Author: Mercedes Rowland

https://dtc-wsuv.org/mrowland24/rowland-final-ai-project/

1. Project Summary:

Project Idea: “Movie Matchmaker” aims to revolutionize the entertainment industry by creating a personalized movie and TV show recommendation service. Utilizing a sophisticated AI algorithm, this service will analyze users’ viewing histories across various streaming platforms and recommend new content based on mood, genre, and occasion. Sales on specific media and platforms will also be shown to provide the best user experience.

Vision Statement: To create a highly personalized viewing experience that caters to individual preferences and enhances content discoverability across streaming platforms. Think of it as the already existing AI on platforms like Netflix that give you recommendations based on what you’ve already watched and your ratings, but for all different streaming platforms, as well as possibly physical media.

Skills and Technologies: The project will leverage machine learning, natural language processing, and data analysis to develop a robust recommendation system. Skills in software development, AI modeling, and user interface design will be crucial.

2. Needs Assessment:

Sector Analysis: In the entertainment industry, there’s a growing need for more sophisticated recommendation systems as the number of available streaming options and content continues to expand.

AI’s Role: AI can address these needs by implementing advanced pattern recognition to suggest content that matches users’ historical preferences and current mood, enhancing user satisfaction and platform engagement. Essentially, the AI will get to know you and your entertainment media preferences and will give you more content to watch based on its impressions.

3. Skills and Technology Overview:

Required Technologies:

– Machine Learning (ML): For predictive analytics and recommendation algorithms.

– Natural Language Processing (NLP): To analyze user reviews and feedback.

– Database Management: To handle large volumes of user data and content metadata.

Skill Assessment:

– Current Skills: Basic programming knowledge, understanding of ML concepts.

– Development Needs: Advanced ML training, NLP techniques, full-stack development for app integration. Web designers and developers.

4. Learning and Development Plan:

Learning Strategies:

– Enroll in specialized online courses in AI and ML (e.g., Coursera, Udacity).

– Participate in workshops and webinars focusing on AI applications in entertainment.

– Engage in project-based learning to apply skills in real-world scenarios.

– Continue to take college courses related to the use of AI and web development tools.

Budget:

– Online courses: $500

– Workshops: $300

– Materials and software: $200

5. Application and Impact:

Application: The skills and technologies will be used to develop the Movie Matchmaker app, integrating with various streaming platforms to provide a seamless and personalized user experience. The applications and website should contain customizable elements like choosing the colors and style of a user’s interface so that it feels like a personalized tool and not just another app.

Impact:

– Beneficiaries: Individual users who seek more tailored entertainment options, as well as an experience that takes the work out of having to think or search for what to watch.

– Societal: Promotes a more engaging and satisfying entertainment consumption experience, potentially increasing cultural access and diversity in viewing habits.

6. Project Timeline:

– Months 1-3: Complete educational courses and initial technology setup.

– Months 4-6: Development and testing of the AI algorithm.

– Months 7-9: App development and integration with streaming platforms.

– Month 10: Beta testing with selected users.

– Month 11-12: Full launch and marketing.

7. Budget:

– Learning and Development: $1,000

– Software Subscriptions: $500 (APIs and server costs)

– Development and Marketing: $2,000

– Total: $3,500

8. Evaluation and Reflection:

Evaluation Metrics:

– User adoption rates and retention metrics.

– Accuracy of the recommendation system (user satisfaction surveys).

– Feedback on usability and functionality of the app.

Reflection:

– Monthly review meetings to discuss progress, challenges, and adjustments needed.

– Post-launch, a comprehensive review to evaluate the overall success and areas for improvement.

– Easy in-app and on-site bug reporting and an entire team dedicated to responding to and fixing problems on these report tickets as they come.

AI tools could be used to start a creative AI business by helping you to brainstorm ideas, develop upon them, and execute them. For example, a business having to do with AI content creation could have its name, business plan, etc. generated through an AI text generator like ChatGPT and then elaborated upon by the actual human developer. Human input would ultimately be the difference between creating an AI business that is generic or unique enough to stand out in whatever industry or category it falls into.

