Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
Listen to that awesome theme music. Alright, Episode 40. We’re back. We got our friend Mike, who has triumphantly returned.
Mike 0:27
Yeah.
Don Mock 0:27
After his last excellent podcast about Comic Sans, which is super fun.
Mike 0:32
Yeah.
Don Mock 0:32
And, Mike, I hope it’s okay that I say this, but Mike is super up on technology. I’m gonna embarrass you, even though I’m literally looking at you in the eyes right now. And I would say, you’re a gamer, right? Is that Is that safe to say?
Mike 0:45
Yeah, yeah. Gamer.
Don Mock 0:46
Yeah, you’re a gamer. Alright, so that qualifies you as being our resident expert to talk about something that is all the rage these days. Seems to be everywhere. It’s on the news. It’s on Twitter, if that’s considered news, or whatever Twitter is these days?
Mike 0:58
Yeah.
Don Mock 0:59
It’s everywhere. And the concept of AI? Right?
Mike 1:03
Yeah.
Don Mock 1:03
Taking over. AI.
Mike 1:05
Yeah, it’s crazy.
Don Mock 1:06
Yeah.
Mike 1:06
I mean, it seems like, I don’t know, a few years ago. There was no AI.
Don Mock 1:11
Yeah.
Mike 1:06
Like, there was like rumblings of it.
Don Mock 1:14
Sure.
Mike 1:14
Or like jokes on Twitter, like, yeah, I made.
Don Mock 1:17
Bullets. Oh, the robot. The robots are taking over and judgment day jokes.
Mike 1:20
Yes.
Don Mock 1:20
That type of thing, right?
Mike 1:21
There was also stuff like going around like, I made AI watch 100 hours of How I Met Your Mother and then this is the script that they wrote, or whatever.
Don Mock 1:29
Yeah, that’s right.
Mike 1:30
I don’t think those were ever real.
Don Mock 1:32
No, I don’t think so either. But now we’ve got I mean, I think everyone’s starting to really get familiar with open AI, Chat GPT, right? Which is definitely more the text version.
Mike 1:41
Yeah.
Don Mock 1:42
More, I consider that content, I guess. I mean, right?
Mike 1:45
Yeah, defintely.
Don Mock 1:45
That content, right. So it’s, I’ve got a question. Let me ask, hey, how do you cook this dish? And it’ll go out and find and give you the recipe for the dish?
Mike 1:53
Yeah.
Don Mock 1:54
Or I think we’ve seen a lot of anecdotal little things on how it’s been incredibly successful, but also probably more so how poor it’s been in responses, right?
Mike 2:06
Yeah. I think it’s not, I think there’s something that allows you to connect it to the internet. I think technically, Chat GPT is like, disconnected from the internet.
Don Mock 2:16
It’s it own, sort of enclosed.
Mike 2:18
It got all of its stuff, and then now it’s like, closed off, but I’ve seen some things online that like that, you can connect it back to the internet. And then I don’t know what that does.
Don Mock 2:27
Yeah, I don’t know, either. I mean, I’ve seen some funny things on Twitter of like, I got an argument with Chat GPT and it’s going back and forth about something was blatantly wrong and it just refused to concede.
Mike 2:38
I think it was the year. I think the one that you showed us. It was convinced the year was like, 2019 or something?
Don Mock 2:44
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was like no, it’s 2023. You know, that type of thing, right? So, I think we’re also starting to see some stories online about I think I’m a college professor and I think I got my first.
Mike 2:55
Yeah.
Don Mock 2:55
Paper written this way or that or whatever. So, I think, you know, obviously in the hands of malicious deviancy you know, bad things can happen, right? The shortcuts I mean, we’re shortcut society, man. Amazon, I need it in an hour. I’m not gonna write my own paper when somebody’s machine can write it for me, right?
Mike 3:12
Yeah.
Don Mock 3:12
So, there’s that but I think, besides the content thing, which I think is interesting, and I guess there’s probably a place for it in the world, right?
Mike 3:21
Yeah.
Don Mock 3:22
Just like Grammarly, I think, I mean, man, one of my biggest pet peeves ever is the they’re, there, their.
