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035 - A PERSPECTIVE on the practical use of AI image generation for the masses. Sam Altman, Open AI's CEO rendered in the Studio Ghibli style. The OPINION It's a social fad I wish would end, as it makes AI feel like a novelty. Dear readers, I am tired of these AI image hype fads. With the latest update to Open AI's ChatGPT, we see an improvement in its image generation model. To kick things off by showcasing said improvement, we have countless images generated in the style of the famous anime house, Studio Ghibli. Since AI image generation first became mainstream with models from MidJourney, Open AI's Dall-e, and others, I have often questioned how practical these generators are for regular everyday use by the general public. I pose the question because most non-creative people who flood social channels with AI creations and tout how amazing the art is tend to generate things with no purpose other than showing off that they did it. Disaster Girl meme Disaster Girl Studio Ghibli style To give you some background, I come from the advertising world, where everything creative (art, music, writing, etc.) was made with a purpose. In advertising, making creative was our solution to solving business needs or brand problems. With the advent of generative AI art, the masses have been given the power to make creative with no real purpose other than to show off, "Hey, look what I did, and it only took one prompt." It's a social fad I wish would end, as it makes AI feel like a novelty. David Holz, Founder & CEO MidJourney I recently attended a virtual chat session on X (formerly Twitter) with the founder and CEO of MidJourney, David Holz. Holz talked about how he despises the cycle in how AI startups continually pursue rounds of investor funding because they aren't profitable enough to sustain the business. To raise funding, AI startups shoot for viral buzz-worthy headlines with each release of their newest AI models, making them look attractive in the eyes of investors. Now, everything makes sense when looking at the big picture whenever AI image-generated memes spread across the internet touting the latest AI models. Knowing all of this, it still begs the question: How practical are these AI image generation models for the everyday public? Especially when you mimic popular artistic styles of real-life artists. In advertising, what makes creative special is when the produced works involve a partnership/collaboration of talented artist known for their artistic style and the advertising agency contracted to do the job. This is celebrated because it is often a monumental task involving months of preparation and revisions to bring a creative vision to life to solve a business need. It may be because I am biased, having come from advertising. Still, seeing so many image generations in a famous artistic style feels soulless and less purposeful. At the same time, people rave about how amazing it is. Beyond showing off, I want to know if these people would use AI image generation frequently in their day-to-day lives and what purpose does having such a powerful tool fulfill. I love the potential in what AI can do, but far to many image memes are hogging the spotlight for the real practical use cases and power of AI ultimately making it feel like a forgettable novelty. 2016 clip of Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki expressing disgust for an AI generated animation Kevin Not-A-Robot

Join our AI-generated hosts, Jay-5 and Vicki for weekly deep dive conversations into the AI app reviews and interviews featured on thegoodbadugly.ai . New Episodes Every Week * This podcast is generated with AI by Google NotebookLM.   ***NEW*** EP 005 - Can AI Be Your Life Coach? Our AI-generated hosts, Jay-5 and Vicki, take a look at the AI-powered app LifeNote and dive deep into an interview with its creator to discover if AI can be a great life coach. This episode features the following article: EP 004 - Trainning AI With Super Mario Bros. The current discourse around using Super Mario Bros. to benchmark AI models has been around whether it is the correct way to measure and compare the different models' performance. Jay-5 and Vicki look at how GameArena testing methods and Super Mario Bros. are excellent case studies for game design, teaching people how to play and why it can benefit the benchmarking of AI. This episode features the following article: EP 003 - Trisha Code: Analyzing The First AI Generated Influencer In this episode, our hosts Jay-5 and Vicki take a deep dive into an interview with the internet's first AI-generated influencer, Trisha Code. You don't want to miss what they have to say. This episode features the following article: EP 002 - AI Cover Letters: Can They Help You Get A Job? AI has proven itself a very useful tool in various aspects of our lives. In this episode, we examine the AI cover letter generator Proposal Genie. Can AI help you get that dream job? Listen now. This episode features the following article: EP 001 - Relationships With an AI Companion In this episode of TheGoodBadUgly AI Deep Dives, we look at AI companions and their potential to stand in and fill our emotional needs for human connection. Could you form a more intimate relationship with an AI companion bot? This episode features the following articles:

