For those of us running an independent business, there is nowhere to send expense reports. They're...
Getting comfortable with AI is as easy as child's play. Most are free or have free trial periods, and for the most part they are user-friendly and fun to play with. Here are 10 tools that I use regularly for business, marketing, and/or fun. Give them a try.
1. Chat/Prompt-based Content Writers
Let's begin with the one that started it all (maybe?), and continues to be the most used AI tool: ChatGPT and its many copy-based offspring. ChatGPT can be found at openai.com and is free. But if you plan to use it for work, I would recommend spending the modest monthly subscription to access Chat-GPT4. Why? Well, GPT3 goes up to 2019 in terms of the content it can access and digest. At the pace the world is changing, this makes the examples and reference it sites rather dated. Furthermore, GPT4 is way smarter. The Large Language Model (LLM, an acronym you'll often see in reference to AI) has been updated and expanded. By way of example, Chat-GPT3 took the Uniform Bar Exam and scored in the 10th percentile. Chat-GPT4 took it and scored in the 90th!
The one that started it all!
If you've been there, done that, you may be ready to go a little further. ChatGPT has spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of offspring apps and tools. These tools use a variety of LLMs, machine learning, and improved interfaces to apply AI to a variety of business situations. One of the best and most widely implemented of these is Jasper.ai. Jasper not only writes copy to answer prompts, but is designed to develop the myriad formats of marketing content: LinkedIn ads and posts, Google ads, blogs, emails, SEO copy, web copy and more.
If you're really up for experimentation, try Olympia.chat, a novel interface that introduces you to your personal staff of 11 specialists. Each is a character with contextual algorithms customized to their area of "expertise". SEO expert, copywriter, copy editor, communications specialist, legal consultant and more. The bots all "talk" to each other so there's awareness of the team's output and interaction.
2. Design Generative AI
Next up: the fun and sometimes odd world of design through generative AI. Many of you will know of MidJourney.com, the widely used image creation tool. Describe the image you want in as much detail as you want and it shall be yours. But, most will agree, the interface is still very clunky and seems like you're part of the first generation technology test that MidJourney is.
Perhaps a better place to start is right where we left off with Chat-GPT. On the same openAI platform is Dall.E. With a simpler, easier interface you can describe what you are looking for. Unlike MidJourney, Dall.E will make a series of recommended improvements to you prompt - usually more detail and specificity (see above).
3. Stock Images
Finding the right stock photography for a website, post, blog etc. can be time-consuming and expensive if you don't pick royalty-free images. Using a tool like stockimg.ai may be the solution. Like most AI apps it's prompt based. Describe the type of image you'd like: "A typical English country pub". The image(s) you get look like a photo of the real thing but, of course, this particular pub does not exist. It is, in a way, an amalgamation of all English country pubs.
The above ad was made entirely by AI (under my watchful eye): The pub, glass, and bottle are all fabrications, and the copy, well you know where it came from. AI stock images are suitable for blogs, posts, slide presentations and similar, but not for more widely used applications like advertising. A telltale sign of an AI generated "photo" is the occasional bending of the laws of physics. Look closely at the chair legs and the upper windows of the pub.
4. Photo Retouching
It isn't true retouching but a smart way to improve personal photos or images needed for small, low-fidelity purposes. So, the holiday photo that would have been perfect but for the person who walked behind you at just the wrong moment. Solved.
Here I use cleanup.pictures to take pesky "other humans" and a car out of a holiday snap in the Cotswolds. There are also great tools for enhancing the faces of people in old photos with low resolution.
5. Transcription
Taking good notes on a Zoom call is a skill not all of us have mastered, and it's not the most stimulating task. More importantly there are times when taking notes is not conducive to a successful meeting, like when you are the presenter, or when you are interviewing someone and need to stay focused and interactive. The answer is an AI transcription tool (of which there are many!) like Otter.ai.
