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Flipboard Friday: Sex, Drugs, Generative AI Companies

Source: https://www.wte.net/Blog/May-2023/Flipboard-Friday-Sex,-Drugs,-Generative-AI-Companies
Date: May 2023
Author: Martin W Smith

Opening

The author poses a historical comparison, asking whether AI has replaced rock and roll as a generational rallying cry. He reflects on what a modern Woodstock festival might resemble in an AI-dominated landscape, contemplating machine-generated performances and sentient learning systems.

He acknowledges the difficulty in distinguishing between AI hype and realistic futures, noting that "the numbers still need to arrive." The author emphasizes that true ROI validation will emerge when large language models and generative AI integrate into mainstream use cases, benefiting profits and customer service broadly.

Loopin Uses AI to analyze employee meeting dynamics and sentiment. The platform helps managers identify retention risks while surfacing business opportunities through pattern recognition across customer interactions.

Refract An AI coding assistant emphasizing refactoring—the process of improving code structure through variable renaming, method decomposition, and dead code removal. WTE developers appreciate this tool's potential to reduce weeks of manual refactoring work while maintaining system behavior through unit testing.

Fabric A collaborative workspace designed to organize digital assets, enabling users to locate and share files efficiently. The author appreciates its solution to "digital clutter" and information retrieval challenges.

Jukin Media Facilitates licensing user-generated video content for marketing campaigns, allowing brands to test influencer content affordably before major investments.

Photoshop AI Beta

The author demonstrates Photoshop's generative fill feature, which accepts text prompts to modify image backgrounds. He replaced a hotel window view with "blue sky with puffy clouds," highlighting the tool's accessibility for non-designers.

He concludes that competing tools like Deep Art Effects face obsolescence against Adobe's integrated AI capabilities.

Conclusion

The author references a Prof G video discussing AI hype versus substantive applications, emphasizing the need for realistic evaluation as the technology matures.