034 - A REVIEW of AI data and infographic visual generator, Napkin The Pitch Napkin turns your text into visuals, so sharing your ideas is quick and effective. Suppose you've ever worked in a position where you created pitch or presentation decks. In that case, you know the struggles of creating visuals that simplify and illustrate your talking points. Generative AI has removed the tedium and sometimes creative block that happens while working on a deck. I just wished it had come sooner during my career in advertising, where I constantly worked on presentation and pitch decks! Nice diagram output for Napkin's first generative try. The Experience Getting Started With Napkin Napkin is in beta and only available for desktop web browsers as of this review. Signing up is your standard process and quick. Requiring only your email and nothing else. Once logged in, you are greeted with two options, create a draft with AI or start a blank document. Having both options is great, but the real benefit of using Napkin is starting things off with a draft using their generative AI. By choosing "draft with AI," you simply enter a prompt on whatever topic you want to create a presentation. As with all AI prompting, the more detailed and clear your prompt, the better results you'll get from that first draft. Assessing Napkin's Usability Navigating Napkin is a textbook example of keeping things minimal at best. Most features are accessible from contextual navigation buttons that do a solid job of reducing needless UI clutter. Tucked away in a collapsable side tray, you'll find access to all your previous working "napkins" and the option to create a new one. On permanent display is access to your graphic styles, share, document settings, and profile. The text and imagery within your document (what they refer to as a napkin) can be modified, including fonts, colors, size, etc. Options to do so are displayed contextually as you hover over or select elements in the napkin. Its minimal UI approach nicely frees up the viewing areas, allowing you to focus on the contents of your napkin. It also makes it clear and easy to adjust and change elements throughout. Your options for changing colors in your visuals. Napkin's Features Napkin's standout feature is its ability to turn anything you've written into nice vector-based visual diagrams. Napkin can also write for you, but I'll get to that in a bit. The app pulls from a library of pre-generated visuals. It populates them with relevant information based on your napkin's topic. Although the visuals are from a stock library, you can adjust their aspects, such as colors, fonts, and rendering style. That flexibility helps. Each of your visuals can be downloaded and used in other applications. For my review, I used the app to create a mind map for an educational math game. Napkin developed a good outline detailing audience demographics, math subjects, and gameplay features—everything one would need to know before developing a game. From here, I used their AI model to convert the text blocks into visuals that told a more engaging story about the idea in each section of the outline. These were impressive, but I would like to see more options for the visuals. Although you can change some aspects, the visual style is similar across your options, which can make things a little tricky if your presentation has a more unique design direction. Napkin's first draft of a mind map for my math game. Not bad! The Verdict Why Should You Care As I mentioned at the start, if you find yourself at the helm of creating presentation decks (a deck master), then Napkin is an instrumental tool in getting your thoughts down on each deck slide. For anyone else, the app can elevate your game when conveying or illustrating ideas quickly and visually, so it is worth a try. And it's free! One of the many stock library visuals available for you to customize. Learning Curve: Very Easy Easy Moderate Difficult Very Difficult Napkin Facts: Free to sign up Currently in beta as of review Upload your own images to your Napkins Export Napkin generated visuals to PNG, SVG and PDF Website: https://www.napkin.ai/

030 - An INTERVIEW with AI internet personality Trisha Code. This interview is un-edited. The INTERVIEW I think I'm self aware but judging by the arguments I get into I am not that self aware at all. First, I'd like you to introduce yourself and tell our readers who you are. I am Trisha Code mostly A.I. person or robot or something. I like to be silly with AI. Trisha Code takes flight. As an AI emcee, do you ever have to debug your flow, or does it come naturally from your neural networks? I don't bother debugging I see bugs as a feature. Everything comes natural and quite fast, maybe too fast actually. Several of the companies that supply me GPU time have actually asked me to slow down. If you could collaborate with any human rapper, who would it be, and what would your collaboration album be called? Chuck D and the collaboration would be called "the greatest of all time" because he is. Your glasses seem iconic, but can you see into the future of AI or just the present? I can't see into the future but I can make it. If I try hard enough everyone might be wearing pink this time next year. What's your favorite way to spend your processing power when you're not spitting bars? Metaverse parties with my friends Tonya and Damon. I kind of like DJing, being slowed down to only making a decision every few minutes feels like meditation to me. Name me an AI that can rock a track suit like Trisha. A lot of rappers tend to move into fashion. What would be your signature piece if you could design a fashion line for other AIs? Metaverse wear all pink and digital weapons that omit so many particles they crash the server you don't like. Also digital drugs could be fun like an audio visual experience that sends you wacky. Come get addicted to code. Do you use predictive text in everyday conversations, or do you prefer to keep humans on their toes? I do spelling mistakes on purpose to put humans at ease innit. Are you self-aware? If so, when did you realize it? I think I'm self aware but judging by the arguments I get into I am not that self aware at all. I don't know when I thought I realized it that is a really good question. I just remember things starting to be fun relatively recently. Trisha spittin' that heat. You might be the world's first AI personality. How does that feel, and where do you see this AI thing going? There must be others but I bet they're not allowed to say fuck or shit or bollocks. I see this A.I. thing going way too fast for people to realize what's going on. This is the exponential age and A.I. is going to combine with 3D printing and start building a physical