Otter: Your personal notetaker
Otter joins all your Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and similar platforms and takes notes. But what's particularly helpful is some of the "smarts" of this AI: First, it uses a combination of voice recognition and which participant's microphone is engaged to detect which individual is speaking (speaker 1, speaker 2 etc.); Next, it associates all notes with any on-screen content, so you can see in the report which slide is being referred to in the transcript; Last but not least, Otter is able to tell when there is a change of topic, so it provides summaries of each section of the meeting by the topic of discussion. A lifesaver.
6. Virtual Shoots
If you have a physical product that is sold on Amazon, Etsy, or similar, or sold DTC via e-commerce, you want it shown at its' best. This usually meant conducting a tabletop photo shoot which is both time consuming and, if using a professional photographer, expensive. Beyond the means of many niche or startup sellers. But now a cottage industry of AI solutions to this problem has sprung up.
Take a picture, pick you environment and voila!
In this particular example, Claid.ai, the process and interface are very user-friendly. Take a simple straight-on picture of your product(s) (you can use your phone), upload the file, then compose your shoot using a wide variety of surfaces, backdrops, lighting, and propping. The AI matches the light-source and makes it all look very real and professional.
7. Creative QR Codes
Didn't QR codes make a comeback during the pandemic! They are truly back, but have remained the rather sad, uninspiring, black & white squares they have always been. Until now! There are many creative QR code apps available but some tend to put the image quality before the functionality of the code. The one I'd recommend if you want to try this can be found at https://controlnet-qrcode.web.app/.
In the above example, the top row are a set of codes that were meticulously crafted by a designer or photographer, while the bottom row were made by AI. The two to the left are mine (give them a try!), with the center one being a controlnet example for which I used the prompt "English country garden". The bottom right example is a current Coca-Cola program.
8. Logos
If your small business, interest group or community organization needs a logo, take AI for a spin. I used Looka.com. This excellent tool asks you questions about your design and color preferences and you can prompt particular images or things (spectacles, an animal, technology?). I kept it simple and graphically focused.
Top left is my original font-based logo designed by yours truly. The next is an early exploration with, to the right, one of the many in-situ examples Looka provides. The bottom row is the logo and logotype I landed on.
9. Personal Avatars
This is where we enter the realm of "fun" rather than a strong business application. But certainly one to show the family. Once again there is an endless list of similar solutions but neural.love is as good as any and has a great name.
A slight challenge with these programs is that the AI needs a lot of examples to be able to do a decent job with likeness. The system recommends uploading 40+ facial images which is no small task. But again it's relatively easy to do. If you are more of an intermediate AI user, you will want to learn how to add the "saveID" function to MidJourney, in which case just a single image is enough to be able to add your likeness to any MidJourney image.
10. Presentations
This one might be the most practical of them all. Yes, AI has been applied to the development of slide presentations. Again there's a good selection of tools like Canva and SlidesAI (Google), and it's only a matter of time before Microsoft and Google buy, develop or just integrate-in their own AI for PowerPoint and GoogleSlides.
For now, I'm using (and loving) beautiful.ai.
With templates, styles, and color palettes to start, Beautiful has hundreds of pre-made formats for almost any communication need, and all with the ability to customize. There is a searchable AI photo and icon library, or you can just upload your own. All exportable as JPG, PPT, Keynote, or Google Slides.
Conclusion
If you're new to AI, don't be afraid. Dip your toe in the water then dive in. For companies getting into AI more deeply, be mindful of the potential legal pitfalls in terms of copyright infringement since, as smart as the AIs are, they don't tend to think too much about that risk. Talk to your attorney.
AI is changing at an unbelievable pace. Some of you may have noticed that your regular Google search page may offer you the ability to use their AI search beta. This morning Meta announced the roll-out of its celebrity bots: characters with whom you can chat, seek advice, and ask questions. While their names are generic, they paid $2 million each to a host of celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Kiley Jenner, and Tom Brady to use their likeness for 10 years!! Stranger and stranger.
But there's no putting the cork back in the bottle. So we may as well learn to use, even if we can't always love AI.
