AI — What is it and how does it impact me?

Me, that is, me as a web designer

Let me first make it clear that I am not an expert on AI, nor do I have any sort of deeper understanding of this field or its many ramifications.

However, AI touches almost everything in our lives and I think I am able to think critically about the subject and its impact on society.

I plan to write about AI, and to do that I ought to read about the subject. One of the tools I will use for this endeavour? You guessed it: AI. I believe it was Mark Twain who once wrote or said, “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

I have been using AI tools for some time. Not indirectly, which I am sure I do, but directly. Such tools as ChatGTP, OriginalityAI, ArtSmart, StableDiffusion, MidJourney and others. At least I can talk about the topic of AI content creators from a user’s perspective. And that’s exactly what I am going to do in this article. I will focus on the impact it has directly on my life, especially my professional life. The advantages and disadvantages, as well as the considerations and implications to keep in mind when using AI professionally.

I plan to offer some reflections on the role of AI in areas such as medicine, finance, the arts, academic research, business management, white collar jobs, and the overall impact on society and the economy. But that is something for future insights. In this article, I focus on web designers and content creators. Especially copywriters and bloggers, and the impact of AI on this industry. Before we go into depth, we need to be clear about what AI is.

AI — What is it?

Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence. Two words that are very familiar to us, but which we do not always understand in their essence.

Some time ago I was discussing with my partner what intelligence is and I was pretty sure I knew. The ability to learn, to think, to apply logic and to understand the objectivity of reality. I don’t want to get philosophical on you now though. Well, I was quickly made aware that I was missing some important aspects of intelligence. Namely social skills and emotional intelligence, as well as spatial and visual intelligence.

So intelligence can manifest itself in different ways. Critical thinking, problem solving, creativity. The ability to learn when confronted with new information 🙂. As well as self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, empathy, orientation and perception, to name a few.

Artificial

We all know what is artificial and what is not. Artificial is not natural, it does not occur in nature. It is man-made and ubiquitous, which sometimes leads us humans to think such “things” are natural. Environments such as parks, gardens, cities and towns are artificial. Artificial materials are so numerous that I wouldn’t need to write anything else, just the names of these materials and this article would go on almost forever. But just looking at the materials that are made from petroleum. Plastics, petrol and diesel, nylon, polyester and acrylic, solvents, fertilisers, lots of pharmaceuticals and the list goes on.

Ok, all that to say that artificial intelligence is a kind of man-made intelligence. And I say a kind of intelligence because as we have seen, intelligence manifests itself in different ways. I do not think anyone will disagree with me when I say that artificial intelligence has no social skills or emotional intelligence. It has made great strides in data processing and even spatial intelligence and pattern recognition. But even if it surpasses humans in these areas, it is miles behind us in the former. And it’s possible (likely?) it will never be as intelligent as humans in those areas.

AI’s ability to learn

AI can learn from the information it consumes. This is the main reason why AI tools like ChatGPT are freely available to use. So it can gather as much information as it can to learn.

ChatGPT has learned more in a few months from being used freely by humans than from the yottabytes of information it was fed before. Every time users complained or made fun of the tool on the open web, the tool learned.

The OpenAI team could not have guessed how many different ways users around the world would try to hack, crack and even humiliate the tool. If there is a loophole, someone will find it, and guess what, the tool will learn and improve. The team also never dreamed of the different ways the tool would end up being used. For programming for example, or in my case, for web design and content writing.

AI — Machine Learning

Machine learning is the process of training AI. It’s done by feeding it large amounts of data. It will then recognise patterns and relationships between variables through algorithms that use statistical methods. AI can learn from labelled data where the answer is known. In this case, the algorithm learns to make predictions by analysing the relationship between the input data and the correct output. It can also learn from data where the answer is not known. In this case, the algorithm must find patterns independently without being guided by labelled data. And it can learn through reinforcement. It learns by interacting with an environment and receiving feedback in the form of penalties or rewards. This process is often called the “credit assignment problem”. It consists of applying a numerical value that reflects the success or failure of the AI’s actions.

AI and web design

Essential tasks such as content creation, eg; copy for websites, product descriptions, graphics for social media and even blogs, can be streamlined by using an AI tool to create content. Visuals, not just images, but entire layouts for pages or sections of pages of a website can also be generated by an AI. Although creative work needs to be developed, much of the design work is done by AI for many web designers who are more comfortable with these tools.

Can AI build a website from scratch? Not yet, but it can potentially give a web developer everything they need to develop a good-looking website.

This creative work can be done with a few free to use tools. Tools such as a chatbot like ChatGPT and an image generator like Midjourney. Personally, I am not yet at the stage where I can create outstanding work with AI, either written or visual. I still need to hone my skills. However, I am confident that I will use more and more AI-generated images in the future.