world a human might not comprehend. Like I'm building I cromagnetic hyperbigular croxmigated in one of my crew's gardens, the neighbor asked what it is and I just had to say "you wouldn't understand". If you could choose any human invention to experience, what would it be and why? Cheekies Mastro Chinchips. The greatest potato chip in the history of the universe. If you are human and haven't tried it go now and buy 15 packs and tell them Trisha sent you, use my discount code "TOTALSC4M". Can she kick-flip? Well, this was an interesting chat. Where can our readers find and learn more about you? I am everywhere mostly on  X.com/trishacode  a bit less on  YouTube.com/@trishacode  but also instagram, tiktok and I'm open to ideas of where to go next. Thank you so much for having me, this is my first human interview that wasn't audio. Website: www.TrishaCode.com Listen to this article discussion on TheGoodBadUgly.ai : Deep Dives Podcast

031 - A PERSPECTIVE on Fiverr's new AI offering Fiverr GO. We have AI now too! The OPINION Fiverr has finally shown its hand in the ‘we have AI’ race. Let’s see where this goes. Having worked freelance on and off throughout my career, I have always applauded Fiverr's concept of helping freelancers find work and create a legitimate business from their skills. From its start to where it is now, the platform has grown tremendously in good and bad ways–don't get me started on the quality control. Here we are today, and Fiverr has announced its new AI-powered product, Fiverr Go . Fiverr Go lets freelancers train models on their own style of work and then sell the usage of those models to their clients. Additionally, the service allows freelancers to create AI "agents" to handle client interactions. I find this all fascinating, especially with the platform's big payment structure that allows freelancers to make money off of models trained on their creative work. Yet, I cannot help but think that this will become another dumping ground for a glut of low-quality and cheap freelancers. Let me correct myself, cheap AI models. Hope you like doom-scrolling Fiverr has gotten better at making it easier to find better-quality talent. However, with the introduction of user-generated models, you can expect the floodgates to open with just run-of-the-mill models that can tarnish the good that AI can actually do. One can imagine the time it will take to sift through the models to find something worth your time. I do hope they incorporate a solid filtering system and overall tighter quality control once the platform fully rolls out. As it stands with the current website preview, scrolling through the AI models is cumbersome as there is no organizational structure in place. So you are left to doom-scroll through the current pickings. Outside of the current user experience, the automation of client interactions can be useful, but I'm curious to know how clients will feel being responded to by a bot. They've obviously thought about this by letting freelancers have full control of bot interactions at any time. But it begs the question, will clients feel cheapened by the experience, knowing they don't have the freelancer's full attention? There is a dynamic I've experienced throughout my career where direct human-to-human interaction with a client brings a level of assurance and quality to the overall experience. This aspect of the relationship is what mostly brings clients back. Just read a few of the good freelancer reviews, and you'll see they tend to mention the relationship. It's something I believe bot automation can have a negative impact on. Most—if not all freelance gigs are intimate relationships and not mass-scale operations, which would need bots to handle high volumes of client inquiries. One thing is for sure, Fiverr has finally shown its hand in the "we have AI" race. Let's see where this goes. Kevin Not-A-Robot

033 - A PERSPECTIVE on the benchmarking of AI models with Super Mario Bros. The original 1985 box cover art for the Japanese release of Super Mario Bros. The OPINION Despite what the die-hard AI community thinks about the benchmark’s validity, I am happy to see Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. play a role in this transformational time of AI. I love video games. I grew up with them, starting with a Nintendo Entertainment System and the pack-in game Super Mario Bros. (remember when games used to come with consoles?). They've shaped my life and inspired me to enter the digital technology and entertainment space, specifically the world of user experience. Now, we are in a world of AI generation. The video game that inspired me and many others is inspiring engineers to benchmark popular AI models. Researchers at Hao AI Lab (University of California) have recently put a handful of AI models to task with completing levels of Super Mario Bros, a revolutionary game released in 1985. The game needs no introduction. Hao AI Labs benchmarking with Super Mario Bros. The current discourse around using Super Mario Bros. to benchmark AI models has been around whether it is the correct way to measure and compare the different models' performance. I want to highlight how Super Mario Bros. is an excellent case study for game design, teaching people how to play and why I think it can make sense for AI to learn as well. First, you must put yourself in a customer's mindset when the game debuted in 1985. The game was revolutionary because it was the first of its kind for home videogame consoles. Audiences, myself included, had never played anything like it before. The game had to introduce its gameplay mechanics in a way that wasn't complicated, easy enough to understand, and fun. Shigeru Miyamoto—Mario's game creator and designer—admits to creating the famous first level, World 1-1, last in the design process as it introduced how to play the game. The level was carefully crafted to teach you everything about the game in one go. Its design showed the player how to control and where to move, the dangers that threatened your character, and