AI&ME

I’ve been having so much fun in the last few months I thought I’d better share it with you. I must’ve dabbled, downloaded or signed up to over fifty different AI programs in order to get some sort of a handle on the revolution that is currently engulfing is. So, this is a kind of beginner’s guide to the creative AI tools which really can build stunningly beautiful, utterly believable, mind blowing content out of thin air…for (almost) zero cost.

I’ll include all the links so that you can play with them yourselves, because, frankly, if you have the tiniest creative bone in your body you will be dying to have a go. Genuinely, I’ve been waking up like an excited nine year old desperate to get back to the AI world.

Portraiture

Right now the top two contenders for creating photo realistic images of people that never existed are Leonardo and Midjourney. There are a thousand others but these two seem to be battling it out for the most lifelike detail, and they’re both improving week on week. The more detailed the prompts the better, although, like most artists, they’ll both completely ignore you at times. Specify the lighting (dappled or light leak for example), the blurriness of the background (or not) the texture and the depth of colour and you cannot be disappointed. You can even upload a reference image and specify the percentage of artistic license you want it to have. And now, with the new ‘consistency’ feature you can create a character and store it in its memory so that you can come back to it later. This means that you’re rugged cowboy on a ranch, looking pensively into the sunset can also be pictured dressed as a giant tortoise pushing a trolley around a supermarket… if that’s what floats your boat. Of course, both these ingenious platforms will also produce any illustration style you can imagine, so the possibilities are endless.

Illustration

For instant creative illustration with terrific fantasy interpretation skills Dalle or Bing (which uses Dalle) are hard to beat. Looking for a 1940s style pen and ink drawing of King Kong smoking a cigarette atop the Empire State Building? This is your platform. Other contenders, equally capable, are Ideogram, Tengr and Openart.

Photoshopping

Funny how things pan out. Adobe’s Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop) has recently become prohibitively expensive for anyone other than a full time professional. If you’re a dabbler or just like to enhance your personal photos occasionally, like Kate Middleton for example, thirty quid a month is a bit rich. On top of that, Adobe has sparked some controversy recently with new terms and conditions that give it access to your private images. Seriously worrying. But fret no longer because as Adobe slowly commits suicide an army of AI photo-fiddling substitutes is coming over the hill to the rescue. There’s Vivid, Bria RMBG (simple background removal) and fun programs like Akool for face swapping, or PhotoDirector and YouCam Perfect, to name a handful I’ve tried. It really depends on what you use Photoshop for, but surely the monthly subscription to Adobe’s Creative Suite must’ve taken an almighty hit.

Music

Oh boy, I’ve had so much fun making music I can’t tell you. I’ve ‘written’ songs in Suno for a couple of my talks (ok, you can roll your eyes) including two Ibiza style dance trance tracks for a conference in, yes, Ibiza. In a slightly less embarrassing fashion I’ve created an album of AA Milne poems set to music of various genres. You can find them here. There’s a dancy, chill-wave one, an Andrew Lloyd Webbery style thing, a Gen Zeddish moody ballad and a couple of heavy delta blues numbers. I think they’re all amazing, of course. But that’s because, whether AI did it or not, none of these songs would exist had I not conceived of them. That’s art as far as I’m concerned. Suno’s big competitor is currently Udio which I’ve tried but found a tad limiting, but there are many more to choose from including Soundraw, Beatoven and Soundful, each of which will be great for specific genres as well as having different price structures for various levels of access. Suno cost me just short of seventy quid for a year’s subscription btw, so it really isn’t an expensive hobby. And the latest feature allows you to upload a sound or music loop so that you really can control the output. Serious fun.

Clones and Avatars

I’m currently working on creating a clone of myself. Sounds horrific, right? Well, it’s only a bit of fun. With a platform called Delphi you feed it everything that exists of you online: every article, blog or video, so that eventually it will know precisely how you think and how you tend to phrase things. Combine this with a lip-syncing avatar and you have a mini-me (or you) that can answer questions vocally, on your website, for example. I’m halfway there but I don’t think Delphi is quite as ready to roll as it pretends it is. We’ll surely get there though. Of that I have no doubt. In the meantime both Hallo and Hedra can create convincing, speaking avatars from any image you upload.

