I’m doing a flash talk at an upcoming meetup. The talk is about how I use Ai. It’s something I feel comfortable talking about because I’ve been using it a lot lately. Mostly for writing content at work but also for all kinds of other things. I’ll share them in this post. And don’t worry, I’m not using it to write this post. (I have to prove to myself every now and then that I can still do it).
Before we get into how I use Ai, I want to first share how I got into using Ai. It goes back to about a year ago. In June 2023. I remember scrolling through reels and reels of Instagram stories. I use Instagram to detach from work. I veg out on food, art, exercise, and comedy content.
All of a sudden, I started noticing people talking about work stuff. Ai. They weren’t techies like you see on LinkedIn. They were normal people. Well… not quite normal. Influencer types. They were sharing tips for using Ai to do all kinds of things. Marketing, homework, or even how to generate passive income. It left an impression on me. I thought if non-techies were starting to talk about it like this, then I better figure it out too.
As I watched more videos I realized that using Ai is a skill. And as an artist, I also know that skills can be learned. That day, I committed myself to learning Ai. My method of learning was how I learn best — by doing. From that day forth, I started making a conscious decision to use Ai wherever I could. If I had a question, I asked ChatGPT. If I had a task, I asked ChatGPT. Sometimes, I even asked ChatGPT how it would do something I already did. Just to see how it would handle it.
These days Ai has become very ingrained into my workflow and personal life. Here are some of the ways I’m using it:
Writing copy has become my number one use for Ai. I use it as at a starting point. I clearly describe the context, what I need done, and any particular details. I ask it to come up with options for me. I don’t know why but I always ask for 10. I usually ask it to go through multiple rounds of revisions. I’ll even take suggestions I like, edited them, and then asked it to use them as a base to create new options. It’s kind of like working with a human in a lot of ways. You keep asking it to do something until it gets it right.
There have been times where I have used Ai to use somebody’s feedback as an instruction to update something. The other day, I needed to find a way to incorporate some new helper text into an interface. I wasn’t very familiar with the subject matter.
I copied and pasted the feedback I received into the prompt. Then asked the Ai how it would use that feedback to craft the new sentence. The first response was long. To edit it down, I told it to shorten the copy and clarified where where the sentence would be used. The next response was close but it had jargon. I asked it to clarify it in simpler terms and boom. I had something I even understood. I shared the copy and people were happy with it.
A while back I figured out I could use Ai to read books in a matter of minutes. It also turned out to be a good way to preview a book before buying it. I start by asking Ai to summarize a book. Based on the response, I ask it questions and it gets into a little more detail. I keep going until I get the gist of the book or the information I was looking for. It was kind of cool to find.
Along the same vein, I’ve used Ai to get a surface level understanding on new topics. Starting with a basic question on a topic, I continue to ask questions to dig deeper and learn more. After that I follow up with additional reading from other sources to verify what I just learned.
One of my first attempts to get into Ai was to plan one of my son’s birthday parties. I brainstormed some party ideas and then had Ai generate a checklist of things I needed. It was perfect and saved me the time from having to think about all the things.
More recently, I used Ai to help me plan a facilitated work session. I described the group of people I was working with. As well as the goal I was trying to achieve. Finally, I asked it to plan the activity. I was very happy with the end result. So much so that I didn’t need any edits or revisions to its proposal.
My first foray into Ai was with generative images. I used DALL-E. It was before I had my epiphany that using Ai was a skill that had to be developed. The end result sucked! I was disillusioned. I had never used Ai. The open-endedness of the chat interface made it hard for me to even know what to write. I tried it a handful of times after that with little success.
After I renewed my determination to get better at Ai, I sought out some alternatives to Dall-E. I found Ideogram and Remix. Both tools take a different approach to Ai. Their UI helps you create custom prompts. They also give you the ability see what prompts other people are using. You can take those and build off them. Or in my case — learn from them.
Getting into these tools was a big leap for me. I finally learned how to structure a prompt for better results. Not only with images but in general. I took my lessons and applied them back to DALL-E and the end result was way better! I feel much more confident approaching generative images with this knowledge.
These days I don’t use generative images for work but more as a fun thing to do with my kids. We sit down together and come up with wacky things. It’s a lot of fun.
That’s it for now. I’m sure there will be more and perhaps a follow up in the future. Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I now have what I need to do my flash talk and hopefully you got something out of it too!