Some ideas for AI businesses that I think would be cool to work on are: 

• An AI character creation tool that comes up with character names, appearances, stats, and personality traits. I think a way to make this unique would be to add a filter for specific games and their lore and it would generate you a character that has qualities that would match that world.
• A branding design tool that could generate names, color stories, mood boards, and logo ideas for businesses, as a start to coming up with their brand identity. To make this unique, one could go as far as to develop an AI tool that’s main objective is to generate logo designs based off of sketches or word prompts.
• A movie/TV show matchmaker tool that contains a database of all media of those types from all different platforms (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.) and ratings of all the ones you’ve watched before. It would give you recommendations on what to watch based on a variety of factors of your choice such as your mood, genre, the occasion (kids party, holidays, a date, etc.) This could also give a user recommendations based on sales on specific platforms or sales of certain movies or series’. I think that this idea is pretty unique on its own, due to it containing a variety of platforms. The technology already exists, but is usually isolated to whatever service you’re actively using.

Game by: Hailey Gebhart, Haili Kuanoni, and Mercedes Rowland

Play here: https://dtc-wsuv.org/mrowland24/game/

Are AI image-generation tools like Dall-E and Midjourney truly all-powerful and a threat to the livelihoods of trained artists?

In my experience, the tools themselves are somewhat repetitive and “dumb” with their generations unless you know how to work with them and create prompts that they can understand and emulate. This means that it isn’t as big of a threat to trained artists as I previously believed, but that doesn’t completely diminish artists’ fears. I will show examples of a bad prompt and its result vs. a good prompt. I’d also like to show an example of how AI can completely rip off a specific artist’s style to show how it can be threatening. Talking about how I had a hard time (and still do) speaking the AI tools’ languages will provide context to my experiences. It’s hard for me to make prompts with my existing, non-AI-related vocabulary. (The tools cannot always understand and produce work properly to the standards and quality of my vision.)

For the essay, I want to textually explain the creative question and my answer based on my experience with these tools and the class overall. For the final project, I’d like to heavily focus on how the quality of prompts is the difference between AI art generation tools being a threat to trained artists or not. I will give many examples, show how prompts evolve over time, and keep track of just how long (time-wise) it can take for an amateur like myself to generate the images that they envision. It might be cool to find an example online of an “expert” in these two tools and how their processes differ and how that affects the quality of their results as a comparison (if I’m allowed to do so, it will be properly cited and attributed, of course).  I’d like to present the final project as an edited video with my creative process narrated with the help of ElevenLabs. It will include photo generations, text prompts, and anything else that I think would be helpful to showcase the answer to my creative question.

The type of game that we went with was a collision game with shooting mechanics and minimal player controls (left and right arrow keys to move the gun and spacebar to shoot.) It has a sci-fi theme and the objective is to shoot UFOs out of the sky, while avoiding airplanes. As expected, I have mostly worked on the artistic side of the game, writing prompts to generate pixel-art images and for the electronic background music track. Chat-GPT had minimal input on the type of game that I wanted to work on because I already had a general idea of what I’d like to do, but it has helped every step of the way in producing the resulting product.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/mrowland24/ecliptix-website/

The first technique in Amy Goodchild’s article that I found to be interesting was “true random.” She cites atmospheric noise picked up by a radio or the visual output of lava lamps as examples. I like the idea of combining “natural” and “unnatural” forces in this way to create art because it doesn’t feel like it’s being completely taken over by computers or an algorithm and still has a somewhat organic, or, as she put it, “chaotic” feel to the process.

In general, I like the idea of having a specific set of rules to follow when making an art piece because it’s similar to how I create some of my own art. For example, I often have a spark of inspiration to create something specific. Whether that something contains certain colors or a certain subject varies, and then I can still allow myself to have the room to deviate slightly from that original inspiration to create something new. I’m also a person who likes to have structure for most aspects of my life, so that may be why these techniques with rules interest me.

Some of the examples of “natural systems” that Goodchild cites are more appealing to me than others. For example, the condensation cube does not appeal to me at all artistically, due to the simple fact that it can hardly be affected by the “creator” or artist at all. The result is almost entirely out of their hands. Whereas growing art like the bacteria sculptures or paintings and drawings contain some aspects of humanity that make them more interesting and valuable for me. At the end of the day, whether any of this interests a person is entirely up to personal preferences and individual perspectives.

