi Epic “Genesis” — from forbes.com by Charlie Fink

The movie trailer for “Genesis,” created with AI, is so convincing it caused a stir on Twitter [on July 27]. That’s how I found out about it. Created by Nicolas Neubert, a senior product designer who works for Elli by Volkswagen in Germany, the “Genesis” trailer promotes a dystopian sci-fi epic reminiscent of the Terminator. There is no movie, of course, only the trailer exists, but this is neither a gag nor a parody. It’s in a class of its own. Eerily made by man, but not.

? Trailer: Genesis (Midjourney + Runway)

We gave them everything.
Trusted them with our world.
To become enslaved – become hunted.

We have no choice.
Humanity must rise again to reclaim.

Images: Midjourney
Videos: #Runway
Music: Pixabay / Stringer_Bell
Edited in: CapCut pic.twitter.com/zjeU7YPFh9

— Nicolas Neubert (@iamneubert) July 26, 2023

Google’s water use is soaring. AI is only going to make it worse. — from businessinsider.com by Hugh Langley

Google just published its 2023 environmental report, and one thing is for certain: The company’s water use is soaring.

The internet giant said it consumed 5.6 billion gallons of water in 2022, the equivalent of 37 golf courses. Most of that — 5.2 billion gallons — was used for the company’s data centers, a 20% increase on the amount Google reported the year prior.

We think prompt engineering (learning to converse with an AI) is overrated. — from the Neuron

We think prompt engineering (learning to converse with an AI) is overrated. Yup, we said it. We think the future of chat interfaces will be a combination of preloading context and then allowing AI to guide you to the information you seek.

From DSC:
Agreed. I think we’ll see a lot more interface updates and changes to make things easier to use, find, develop.

Radar Trends to Watch: August 2023 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Programming, Web, Security, and More

Artificial Intelligence continues to dominate the news. In the past month, we’ve seen a number of major updates to language models: Claude 2, with its 100,000 token context limit; LLaMA 2, with (relatively) liberal restrictions on use; and Stable Diffusion XL, a significantly more capable version of Stable Diffusion. Does Claude 2’s huge context really change what the model can do? And what role will open access and open source language models have as commercial applications develop?

Try out Google ‘TextFX’ and its 10 creative AI tools for rappers, writers — from 9to5google.com by Abner Li; via Barsee – AI Valley

Google Lab Sessions are collaborations between “visionaries from all realms of human endeavor” and the company’s latest AI technology. [On 8/2/23], Google released TextFX as an “experiment to demonstrate how generative language technologies can empower the creativity and workflows of artists and creators” with Lupe Fiasco.

Google’s TextFX includes 10 tools and is powered by the PaLM 2 large language model via the PALM API. Meant to aid in the creative process of rappers, writers, and other wordsmiths, it is part of Google Labs.

How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide [Mollick]

On 07/15/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, education technology, emerging technologies, Google, graphics, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Microsoft, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, programming, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Covering the state of play as of Summer, 2023

101 creative ideas to use AI in education, a crowdsourced collection [Nerantzi, Abegglen, Karatsiori, & Martínez-Arboleda (Eds.)]

On 06/28/2023, in Africa, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, assessment, Australia, Canada, creativity, digital learning, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, Europe, experimentation, graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, India, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, participation, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, project-based learning, skills, student-related, teachers, tools, UK, United States, vendors, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

101 creative ideas to use AI in education, A crowdsourced collection — from zenodo.org by Chrissi Nerantzi, Sandra Abegglen, Marianna Karatsiori, & Antonio Martínez-Arboleda (Eds.); with thanks to George Veletsianos for this resource

As an example, here’s one of the ideas from the crowdsourced collection:

On a somewhat related note, also see:

Merlyn Mind launches education-focused LLMs for classroom integration of generative AI — from venturebeat.com by Victor Dey

Excerpt:

Merlyn Mind, an AI-powered digital assistant platform, announced the launch of a suite of large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for the education sector under an open-source license.

Designing courses in an age of AI — from teachinginhighered.com by Maria Andersen
Maria Andersen shares about designing courses in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) on episode 469 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

With generative AI, we have an incredible acceleration of change happening.

Maria Andersen

Learning Ecosystems

Some very fun art and creativity for you!

My Honest Review of AI Art Tools I Used In 2023 Here’s what I think of every AI art tool I used in 2023.

Video, Images and Sounds – Good Tools #14 [Good]

AI tools and features; plus AI’s ongoing impact (both positive and negative)

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