After much deliberation, I was compelled to finally start using the popular artificial intelligence tools of Midjourney, a descriptive digital art generator, and ChatGPT, an automatic text generator. These tools have been in the news as of late and being the tech-savvy curious guy that I am, the temptation of free trialing both was one that couldn’t bear resisting.

Starting first with Midjourney, I tried to enter in a description of an image that I wanted to generate. The first time did fairly well, all things considered. The next few images were based on personal ones that I wanted to imagine how they would turn out using photos I had in my own collection. Those were hit-and-miss. The rest of the generated images included mascots of local sports teams and college programs. Overall, they were good. Really good. To see these imagined pieces created in a short time period (most of them running no more than a minute of time) was incredible to witness in real-time.

The reminder that was given from the beginning was that Midjourney is still a beta product. Regardless, I have come away with it fairly satisfied with the results. It tells me that it is an AI tool that can be used for a lot of motivation for creative people. There is caution, though, on using this as official imagery to replicate or replace actual pieces of real art.

Using ChatGPT, I was to first ask it a history question: why was the Mason-Dixon line an important part of the early United States history? It gave a pretty good answer, a detailed one than what I had expected in an instant. This is no deterrent at all, but if given the chance to expand even further, like an essay perhaps, it would have obliged.

Going further, I started another chat, this one, personally, to ask about comic book characters: Batman and Superman. I wanted to see how deep the AI could go in providing detail regarding something from the publication-entertainment industry. While I did liked the responses it gave, I threw in a curveball and asked it an opinion follow-up. The answer it gave was an honest but deflective one, saying it could not give an opinion as it deemed that as a human attribute. And since it is aware that it’s not human, it gave statistical information based on the question that was given.

Given the capabilities on what it can provide based on what it is asked, I can see why folks love to use ChatGPT for certain industries, including, but limited to, school-aged students. There are parents and teachers who have their thoughts on the use of AI to generate wording that those students would otherwise not use to that level. So, it has started the debate on whether AI could be used (or abused) for purposes beyond its intent. I believe it is getting to the point with companies investing in it with plans to eliminate current positions that may not need an individual in the future. If AI has gotten that advanced, then there should be preparation for this scenario to continue. My question is this: is the investment in AI from large companies going too fast? Or is it on brand to be the future of creative and assistant services whether we want it or not?

At the time of this writing, Microsoft, Google and Adobe all have introduced new AI tools to their collections. For Microsoft, this includes incorporating OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT) services into their products such as their search engine, Bing, and their web browser, Edge. They also have plans to bring in DALL-E into the Bing chatbot to generate images based on descriptions. Google has introduced Bard. This tool has gardened a lot of controversy with some questionable results being given out. Google has vowed to squash any issues that should arise with Bard. Adobe has now gone the image generation route in Firefly. This is in addition to other tools Adobe has brought on to work alongside Photoshop and Express in recent time that gives the ability to text to describe images.

For myself, I’m in digital design and web development. I would love to use Midjourney (or even Firefly) for some of my work. But then, it really wouldn’t be mine in totality. For personal use outside of work, that’s fine. Otherwise, it’s not entirely likely for professional use, unless things change in terms of outlook. The same goes for ChatGPT. It would be nice to generate some random text to throw on to a website that I would create. But would it be proper to have ChatGPT text on there? See, the conflict here is integrity. As tech-savvy and creative as I am, it may be better off to use AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT as aids and not replacers for actual attributes (or other tools) used to publish, create, etc. After all, think about the writers and artists who possess SKILLS to do what they do best. If a machine can easily replicate their entire life’s work in seconds or minutes, then suddenly, two industries are upset about the advancement of this kind of tech. And I totally get their concern.

That said, services like ChatGPT isn’t going anywhere at all. In fact, it’ll be far more probable than not those advancements will solidly continue, more companies will invest big money into incorporating them into their services and a lot of people will be impacted in some form. Depending on whether it’s the lower-level employees, the higher-level employers or the end user, AI-based tools will be close to the standard right now and more coming sooner rather than later. To be fair, it’s already been around for quite some time. Those chat-bots you see on some sites asking you for any assistance on anything? AI. Those automatic voice systems you hear when you’re on the phone with customer service? AI, too.

As for Midjourney, art is a form of expression. And describing it is what makes it fun to discuss. But when it’s a machine that creates it and uses it in a way that could or could not be beneficial to society or even certain individuals, then there must be a discussion on fairness. This is a big part of a major example of my future conflict with AI.

So that there is no confusion on my stance with this, I actually really like AI a lot. I still do plan to use it (whether Midjourney, ChatGPT or some other tool) for certain pieces personally. Far as professional use is concerned, there is still a lot of internal debate on using it as an assistant to the work and not a formal substitute of it.

The better thing could be to avoid it for professional use entirely. But that really doesn’t feel realistic, especially if other companies are planning to use it and benefit immensely because of it. Shouldn’t I possess the option to do the same for my business? Would that be fair? I suppose it depends on the situation; however, you don’t want to be on the slow end of tech advances. Because if so, then it is that much tougher to gain those new skill(s) to compete with contemporaries for gigs and offers. And the world probably isn’t going to wait for those that get left behind in the dust with being slow of change like that.

This, to me, could be the beginning of speeding up the never-ending issue that plagues society to this very day: the haves and the have-nots. There seems to be a lot of folks who wish to be part of that elite class of the haves.

Enter ChatGPT and Midjourney.