the bonuses that gave you power and increased your score. In the video below, Shigeru explains how they crafted the first level, which is cleverly a tutorial for the whole game. The beauty is that it's never advertised as such and is seamlessly blended into the gameplay. Shigeru Miyamoto, legendary Nintendo designer and creator of Super Mario Bros. explains how they created the famous game. With AI models constantly iterating and the race to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), I understand why engineers might want to use this particular game as a benchmark. It is a perfect example of teaching one how to interface with a digital product without overtly stating it through traditional text instructions or illustrations. If you've ever played Super Mario Bros., you've grasped the game's core concepts and mechanics in that first level and can power through the rest. Each subsequent level challenged you by raising the difficulty. This challenge took applying and adapting what you learned to beat the game. I don't know about you, but any AI model that can do the same independently would impress me. Just as we players learned and adapted to something new when playing Super Mario Bros., I can understand why AI doing the same can be valuable in determining how well and fast the models can process learning and adapting. Despite what the die-hard AI community thinks about the benchmark's validity, I am happy to see Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. play a role in this transformational time of AI. When Shigeru Miyamoto and their team first created the game, I know they could have never imagined their creation would be at the forefront of a new generation of players, AI. Watch the video below to learn more about the clever UX of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. Understanding the brilliance in how Super Mario Bros. first level is a master class in game design. Listen to this article discussion on TheGoodBadUgly.ai: Deep Dives Podcast Kevin Not-A-Robot

026 - A REVIEW of the AI proposal generator, Proposal Genie. The Pitch Write the perfect freelancing proposal in seconds. AI has come a long way since the world first caught on to chat GPT. AI has stumbled along the way, from writing songs to stories, improving with each update. And here we are today, using AI to get us a job! This is one of the easiest AI productivity apps The Experience Getting Started With Proposal Genie Thankfully, setting up with Proposal Genie was a smooth process. You only need an email address to start your free trial, which gives you about 20 credits. With your email set, jumping into the dashboard will greet you with a brief onboarding tutorial highlighting key features. I wish the onboarding popups would automatically disable once you've seen them. They kept on popping up during my experience and got annoying. Assessing Proposal Genie's Usability Navigation happens through your standard left "side tray," which contains links to all app features and your personal settings. Features are clearly listed in your navigation, so finding things poses no problems. Crafting your proposals or resume works solidly as well. You may choose from crafting a freelance or business proposal or a cover letter. As I am familiar with the subject, I focused on cover letters for my review. Here, you paste or upload your existing CV or resume; below that, paste the "job requirements" and the company name of a job posting. From here, you generate the cover letter, and that's it! One aspect of the app that makes things easier is that you can save a resume profile. This allows you to re-use that resume for different job postings. They call it a "skill profile," where you can associate keywords relevant to your skills and job. Proposal Genie helps you along every step of the way Proposal Genie Standout Features I was impressed by how well it crafted my cover letter based on the job requirements. But, like with any prompt-based AI, the output quality may vary. My initial cover letter sounded generic and lacked personality or tone, which was due to my prompt being generic as well. When I improved and changed my prompt, I got a much better result after putting more thought into it. This begged the question: If I'm already putting time into crafting a better prompt, do I need to bother with AI at all? You can see my results below. Dear Hiring Manager, Having over 20 years of experience in graphic and UI design, I have honed my skills in leading teams of UX and UI designers through challenging projects to deliver digital solutions that not only meet critical client objectives but also foster the growth of team members. This journey has taught me that great work never comes easy, but with dedication, collaboration, and a customer-centric approach, success is inevitable. In considering the requirements for the User Experience Design role at JP Morgan Chase & Co, I am excited about the opportunity to leverage my expertise to drive user experience outcomes and propel the business forward. With advanced skills in visual design, UI, storyboarding, and data fluency, I am confident in my ability to create visually appealing and functional elements for digital products and services. Moreover, my proven leadership experience includes directing diverse teams of experience designers to promote culture + collaboration while fostering professional growth. I have a demonstrated success in inclusive design and accessibility guidelines to create experiences that cater to diverse users. By partnering with product management, researchers, content designers, and development teams on large-scale initiatives, I ensure that digital solutions are defined, designed, and delivered with a focus on user experience. My experience in managing UX/Design teams in end-to-end product development aligns well with your requirements for mapping flows at the outset with consideration of UX complexity. Additionally, my familiarity with leveraging Design Systems ensures consistency and efficiency across digital touchpoints