Technology is ever changing, never standing still and as designers we have to stand ready to adapt and learn new skills. However our existing skills will always be required, especially the ability to connect with and understand the feelings and emotions of others on a human level. Whether any technology can truly replicate this is an unanswered question, but for now whilst modern Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can achieve amazing things, they cannot achieve this.
Unfortunately, I was unwell this week and therefore unable to attend this lecture and workshop session in person. Helpfully our lecturer Paul puts a summary and the presentation given at the lecture on Blackboard and I have used that to catch-up on what I have missed.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are two of the most talked about topics in technology, have been for a few years and I cannot see that changing. A huge amount of tools we use everyday are using some form of AI to give us what we want. The improvements and better personalisation in the products we use has all been down to improvements in AI and the machine learning used to train it.
The discussion around AI and its capabilities has really taken off recently with the launch of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is able to provide written answers to prompts that it is given and has been really impressing those who have tried it, not only with the accuracy of its answers, but with the human-like way they are phrased. This has led to many questions about what it may be able to do and will it take over from humans in many jobs. One of the main things that have got people talking is ChatGPT’s ability to write computer code accurately, something that takes humans skill along with many years of training.
The software behind ChatGPT is open source meaning it is available to anyone to look at, study and modify to their own needs, this has led to so many talking points, can AI produce art, can it write excellent copy and can it be truly creative. While it will take time to have these questions answered fully, there is no doubt that this technology will play some role in all of our future, be that at work, studying or in day to day life.
As part of this week’s online resources there were a number of links to AI based tools, so I decided to have a look at some of these and see the results for myself.
I started with Designs.ai and decided to see what sort of logo it could create for my recently created Instagram page for showing my design work (@pmca_design, give me a follow). Here was the result:
While the process was very easy and quick, I had this within a couple of minutes. It only took a few steps and easy selections such as industry of the business, colours and logo preferences. I cannot say I would be happy to use this logo, while it does everything a logo needs to, for me especially for a creative Instagram page, it feels very dull and uninteresting. It feels like a template and to me at least it looks like it took a couple of minutes to create. I don’t feel existing logo designers will have much to fear with this particular AI based technology.
The next tool I tried was the Deep Dream Generator which claims to be able to create art from a text prompt and some other basic choices, I decided to see if this could create a more suitable logo for my Instagram page. Here is my result:
This is much more interesting than the previous example but it is still flawed, there is no indication that the logo is for a design page. For me the page is PMCA design, this looks more like a logo for a merger between PMMA and PMMC, it definitely does not read as PMCA to me. So again this would not be a logo I would use, and I don’t think it fully meets the brief.
I decided to give Deep Dream Generator another go as it also offers the ability to use an image as well as a text prompt to create an artwork. This time I decided to see what it could do with a picture of my 2005 Ford Mondeo and a prompt to create a futuristic electric hypercar, I also changed the model from artistic to photoreal. Here is the base image:
And here is the photorealistic, futuristic electric hypercar generated: