🤖 YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS

If you're worried that the AI revolution is passing you by, don't be. It’s coming to you. You might even be its next creative star.

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Gucci and Adidas unveiled their Spring/Summer 2023 collection (Gucci)

🔼 Bitcoin. It’s at a 9 month high »»

🔽 Sweden’s largest pension fund. They owned about US$1b worth of shares in both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank »»

💬 “The economic case was just very strong.” Car-free living takes off in car-centric cities »»

🛩️ Bali’s best beaches »»

👗 Adidas and Gucci are back at it »» Also: “Gucci Continuum” will make deadstock fabrics and previous-season pieces available to young designers, makers and other creatives to incorporate into their own designs »»

💎 Get ready for Handbags Online: The Power of Colour, an auction of rare designer handbags and accessories at Christie’s Hong Kong. Bidding starts next week »»

Raffaele Contigiani’s Hôtel du Lac in Tunis features in a new coffee table book showcasing the world’s best brutalist architecture. (Philip Quick / Robb Report)

Chick-fil-A’s going global »»

Inside the 72 hours that transformed US banking »»

OpenAI released GPT-4, an updated version of the AI tech that powers ChatGPT »»

A new coffee table book showcases the world’s best brutalist architecture »»

Silicon Valley Bank did not have a communications professional on their leadership team, and it showed »»

Check out Chief’s new London branch. The American members’ club has totally transformed a Bloomsbury townhouse »»

Europe is bracing for (another) devastating drought »»

The golden era of celebrity beauty brands is ending »» 🔐

Tomorrow’s founders can’t code. That’s OK »»

Coinbase will add the popular DeFi apps Uniswap (one of the most popular decentralized crypto exchanges) and Aave (a platform for lending and borrowing crypto) to its new Base blockchain »» The newsletter's writer owns shares of Coinbase

The best barrier creams to lock in moisture and protect your skin. (Also: what is the skin barrier?) »»

Meta laid off another 10,000 employees »»

A 5,000-mile-wide blob of stinky seaweed is headed straight for Florida »»

The next FIFA World Cup will have 16 more teams and 40 extra games »»

The best bedsheets, according to hoteliers »»

If you're worried that the AI revolution is passing you by, don't be. It’s coming to you. You might even be its next creative star.

Google’s adding generative AI directly into Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. (Google)

IF YOU'RE WORRIED about the AI revolution passing you by —or the fact that you don’t yet know how to prompt the perfect response from ChatGPT— don't be.

The reason why you shouldn’t worry is simple:
The AI revolution is going to come to you.

EXHIBIT A: GOOGLE just announced that generative AI is coming to both Gmail and Google Docs.

Let's unpack what it means, shall we?

AI HAS ACTUALLY been chilling in our Gmail accounts for years now, automatically suggesting how we should finish our sentences, as you may or may not have noticed.

Now, Google's upping the ante by integrating a ChatGPT-esque interface directly into your Gmail compose window, your Google Meet video call, and your Google Slides presentation.
Ask Google to summarize a long and wordy email conversation for you, and it will.
Then ask it to compose a professional reply to the team, using nothing more than the words “I’m on it” as its prompt, and it will as well.

THE EXAMPLE USE case in Google’s launch video for its new AI tools is a team creating a Spring marketing brief for an e-commerce product —but the industry to really think about here is agriculture, actually.

As Vox reminds us, 150 years ago, about 50% of American workers worked in agriculture.
Just 30 years later —at the turn of the 20th century— only 33% of the country’s workers did.
By 2022, only 1.4% of American workers worked in agriculture.

WHAT HAPPENED? TECHNOLOGY, obviously.

Farming and ranching continues to be boosted by innovations in mechanical automation, as well as chemistry, biology and —as I’ve written— genomics.
What all that innovation did was allow people who would otherwise have worked in agriculture to do other things… like write marketing briefs for e-commerce brands in 2023.

BUT WHAT’S GOING to happen once that sort of work is automated?

I predict there will be another wave of professional displacement, a powerful echo of the one that transformed the demand for agriculture workers into demand for office clerks, phone operators, typists, and marketeers.
Only this wave of professional displacement will allow us humans to pursue even higher value work than writing marketing briefs.
Making art. In exchange for money.

GET READY FOR an absolute explosion in creativity, as people without skills in programming, image making, writing fiction, or making music gain the ability —through generative AI— to realize whatever creative impulses they have.

I've written a lot about this wild sociological experiment we’re all in: the end of mainstream popular culture, as our info and entertainment feeds splinter into ever finer, ever more individualized strands.
That splintering has been driven by social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, but it’s also been fed by an increase in the supply of creators on those apps.
No longer, of course, does an aspiring comedian have to cut their teeth on open mic nights, to maybe, hopefully, get noticed by a talent scout, and possibly, perhaps, if they’re lucky, an audition for a featured role on SNL, in order to be seen and appreciated by millions.
Today, there is no shortage of really brilliant and funny TikTok and Instagram comedians, bringing joy to countless fans.
But that supply shock is about to go into overdrive.

TODAY, AI IS helping us send snappier emails and build punchier presentations.

But just wait and see what happens when the ability to create all sorts of different creative output —from visual art, to music, to long form fiction, to animated films— is unleashed on everyone.
Already, plenty of tools exist to let anyone make beats, create photoreal illustrations, and even generate animations.
But tools like these are only going to get more powerful, and more accessible.

BUT WHERE WILL the money come from?

The coming explosion of generative AI tools is going to meet our social media discovery moment perfectly.
Algorithmically-driven apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels have made it easier than ever to have your stuff seen by people you don’t know, sometimes hundreds of thousands of them.
That, in turn, will make it likelier —though not necessarily easier— for your new-found AI-fueled creative output to find its 1000 true fans.
(“1000 True Fans” is a theory, originally posited in 2008, that all a solo artist needs to make a living making their art is that many true and loyal fans. I link to the original essay below.)

OK, WHAT’S THE point here?

A lot of people are freaking out about the blog writing and content marketing jobs that are going to go away thanks to ChatGPT.
What we should instead focus on is the coming superabundance of creative output that's about to rush at us, from makers in every corner of the globe, who no longer need to be classically trained in the mediums they’re creating in.
Let’s hope some of it is good!

More:

Google’s bringing AI chat to Gmail and Docs »»

How you (yes, you!) can actually use AI to make your work better »»

A new era for AI and Google Workspace »»

1,000 True Fans »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.