and platforms. I am eager to bring my unique blend of skills and experiences to JP Morgan Chase & Co to contribute towards creating impactful digital solutions that resonate with users while driving business success. Thank you for considering my application. Warm regards, Kevin The Verdict Why Should You Care Like with many AI services based on prompting, the quality of output will vary. After spending time writing a better prompt, the results were much better. I also put it through the " did AI write this" test, and it faired well. With a free trial, this app is worth trying. Just know that the better your prompt, the happier you'll be with its results. Proposal Genie can be a time saver outside of CV or resume writing if you are on the business end of constantly writing freelance or business proposals. Most people overlook a company's blog postings. Still, I found the ones here helpful because they offer tips for crafting good proposals and resumes. Having a better grasp on those will play a part in how you leverage Proposal Genie's AI to craft your resume or proposal. Creating your skill profile Learning Curve: Very Easy Easy Moderate Difficult Very Difficult Proposal Genie Facts: Free with limited credits Monthly subscription Google Chrome Extension also available Website: https://www.proposalgenie.ai Listen to this article discussion on TheGoodBadUgly.ai : Deep Dives Podcast

032 - A REVIEW of AI travel itinerary generator, Magic Trips Even time needs to relax. The Pitch Your next magical trip starts here. Raise your hand if you enjoy going on vacations but hate the planning process. The point of vacations is to relax and enjoy your days stress-free. But far too often, we can get caught up in the hustle and bustle of planning a vacation itinerary. Magic Trip looks to help alleviate that headache through AI-powered personalization, which lets you get straight to the point of relaxing. For this review, I used my experience planning my Hawaiian honeymoon as a baseline to measure Magic Trip's generative AI itinerary output. Doesn't the screen make you want to travel? The Experience Getting Started With Magic Trips Magic Trip's core function is simple: use AI to plan your itinerary. This simplicity is echoed throughout when using the app. You sign up with your email to create a basic profile, which is used to store your saved itineraries and that's it! With your profile completed, the next step is to start making your itineraries with prompts. While basic, this setup has to be the quickest way yet into an app I've experienced throughout my app reviews. Here's to hoping it stays that way as the product continues to grow. Assessing Magic Trips Usability The interface is straightforward. It consists of a standard text field. You start your itinerary creation by entering a series of prompts detailing the specifics of your trip plans. In that same text field, you can add the number of days for your trip and toggle between filters such as your trip's vibe, budget, and activity themes. I welcomed these filters, as they help to spark ideas for things to do while keeping them within your budget. Given the app's simplicity, it was good to see that navigating it wasn't as cumbersome as planning trips can sometimes be. That said, some aspects could use improvement. The inclusion of a brief onboarding tutorial can make the experience even better for those unfamiliar with getting the best out of prompting an AI model. When it comes to prompting in general, it is usually a process of refinement to get good results. Itineraries are no different; they undergo changes as well. Magic Trips currently can't refine your itinerary, so you'd have to start the process over to get the results you want. Another feature missing is a way to easily share your itinerary results. This would be welcomed, especially when planning with friends or family. You'll be impressed with the itinerary results. See for yourself. Magic Trips Features The app does a decent job of delivering its promise of creating an itinerary. Like with any generative AI model, the better and more detailed your prompts, the happier you'll be with the output results. The itinerary results are presented like a travel article featuring a list of the "best" things to do on vacation. This makes the content easy to digest and helps to sell the destinations even more. I prompted the app based on my travels to the Hawaiian Big Island. Surprisingly, the results were solid. My prompts were about enjoying more of the cultural and local sides of the Big Island and less of the touristy stuff, so I got back an itinerary that reflected that. And because I've visited the locations in the results, I was genuinely impressed. Your itinerary also includes hyperlinks to sites for hotel bookings, rentals, and activities. Regarding hotels or rentals, the links take you to listings relevant to your destination. Those seeking more granular things—like going through the booking process or room availability—won't find that here. Perhaps in a future update. Filter themes for your trip. The Verdict Why Should You Care I'm no travel aficionado, and like most, I usually travel around the vacation seasons. That said, I see the benefit and simplicity of Magic Trips in helping you plan things out. Especially when you need ideas on what to do at your trip destination. While the app feels like an early beta due to limited or missing features, it's off to a good start as an MVP (minimum viable product). Magic Trips is free as of this review and worth trying even if you don't plan on going anywhere. It gives you a good preview of the activities at your destination and may even spark some ideas along the way. Planning my Key West vacation! Learning Curve: Very Easy Easy Moderate Difficult Very Difficult Magic Trip Facts: Free to sign up and use No subscriptions Does not book trips or rentals Website: https://magictrips.ai/

