Author: laurettopiper24

In a 300-500 word blog post, describe how you’d use AI tools to start a creative AI business. Given that everyone has access to these tools how would you add something unique?

If i had the knowledge and resources required to launch a business at this point in the timeline of AI development, I would be curious to see the potential in putting custom databases in the hands of the average consumer. While this kind of service is currently offered by runwayML in a rudimental form, its use is confined to that specific AI tool and I feel like this service could be further refined.

I envision a pandoras box of sorts that could be offered in the form of server space that has access to high end computational resources that could serve as the processing power needed to fuel complex generations. These custom databases, consisting of user uploaded content in whatever format they desired, could then be integrated by the service provider into various AI tools in order to offer a service that is currently only available at a professional level and requires strong understanding of machine learning practices.

The service provider would serve as a middleman between the consumers and AI tools, by shouldering the resource load and normally complex process of integrating custom databases into an AI workflow. Different packages could be offered that also include integrating the users custom database into an AI tool chain of production. For example, images generated on a custom database in Midjourney AI could then be automatically animated using RunwayML by the provider before being upscaled using a different AI tool and presented back to the user.

This entire chain of production could be tailored to provide opportunity for user input as well, through offering a simplified translation of options to the user in each step of the process, the user could be allowed to provide creative input at all steps of the process as if they had manually used all of the tools in the production chain individually.

While many AI developers are currently working on making custom databases/datasets more available, most options are still aimed at developers with backgrounds in machine learning. In the professional world, Vertex AI offered by Google and SageMaker by Amazon are currently very close in this regard. Also in the open-source realm, the ability to generate custom databases and libraries are available through TensorFlow and PyTorch, but they again require significant technical knowledge and computational resources.

By making this kind of service easily available and understandable to the average user, I believe an opportunity to accelerate learning, progression, and discovery would be achievable and an immense amount of useful data would be generated by the process that could in turn be used to push AI development even further.

Current primitive AI database offered by runwayML:
https://runwayml.com/ai-tools/ai-training/

Google Vertex:
https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai

Amazon SageMaker:
https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/

Open Source:
https://www.tensorflow.org/

https://pytorch.org/

Project Title

“WSUV InfoBot: An AI-Driven Campus Information System”

Project Description

The WSUV InfoBot project aims to develop an integrated AI-powered system that provides students, faculty, and visitors with real-time, tailored information about campus resources, events, and academic programs. This system will utilize advanced AI algorithms to process and deliver information through an intuitive interface, supporting both web and mobile platforms.

Objectives

1. Create a Comprehensive Database: Aggregate and organize all relevant information about WSUV, including academic programs, faculty directories, campus events, and administrative services.
2. Develop an AI Reference Tool: Utilize natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to develop an AI that can understand and respond to queries with accurate and relevant information.
3. Enhance Campus Communication: Improve the accessibility of information, reducing barriers for students and staff and enhancing the overall campus experience.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

• Digital Technology and Communications Department: Will oversee the content management, ensuring that the database is comprehensive and up-to-date, and manage the interface through which the campus community interacts with the AI.
• Computer Science Department: Will handle the technical development of the AI, including programming, testing, and integrating the AI with existing campus IT infrastructure.

Grant-Worthy Aspects

• Innovation: The project introduces a novel use of AI technology to improve information dissemination and accessibility in an educational setting.
• Impact: By providing immediate access to campus information, the project aims to enhance student engagement, improve academic outcomes, and streamline campus operations.
• Interdisciplinary Approach: Combines expertise in communications, database management, and AI development, embodying a collaborative approach that can serve as a model for other institutions.

Potential Challenges and Solutions

• Data Privacy and Security: Ensuring the protection of sensitive information by adhering to best practices in data security and compliance with legal standards.
• User Adoption: Developing training and promotional strategies to encourage widespread use of the system among all campus demographics.

Expected Outcomes

• Short-term: A functional prototype of the WSUV InfoBot with basic query capabilities ready for campus-wide testing.
• Long-term: A fully integrated, AI-powered campus information system that serves as a central hub for WSUV communications and resources.

Funding Request

• Budget Overview: Detailed costs associated with software development, hardware acquisition (if necessary), personnel involved, and ongoing maintenance.
• Resource Allocation: Clear delineation of how grant funds will be used to support project phases, including research, development, implementation, and evaluation.

You will each submit your own version of the group game to the server and share in a blog post along with a short statement about what your contributed was to the collaboration.

