Promptly

Several years ago, I became interested in using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to produce artwork, largely with the idea that it would help illustrate a children's book. Clearly, the emphasis for me was the story. While many children's books are all about the pictures -  a delightful art style, or carefully crafted character - I had the story, and needed the art. I figured I could write my way to some good accompanying illustrations.

I found a couple of systems that would use your "prompts" to create art. A prompt is simply a sentence that tells the AI bot what is wanted from it. In the case of art, the instructions include such things as subject, action, style, colors, setting, descriptions and other elements. The AI, once instructed,  will then render art selections, delivered electronically as an image on your screen.  

Among the art-rendering AI systems I tried were:

Midjourney: "Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Francisco-based independent research lab Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts..."

DaVinci: "Transform your creative ideas into stunning AI-powered paintings in just seconds, bringing your vision to life with advanced technology. DaVinci is a state-of-the-art AI Image Generator app. Using the latest artificial intelligence technology, it can create unique artworks, photos, and images based solely on your descriptions."

NightCafe: "AI Art Generator: All the best AI Art models in one place/Create amazing artworks in seconds using our AI Art Generator. Use Flux, DALL-e 3, Google Imagen, Stable Diffusion, Ideogram and more. NightCafe is an art generator, but what makes it unique is the community. Join millions of other AI art enthusiasts and publish your creations, like and comment on other creations, hang out in AI art chat rooms and even participate in artwork contests and challenges - all without leaving NightCafe."

While my introduction to AI bots was my desire to create illustrations, AI bots are used for many purposes, from sprucing up a sentence to generating designs. Whatever the desired result, once the command is provided, the bot goes to work - using the collective power of the information on the Internet - to do as commanded. Interestingly, back when Google was launched, its self-proclaimed mission was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Early users were delighted to discover that among all the early search engines, Google did, indeed, return more useful results for one primary reason: in those days, "sponsored" results weren't the main idea, relevance was. So the more a user selected a result to follow when presented with a page of them, the more "relevant" that result became. And of course, the information on the page linked to had to contain real results based on the user's search string. 

All the information located and catalogued has only compounded over time, becoming better structured and classified, and now the bots have a veritable feast of reasonably well-organized information, learning, exposition, imagery, ideas, words, emotions, to sort through and feed back, in images, responses and conversations, to the user.

In the early days of search engines, it soon was discovered that search strings were more successful the more specifically written they were, with “not” and “and” and many other subtleties that helped the engine work efficiently for your results.

Writing prompts to create art, it turns out, is going through a similar time. It’s a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. First, there is that word, "prompt." Getting the AI to do your bidding is anything but. Prompt, that is. Writing a prompt requires careful crafting, and very specific words and placements of words in order to turn out something close to what you're looking for. And, not all that long after people began to interact with AI, schools for writing prompts began to pop up.

But the old principle of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) still holds, hence the schools for writing prompts. Among many others, Google offers a prompt school - including accreditation. Coursera, SectionSchool and other online educational platforms are now also offering prompt classes - and there are any number of offerings of prompt collections that help students and dabblers to become more proficient and understand the nuances of prompt writing.

Google Prompts: "Ready to get more out of AI? Google Prompting Essentials will teach you how to design prompts that work in 5 easy steps. Learn how AI can help you save time when tackling complex tasks, analyzing data, and summarizing information." You'll be certified, have a library of working prompts, qualify for jobs. In an approximately 10-hour course, you will be able to write a fewer-than-21 word prompt that will provide workable results."

All that said, however, I had a conversation with a young woman recently who wanted to investigate a research project she had, and went to an AI bot for a *discussion.* She was shocked to discover that, using good prompts, she was able to, conversationally, scour the internet, and millions of other people's thoughts, ideas and experiences and have a roughly hour long "conversation" with an expert, a mentor, a friend, and an analyst. Free. Her choice of bots was innovator ChatGPT, a ground-breaking AI bot that literally uses the vast storehouse of the internet to chat with the user based on conversational questions and discussion. She was not only delighted with the insights the AI offered, but also reported that her interaction was highly "conversational," confirming the promise that the bot makes to respond in almost human-like ways.

ChatGPT
"(If) ChatGPT doesn’t ring a bell, here’s a quick overview: It’s a chatbot that interacts conversationally with you. You’d be pardoned if you wonder what’s all the fuss about. After all, isn’t it the same as those infuriating chatbots which supposedly help you when you have an issue with your mobile provider or other services? As it turns out, ChatGPT is a very special chatbot, and that’s just the beginning: it can also write software, poems, songs, and short stories."

No doubt at this point the burning question arises: did I write this article using AI?