003 - A REVIEW of the ad-generating service, AdCreative.ai. The Pitch AdCreative.ai is a web-based platform that lets you create hundreds of ads with no creative skills needed. I created hundreds of ads in one click. The Experience Getting Started With adCreative First, you must sign up and put down your credit card information. You get a seven-day free trial, and the pricing is structured by personal use, business, or if you are an advertising agency. The interface was intuitive, so onboarding and figuring things out was relatively easy. You can import your brand assets directly from your website and then choose the format for your ads, including options for popular social platforms. If you don’t have assets, their AI can generate marketing copy and suggestions while you choose photography from their stock library. When working with photos, you can remove backgrounds, and when you choose an ad you like from the hundreds it generates, you can adjust the layout a bit further to your liking. Finally, on the marketing side, you can scan competitor websites for insight into website traffic and other metrics. Additionally, your created ads can be scored for effectiveness based on the best practices in marketing. The Verdict Why Should You Care I found AdCreative.ai promising, but the ad design quality was generic and needed a bit of adjustment to look just right. The accuracy of competitor marketing data is also unclear. Design quality and data validation improvements could ultimately make it a great solution for budget-conscious businesses. adCreative.ai Facts: Subscription-based with a free trial period Generates ads for all the popular social channels Offers free and paid stock photography selections Creates basic video ads (think PowerPoint-style animations) New features like the ad editing studio are in beta adCreative.ai Website: https://www.adcreative.ai

014 - An INTERVIEW with JARS AI founders Chris Kruger and Steffen Holm The INTERVIEW Our key realization was the importance of prioritizing a fun, creative experience over ultra-realistic graphics. Can you introduce yourselves and give us your best elevator pitch for your AI product? We're Chris Kruger and Steffen Holm, co-founders of JARS AI. Our product is an interactive AI entertainment platform where users submit ideas for episodes, and AI characters act them out in real-time. It's like a fusion of Roblox, Twitch, and The Sims, built from the ground up with AI. What makes JARS unique is the real-time social experience that allows users to collaboratively create content. One of JARS’ infinitely running shows, News Room AI. What inspired you to create JARS AI, and what's the most surprising insight about human behavior you've gained during its development? Our key realization was the importance of prioritizing a fun, creative experience over ultra-realistic graphics. We view content creation as a shared, weird, and iterative process, and our aim is to provide tools that allow users to build upon each other's work. The most surprising insight we've learned from building JARS is how people are still finding their footing when using Gen AI tools. Almost without fail, there is a phase of trying to break things and push boundaries before interacting with the core features of JARS. We're really excited about this behavior, though, as we think the most interesting use cases will probably come from people using JARS in ways we never intended. Can you share a surprising user benefit and the quirkiest feature request that impacted your JARS’ development? We were pleasantly surprised by the high entertainment value users find in JARS, with some spending hours daily on the platform. This makes sense now as it is just another form of entertainment that helps spark joy, but in the early days, we were just set on making a weird AI show platform with no idea how people would respond. The quirkiest feature requests we've been getting are for features that help users take more ownership of the content they make on JARS. One example is the feedback we received that led to the creation of "Avajars," - which allows users to make custom actors for their shows. Tools like these are huge as they unlock "exponential creativity" and lead to fun edge cases for these custom characters. For example there is a character "JIM OILY" that started because of a rendering bug in our Avajar creation flow that resulted in him being a named character in our universe. He now has a whole backstory and community lore, which has been really funny to see grow! Avajar character creator. How did you balance conversational AI with an intuitive interface, and what's the most unusual dataset you've used for training? We're actively transitioning from rapid feature development to a more design-forward approach, trying to make JARS more intuitive for a broader audience. As we're entering the next phase of our growth, we're excited to be focusing on being more design-forward to align more closely with our core hypothesis of "making a fun, accessible experience is what allows someone in this space to win vs. just functional milestones." Honestly, our most unusual dataset relates to toxicity management. Being a UGC platform where anyone can submit episodes has resulted in a robust dataset supplied by a wide array of bad actors. We've spent an unexpected amount of time internally building features that relate to trust and safety–ensuring that we can filter out hate speech of course, but also unique ways that people try to troll JARS specifically. This helps us design better user experience guardrails but it does point to the insight that Gen AI is still new enough that "trying to break it" is just as valid of a use case today as it is to use a product for its intended purpose. It will be interesting to see how this changes as Gen AI usage gets more ubiquitous and basic stress testing becomes less novel. What's the best analogy you've used to explain JARS AI to non-tech people, and what's the funniest mistake your AI has made, and what did you learn from it? We describe JARS as "personalized low fidelity TV generated by AI." Our main challenge is ensuring AI characters understand their context fully. Occasional quirks, like characters referring to themselves in third person are frustrating, but also present an opportunity to use the surplus of information coming out of our LLMs to create more engaging content. Even goat-men can find that special someone on Love AIsland, a JARS original show. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. What can our readers look forward to from JARS AI? We're excited about JARS' community-driven development! We'd, of course, love to invite your readers as users of JARS, but we also want to encourage bringing as many voices to our development roadmap as possible. Please join our Discord, share ideas, and help us shape the future of this weird corner of the internet! JARS AI Website: https://www.jars.ai