Text to Video

This is the Holy Grail for AI enthusiasts at the moment. Type in what you want to see and AI will deliver a video almost instantly. You can see the Sora showcase here and it is truly mind blowing. It hints at a future where we will create our own ‘movies’ with friends each contributing to the storyline, adding characters and dialogue as we explore the universe that opens up before us. This will happen, but for now Sora, Pika and Kling are battling it out behind the scenes with only a privileged few being allowed in on the fun. In the meantime, Dream Machine by Lumalabs is available, free and pretty damn impressive. 

Truth is, things are moving so fast that in a couple of weeks I’ll need to update all this info, but the point is that right now, today, is the perfect time to start playing around with these incredible tools as they develop and mature. After all, if AI will ultimately rule the world and turn us all into slaves we may as well have some creative fun with it in the meantime.

Howard Saunders is a writer, speaker, Retail Futurist (and AI enthusiast)

howard@22and5.com

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  Howard Saunders   Jun 27, 2024   AI, Uncategorized   Comments Off on AI&ME   Read More

SPACEBOY, THE MOVIE

No photography, no actors, no scenery, no cameras, no musicians, no production company…just me and a keyboard. Text to video is in its infancy but text to image gets better by the week, literally. When I started playing around with some of these programs a few months ago I was pretty impressed, but there was nothing like the level of texture and detail you can achieve now.

I’ve spent my entire working life in the creative industry. My memory is hazy at the best of times but I do know that a good few years of my professional life was pre-computer. It was all cutting boards, scalpels, Letraset and spray mount. Computers landed at the end of the eighties and suddenly we could produce instant designs without the need to stay up all night slicing letters out of Pantone film. All those years ago the threat was that computers would take our jobs and we’d end up packing bags at the Tesco checkout. Thankfully, Tesco never had to deal with an influx of entitled designers from Soho.

But the arrival of AI is sure to change everything: these creative tools are beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. And remember, it’s only week one. I’ve already been challenged by designers who say, ‘Yeah, but the copyright’ or ‘Yeah, but there’s no soul’. I just smile knowingly at the smell of clever people pooping themselves.

Sure, the hands can go a bit weird and the eyes wobble like a demented rattlesnake, but how many weeks will it be before they fix that? Basically folks, content is now free. No need to fret over finding the right actor or model. AI will fill the role instantly with a perfect, racially non-specific person without the need for any agency, fees or royalties.

And Suno will write you a nice little ditty as the background music. No need for any grumpy old failed rock star to feign interest in your ‘exciting new product’ as he takes the brief for another ‘something upbeat with a catchy refrain’.

So. Will AI take all our jobs and ultimately destroy the planet? Quite probably. But seriously, I won’t get into all that here. Maybe next time. In the meantime, can I suggest we loosen up and enjoy these fantastic new creative tools. After all, as Spaceboy says, ‘life is an adventure’.

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  Howard Saunders   May 17, 2024   Uncategorized   Comments Off on SPACEBOY, THE MOVIE   Read More

PUPPY LOVE

Most trends born in California become diluted by the time they arrive on our damp and cynical shores: yoga, veganism, vegetable smoothies, poke, Botox and fillers, tooth whitening therapy, therapy, the whole athleisure-wear thing, boho-chic, hyper-gluteal augmentation, even the opioid crisis…all fade a little on their long journey across the Atlantic in order, perhaps, to acclimatise to life beneath our sullen skies. But there’s one trend that has surely been amplified en route from La La Land: canophilia, aka our obsession with dogs.

Unlike the Americans, we Brits have loved our pet dogs for over six millennia as dog culture really kicked off in 4000BC, just at the end of the stone age. So essentially, our relationship with our favourite pet rolled along perfectly happily for six thousand years…until something shifted post Covid. A cultural blip in the matrix perhaps, but today it’s impossible to go to a shop, a bar or a restaurant without a dog sniffing at your ankles.