Link: https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/game/

Statement of Collaboration:
I was sick for the day of team assignments and therefore had my first meetup with the group during the next class. This resulted in missing the initial brainstorming, project idea, and coding that was produced.
However, I still feel like I was able to have a significant contribution to this project as outlined below.

• Collaborated and suggested improvements to the project that would give me useful material to contribute.
• Created audio samples and edited samples found online.
• Implemented the audio into existing code.
• Modified and adjusted images in Adobe Photoshop to better fit our needs.
• Implemented imagery into existing code.
• Scheduled online meet-ups and assisted in development of late stages of coding including a start screen and other basic functionality.

Blog Prompt: This week, start thinking/researching/chatting about your final project and research essay. By class, post a description of both your project idea and essay topic.

Essay Topic

   Over the course of this semester, I have developed a keen interest in the application of AI tools in a professional environment. This interest was even more perked after the very insightful visit by the president and COO of Happy Finish, Toby Roberts. Seeing the application of various AI tools working in an integrated system to produce stunning and specific visual content  was an impressive display of not only what is possible now, but what the future holds. As AI continues to proliferate across the tech industry and outwards, I realize the value in understanding the inner-workings of the Tools we all will be exposed to and work with.

For my essay, I would like to explore and work towards understanding a full overview of the process that some of the more prominent AI tools use to generate their content. Using a ground up approach, I plan to examine the process from its earliest stages of data collection, pre-processing, and model training through to the actual generation of content. Through a better understanding of the process as a whole, I hope to obtain not only more knowledge that will improve my usage of these tools, but also give me insight into relevant and useful skills to refine and learn in order to increase my chances of securing a job in a related field.

Project Idea

TBD

1. As AI becomes more integral to the creative process, what skills do you believe are most important for professionals in your industry to develop?

2. From your perspective, what are the emerging trends in AI that you believe will have the most significant impact on the creative industry in the next five years?

3. Could you share insights on how HappyFinish integrates AI into its creative processes? How does the company balance between AI automation and human creativity?

https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/island/

Use scroll-bar to navigate

My Video:

https://youtu.be/12tiLp4LQAY?si=5OI7GUGSa7oZdPSH

Compose a brief reflection to accompany your video (in the blog post), discussing your creative process, the challenges of maintaining consistency, and how you utilized AI tools to generate, refine, and audibly enhance your world and its narrative.

Imagery: Custom Chatgpt

Animation: RunwayML

Audio FX / Ambience / Vocal FX: Audiogen.co

Reese Bass / Some ambience: Me

This was a very challenging project that I ended up having to scale back on in order to reach completion.
Maintaining consistent imagery was a monumental task when trying to work with unique generations that adhered to a user chosen art style over “going with the flow” of whatever the AI generated.
Morphing and other inherent flaws of RunwayML prompted me to delve quite deep into the realm of generating unique content through AI.

Using a data-set of images generated using a custom GPT, I was soon able to slowly generate frames using RunwayML that provided smooth animation without morphing, however I was unable to get farther then basic arm movements and facial movement in the time I spent.

While I was unable to fully flesh out my idea, I feel like I am well on my way to understanding the basics of some of the advanced concepts used in some very impressive generations and am very keen to continue working on projects in my own time.

Many of the processes I found for completing high level projects involved running videos and images through several different AI-based programs in order to reach a profound level of control and manipulation of the content, instead of remaining at the whim of vague generations arbitrarily based on prompts.

Some interesting generations I found during the process:

Solid art style with basic animation, editing, and fx. Audio is great but would have been cool to see lipsync through Runway or Pikalabs.
https://youtu.be/EsbpCV0vWlM?si=mg504HDTEcsldGf9

Open Source AI animation is moving forward as well:
https://civitai.com/models/331718/bubbling-rings-or-animatediff-motion-lora

https://civitai.com/models/335070/simple-lcm-img2vid-workflow-or-comfyui

An amazing rendition of Zelda as a 1950s trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNdvRHq8Hs8

Open Source AI datasets:
https://www.openml.org/

Example of how to build a dataset in order to generate unique content using Stable Diffusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmnGSjvWII

In a blog post, share the type/genre, your role (coder, designer, writer) and a general description for a game you would like to collaborate on.

Type/Genre: RPG / Exploratory/Platformer

Preferred role: Designer / Coder

While I am open to any type of game to collaborate on, I think a simple RPG or platformer would be a great way to become familiar with the basics of a html/js browser-based game. An rpg gives opportunity to work with a variety of javascript functions including arrays and animations as well as providing ample room to incorporate AI into more dynamic storytelling and dialogue.

