Everything AI, everywhere, all at once
How Artificial Intelligence has gone from zero to 6 million miles per hour in the last three months and why our team is experimenting with it every single day. And you should be too.
Today's Pound & Grain newsletter is about 1,500 words, a fun 9-minute read that has 100% been hand-crafted by real humans.
I’m Jackson, one of Pound & Grain’s Creative Directors. Thirteen years ago, when Pound & Grain launched, there was no ChatGPT and certainly no Midjourney. We had to Google things like we lived in the 1970s.
I wanted to share with you our agency’s many thoughts and feelings about how we’re using AI - and even some of our embarrassments. I’m confident by the time you finish reading this, ten more things will have happened in AI that will change everything, everywhere, all over again.
Why are we sharing all this AI stuff?
After experimenting every day, we have thoughts
The fingers! AI can be a cold, dark place with weird fingers
It’s more than just fun and games with bots
Life moves pretty fast
Originally wanted to start this newsletter off with Illinois' resident high school philosopher, Ferris Bueller. And guess what, I still am. Ferris said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
If you skip even 2 or 3 hours right now, you might miss a half dozen new AI tools, uses or ideas. Unlike the last big, new things like the Metaverse, NFTs or Voice Assistants, this one might be the one that sticks. Then again, I thought Quibbi was a decent idea. But here’s just one stat: ChatGPT got to 100 million followers in just 40 days. Even TikTok took 9 months to get there. Instagram, 30 months.
Experimenting that never ends
Like a good ChatGPT prompt, let's assume you already know what large language models are and generative AI is all about. This is a safe space, so we’re sharing how some of us jumped into the deep end of the AI pool.
GrantGPT
Grant Fraggalosch, one of our fearless Creative Directors, went all in. He created a brief to build an animated version of himself, aka Grant 2.0. He started by uploading his picture into Midjourney to create his new avatar. He then used ChatGPT to create a script explaining the processes. His goal? Take the stigma and fear out of AI. He then uploaded both of them into Studio D-ID which created a fully animated presentation.
Cute Silly Bears
At the same time Oleg Portnoy, one of our Design Directors has been using tools like Dall-E in their creative process. Someone who brings a detailed eye and a passion for the craftsmanship of the artist, Oleg sees huge potential. He’s been making a series of bears wearing straw hats on beaches, something he probably (no, definitely) wished he didn’t share with me. But, they’re so cute!
No, not just Justin Trudeau images
I’m still catching a lot of flack from the team for sharing one of my first prompts in Midjourney. Done while watching the World Baseball Classic and fresh from seeing an endless stream of Midjourney experiments with US presidents. I was trying to get images of Prime Minister Trudeau as a baseball player or as a goth teen baseball player.
I quickly evolved from Midjourney’s free plan, to $8/month, right into a plan more expensive than my Netflix. I explored World Baseball Classic vinyl toys, Wes Anderson-inspired Air Jordans, cute baguette delivery trucks, luxury croissant cereals, and even a Museum of Jack Russell Terriers. Like any creative brainstorm, you have to get the ideas out of your head, so you can move on to the real big ideas, but faster.
It’s more than just creepy fingers
The fun stuff is a great place to start. But it’s not all fun experiments and cute bears. Our Director of Technology, Emmanuel Davis, has been playing with prompts for longer than most. He started using Amazon Lex in 2017 and in his mind the tools have come a long way, especially regarding understanding the intent of your prompts. I couldn’t agree more.
At first glance, the images that come out are mind-blowing. But, if you look just a little closer things get weird, fast. Sometimes, your experimental boat design defies both logic and thermodynamics. Sometimes, your cute baguette delivery truck doesn’t have room for a driver - and the bread is, as Tom would say on HBO’s Succession, “ludicrously capacious”.
The complexity of the human form in AI-generated images has improved dramatically in the last month. So yes, sometimes a leg is backwards, or in a group shot, someone might be missing their pants or they don’t know how to sit in chairs. The power to generate lots of ideas in seconds is a powerful way to go from nothing to concepts at a speed that is made for right now. And yes, it’s going to help us do more with less.
