I have something horrible to say.
I’ve been using AI, and sometimes, I’m very impressed by it.
…I feel like a fraud.
Coming from a (somewhat) creative background – I’ve seen it trivialise many a traditionally difficult job.
Want to convert a complex image wireframe into a clickable web prototype application? Done.
Want a step by step guide of how to fix your lawn based on your area, time of year, weather data and preferred grass seed? Done
Want to create and image that summarises this whole article with all the little nuances you would like included? Done and done.
People no longer ask if an image was photoshopped, rather, they ask if it was AI’d.
I suppose, in each of those cases, I was going to do the work on my own, it would have just cost me time.
Instead I have saved myself some time and paid my tokens and had AI do the work.
Its all well and good if its saved me spending time myself that I would have otherwise would have had to burn on trial and (frustrating) error.
My mind is drawn to the many people in the world, who’s job is to help create and service businesses with these requirements. Does that now mean that designers, coders and VFX people are no longer needed?
We’re starting to find out. The best people aren’t being replaced with AI, but rather, they use it as a tool to help them get to where THEY want to go significantly faster.
Where does that leave the late adopters or the journeymen?
I’ve been doing a lot of design work recently and being able to use an agent to generate a lot of the boring repetitive work, has really helped me focus on the destination, not just the getting there part.
It feels like going from walking, to using a horse.
You really need to guide the horsey AI, or it will get side tracked and go off on its own adventure looking for carrots or avoiding weird shaped bags. You have to keep focused and steer it.
It cannot make the decision of where to go, nor should it.
Curating and shaping and simplifying is now the main human skill that AI cannot yet take from us. Our judgement.
If we simply pass each other AI generations without processing and judging based on the direction, then it’s not going to be right – it’s going to be a bloated mess.
I’ve been guilty of this, Ask AI something, get an answer, marvel at the data and quality, then pass it on like you’re the smart one. But when you actually read it, judge, curate and assess, it never quite right. You need to process, judge, tweak and simplify.
In a recent interview on The Knowledge Project, The Shopify CEO, Tobi Lütke, has called these slop grenades.
People generate and throw them at each other.
The skill really is taking the output then molding it. Make it simpler. Make it help guide you and others decisions. Don’t settle for slop.
I’m aware I will never be a great designer. Especially using AI.
But it now gets me to a point where I can put my effort in and craft something that I otherwise would have taken me significantly longer.
Towards the end of using AI in a project, I always feel like I’m fighting against the it for small tweaks and improvements. And it fails. We back and forth. And I take over fully removing the AI.
And thinking about it, that’s the human part.
I realise that the fight at the end is taking the project from an average mostly AI guessable destination, word weights in LLM models averaged out – into something unique and human.
It’s the fight between human individuality, with all its flaws and uniqueness, fighting against the model and it’s average weighting for what it thinks is best vs your human vision. This is the struggle of man Vs AI machine.
A tale as old as terminator.
During one of my projects, In an effort to save money I downloaded 200gig of free models.
Then I used my GPU to process and create images.
One smoking hot 5070ti and 10 minutes of power later, I have a crap image of a snail fighting of 15 pigeons with a baseball bat:
Do not stare at it too long, its like staring into a fiery hellscape void.
I’ll be back – (in two weeks)
