What's Real Anymore in the Age of Generative AI? — The Idea for a Personal Creative Project
How Generative AI Helped Me Fabricate a Video News Story for $30 in One Afternoon (Part 1)
Generative AI — Hype and Risks
Generative AI is making it easier for anyone to create new text, images, audio, and video with instructions in plain English. As the popularity of generative AI has been rising to a hype, so has the coverage of its limitations and risks. For example, data scraped off the internet frequently leads to repeating existing biases and large language models (LLM) creating falsehoods (aka “hallucinations”).
Although generative AI is a transformational technology that will affect all industries, human history has taught us that technology will not only be used with good intentions. As I have been reflecting on the impact of generative AI, I have started having a dozen more questions for every answer I’ve found.
We are more connected than ever before — yet, we are more divided.
We have more information available than ever before — yet, we seek confirmation of our existing beliefs.
My conclusion: Despite all the good we can expect generative AI to create, it will also make it a lot easier to create and spread misinformation. That’s why we will need authentic information from trusted sources — and a way to validate it.
“How will we know what’s real anymore? And how can we tell?”
So, I set out to explore these questions to start a discourse on the topic. Four generative AI tools have helped me create a full video of a fabricated news story in one afternoon…
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Disclaimer
The following is a creative project that I have created using several generative AI tools. The goal of this project is to start a discourse about the potential of generative AI technologies, learning and using the tools, combining the output of one tool with the input of another, and thinking about the ethical implications of AI-generated content at scale. Lastly, this project aims to prepare AI leaders to discuss these aspects with their business peers. The use of specific tools is neither an endorsement nor taking a position on the product. They are rather exemplary for applications for this medium. Finally, the objectives and motives of this project as well as the views expressed in this post and the linked videos are my own.
A Glimpse of the Future Created with Generative AI
AI leaders in business are looking to determine how to best use generative AI — whether it is to implement existing solutions or to build their own. They also need to advise their peers across various business functions about the potential and the risks of this new technology, and help increase AI literacy across their company. This is especially relevant as everyday users now have tools at their disposal that can be used at an unprecedented scale — for good and for bad.
I’ve been writing about various aspects of generative AI and its social/ societal impact — for example, using outsourced labor for content moderation, the early hype of prompt engineering, the ethical implications of generative AI, the impact on communication as it gets easier to combine different types of AI-generated media (e.g. text + audio + video), and the responsibility put into the public’s hands.
Earlier this month, I turned my curiosity into a creative project, using publicly available generative AI tools. In between running errands, I sat down to try it out — in one afternoon. To create the assets with AI, I used nothing but a smartphone where the tools support mobile devices.
I wanted to explore the following questions:
What can you create with generative AI today?
How realistic will the results be?
How do you use the tools?
How long does it take to generate a good result?
With whom would I share the results?
This the first post in a 4-part series. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and approach to using generative AI to create a video of a news story. Tomorrow, I’ll share how ChatGPT and Midjourney have helped me create the script and imagery — stay tuned for the final clip.
What questions do you have about the potential of generative AI?
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What’s next?
Appearances
June 8 - Panel discussion with Transatlantic AI eXchange on Web 3.0 Generative and Synthetic Data Application
Join us for the upcoming episodes of “What’s the BUZZ?”:
May 9 - Brian Evergreen, Founder & CEO The Profitable Good Company & Author, will discuss how manufacturing businesses can Create A Human Future With AI.
June 8 - Ravit Dotan, Director The Collaborative AI Responsibility Lab at University of Pittsburgh, will join when we cover how responsible AI practices evolve in times of generative AI.
Follow me on LinkedIn for daily posts about how you can set up & scale your AI program in the enterprise. Activate notifications (🔔) and never miss an update.
Together, let’s turn hype into outcome. 👍🏻
—Andreas