Mike 3:28
Yeah.
Don Mock 3:28
Right? I mean, oh my god, I’m gonna get in trouble. I’m literally gonna get in trouble by voicing my opinions on a podcast and putting out in the world about they’re, there, their. So, I’ll stop with that, right. But my mother in law was a librarian. My aunt is a librarian. I mean, we’ve got a lot of English professors, dare I say, in the family.
Mike 3:48
Yeah.
Don Mock 3:49
So, they’re there and their, right. Shout out Kathy and Ruth. Mission critical importance. So, besides that, I think what we’re probably more interested in is the Art Generator.
Mike 4:02
Yeah.
Don Mock 4:02
Right. And you were showing me something in the office the other day, that was pretty cool.
Mike 4:05
Yeah, Midjourney. Yeah, that’s the seemingly the best version of it. I think it’s connected with this thing called Stable Diffusion. I’m not sure. I think they use that as like, their back end.
Don Mock 4:17
The back engine?
Mike 4:18
Yeah, to generate all the art. But yeah, I mean, I remember seeing like early ones. I don’t remember the names of them. Like, oh, I think DALL-E was one.
Don Mock 4:27
Okay.
Mike 4:28
And stuff looked a little wonky and weird.
Don Mock 4:31
Yeah.
Mike 4:31
It was like, kind of like, that’s interesting. It’s coming there. And then Midjourney came along and it’s just creating, like works of art.
Don Mock 4:38
Blows it out of the water.
Mike 4:39
Crazy. Yeah.
Don Mock 4:39
So, an example of that would be what Mike like, because I know we were tinkering around with it. Like, I want an alien in a convertible, in the style of Picasso’s blue face.
Mike 4:49
Yeah.
Don Mock 4:50
Go.
Mike 4:50
Yeah. It just generates four different versions of whatever it thinks that that means.
Don Mock 4:56
Yes.
Mike 4:57
And it’s amazing.
Don Mock 5:03
It’s terrifying, though. You say it’s amazing. I say it’s terrifying.
Mike 5:05
Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely terrifying. I mean, there are the, obvious markers that we’ve seen.
Don Mock 5:12
Yeah.
Mike 5:12
With the messing up of hands.
Don Mock 5:14
Yes, I was gonna get into that. But since you brought it up, we can chat about that. There’s two things, I think that are very problematic. And as everyone knows, I love comic books, and I follow a lot of comic artists online. I love sequential storytelling. That’s just my jam. Right? So there definitely is a, I don’t wanna say backlash, but like a whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t be stealing my style here.
Mike 5:32
Yeah.
Don Mock 5:32
Don’t be stealing. I mean, worked on 20 years to develop this specific style or whatever.
Mike 5:36
Yeah.
Don Mock 5:36
Now, people can just ape it and make their own sort of thing, which is crazy, right? But the telltale sign twofold is one, always look for the weird little signature that was stolen, because obviously. It’s I want a Rembrandt of this, of that, and you’ll see like a weird little signature, that’s kind of been bastardized by the computer.
Mike 5:55
Yeah, yeah.
Don Mock 5:55
You know what I mean, in there, you’re like, okay, it’s clearly AI. Right? And then the magical topic of hands.
Mike 6:00
Yeah, the hands.
Don Mock 6:01
Yeah. For those that don’t know, do yourself a favor and go Google. Well, this might be dangerous. But Google, you know, AI art hands.
Mike 6:01
Yeah.
Don Mock 6:02
And you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see what Mike? I’ll throw it to you.
Mike 6:11
Just jumbled up hands, many different fingers. Wierdly positioned hand.
Don Mock 6:14
Yeah, fingers coming out of the middle. I mean, they just can’t. It’s amazing how the faces I think, look relatively natural, right?
Mike 6:24
Yeah.
Don Mock 6:26
But hands. Teeth are a little wonky, too. You know what I mean?
Mike 6:29
Yeah.
Don Mock 6:29
If someone’s really smiling to get kind of strange, right?
Mike 6:31
Yeah.
