This week we had our second design critique of the semester, concentrating on our second deliverable. In my case this was an e-book, however, some of my classmates had created narrative websites as well. As with all design critiques, I gained some valuable feedback on my e-book and I will use these insights to develop and improve my e-book before submission. As we didn’t have a lecture this week and I will cover the design changes I make in my project research blog, I decided to look at an article that caught my eye this week, which looks at how generative AI is being used in content creation and where this may lead soon.
While looking at the daily newsletter I receive from Medium, this article https://uxdesign.cc/the-rise-of-generative-ai-driven-design-patterns-177cb1380b23 caught my eye. I am interested in AI developments and where there may be opportunities for me to add AI to improve my work and life. From the start of this article, I could see it was looking at content rewriting as its first main topic, and this is a topic which particularly interests me, as I find putting my thoughts into words challenging especially when it comes to writing more formally. However, I don’t like the idea of using AI to do my writing for me, I still want it to be my ideas and thoughts in the writing, and I would like a way to make my writing read better and fit the reader’s needs better.
Many companies have launched AI assistants as part of their existing tools such as Notion, Grammarly and Figma. Notion AI is always popping up as I am using it to host my blogs, but I have so far avoided using it as I expect it to work much like ChatGPT and take a short prompt and turn it into a full post, and as I said above this is not what I want. However, in the screenshot below from this article, I can see other options, to improve my writing.
Source: https://uxdesign.cc/the-rise-of-generative-ai-driven-design-patterns-177cb1380b23 (Last Accessed 07/05/24)
This could be something that I find very useful, but I would be concerned that it could make my writing sound like it had been AI-generated rather than AI-improved, and I feel this is a huge differentiator. Using AI to correct errors, reformat text or improve readability are all perfectly valid ways to use the technology. However, using AI to create content you pass off as your own, is where I draw the line, and I feel as if certainly in universities, that is where the concern about AI lies. I think our lecturers have a sensible system of where using AI is acceptable as long as you reference the use, I feel this is fair as it allows us to save time where possible, without claiming credit for something that is not our work.
Another area AI tools are being developed and deployed is within content summarisation, there is no doubt we have a wealth of information at our fingertips online, however, sometimes the information we need can be buried within a lengthy academic paper, or article and the time it takes to read the whole piece as well as all the irrelevant information before getting to the insight you need can be significant. Recently, during my current project for this module, I needed certain facts to use within my design and I have found myself going to ChatGPT rather than Google, as where Google will give me articles with the answer, Chat GPT gives me the answer I am looking for straight away.
Advanced Search is another area of AI growth, especially where nuances of language can cause you to get incorrect results. Using machine learning AI could make decisions on what you are likely looking for even if the search term is somewhat vague. Google already does this for spelling mistakes, so it makes sense to reach that bit further to help people. There are some occasions when I know the information I want but struggle to create a search term that allows me to find it. An AI assistant that could help with this could be incredibly useful. Even a service that asks follow-up questions to refine your search and give more tailored results could be a gateway to making a product like this a reality.
There are many more advancements in AI happening all the time, with some services looking to make predictions and offer advice based on the wealth of knowledge available. The ability of a machine learning algorithm to learn your own nuances in a specific area and design itself to be the most useful is exciting. I look forward to following the advancements of AI. Of course, like all new and potentially transformative technology, there is the opportunity for it to be used to do negative work, however, I feel more confident that enough people are raising these issues and pressuring creators and developers to ensure ethical concerns are taken seriously, and that these voices are being used at an early stage in AI development, that we may have learned from past mistakes and ethics may just be included in AI design if not from the start from early in development.
ChatGPT and LLMs have now passed the novelty phase, and we are seeing developers take the technology and try to make it useful in a range of scenarios, we are seeing it in tools that play to AI’s strengths, but with more development and creative thinking we still do not know what may be created. AI throws up several ethical issues, however, I feel that as these issues are already in the conversation before we even know the full power of these AIs, leaves us in a better place than when the Internet or Social Media came along where they were hailed as amazing products and no-one was considering their potential harm.