Kateland Clark, Design Director, has been experimenting with how these tools could offer a better and more unique solution to stock photography and how you can use these as creative proof of concept images. It comes with a steep learning curve and getting the right results takes time. And while Midjourney gives you some incredible options, Shutterstock AI or Adobe Firefly, with the same prompts just doesn’t compare. As she described it, “a true example of ‘you vs. the guy she told you not to worry about’ meme.”
Shutterstock and Adobe are training their AI’s using their own licensed imagery. But, they have quite a bit of catch-up to deliver Midjourney levels of results, which is trained on wider, more diverse content. The same issues we face in pulling from stock photography or in casting our own shoots, still exist. There are under-represented options for all shapes, sizes and colours in stock and AI. As Levi’s found out quickly, it’s not your answer to diversity casting.
How to get started
Use it as a writing assistant
Our writers have been using it to help with thought starters, outlines and testing how to beat our copy options every day. We’ve been testing Writer.com with one of our clients. The tool has been trained with their content brand guidelines. So it can ensure you follow rules like avoiding my personal grammar hellscape, the Oxford comma. You can highlight, ask for alternate ideas and in general have your whole team write consistently and learn from all those interactions.
Dana Kopman and her client services team have been testing ChatGPT, Compose.AI and Cogram. Cogram takes automatic notes in virtual meetings and identifies action items. While Compose.AI uses a simple Chrome extension to act as your own writing assistant.
Could a bot have helped write your latest email? Maybe? Can they take your meeting notes. Yes. Can they help train our own Managing Partner, Sandy Fleischer? Yes? I’m getting to get him to validate his hundred daily Slack ideas with ChatGPT. That’s progress.
AI for everything
On the tech side of things, Emmanuel and his team are using machine learning to create sentiment analysis and image recognition. They are using GitHub’s Copilot - think Google, for techies - to generate boilerplate code and specialized functions. In his spare time, he’s been using Amazon Rekognition to help detect inappropriate images for a children’s game he is building. We’re currently experimenting with how ChatGPT could be part of the next generation of our website’s contact form.
You get a bot. You get a bot. EVERYONE gets a bot
In a couple of simple ways, I’ve been using Notion’s AI for lots of daily brainstorming and now I'm not sure what I'd do without it helping me generate rapid pros and cons, email subject lines, poking holes in my copy and coming up with LinkedIn posting ideas. I’ve also been using Artifact, an AI news app, to get all my latest headlines.
Getting AI to help solve your more mundane tasks - note-taking, scheduling, follow-ups, is an incredibly powerful tool to add to your daily workflow. Allowing you to use that extra time to supercharge your creative skills and output.
So what have we learned?
Jackson isn’t a bot. We are 99% certain.
It’s easy to get started. What’s your first AI prompt?
Learn to embrace it, even the weird fingers
Some simple ways to get started
I, for one, welcome our bot overlords
A few weeks ago, I asked ChatGPT what I could do with some bourbon and my favourite, Amari. I got about 10 ideas in 4 seconds including a spin on Don Draper’s favourite drink, the Black Manhattan.
The next step was carrying on a whole conversation with my “BartenderGPT”. That turned into orders at Amazon, a spice company and a liquor store for all the ingredients and tools I needed to make my own house made Amari and bitters. Wait, am I working for the bots now?
In the wild
Other links, ideas and things of note from your Pound & Grain team.
🍹 Can ChatGPT plan your vacation?
We are a ways off from that, although in a Bing itinerary for an upcoming trip, it suggested Froggyland, a museum of frog taxidermy, in Split, Croatia.
🤖 ChatGPT did NOT title this podcast
Adam Grant chats with AI entrepreneur, Allie Miller, and professor, Ethan Mollick, on all things ChatGPT.
Bill Gates would know how it feels, given his ride through the transformation from computers, mobility and the internet.
This newsletter was written by Jackson Murphy and edited by Dan Owsanski. Special thank you to Midjourney for giving Jackson the power to create his own graphics.
Like this? Share it with your team and anyone else you wish. Got questions about Artificial Intelligence, let’s chat.
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