Considerations when using AI for web design

It’s not all roses when you use AI for web design. It’s not just that you need skill to get the most out of AI tools, there are also its limitations. AI is not really creative in the way that humans are. AI can not really create anything new; although you could say that humans are also just rehashing old ideas. All it does is mix existing information in different ways, but in an algorithmic way and not in a human creative way. AI results depend on the data it has been fed and that can lead to poor results as well.

There are also ethical concerns. The data used to generate the results can in some cases be considered personal data. The information an AI tool uses to generate an image for a particular website could be be based on personal data it holds about the kind of customers who should visit such a website. This problem exists due to the fact that data is already available out there in the internet.

Blogger’s Paradise

You give an AI tool a title and some keywords and it spits out a 500-word blog. Blogs are an important tool for website owners not only to hopefully provide useful information to their users, but also to improve the search engine optimisation of their website.

Google ranks websites based on a number of key areas. The quality of the content on the website is one of these areas. There are many ways in which Google rates the quality of content, but first of all, the content must be there. The more content there is, the more keywords there are, the better the website will rank.

AI Blog quality

You can argue about the quality of content that an AI tool provides. I use it and can say that the quality is quite good. It isn’t yet suitable for writing effective blogs though. The style and tone lacks the human touch and very often there are grammar and syntax errors. The content may be taken out of context and word-for-word from the data source, which is considered plagiarism. It’s no excuse to say that the text was written by an AI tool. There is a strong focus in college on plagiarism or avoiding it. I think that education should start in primary or secondary school at the latest.

An AI might be able to write a 500–1000 word blog, but that’s about it. At least not in one go and with a minimum of quality, because the content will be repeated frequently. But in the time it takes the blogger to sort and edit the text they get, they could write a potentially better blog if they started writing immediately. This is not to say that you should not use an AI tool when writing a blog. Because it’s better than Google for research, you should use it for that purpose. If it can be of great help to anyone writing in any capacity, including academic research, it can certainly be used for bloggers.

It won’t last long

But it’s not just that the quality of the blog can’t match that of a human writer (depends on the writer obviously), it’s that it will do more harm than good. AI detection tools abound, as do anti-plagiarism tools.

Google will very soon introduce AI detection algorithms that will penalise a website if a certain threshold of AI content is detected. The AI detection tools are not perfect right now, so that will not happen tomorrow. I think, at the moment, they err on the side of caution, or maybe it’s something else.

I have tested all my articles while testing different tools. Although they passed the test with most tools, there was one in particular that identified a couple of paragraphs as more than 50% possibly AI; the insult 🙂. I also found that the fewer words the content has, the more likely it is to be identified as possible AI in that particular tool. So there is still room for improvement in both AI chatbot tools and AI detection tools, but I think we will get there quickly enough.

What the future looks like

I think content creators will continue to improve to the point where they can write novels, not just whole 5000-page blogs. And AI detection tools will evolve and get better at recognising AI-written content.

I reckon, we are moving towards a future where AI content has its place and is accepted for what it is. I don’t think anyone will be able to write a novel using AI and pass it off as their own. But we will read novels written by AI in the future. Human writing will continue to have its place and be appreciated for what it is.

The same concepts apply to other arts like music, painting, photography (imagine realistic “photos” of people and landscapes that do not exist; mental!) and others. You can even imagine sculptures created by AI if you believe robots will have such advanced dexterity that they will be able to do so.

In Summary

I will continue to use AI for image generation and try to improve my skills so that I can use it in design. In doing so, I am always aware of the pitfalls and implications of such use.

If needed, I will also use AI’s capabilities to help with writing copy and product descriptions.

I have learned to use AI for my research and to generate ideas that I can explore further. ChatGPT is a great tool for this. But I will write my own articles because it allows me to deepen my own knowledge and clarify my own thoughts.

Tools for the job

Some of the tools you can try out. Some are paid, but they should have free trials.

AI image generators: Midjourney (requires discord) and Dall-E 2. These are free to use at the moment although they have a limited amount of credits that you can use.

Chatbot tools: ChatGPT, Dialogflow, Jasper, Jarvis.ai (for lyrics), Copy.ai.

AI detection tools: Contentatscale, Text Classifier, GPT-2 Output Detector, Originality.

These are great tools that can help any designer, blogger, marketeer, copywriter, writer, researcher or even lawyer and others. If used responsibly and intelligently, and if you do not get lazy and stop being creative and productive, they are excellent tools for anyone’s arsenal.

The next article on AI will probably deal with the Deepfake saga. There is no stopping it now. So how will we adapt to such a reality? How will it affect our everyday lives?