AI Tools Part 5: 2023 A Year in Review
Description
What a year it’s been for Generative AI technology and the tools that have been developed! When I first started the AI Tools series with Part 1 back in January of 2023, I could only see a sliver of what was to become in the months ahead. I then decided we need a central place that we could reference all these emerging tools and their updates so I created AI Tools: The List You Need Now in February. By the time I got to AI Tools Part 2 in March, it was apparent that developers were moving full-steam ahead in developing and providing updates and new tools every week. I had to pull back from doing such rapid updates that were quickly becoming obsolete as soon as I’d publish and put out AI Tools Part 3: in June, to give us a sense of where we were mid-year. Then focusing primarily on video and animation tools, I published AI Tools Part 4 in August, along with a smattering of how-to articles and tutorials for various AI Tools (which I’ll cover in this wrap up) that brings us to here at the end of the year.
And here we stand, looking into the possibilities of our future.
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<figcaption id="caption-attachment-274821" class="wp-caption-text">Midjourney 5.2 Generated center image and outcropped in Adobe Photoshop with Generative Fill Expand.</figcaption></figure>
Where we started… Where we are are going.
The biggest fears about Generative AI in January, was that it was cheating; theft; it’s not real art; it’s going to take our jobs away; it’s going to steal your soul, etc. Well, only some of that has happened so far. I’ve seen many of my nay-saying design, imaging and photography colleagues that were actually angry about it then, embrace the capabilities and adapted their own style in how they use it in their own workflows and compositions. Some have made their work a lot more interesting and creative as a result! I always applaud them and encourage them in the advancements, because they’re trying something new and the results are beautiful.
And I see how many folks are jumping on the bandwagon with full abandon of their past limitations and genuinely having a lot of fun and have unleashed the creative beast. I think I’ve fallen into this category as I’m always interested to see what I can do with the next tool that opens up a portal to creativity. I’m an explorer and I get bored really quickly.
In reality, nobody has lost their souls to AI yet and the jury is still out as to whether any real theft or plagiarism has cost anyone money in actual losses for IP, though there have been some class action suits filed*. But where there have been actual loss of jobs and threats of loss of IP are in the entertainment industry – where voices, faces and likenesses can be cloned or synthesized and the actors are no longer needed for certain roles. We’ve witnessed the strikes against the big studios for unfair use/threats of use of people’s likeness for use in other productions without compensation.
*Note that as of December 27, 2023, the first major lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft was filed by the New York Times for copyright infringement.
As an independent producer, VFX artist and corporate/industrial video guy, I have seen both sides of this coin in a very real and very scary way. Because I can do these things with a desktop computer and a web browser – today. We can clone someone’s voice, their likeness, motion, etc. and create video avatars or translate what they’re saying into another language or make them say things they probably wouldn’t (which has a long list of ethical issues which we will undoubtedly experience in the coming election year, sadly.)
We are using synthesized voices for most of our Voiceover productions now, so we’re not hiring outside talent (or recording ourselves) anymore for general how-to videos. This gives us ultimate flexibility and consistency throughout a production or series, and can instantly fix mispronunciations, or change the inflection of the artist’s speech to match the project’s needs. It’s not perfect and can’t really replace the human element with most dramatic reads that require emotion and energy (yet) but for industrial and light commercial work, it does the trick. And I can’t help but feel a little guilty for not hiring voice actors now.
For cloning/video avatar work, we independent producers MUST take the initiative to protect the rights of the actors with whom we hire for projects. We are striving for fair compensation for their performance and a buy-out of projected use with strict limitations – just like commercial works. And they agree to participating on-camera and in written contract before we can even engage. We need the talent to give us content needed to clone and produce realistic results, but we’re also not a big studio that’s going to make a 3D virtual actor they can use for anything they want. If there’s a wardrobe change or pose, etc. then it’s a new shoot and a new agreement. There are still limitations as to what we can do with current technology, but there will be a day soon where these limitations will be lifted even at the prosumer level. I’m not sure what that even looks like right now…
All we can do is stay alert, be honest and ethical and fair, and try to navigate these fast and crazy waters we’ve entered like the digital pioneers that we are. These are tools and some tools can kill you if mishandled, so let’s try not to lose a limb out there!
The AI Tool roadmap to here…
Let’s look back at this past year and track the development of some of these AI Tools and technologies.
Starting with the original inspiration that got me hooked, was Text-to-Image tools. I’ve been using Midjourney since June of 2022 and it has evolved an insane amount since then. We’re currently at version 6.0 (Alpha)
Since I wanted to keep it a fair test all along, I used the same text prompt and only varied the version that Midjourney was running at the time. It’s a silly prompt the first time I wrote it back in June of 2022, but then we were lucky if we only got 2 eyes on every face that it output, so we tried everything crazy that popped in our heads! (well, I still do!) 
Text prompt: Uma Thurman making a sandwich Tarantino style
I really have no idea what kind of sandwich Quinten prefers and none of these ended up with a Kill Bill vibe, but you’ll notice that the 4-image cluster produced in 6/22 had a much smaller resolution output than subsequent versions. In the 4th Quadrant, in 12/23 was done with v5.2 with the same text prompt. (Check out the 4X Upscaling with v6.0 directly below @ 4096×4096)
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