Don Mock 6:32
But the hands are hilarious. And do you remember what I what I sent around the office? Maybe a couple of weeks ago?
Mike 6:37
Yeah, the wearing of the ring for?
Don Mock 6:39
Yes.
Mike 6:40
Possible. Saying that..
Don Mock 6:42
Yes.
Mike 6:42
This is made up. It’s not real.
Don Mock 6:43
Yeah, so speaking of nefarious behavior, as we talked about content with Chat GPT. You can already go out and buy rings, okay? That have a 3D printed extra finger on the ring, hanging off right? Like lifesized, humans sized.
Mike 7:01
Yes.
Don Mock 7:01
Right. So you could wear the ring. It’ll have an extra finger sticking out. So if you are caught, the thinking here. I’m not saying I’ve come up with this. But the thinking here is that, oh, if you’re caught on surveillance, or you’re caught doing a crime, you can claim that wasn’t me, look at the..
Mike 7:17
Yeah, look at the weird fingers.
Don Mock 7:19
Yeah, that’s computer generated image. That’s not me. Look, I’ve got seven fingers. You know, I’m like my word. Does this stuff happened fast? I feel like a grandpa saying this out loud. But it’s totally insane.
Mike 7:29
I mean, it’s crazy. The immediate thought because it’s not been out that long. And it’s like, immediately somebody’s already like, well, we can just do this.
Don Mock 7:38
Well, bad people are out there doing things immediately. Are they smart doing that? I have no idea. It’s kind of funny to think about.
Mike 7:45
Yeah.
Don Mock 7:45
But I think, we haven’t really tinkered with AI from a workflow perspective over here at all. I think, early in my career, gosh, I mean, before Photoshop even had layers, because I’m so old. It would be interesting to think about how I would have utilized it earlier in my career, but it hasn’t really, we do have stock imagery. We do have stock illustration out there.
Mike 8:06
Yeah.
Don Mock 8:06
We obviously are very versed on our site to illustrate things on our own. But I think, it’s going to be interesting, I think, to see over the next several years, our major publications, for example, as editorial is having a hard time and has been for a number of years. We don’t read magazines anymore on a printed form, even though Rob and I literally just talked about is print dead. Is Time Magazine gonna use AI images?
Mike 8:33
Yeah.
Don Mock 8:33
Is National Geographic? You know, I mean, how is this going to happen? I don’t know.
Mike 8:36
I think it’s good in a sense of like, it’s good for ideation. I think like, if you need to think of a bunch of different things, or you just need to like it, you do the same thing, when you’re like scrolling through the internet, if you’re looking for.
Don Mock 8:54
Sure.
Mike 8:54
Some sort of creative burst of energy to get you through whatever you’re working on.
Don Mock 8:58
Inspiration, we’ll call it, right?
Mike 8:59
Yeah. So, I think it’s good for that. But, I don’t know using it directly is, I don’t know. It seems it’s that is, seems weird to me. It’s like, kinda are the robots taking over?
Don Mock 8:59
Yeah, there’s a little Judgment Day aspect there.
Mike 9:13
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:14
I mean, it’s interesting. Our workflow here, for the most part, if I think about round one, and theater of the mind and showing clients sort of comp ideas. I think, in the rare instance, it actually could be interesting to be like, because a lot of times, we’ll come up with an idea. We’ll, doodle it out, we’ll sketch it out, and then we’ll kind of have to put it in layout, like Marker Comp style, or just black and white illustration style, right? And sort of add some support images, right? Because obviously, if it truly is something creative, it doesn’t exist out there. You can’t go find what it is.
Mike 9:45
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:46
It’s like, we want to illustrate this specific scene in this specific style.
Mike 9:51
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:51
Right. So, we’ll show clients here’s a style of illustration that we love, right? Because it shows the color scheme and shows the whatever, but then we have doodled out, your product in this environment, whatever the case may be.
Mike 10:03
Yeah.
Don Mock 10:03
It might be interesting in the future to utilize AI to try to help sort of bridge that gap I think, but as of right now, I still wouldn’t. I don’t know that you can use that stuff as final high-res. I don’t even know what the legal ramifications are of that, you know?
