I've been hearing a lot about AI tools lately. Maybe you have, too... or maybe you don't spend time in the same Twitter echo-chamber that I do.

Either way, it's true. Several new artificial intelligence tools are blowing people's minds. One of the leaders in AI research is OpenAI.

In April, OpenAI released DALL·E 2, which can create original, realistic images and art from a text description. I have experimented with it for the last few months. It's very impressive, and I'm even more impressed by what I've seen others create with it.

Then, just last week, OpenAI released another tool. ChatGPT — which I'm even more excited about — is an AI chat assistant that can carry on mostly-coherent conversations, fetch information on just about any topic you can imagine, and compose completely "original" responses.

You can scroll through a few tweets in this Twitter profile to see some of the things people are doing with it. And this creative prompt and ChatGPT response is by far one of the most hilarious things I've read in a long time.

Anyways, I'm sure you can guess where this is going. I plugged this week's fragment into ChatGPT and asked it to write a few more lines of poetry to complete it.

`The sun does not like or dislike anyone`
`Though it gives some people skin cancer.`

#015 / 2022

Here's my prompt and the response ChatGPT gave me in return:

Hmmm... it's sort of elementary-sounding; a little lacking in meaningful depth. I have to admit though, that's me sometimes too. Maybe given some more careful prompting, we could get something better! Maybe with all its new users ChatGPT is in one of those creative slumps like I've been in for a while myself.

This is fun.

As a bonus, I spent a few minutes prompting DALL·E 2 to come up with some accompanying images. The results are too entertaining to choose just one.

Many people have been talking about the potential AI has to replace certain professions, especially creative ones. I know there are creative purists out there with OPINIONS about AI-generated art. Personally, I get more inspired than worried by new technology like this. What an opportunity to generate new ideas and push the boundaries of what we perceive as possible — what we perceive as art.

This stuff is so beautiful to me. The future will be beautiful, too.

Before I let you go, a quick question: What are your opinions on AI? (I would love to hear from creative purists and anarchists alike!) Pause and answer this for yourself. If you feel like sharing you can reply to this email. (I'll give you my answer if you ask!)

Thank you for joining me.

See you next Tuesday,

Benny

P.S. — Did you catch me saying I'm in a creative slump above? Never fear. Writer's block is a wonderful thing! It gives me time and energy for other things in life and it means my brain is working on more stuff. :) I'm also super thankful to have this newsletter to keep me creative even amidst the dry seasons! I appreciate you holding this space for me. Until next week!

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