Restaurants desperate for trade have caved. Perhaps in the name of inclusivity they hang ‘dog friendly’ signs in the window above a shiny bowl as if allowing dogs is the magic bullet they need to get back to profit. A couple of years ago I guess it looked kinda cute, but frankly it’s hard to walk down a local high street now without accidentally booting a tin bowl along the kerb. These are the places I vow never to visit, and I’m sure I can’t be alone.

Q. How does your dog smell? A. Terrible.

The age old joke wasn’t wrong. Owners who exclaim ‘My dog does not smell!’ have been inoculated with doggy stench daily over many years having never left Rover’s side. They even allow him to sleep on their bed for god’s sake. Polite customers, meanwhile, pretend it’s absolutely normal for a bear of a beast to be slumped beneath the next table even when the whiff of wet fur wafts across their creme brûlée. And if you feel an exploratory tongue douse the back of your hand at the bar you can be damn sure that it’s recently been intimate with a dog’s rear end, if not another’s then its own. Peculiarly, for a nation addicted to hand sanitiser we remain stumm. Non dog owners are mute onlookers as they watch their favourite places become, literally, dogged by mollycoddled mutts.

Cultures twist and turn but ultimately they settle by consensus. That’s why we don’t see ‘no bicycles’ signs outside bars and pubs. Culture has deemed it inappropriate to lean your muddy mountain bike alongside your table, so there’s no need to ban it. But since the ‘blip’ we must now endure legions of snapping, snarling, sneezing, yapping, gnashing, drooling, farting hounds in every establishment. And bikes don’t do any of that. Meanwhile, in crazy California where all this began, dogs are banned from restaurants and even stores that sell packaged food.

Hyper-anthropomorphism is hard to say, but nonetheless very real. Today’s dog lovers talk to their pets in cartoon baby voices, celebrate their birthdays (the day they arrived) buy them Puppucinos from Starbucks, doggy ice creams at the seaside, create Instagram pages for them, tie bibs around their necks at mealtimes and push them in doggy strollers when the poor darlings can’t keep up with the pace around Waitrose. They take up seats in restaurants, bars, buses and trains as if we must all accept that the ironically named ‘Charlie’ with the flappy tongue is simply one of us. It’s gone too far.

Clearly these beloved animals are the children we never had. It’s a dog’s job to be the child that never grows up and tells you to f*** off, basically. But they’re also living, breathing status symbols. In the countryside it’s not unusual for a family to rock up at the pub, fully Huntered and Barboured, accompanied by a brace of pony sized brutes as if to flaunt the fact that they can afford to buy steak every day of the week. They may as well drive their Range Rover into the bar. It would be less of a nuisance.

Back in the pre-gastro days it was heartwarming to see a local farmer nestled by the fire, his loyal Collie alert to any unusual comings or goings. But recently dog culture has morphed into an obsessive cult; a perverse display of narcissism that says ‘sod you, these are my true friends’. On a serious note, I believe it plays perfectly into the current phase of self loathing mankind is going through. We may love our kith and kin, but we despise humanity for everything that’s gone wrong on planet Earth. After all, no dog ever started a war.

We all know that teenage stabbings have become so commonplace the press is no longer interested. But leave a pooch in a car without the window ajar for more than fifteen minutes and you’ll be on the front of the Daily Mail beneath the word ‘MONSTER’ the next morning. Seriously, our priorities are way out of kilter.

I may not be a dog lover, but I’m no hater. I can more than appreciate the majesty of an Irish Setter bounding along a deserted beach in pursuit of a far flung stick of driftwood. I can even see it in slow motion as it shakes itself dry, water droplets glistening in the late afternoon sunshine. I simply ask that you don’t bring it sweating and panting into the pub to do that. That’s my point. Dog lovers, please spare a thought for those of us who don’t love your dog, but can definitely smell it. And restaurateurs, please be brave enough to say that your dog days are over.

Bone appetit!

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ps. Big thanks to Bing/Dall-E for all the imagery

  Howard Saunders   Feb 14, 2024   culture, Food, gourmet, pizza, Retail, Uncategorized   Comments Off on PUPPY LOVE   Read More