Mike 10:18
It’s a little bit.
Don Mock 10:20
A little nebulous?
Mike 10:21
It’s a little nebulous right now just because they are in court, I think right now with Getty Images
Don Mock 10:27
Really?
Mike 10:27
And then I think. Yeah.
Don Mock 10:28
Nice.
Mike 10:28
Getty Images going after a Stable Diffusion and Midjourney I think.
Don Mock 10:32
Okay. Interesting.
Mike 10:33
Then, I think there’s another legal case with like three artists and maybe, like Deviant Art artist, I’m not sure who they are.
Don Mock 10:43
Yeah, copyright infringement, like you stole my jam.
Mike 10:46
Your copyright infringing my material and then using it for your robot.
Don Mock 10:51
Yeah, well, correct me if I’m wrong here, Mike. But Chat, the chat GPT, that is free, correct. You have to sign up and make an account. But, right now, you can still use it for free.
Mike 11:04
They have a Plus program now, which gives you more access, like when it’s down or like some other stuff.
Don Mock 11:11
I mean, meaning anyone can sign up for an account and just at least tinker, right?
Mike 11:14
Yeah.
Don Mock 11:14
You can go in and say, Oh, my God, like, how do I cook a cake? Or whatever. It seems like from the content Chat perspective, the technology side seems to be far more successful. I’ve seen a lot of videos of like, help me build a website, and it’ll go through all the data, C++, whatever the case may be right. But, I think and again, correct me if I’m wrong here, I think the Midjourney, you have to pay, right?
Mike 11:37
Midjourney, they have like a pay. They do it like a trial kind of thing. You get, like so many generations for free and then after that you have to pay.
Don Mock 11:50
Okay, well, then that that may be the whammy in the lawsuit. Right.
Mike 11:53
Yeah.
Don Mock 11:54
Because it’s a paid scenario?
Mike 11:56
Yeah.
Don Mock 11:56
And you’re profiting off of other artwork, and other artists, right. That type of thing. Copyright law is a weird thing, man.
Mike 12:10
Yeah.
Don Mock 12:05
I mean, it just is. It’s weird. You know, some things, you think would be slam dunks aren’t. It’s always very interesting too, when it goes global. I mean, the world is a smaller place here now. Right?
Mike 12:18
Yeah.
Don Mock 12:18
So it’s, this isn’t just a domestic scenario. It’s the things we think that are obvious. It’s like, oh, Apple lost every single trademark infringement, you know what I mean, ever, on iPhone to Samsung. And you’re like, that doesn’t make me any sense. But then other artists win handily, right? So I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing.
Mike 12:18
I think the court cases that are here, that are coming, I think this will be like, kind of, it’ll either make or break AI for our generation. Like, it’s gonna either kill it, or it’s gonna continue.
Don Mock 12:54
I mean, I think, as with everything, technology’s always great and fun to tinker with. And it has improved certain facets of our life for sure. I’m a little old school and I still love photography, the way photography was meant to be.
Mike 13:10
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:11
Illustrator, you know what I mean? Hiring illustrators to illustrate things and let artists be artists.
Mike 13:15
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:16
They can’t have computers take over everything, right?
Mike 13:18
Yeah, yeah.
Don Mock 13:20
Alright. Well, I think that sort of wraps up today’s chat on AI. Good, bad, indifferent. It’s kind of interesting. It’s out there. It’s definitely fun to tinker with.
Mike 13:28
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:29
It’s definitely worth an afternoon to sort of play around and see what’s out there and whatnot. It’ll be interesting to see kind of where it goes, Mike, especially because you brought up the lawsuits. And we are kind of artists at heart, right. So it’ll be interesting to see sort of how that works within the artist community and all the students out there, don’t use it to write your paper.
Mike 13:47
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:48
Right?
Mike 13:48
Yeah.
Don Mock 13:50
Alright. Well, I think that’ll wrap us up so everybody can find us at mocktheagency.com online, and you can hit us on the socials and we will chat with you next time. Thanks, everybody.
Mike 13:58
See you.
Don Mock 13:59
Thanks Mike.
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