Daily Inspiration: AI and Creativity – “You might find your imagination buried deep within the algorithm!”

“You might find your imagination buried deep within the algorithm!” -Futurist Jim Carroll

I imagined myself on a stage in the future – and there I am!

Imagination is a wonderful thing. Don’t waste it – empower it!

With a number of upcoming keynotes on AI, I decided that it might be captivating to tell the story of AI through AI. And so, rather than using traditional stock images throughout, I thought it would be best to generate the art that I use to tell my story on stage and in conference rooms.

I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results! I’ve immersed myself in the world of Midjourney, the ‘text-to-image’ service that has become the favorite of so many eager to explore this complex new world. You’ve already seen a few results here. The image above, for example, came from a photo of a keynote I gave on stage in London, England a few years back; an AI took the image and rebuilt it using my prompt to give it a futuristic theme.

I also asked it to give it a bit of a 1950ish, cartoon style look. (In this case, I didn’t use the feature I’ve discovered which lets me swap in my actual face.)

Back to my key point. I am discovering I can enhance my slide deck, wonderfully, through the use of AI-generated images. I’m discovering that if you are going to tell a story about technology, you might as well use the technology to tell the story. For example, if I am going to talk about the future of insurance, I might as well have a futuristic actuary interacting with real-time insurance information.

Similarly, if I am going to make a point about AI in agriculture, I might as well use AI to generate a futuristic image of a futuristic farmer.

What about construction? Well, AI is leading to the acceleration of robotic construction methodologies, so why not dream up a few little construction robots?

The more I got into this, the better I found the results to be.

The results at times, though, do get a little weird.

For example, one of the easiest tools that an organization might implement is an AI-enhanced support chatbot – you know, those online agents that will converse with you through a Website when you seek some assistance. With that in mind, I asked MidJourney, one of the most popular AI image generation platforms, to generate for me ‘an AI chatbot.’ It came back with four options (which is standard).  It’s not quite what I expected…

But the little chatbot is cute as heck though…

I ended up using a variation of this in my slide deck when I was talking about examples of the key pillars of innovation.

I’ve had other odd results. For example, I wanted to make the point that when it comes to the future, there is no silver bullet solution to be had.

The AI gave me a horse. Um, a Silver Bullet.

I can only imagine that somewhere deep within the algorithm are extensive details about the commonality of a horse named Bullet. Hence, a silver bullet! I left it in the slide deck! After all, it will help me to emphasize the point about the risks of relying on the algorithm!

Overall, I’m having a blast. I’ll use the first version of the deck next week when I am with the senior leadership team of a global construction/infrastructure company. The reaction should be interesting!

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