A.I. as a Tool

The promise of Artificial Intelligence, according to its marketers, is that it powers a wealth of tools that can quickly, inexpensively produce what otherwise would have required substantial commitments of time and resources.

The compromise of A.I., however, is that it often attempts to deliver on this promise via copyright infringement, "hallucinations" (read: wrong answers), and a loosely legislated frontier (to say nothing of deepfakes, dangerous advice, and other pitfalls to which we have exposed ourselves and our children).

I experienced both of these while creating this piece. This sample was originally delivered to a group of corporate leaders in the comparatively primitive form of a PowerPoint slide deck, which relied heavily on my skills as a presenter to bring the story to life. I thought it would make a perfect project to test the ideal A.I. situation and demonstrate my worth as both prompter and producer.

For the experiment, I used Davinci's A.I. hub and Seedance 2.0. I prompted the main character, scenes, voice over, and musical score, while I personally made the storyboard, wrote the script, and edited it all together (with the help of a stock sound effects bank).

The cost savings are clear. A decade ago, my professional animator friend in Los Angeles estimated it would cost $10,000.00 USD for one minute of professionally drawn studio animation. That would bring this little vignette to a $45,000.00 price tag, unobtainable for laypersons and a turn off for any corporate budget, with many weeks of work ahead. Through A.I., I made this by myself in about a day and a half for under $200.

I love my little octopus (whose name is Mitchell). I do not love how readily and frequently the A.I. produced what amounted to stock footage of Disney and Nickelodeon properties. This exercise highlights the advantages of our new era, as well as the amount of human work and diligence still required to truly use these technologies as functional, ethical tools.