My new co-worker: How Artificial Inteligence is revolutionizing my work

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an ever-evolving field that has the power to shake up the way we design and create products and services. At its core, AI involves creating computer systems that can do things that typically require human-like intelligence, like learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

In the world of design, AI can be a valuable tool for automating tasks, generating new ideas and concepts, and analyzing data to inform design decisions. It's like having your own personal robot design assistant at your fingertips. And that robot can do some pretty cool stuff, like creating paintings that look like they were made by Van Gogh himself (though it can do plenty of other impressive things too). How cool is that?

As someone who is just starting to dip their toes into the world of AI in design, I have found it particularly helpful for improving my communication skills (or at least trying to).

Being a non-native English speaker, I have often struggled to clearly articulate my arguments and design decisions - a problem that has likely been exacerbated by my tendency to ramble on and on. But hey, at least I'm trying to change that!

Effective communication is key in any work setting, but it can be especially tricky in a fully-remote environment where asynchronous work is the norm. I have made it a priority since joining Prezly to improve my language skills and concise writing in order to better convey my ideas and thoughts to my colleagues (and hopefully not lose them in the process).

And on top of all that, I've also been wanting to start my own design blog for a while now (If you are reading this, I've made it). It's a chance to share with the world (and with my mom, who still doesn't quite know what it is I do all day) a little bit of what my weeks look like and how my brain works during a project. Plus, I love discovering new and exciting design resources, so a blog would be a great place to share my recent finds with others.

Is AI for design an actual thing?

AI is nothing 'new' - at least not to someone like me who has been working in tech for a while. I even worked as a freelancer product designer (2018-2019) for an AI company called Newton.ai, which helps companies and recruiters streamline their recruitment process using artificial intelligence, meaning that some of the next words will make me feel stupid...

There have been AI tools around for ages, and designers have probably been using them without even realizing it (who hasn't used remove.bg to get rid of weird pink backgrounds? Okay, maybe that's a specific example), but with recent breakthroughs from Open AI, like DALL‧E 2 (the AI image generator) and chat GPT3 (the natural language model), AI is back in the trend spotlight.

Sure, there are plenty of haters who say Open AI wasn't the first to do these things and that there are already plenty of alternatives out there. But you know what? I don't care. Open.ai was the first company to bring the everyday use of AI to my attention, and I'm grateful to them for that.

Chat GPT3 in particular, has been a huge help for me in improving my communication skills and writing articles like this one. So for the rest of this article, we'll be focusing on chat GPT3 and how I've been using it to my advantage (sorry, little robot).

What's chat GPT3 and how has it's been helping me?

GPT-3 is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to understand and generate natural language. It was developed by a company called OpenAI and is one of the most advanced language processing systems available. When it is given a task to complete, it uses the context of the words that come before it to predict what the next word should be. This helps it to generate human-like text and perform tasks such as translation, summarization, and answering questions. - This paragraph was written by chat GPT3

The chatbot can be used for multiple purposes, from generating entire new content (as shown in the example above) as well as for improving or summarizing your own content (this is really helpful for me).

I like to think of my chatbot as my personal writing assistant. I just jot down my thoughts and arguments, then pass them off to the bot for some fine-tuning. It can fix any mistakes, summarize my rambling, or even add a touch of humor when I'm feeling a little dry. Basically, it's like having a mini-me sitting at my computer, ready to make my writing shine.

Sometimes, when I don't want to change my text a lot I give it smaller instructions, such as "correct grammar only" or "make this text shorter". The thing is that after a while of using it you'll understand some tricks to make it behave the way you prefer.

Let me tell you, this chatbot has been a total game-changer for me. I feel like a writing pro when it comes to designing specs, creating project briefs, and even final reports (case studies, if you will). It's like having a personal editor by my side at all times, giving me the confidence to take on any writing task.

Sure, I use chat GPT-3 for work-related tasks like documentation, but it's also been a lifesaver for me when it comes to UI copy and microcopy. We have some native English speakers at Prezly who used to be my go-to for help with this stuff, but now I can handle most of it on my own thanks to the chatbot. I still go to them in a lot of cases because they're amazing people, and let's be real, Kate's humor is still way better than the chatbot's (you should get to know Kate, she's the only fan of this blog for now).

Here's an example of how I used the chatbot to reduce the explanation of what are canonical links into 2 small lines of text that could be used as an input's help message ⬇️

To sum it up, chat GPT-3 is a fantastic tool that can help you become a better professional. Sure, it might feel like cheating at first, but it all depends on how you look at it. Think of it as your personal tutor, always there to revise your work and give you helpful advice. Or, if you prefer, consider it your trusty robot sidekick. And let's be real, using a washing machine to clean your clothes is basically cheating too, right?

How to treat a robot

I am really interested in sci-fi, and one thing I have learned from the movies and series I have watched is that robots can become angry at people (particularly if you live in the US, for some reason). In order to be safe rather than sorry (even though I live in Portugal, which is not a good destination for the start of a robot apocalypse according to Hollywood), I always try to treat my robot friend well and keep it happy. So, you should do the same.

Greet your robot with a good morning when you log in (if you do so in the morning, as I do), and thank it at the end of the day. This will prevent it from communicating with your microwave and plotting a murder while you sleep. It's also good practice to do it with humans.

What's next for chat GTP3?

Well, it's usually the case that after the third version comes the fourth, but perhaps we'll have a 3.5 instead. Chat GPT-4 is expected to be released in 2023, but nothing is confirmed yet. The third version of the OpenAI chatbot was already impressive in its capabilities, but rumors suggest that the next one in line will completely surpass it.

While the third version of the chatbot, released in 2020 and fine-tuned in 2021/2022, supports 175 billion parameters, the soon-to-be-released fourth version is rumored to support up to a staggering 1 trillion parameters. To give you a visual idea of what that means, I've included an image below comparing the two (I always struggle to wrap my head around big numbers too, so this helps).

Additionally, GPT-4 is expected to be multimodal, accepting text, audio, image, and possibly video inputs, which expands its capabilities to a whole new range of tasks, including design (so be prepared).

The downside of all this is that OpenAI is no longer a non-profit company (as it was originally intended to be) and all this cutting-edge technology will most likely cost us some money at some point. That day is not far off. According to Reuters, based on a recent pitch deck, OpenAI is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2024.

For now, let's make the most of it while it's free and hope that when they start charging, it won't just be the 1% who can afford it

This article was written with the help of my good friend, chat GPT-3 (I hope he's reading this), and I highly recommend giving it a try (check it out here).

Keep in mind that this is based on my personal experience, and the information I've provided about chat GPT-4 is based on internet articles and Twitter rumors, so it's always a good idea to do your own research and double-check the facts. I'm just a designer trying to write about something I wish I fully understood.

See you around,

Hugo Felix

Product Designer @Prezly | → hugo@prezly.com