How to use A.I. in your creative business
A lot of talk has been happening lately around A.I. ( Artificial Intelligence ) from Chat GPT, to DALL-E, Midjourney, and more, there are a lot of questions around this topic such as Can AI really replace artists? What will happen to traditional jobs in the creative sector, Artistic jobs, writing jobs, and how will businesses use this technology everyday? Will this be a dystopia or will this help businesses and workers get more done? Matt Winters, CEO of Austin Visuals Productions, a 3D Animation, Video Production and Creative Agency gives us his thoughts. Matt has been experimenting with and adapting these new technologies such as Chat GPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and more AI software within his business and wants to share his thoughts.
— Matt, should A.I. for the creative industry been seen as ‘Scary’?
” Sometimes we fear what we don’t understand. Some people fear also before they even use the technology themselves. I would suggest anyone that’s fearing what this technology could do to disrupt the industry is get to know it first, get familiar with it’s limitations and you may find that the current technology we are more the teachers. It’s complex uses usually require human guidance. Automation of certain tasks may likely lead to humans doing other things that aren’t so tedious. The typewriter or word processor didn’t put words out of date, we still use typing more than ever, but when the word processor came out people may have thought similarly as some do about A.I. The word processing computer did put the type writing industry out of business, but businesses shifted gradually, manufacturers of the typewriter were already diversified in producing many other kinds of products than just a typewriter, work rooms in offices gradually ordered more computers and got more work done faster until the cost savings was validated. Today, we still have offices and typing going on, we are just doing it on laptops and desktops in offices and from home. It is good to keep informed with trends so you can stay ahead of the curve but worry, I wouldn’t unless you’re in the business equivalent of the only company making typewriters and dedicated to never automating at least some of your existing business.”
– Room created with A.I. using Midjourney
— Matt, you’ve been writing scripts for years utilizing script writers for explainer videos and tv commercials. How has your process evolved since the use of ChatGPT ?
” We’ve traditionally used our script writers and creative directors to write scripts for our animated videos. I think this approach has given us a very targeted messaging approach and good quality. Messaging is one of the most important priorities when building a complex production. ChatGPT is being used in a variety of ways now. For one, our clients are now coming to us with scripts ( that ChatGPT wrote ) more often. The interesting thing is most times for now these scripts coming from clients are not pre-approved so they still want us to re-write them. Perhaps in the future they will get better and ChatGPT will be able to write a complete script that is client approved, but for now we have to still work on the script after receiving it. It has perhaps sped us up as before some clients didn’t know what they wanted to say at all. Clients still know very specific and up to date knowledge about their business and want some of this information into their scripts so at least ChatGPT can help get the conversation started.
In our own process, we still have script writers, but rather than them using their work hours writing blogs, and social media, a different set of workers can how be empowered to utilize Chat GPT to write and maintain our blogs and social media posts, thus freeing up our specialized writers to give clients even more specialized attention in their messaging. ChatGPT hasn’t replaced managers but rather than hiring management to answer some basic questions our workers sometimes ask upper management, now ChatGPT empowers our workers to ask ChatGPT first which reduces the need for some new middle managers to answer basic questions, help in some research and some minimal writing efforts for process documentation. ”
– Created with A.I. using Midjourney
— Matt do you think A.I. is going to replace Artists and Creatives?
” In Short — No, A.I. will not replace artists. — From what I’ve seen, since Austin Visuals is actually in the creative business, we are not being replaced. I think some areas of the creative marketing are being automated causing some creatives to decide to use it as a tool to speed up and multiply their efforts, or if they choose not to, then businesses may decide to integrate these systems and software into their process behind the scenes anyway. Rather than a blog writer getting paid hourly to write 1 blog in a day, they can now write 5 blogs with the assistance of ChatGPT. I also have not seen entire creative processes fully automated by ChatGPT or similar A.I. systems. It’s possible in the future but I don’t think we are there now. We still need writers to prompt and edit ChatGPT, we still need storyboard artists even though A.I. can make some fantastic looking still images ( A.I. ) does a poor job making custom images for business uses, and it does a poor job of making custom sophisticated commercial quality 2d and 3d animation.
We are now using Midjourney to deliver quick concept art sketches to customers to start a conversation. These images requested by businesses are usually technical, and very specific, which is something A.I. just hasn’t been able to touch yet. Years ago there was an upset in some small parts of the animation industry that ‘drag-and-drop’ automated animation makers were going to all replace animation companies, but after years of this software has been out there Austin Visuals is still in business. As it turns out, some clients do teach themselves how to make their own videos, but it seems like the majority that try end up getting frustrated because they want to customize their animation using a drag and drop animation automation program and businesses find they don’t have the time, are limited by the software program to customize their animated video, or they lack the skills so they end up asking Austin Visuals in many cases to create the work from scratch. Sometimes clients may request that Austin Visuals uses the automated tool to finish their work and in many cases we are able offer them a visual solution to their needs.”
— Matt, what are some tips you’d give marketers, and creatives on using A.I. Where do you begin?
” I would start by first googling some articles about what is A.I., what is ChatGPT and its use cases. It is easier to approach a new tool when you have a bit of introductory knowledge about what it is, what it can do, and what problems can it solve now. Next I’d recommend to sign up for ChatGPT here https://openai.com/ just go to login, make an account and you’re good. I recommend upgrading for premium and prompt access, where last I checked sometimes their free version is not always available during peak usage times. If you’re a creative and looking to make a bunch of cool still images perhaps for concepting ideas, I recommend you go to the app store on your smart phone and search any terms related to ‘A.I.’ just download them and experiment with them. You usually give these A.I. image apps some text prompt and within 30 seconds or less you have a detailed image. I find that image technology doesn’t do Text, Faces, or Fingers on hands well as of yet. My last quick recommendation is if you own a business figure out ways you could use this technology to free your business time up for you or your co-workers and just start using it in your daily tasks. You can use ChatGPT to write a meeting outline for you, blogs, tell you what the competition is doing broad research oriented ways. Overall ChatGPT is really good at organizing lots of data and summarizing it into a written form you can understand. Next time you’re thinking of having someone else tell you what the top 10 of anything is try asking ChatGPT directly and it will likely organize enough data for you to make a quicker decision than possibly you polling your team for smaller research oriented tasks. The rest you’ll have to find websites using Quora or Reddit discussion threads that have to do with the latest A.I. software being used if you want to go beyond using ChatGPT.
Some use cases I can think of how you could use A.I. for your creative process automation, showing your clients concept art earlier on using quick A.I. images. Using ChatGPT to help you write social media posts or have it help your writers post and consider having them post content for you, consider making it a company policy to consult ChatGPT first before asking a question to a colleague as this will save company time.”
— Matt, Thank you for your time. Do you have any additional advice about A.I. for creatives
” We have seen a trend that independent creatives get smart with technology. I recommend creatives use the technology to enhance the work you do, rather than fight against it. There will always be a need for creatives. We have yet to explore what new kind of art this technology will help us create. ”
— If you have any A.I. , Animation, or video production related questions. Feel free to reach out and email us [email protected] or call us 1-512-591-8024 – Matt Winters, CEO, AustinVisuals.com
To see examples of our custom video or animation work you can visit austinvisuals.com/videos