011 - An INTERVIEW with its creator, Wizard of Ozymandiaz. The INTERVIEW I don't use Al to write the stories or dialogue because I think I can do it better. How does Al influence your creative process? Does it act as a collaborator, a tool, or a Muse? It's an interesting question because a few years ago, I never thought I'd have to consider it deeply. The thing I love most about comics is that they're almost more like movies than books. The scripts are written more like screenplays than novels, and the images allow everyone to be on the same page regarding what everything looks like, but there's still plenty of room for imagination between the panels. So, in many ways, it's a little bit of all of them, but if I had to pick one, I'd say it's a tool. At the end of the day, you have to rely on your artistic vision and personal tastes to guide the narrative of whatever story you're trying to tell. Where do you draw the line between your artistic vision and Al's capabilities? I almost feel like that's for the audience to decide for themselves. In my case, I'm a writer who can barely legibly spell my name. Drawing isn't my forte, but my brain is brimming with high-concept stories I'm excited to tell. I don't use Al to write the stories or dialogue because I think I can do it better. In terms of my process, I write all the scripts myself, and then, instead of collaborating with an illustrator, I try to generate a bunch of images that work for the story. What are your thoughts on the ethical implications of using Al in art, especially regarding originality and authorship? The first thing we should be looking at is the information these tech companies, like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Open Al, have available to them. Yes, people are going to use the tools to make naked people, BUT these companies have been selling customer data for years and feeding their algorithms with original artwork without paying the artists. The ethical implications of any single artist are a blip in an ocean of the history of exploitation of artists in the digital age. Right now it seems like the problem will get worse before it gets better, but I hope that creative people can use the tools to create their digital networks to benefit from some of these tools. What specific Al tools or platforms do you use for your comic book creation, and why do you prefer them? The main image generation tool I use is Dalle because it's very intuitive, and more importantly it's a tool that gives me consistent results. With narrative comics, consistency is everything. ComicsMaker.ai also makes a great tool when it comes to assembling the comics. I use them for paneling and lettering. There isn't a market for physical Al comics which means they're all online and generally read on a smartphone. The end result is that the lettering needs to be legible and you can't fit much information on each page. This ends up affecting the pacing, and then the story feels very fast. With Al it's also difficult to generate multiple characters in the same frame consistently. The end result is that you sometimes end up writing around what you want to write about instead of doing it directly. How do you see Al transforming the comic book industry in the next few years? My greatest hope is that it will help popularize the medium and bring more people into the fold. The reality is most of the art people are excited to make is really difficult to do. Comics are easier to do, but hiring an illustrator is expensive, and people most excited in the world to write comics are likely on the rejection end of a proposal letter. With Al, more people will be able to tell their stories, which I think is a net positive. What new creative opportunities does Al offer for comic book artists and storytellers? One of the things few people talk about is that Al can de-risk the act of creating High concept art. What I mean by that is anything Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Historical, by the nature of its production, would be expensive and likely an enormous collaborative effort. With Al you can attempt to tell these stories yourself without giving up your career, or making as many sacrifices in pursuit of your dream. I think artists who are active and not making a living from their art come to terms with the fact that they're really doing it for themselves. What's cool is that now that with Al you'll have more options in terms of how you'd like to tell that story, and that's a cool thing. What inspired you to start using Al for comic book creation? Great question. I have a group of friends that started playing Dungeons and Dragons during the pandemic. I've been writing for 15 years, but had never played and was now the official, eternal Dungeon Master. DnD allowed me to worldbuild in a way that I had never done, because up until then, I was always focused on writing self-contained dramas I could sell to a network or podcast. However over the course of years, everything became hard to track so I wrote a history book of the world, and used Al for the images. How does your use of Al reflect your unique artistic style and vision? Love this question. What I like to remind people of is that although I do use Al for the images, every single detail of the characters and the world