I suppose you could just replace me with one of the many AI platforms out there. After all, they’re almost instant, they can generate countless of complex things in next to no time, they don’t swear at the screen when something goes wrong, they don’t have a questionable and suspect sense of humour, and they don’t cost £35 an hour.
So why choose a person like me?
AI, as we know, uses loads of water and power for the simplest of tasks, and with AI data centres (that’ll be “centers” to any North American viewers) springing up all over the place being all ugly and eco-unfriendly and stuff, it kind of makes sense to keep all that to a minimum. Me? I run on three large mugs of tea a day and a glass of wine when I’m cooking 🙂
But seriously, AI doesn’t think or feel (yet!), it just generates; it produces an output, not a solution; it has no taste and can only use yesterday’s ideas (all stolen from people like me: the creators) as it regurgitates and amalgamates bits of all the stuff it’s been fed in order to produce something with no soul.
It’s only as good as the prompts you give it, and nothing it creates is truly original.
Sure, your NanoBanana-generated image of a bazooka-toting alpha hamster sat astride a metallic turnip as it flies above a crowd of undead cricket umpires might very well be unique, but all of those elements came from somewhere else, and no thought, imagination, discussion or feeling went into its creation. Also, I think almost all such creations reflect the lack of those vital ingredients. Of course, creating such an image manually in Photoshop (or equivalent) would take many hours, compared to the handful of seconds it takes AI, and if AI generated images suit you, your project and your audience then you really need read no further.
If, however, you require something we can both have input on, that we can both discuss and change together, and won’t instantly provoke the response: “Ugh! AI slop!”, then please read on. Have a look at some of the stuff I’ve created over the years, and if you think I can be of any help, please give me a shout 🙂
(Sound on for the end bit!)
Avebury Free Festival 1974. Poster and T-shirt design.
The only real thing about this poster is the date. The 13th of July did, indeed, fall on a Saturday in 1974. Everything else was made up by me, including the ridiculous band names.
There was some online speculation concerning the use of AI. I addressed that here, in a short and quite unprofessional Youtube clip.