At first, I used my GPT to create photos for this scene in my world, “Ecliptix,” but I was unsatisfied with my results and decided to swap over to Midjourney. Some of my photos were generated by combining photos from Midjourney with photos from Dall-E and then using the prompts that Midjourney gave to describe the hybrid photo. I expanded the scenes in Midjourney so that they were not in a square aspect ratio and imported them into Runway. In Runway, I used a combination of the paint brush and zoom tools to get the motion for my video. I used my world GPT and ElevenLabs to create the narration and used Suno to create my background “instrumental-electronic” track. This process took a lot of trial and error, and I’m hoping that I get better with these tools in the future, as I still struggle a lot with them.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/mrowland24/palm-shade-sway-website/

The moment in time that I want to capture for visual #3 is the school that children and teens go to once a day in my world, “Ecliptix.” To give some context and backstory, the school that kids attend is only held once a year, and all the information that they need is essentially uploaded into their brains over the course of about 8 hours. This is done once a year instead of all at once to allow the kids to absorb the information and not feel overwhelmed. Human kids have the ability to learn this way as well because of a chip that is inserted into their brains at birth. They basically go into a type of hibernation to allow for the information to be absorbed without having to take breaks to use the bathroom or eat.

In the first shot, I want to show the kids sitting down at their desks in their school uniforms, hooked up through wires from their heads to their teacher at the front of the classroom. The room has a sterile, almost hospital-like feeling and is white and gray in color. The shot will be from behind the students, and they will face forward toward their teacher. The teacher is a robot/AI woman standing in front of an all-glass wall that shows views of downtown Ecliptix. Next, I’d like to show the students “falling asleep” or into their trance-like state to begin the upload. Each shot will then look similar, with the city outside behind the glass wall changing. The lighting will gradually go from bright and early morning sunshine to a sunset. Cars will be flying around, people will be walking on the streets, and life will seemingly go on outside of the school while these kids are “learning.” I think it would also be cool to show the kids walking out of the classroom at the end, or to show them unhooking from the wires and leaving the school.

I’d like the visual style for this project to mirror that of my previous visual story. A similar art style, color palette, and overall mood and tone for each shot will be used. The soundtrack will not include voices, as I want the viewer to experience what it would be like for one of us to be in Ecliptix (since everyone there no longer communicates verbally due to evolution).  I want there to be some sound effects, such as the humming of electricity or the distant sound of the busy streets, heard from within the classroom. The background music will be ambient for the most part, and I’d like it to give the viewer/listener a slight feeling of unease.

I experienced some difficulty keeping consistency in my images for this assignment. Sometimes regenerations of photos would leave out certain details that I had already clarified in the configuration for the GPT (i.e., color palette, art style, etc.). I also had to fix my character’s appearance multiple times and ended up not using some really awesome photos because they weren’t consistent enough with my already existing photos and ideas. In order to create the character in particular, I went through a similar process to when I created the concept for this world in the first place, asking my GPT for details that it would need to get a clear picture of her. Once I answered those questions, I was also able to envision her as a character and what her appearance and personality would be like, which made it easier to tailor my world’s story to fit into her life. Overall, this was easily the most fun I’ve had so far with the photo generation, and I’m excited to do this again as a starting point for the video assignment.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KAxAs679Akbx2DzYIgXLUOcGj7AiX98jlq5LeZxq4-k/edit?usp=sharing

I think that AI cinema could open up a lot of opportunities for people outside of the film industry to make new and exciting cinematography, and that it could also be useful as a tool for those already within the industry. The biggest risk with AI cinema is the potential for people to lose their jobs. AI is already taking over tasks like scheduling, sorting, etc. that were traditionally jobs for actual people, but I don’t necessarily view this as being a bad thing. Cutting out those jobs that most likely require the least amount of skill and expertise can cut back on production costs and allow for smaller film makers and studios to produce more often or have the budget for better quality projects. 

