AI is even more OP than I realized.
My relationship with AI has been a love-hate kinda thing. I use it at work: more like a sentient rubber ducky Stack Overflow (minus flaming and down-voting and general condescension) that I use to help me debug; sometimes as a hallucinating junior programmer with his own style who forgets basic error-checks and gives me code that I have to study like crazy and often mod before I'd ever think to use it in production; sometimes for quick one-off questions like "how do I do [x] in [language] using [new library]?". It can drive me bananas, parroting the same things over and over again, saying I should use functions that don't exist, and I could go on. But it's a useful tool and I'm grateful to have it. And yes, I've used it to talk writing. Not grammar and stuff cuz I can do that (I prefer to use words like "cuz" but I can be fancy and formal if required); more brainstorming ideas. I'll ask for tips like creating character names or how to write a good "hook", or little writing prompts etc. So yeah, it's a part of my life now, like it or now (and most of the time, I do like it).
But here's the thing: I love to code. I love to write. So for me, the idea of allowing AI to completely take over those tasks for me kinda sucks ice. So when my friend asked me to review a web app he "built" (had an AI do for him) I was like, meh, it's alright. Better CSS than I can do (lol). But it was bloated, hard to follow, had accessibility issues etc. so I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I'd want that thing doing my code. But my buddy's not a programmer, and he's been hooked on AI lately cuz now he can create web apps.
BUUUUUT (and yes, it's a "big but" )...
One night, my mom showed me a video of one of our favorite comedians... as a baby. š It was even funnier than the first time I saw it, cuz it was a flippin' baby! What the puck? Seriously? Who does that? Who looks at a comedian and thinks, "oh, he would be so much funnier if he were a baby"?! š
Wellll... then last night, after a long day at work, I didn't want to code. I kinda wanted to write but didn't feel like jumping into my main story, and didn't really feel like doing a random prompt or whatever either. Soooo.... I made the mistake of looking for an AI that could create pictures. š I described a handful of characters/settings from the stories I'm writing, and I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY! It was like seeing my creations come to life. Of course it has a limit on edits and there are details I would definitely want to change (in nearly all of them) but I was shocked at how good they were. It was like the thing read my mind! Well... not quite. Okay, here's a better analogy: It was as if my book were published already, and were a huge success, and they were making it into a movie. The castles looked so real! The people were darn-near exactly as I imagined them! Both were antagonists that I want to write redemption arcs for, and maybe even have ending up together. He was as tough-looking a warrior as in any great story turned movie. She was even more beautiful (and intimidating) than I imagined her! The lady in particular was especially surprising; it was like they hired an actress, or a model or something, dressed her as my character, and then gave her the magic that character has in my story using high-end special effects! And tonight I added a couple more of the castles to my collection. I'm starting to hit limits, so I might give it a few days, but I kinda want to do this for all my characters. This pretty much confirmed that I should create that wiki I've been thinking about, to keep track of all my characters, settings, time lines etc. I love writing and going on imagination alone, as writers have done since the Dawn of Time, but dang! It's fun to see my creations too!
Now, I know @Lunduke has (or at least had - I think he still has) a "no AI generated content" rule. And in general I think it is/was a very good one. In any case, I'm sharing this next bit because it's awesome and because it might inspire some hard core hardware nerd to build it. My prompt was, "A mobile device inspired by the old "luggable" computer; a CRT-bezel-like holder for the tablet, and off to one side of that (like on the SX-64) are two small slots for SD cards that look kind of like floppy drives, and a full-sized mechanical keyboard; it's what the Compaq Portable or the Osborne would have looked like if they made it to 2025." the first picture was cool, like an early 90s era laptop. But that wasn't quite what I was shooting for, so I added, "The keyboard should have a number pad (the tablet doesn't have to take up the entire surface of the other side - that was how it worked on luggables), and the keys should be either white or a lighter shade of gray. But it's not yellowed like a real vintage computer would be now." And man, let me tell you... I would want both of these things. I would use one for my Surface and the other for a de-googled Android. The second one is more like what I had in mind (except that it forgot the number pad or the other not-mobile keys, but I don't really care that much - that thing is rad). And it looks really sturdy too, another important feature in a mobile thing. And those keys! I can practically hear'em click... oh wait, that's me typing this. :-D But all joking aside, if ClockworkPi made either of them I would so have to save for it - maybe even bite the bullet and snaggit dagnabbit. :-D
But I guess the point (apart from the awesome retro-lookin' tech that doesn't exist... yet) is that in my mind, AI was all about code, writing, basically just text. I knew that governments and other rich folks had found ways to make it do mind-blowing "deep fakes", but the picture generation thing is available to the average Joe Nerd! At no cost! That's insane! If I can do this - graphics above and beyond anything I could ever have created in Paint or Gimp, what are the big-shots and their bottomless wallets capable of? And then I remembered "eleven labs" and their crazy voice generation stuff... yeah, AI is wildly over-powered. That Jurassic Park quote about being too busy trying to see if we could, that we never stopped to think whether we should, is oh so fitting. š