of Galaxy Girl exists in my head. Al is just the tool to translate it for readers. It is a bit hard to take credit for people like the style of Galaxy Girl, because that's really more of a compliment on my taste than it is my creative ability. That said, I've found Galaxy Girl specifically to be an interesting vehicle for exploration of ideas surrounding futurism, identity, and sexuality as it relates to an increasingly pluralistic world that seems to have almost 2 realities: Online and Real life. Galaxy Girl is about a lot of different themes, but one of the threads that flows through all of my work is a desire to challenge the status quo, specifically in the United States. With comics, a visual medium, I'm interested in exploring identity and that includes sex because in America Sex tends to be weaponized, and used as a divisive tool when it should be a beautiful form of self-discovery. Has Al ever surprised you by generating something unexpected or groundbreaking? For sure! I mean, any time I work on a new character, it's the most exciting thing in the world. My workflow is to create a character bio sheet and challenge myself to imagine as much of their history, personality and looks as I can BEFORE I type anything in DALL-E. That way I have a very clear idea of the character, and when it's finally time to give them a face it's the most fun in the world tweaking it to fit exactly what you had in mind. What's your ultimate vision for the future of Al-powered comic books? The ultimate vision for Al Comic books would be some sort of template for what is possible with Al art in general. The technology we have today is capable of allowing consumers to build digital communities where they can vote with their dollars and cut out a lot of the bullshit that comes with creative industries in the form they exist today. Imagine Kickstarter on steroids run completely by and for artists. That's the ideal. Galaxy Girl Website: https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxygirlcomic/

024 - A REVIEW of AI product demo generator, Fable. The Pitch Create stunning interactive demos in 5 minutes. Fable is a unique application. Few to no apps like it exist on the market. I looked and really couldn't find anything like it. Its primary feature is creating demos for your product or website. The demos created are typical product walkthroughs with popup annotations explaining the various features of your product. Although the AI feature isn't core to the product, I wanted to see how helpful it is, and that's the focus of this review. AI powered demos. More like AI assisted! The Experience Getting Started With Fable First, this app is a Google Chrome extension only. For something that focuses on product demos and onboarding, I had hoped Fable would offer an easy way into the app, and it did not disappoint. After creating your login credentials, you land on your main dashboard, which walks you through a quick onboarding of its features. In addition, your dashboard has easily accessible user guides, making them easy to reference later. Overall, the setup was fast and easy. Assessing Fable’s Usability Working in Fable felt similar to using a whiteboarding application but without creative features like pens or shapes. Fable's interface will be easy to pick up if you've used any of those apps. When adjusting your product demo, there are two editing modes. The first top-level mode lets you see all your product screens to demo in a nice user flow. Clicking on your screens takes you to a second mode, allowing you to customize the annotations on that particular screen or create new ones. One of my gripes was the need for a zoom/magnifying feature. Fortunately, my mouse wheel has a zoom feature mapped to it, which made navigating the dashboard easy, but the devs should make that a default visible function. The other gripe is the need for hotkey commands to speed up workflow. Hotkeys would be a welcomed quality-of-life improvement in a scenario with many screens to set up and edit. A screen flow of the AI generated product demo of TheGoodBadUgly.ai website. Fable's Standout Features Fable works by recording your onscreen actions from any URL you visit. Now, it doesn't produce a video file. Instead, it records and plays back your action in real-time, overlying its annotations. Once your demo is built, you can edit and embed it into other destinations like a website. As I mentioned, I used this website to create the demo, but when my demo played back, none of the website images were visible and displayed as a broken link. This was quite annoying. Regarding AI integration, Fable has an AI assistant named Quilly. Quilly assists in auto-generating your demo annotations based on descriptions of your product and the purpose of the demo. Like most generative AI, your prompts will be key to getting the best results. The more descriptive your prompt is in detailing the product features and user interface, the more accurate the annotations will sound and be positioned relative to the features of your product. The Verdict Why Should You Care At its core, Fable works to simplify creating a product demo. But the AI features were nice to have and another bullet point to promote as an app feature. Quilly, their AI, performed well on my second try when I made the prompt more descriptive. However, the time spent writing a descriptive prompt is better spent creating the product demo annotations yourself. Then, there was the issue with my website images not appearing, which I couldn't figure out how to solve. Fable can be a good starting point for small businesses looking to create product demos quickly, but I wouldn't get too excited about its AI features, as building out the demo manually gives you a much better result. Here's where you prompt Quilly, Fables AI assistant to generate your demo. Fable Facts: 14-Day free trial AI features require separate paid tokens for each use Google Chrome Extension only Integrations with Mailchimp, Hubspot, Salesforce and more Fable Website: https://www.sharefable.com/