There are also a couple of extra elements that I think would help make this kind of project unique and easy.
A first thought involved adding responsive AI dialogue options through incorporating queries into a custom gpt that is linked to dialogue options via API-integration to focus on a unique experience for individual users.
I also would like to explore animation effects and other tools available through JS libraries available online such as https://phaser.io/

However at the end of the day, I am happy to work in whatever role and direction the group as a whole wants to move in.
Looking forward to seeing everyone’s projects and ideas reach fruition.

I spent most of my time attempting to re-create perlin noise in animations. I think the predictable patterns and sequences have a high degree of potential in both visual and audible art.

Assignment 1: Interactive HTML5

https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/interactivehtml/

Assignment 2: Generative Art with P5.js

https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/flowfield/

Assignment 3: Generative Animation with P5.js

https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/flowfield2/

Read the article by Amy Goodchild and discuss some of the techniques that interest you.

Generative Arts by definition is art created using autonomous processes and autonomous process is defined as a process not under direct human control.
Using these definitions, it should be readily apparent why the advent of AI and also technology in general are a powerful boon to this broad genre of art.
This article explores a plethora of examples that cover many different techniques and approaches to the fusion of technology and AI that showcase a fascinating world that is heavily explored already,  but still with much to be discovered.

Mathematics

Using mathematical algorithms for generative art is not a new concept, nor is using it in a digital realm to produce images and artwork. Even basic visualizers from the early days of computers used similar practices in order to generate visuals for a wide variety of purposes. (Shout out to winamp!)
However, with the advent and advancement of AI, this approach to generative art has acquired a large boost to capability and accessibility. Never has it been easier to work with a program to generate fresh code and algorithms to produce never before seen images and videos.
This is a frontier that I feel will become especially streamlined and expanded upon as AI software continues to allow more complex processes and ideas to reach fruition.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3YM14Yiwpo/

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence in generative art is approached in this article as a similar and parallel process that shares many characteristics of generative art outside of the influence of AI.
I view AI as not only a natural path of progression for generative art, but also the gateway to new frontiers.
In the article, Anna Ridler’s work entitled Mosaic virus serves as a perfect example of the potential AI holds in this genre and highlights a key aspect that I think will make AI a crucial tool to these forms of art, artist selected unique datasets from which AI can generate images and art.
As more artists assemble custom selected datasets and begin sharing them online or using them for their own creations, I really think we will start to see a form of art generated by AI that becomes a truly unique experience uplifted from the mundane and generalized content produced by AI’s based on larger and less specific datasets.

http://annaridler.com/mosaic-virus/

Simulated Ecosystems

Simulated Ecosystems is a niche looking but enticingly useful application of generative art that I also see a vast amount of potential in.
While my knowledge on this subject is limited, I wonder if its possible to observe the tendencies and movement of organisms and use these to run very real simulations of possible interactions between species or organisms instead of the more whimsical approach of imaginary organisms used in this article.
The sci-fi nerd in me would love to see the simulation of real organisms, perhaps at a microscopic level, going through theorized changes to their environment or interactions with other organisms.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKPVRX9lN5S/

After reading the articles above and performing the coding exercise, share your thoughts about what this all means for the future of coding. What does AI mean for software, game, app and web development?

As I previously mentioned in previous blog posts that related to similar industries, I believe AI is both revolutionary as well as polarizing for web development as well as our economy and industry as a whole. We have already seen software and games that have been developed with extensive use of AI, with a leading example being a best selling game released on January 19th of this year by the name of Palworld. AI is already being used to write code, design graphics, animate, and streamline workflow in an industry that is already seeing major post-covid layoffs as the tech industry slims down.

What are your concerns about the profession and what do you see are the opportunities?

AI opens many doors in the realm of creativity but at a cost of less manpower needed in order to achieve desired results as the entire process eliminates the need for redundant workers. I foresee many jobs and departments slimmed down extensively to a key few individuals who are able to quickly work with AI to complete tasks that used to require much more time and workers.

  How might this affect your own future plans?

As AI advances further along and becomes even more efficient, I believe it will soon move to a place where it coincides with daily workflow in not only tech related fields, but also a broad spectrum of other fields. It is already implemented to a high degree in many silicon valley jobs and programmers and developers already work alongside it in an almost unofficial relationship. As the technology improves, I believe not only will it become mandatory to work alongside AI software and engines, but being able to skillfully manipulate it will be a highly desired commodity in the workforce. As such, I am trying to incorporate it into much of my work flow and learning process as possible, to prepare for a work force that will co-exist with AI.

