AI arts and crafts
”Every artist was first an amateur.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Previously at the Volcano Base, I’d been wallowing in a Chocolate Limbo. But it did give me time to share a simple prioritisation tool for people thinking about applying AI and automation.
Since then, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole, experimenting with synthetic personalities. I occasionally emerged, covered in ghastly oomska, to unexpectedly win some new clients. So that was nice.
Mission Briefing
AI arts and crafts
Do you get stuck down rabbit holes too? Something interesting occurs to you, or you’re inspired by something you read/see/hear. And off you go, headlong down the rabbit hole to find out as much as you possibly can. You emerge for air and scotch eggs ONLY. Maybe a slow-motion Diet Coke. Do you?
Well, I do. Quite regularly, if Cathy is to be believed. But I’m not 100% about that any more. Not since the Estonian Episode.
Subterranean foraging
This week’s subterranean forage was courtesy of my friend Shaun Trevisick. He’s one of those TV types. No, one of the nice ones. Somehow we ended up having a meeting with the founder of an impressive creative technology company (withholding the name for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me at this time).
They’d recreated a historical figure from some grainy old photos, which was then interviewed on a TV chat show. This was mainly a vfx and cgi job, with a new generation of AI tools involved in the production process.
Their production process was some next-level stuff. What really struck me was how experimental every stage of it was, because the technologies were so new. They were inventing how to do this process, while running the process. It reminded me of the parachute crochet I was engaged with at the beginning of this year.
AI craft
But what really struck me was the level of craft. Some people in the creative industries think AI is a threat to that. OK, yes, it is a threat to some things. But these guys were using the AI tools to craft with, and also crafting the tools, informed by years of conventional video production experience.
They could spend more time going deep on the aspects that got them excited (like eyebrows), while handing-off time-consuming drudge to AI systems. They took time to give the AI systems really high quality inputs. Crucially, they took the time to give the AI systems high quality feedback, redirecting the next iteration.
I think, by any definition, this is still craft.
Rabbit hole ahead
Naturally, having discovered that the historical figure was reading a script (not actually being interviewed), I dived headfirst into the rabbit hole of synthetic personalities. I’ve learned so much, but don’t have anything of practical value to show for it. Apart from my n8n-enabled Victorian occultist, which is still very much a work in progress. Honestly, he’s struggling to use Excel responsibly.
Classified Intel
Some interesting stuff I discovered on my adventures.
Magnific_AI
Transforms any image into a higher-resolution version. If you’re picky about visual details, you’ll like this. It reminds me of those police dramas where they’re looking at grainy footage and someone says “don’t worry, I’ll enhance the image”. Now actually possible.
It’s a vfx studio in your browser. All sorts of amazing tools, like being able to do motion capture FROM an existing video clip. So you capture the actor’s performance, analyse the video for the skeleton, and then add whatever creature/person you want over that video skeleton.
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