The world of AI continues to move at a dizzying pace. It provides creatives with potential new tools even as it leaves many wondering where their hard-earned skills fit in a world where AI can do much of the heavy lifting.
AI empowers creatives to iterate on ideas more quickly, and be able to more easily “show don’t tell” in the process. AI can be a brainstorming buddy that doesn’t require you to politely humor ideas that don’t click. It can automate a lot of creative grunt work, though we can be forgiven for feeling that it might soon automate the fun stuff too.
Whether you’re excited or anxious about the role of AI in the creative process, it’s worth keeping tabs on the tools and platforms that are rapidly leveling the playing field for folks who trade in creative ideas.
OpenAI turns up the heat on Midjourney
For many, Midjourney has been the go-to tool for image creation, even if it means muddling through a clunky user interface via the Discord platform. For a hot minute, anyone able to generate effective text-to-image prompts could dub themselves a “prompt engineer” and consider a future as an expert in coaxing usable imagery out of AI platforms. By comparison, OpenAI’s DALL-E 2’s image generation prowess failed to impress the newly-minted prompt engineers.
All of that looks set to change with the announcement that DALL-E 3 is coming, complete with integration into OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a tool which has proven to be more useful than image generation for many, and as such is one already embedded in many folks’ workflow. From an artistic perspective, DALL E 3 apparently understands context significantly better, resulting in more accurate images generated from prompts created in collaboration with ChatGPT. Bad news for “prompt engineers” but good news for anyone who just wants to see an image of an idea without so much guesswork. DALL-E 3 rolls out to Chat GPT Plus and Enterprise users in October.
AI shots fired in the content wars
YouTube has announced new AI tools for content creators that include the ability to create AI backgrounds for YouTube Shorts. Dubbed Dream Screen, this feature will be rolling out in 2024. Also coming is YouTube Create, an app designed to provide the kind of editing tools that TikTok’s well-featured CapCut app offers. Creators can also expect to see AI powered insights that will include ideas for video content, audio dubbing into other languages and assistive search to help creators find licensable music for their work.
Getty Images get into the AI game
Designers looking for just the right image are used to trawling stock libraries in the hope of getting lucky. Among those libraries, Getty Images has long been considered the premium destination for quality stock, and they’re now touting “commercially safe” AI images as part of their offerings. Generative AI by Getty Images is trained on Getty’s existing image library. As yet, one can only request a demo, but tech news site The Verge reports that when it comes to creating photographic-style images, results are “better than expected”, notably “less soulless” than similar images created on other platforms. Given the challenges inherent in finding the perfect stock image, Getty’s foray into AI could solve many a designer’s headaches.