Fictional Band Website:

https://dtc-wsuv.org/laurettopiper23/bandportfolio/

Group Members: Pamela, Tommy, Manuel, Luke

Post a paragraph summary description of your story/moment that you will turn into a series of shots and then compile into a video sequence. Write another paragraph that describes the visual style and what you imagine the soundtrack to include: voices, sound effects, music.

For this project I plan to bring to life the AI generated story that was produced for our short fiction exercise. This tells a story mostly through the conversation between a stranded man in space and the AI system aboard the escape pod that he is confined in. This scenario provides ample opportunity for a variety of shots that can bring to life both the man and machine trapped together and the vast emptiness of space that surrounds them.
For the visual style, I have high hopes of uploading anime clips from the 80s-90s and seeing the generated responses to prompts using them as reference, but this will take some experimentation.
Influence will be drawn from some very visually stunning works like Royal Space Force and and other iconic series from that time period. I am very interested to see if I can upload a standard dialogue cutscene from one of these series and attempt to replicate it using Runway in order to quickly establish a scene that would fit this story.
For audio, I plan to use a program similar to ones used in our in class exercise in order to quickly provide dialogue.
By having it generate content based off of small portions of dialogue I hope to be able to capture the proper inflection needed in order to provide weight to the essential element of delivering the story, the conversation between the AI and stranded man.
Sound effects and music can be either sampled or rendered using AI and I plan to experiment with both options to find the right fit for this project.

Reflective statement: Write a brief post along with the slideshow discussing your creative process, the challenges of maintaining consistency, and how you used AI tools to generate and refine your world and its visual representation.

For this project I really tried to hone in the custom GPT that we utilized to take a lot of the legwork out of generating prompts and images. Through modifying the instructions, I set the parameters and scope of the world in a brief description of the overall premise of the world, explicit instruction and detail related to the aesthetic and scenery, and finally specifics on the overall art-style and rendering to increase consistency.

Images where uploaded as well to serve as reference images and a diverse color palette was established by region on the island that became the realm of this universe.

As mentioned in the reflective statement prompt, it was definitely an ordeal to keep the GPT on topic and producing images from a consistent universe. Constant reminders and new references were needed and I found that showing it images that it had just generated for reference for each consecutive new image proved very beneficial for enhancing consistency.
It is definitely vital to have clear and concise instructions already built into the GPT as well, long flowing conversations are quick to lose the required specificity needed in order to generate consistent imagery, especially with characters.
However, I found that scenery and landscapes were easier to produce consistently over a long period of time.
Limitations to the amount of prompts per hour also led me to find that you can open several windows of the same GPT at once in order to extend the amount of prompts you can use and work on several tasks at the same time to reduce wait time during generation.

While I am not completely satisfied with my project as a whole, the scenery and landscape seemed to fit rather cohesively even though the character models showed slight variations in cell-shading and art style.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KD4RwPYI6PM7wRYVCcJNtwTMKK7ni7MvER9ilfOCJNE/edit?usp=sharing

Group members: Pamela, Tommy, Manuel, Luke

What are your thoughts on the risks and opportunities of AI Cinema?

AI Cinema and its incorporation into both professional and indie film provides an exciting glimpse into the future of the art, albeit with some caveats. Much the same as the indoctrination of other ground breaking technologies such as the switch to digital from film, job expectations and work processes will inevitably change as AI is implemented into the work flow. The articles in question for this weeks blog post explore an uncertain future for many occupations in the industry, with voice actors mentioned as specifically on edge about AI and its risks to their job security. In a way, the advent of technology such as this is wielded as a double-edged sword. On one hand, an entirely new realm of creativity and accessibility is opened with AI, on the other, many doors will be shut for those in the industry who find themselves outperformed or left with more accessible alternatives to their services. Which is rather concerning in a corporate and profit margin driven society and industry. While the creative among us may use this technology to reach for the stars, I foresee many corporate interests instead using this resource predominantly as a way to cut costs and reduce labor for higher profit margins.  

What do these tools mean for the future of Hollywood entertainment and for independent artists working in the industry? 

As the playing field becomes more leveled and AI increases in skill and productivity, I believe the indie and amateur film makers stand to gain the most. Opportunities that remained inconceivable either due to budget or scope now have alternatives that are a prompt and render away. Artists can explore various new ground-breaking formats at lightning speed, combining and remixing elements to explore new ideas and concepts visually and audibly. On the horizon, many new and unique works never before seen will begin to emerge as the technology evolves alongside the artists.