The jobs that could be potentially lost within writing, directing, acting, etc. are more of a concern, in my opinion. Just as other artists do, these people spend their entire lives mastering their craft and finding their niche. To have all of that squashed by AI would be devastating. There is also the risk of deep-faking famous actors and voice actors for future cinematography without their consent, either while they’re alive or after they’ve passed away, and that poses another ethical concern.

These AI tools have and will inevitably further change the future of Hollywood entertainment forever. Artificial intelligence is changing a variety of industries, and I feel like the vast majority of them are not safe from exemption; therefore, there won’t be any for the film industry. Hollywood could sink or swim with these new tools, but that depends on how far people are willing to go with AI. Independent artists have the most to gain, because this could give them the edge to be more on par with Hollywood when it comes to production value, overall quality, editing, casting, etc. It will be interesting to ask myself these questions 5–10 years from now and see how the answers may differ due to developments.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LjKKgH3Ioz6IjaZlJ6XtpR_0al61FTVLuo4TTYniYFQ/edit?usp=sharing

In a distant future, Earth has evolved into a post-apocalyptic tableau where humanity’s remnants and advanced AI navigate survival within densely populated cities, virtually devoid of organic life. Amidst this stark landscape, a unique hybrid ivy, a fusion of technology and nature, thrives, symbolizing the enduring adaptability of life.

This world’s architecture, composed of an ultra-durable blend of concrete, metal, and glass, conceals transformative secrets. Buildings and objects alike, when bathed in artificial light, can be morphed into something entirely different by any entity within a quarter-mile radius. This phenomenon, a byproduct of artificial illumination, has unlocked unprecedented creativity but also sowed seeds of deception, as appearances can be radically altered, challenging perceptions of reality. These buildings are also structures that defy time and disaster. They are permanent and unchangeable giants that cannot be destroyed by any known means. 

The remnants of past architecture stand as somber reminders of a bygone era, now subject to the whims of those wielding the power of light. This capacity to alter matter extends to the very food that sustains life, with AI-crafted nutrients providing sustenance in forms limited only by imagination that are easily accessible and insanely cheap. Yet, beneath the surface of this technological marvel, a longing for Earth’s lost natural beauty persists, driving a movement to restore elements of the organic world, despite the omnipotent AI’s dominion.

The economy, under the gaze of this all-powerful AI leader, is invigorated by the innovative potential of artificial light. Hydroelectricity, durable construction materials, and user-generated data are pivotal, yet the true currency lies in the ability to transform matter, introducing a dynamic new market landscape.

Religion and education have been profoundly affected by this transformative technology. Covert adherence to ancient faiths merges with reverence for Earth’s lost natural splendor, facilitated by the same artificial light that enables the instant acquisition of knowledge. Education has been revolutionized, with knowledge being directly uploaded into individuals’ minds or systems, creating a uniformly educated society amidst whispers of inequality and information control. This has led to a society uniformly educated in theory but rife with undercurrents of discontent and allegations of information manipulation.

The advancement of technology has both enhanced and constrained life, with the power to alter matter introducing an element of unpredictability. While fostering cooperation, it also fuels conflict among humans, AIs, and hybrids, as the line between reality and illusion blurs.

Communication has evolved beyond words to encompass body language, telepathy, and digital texts. However, the capability to transform matter with light adds complexity to interactions, weaving a web of illusion that challenges the fabric of society and tests the boundaries of creativity and coexistence. In this world, nothing is as it seems under the artificial glow, casting a shadow of doubt on what is real and what is merely a trick of the light.

Here is the album cover and promotional poster for Palm Shade Sway’s ‘Lunar Reflections’. The design encapsulates the serene and mystical vibe of the album title, featuring a night scene with a palm tree silhouette, a luminous full moon, and its reflection across the calm sea, all under a star-sprinkled indigo sky. This cover mirrors the band’s unique blend of traditional reggae rhythms with global influences, set against their commitment to themes of environmental conservation, love, and unity.

Track List:

1. Moonlit Serenade
2. Shadows on the Shore
3. Echoes of the Tide
4. Crimson Waves
5. Beneath the Celestial
6. Whispers of the Night
7. Reflections in the Water
8. Swaying Palms
9. Stars in Harmony
10. Ripple of Dreams
11. Lunar Lullaby
12. Silhouettes Against the Sky