AI Is Here, Now What Do We Do With It?
AI did this.
A year ago I checked in on what was then called GPT-3, an AI text generator. AI had been taking incremental steps, but for years and years it wasn’t really ready to pose as human writing. In certain applications, like filling in web searches, it was quite useful—but it was limited. Then came GPT-3, which passed an important threshold by producing human-sounding blocks of text. In the past year, the latest version, ChatGPT, has made even more dramatic improvement, sparking both excitement and fear.
In addition to text generation, AI bots like Midjourney are producing absolutely amazing art. Its so good that in December, a father’s tweet about his illustrated, AI children’s book went viral. He used ChatGPT to write it, but the project attracted attention because the art was far beyond what an amateur illustrator could manage—especially in a weekend on his computer. It was a watershed moment when authors and illustrators felt existential dread, and began to wonder if they’d all just been made as obsolete as the quill pen.
The age of AI is upon us, and 2023 looks to be the year when its utility begins to filter into our lives in big ways and small. Recognizing that I am famously bad at predictions, I can’t help but feel that we’re at the dawn of a technology that will transform our lives. It won’t just save us time on our writing drudgery, AI will integrate into a huge number of everyday tasks like the internet did, creating downstream uses we’re only beginning to consider.
In today’s post, I’ll start exploring the strengths and deficits of the tech, with a focus on the beer industry. As a part of AI week, I’ll explore the ethics of AI, and dip into its possibly dystopic implications. Today, though, a sunnier view.
Get Rid of your Marketing Department!
So what can AI do? A year ago, GPT-3 took short instructions and requested “input” words to increase accuracy. It wasn’t bad. When I asked for a review of Jever, the bitter German pilsner, it gave me the following example, so long as I provided “crisp,” “bitter,” and “sharp.”
If you're looking for a sharp, bitter, and crisp pilsner, Jever is a great option. It's got a strong flavor that can hold its own against heavier dishes. However, it's also light and refreshing enough to enjoy on its own.
Not bad. But things have improved in a year. Now ChatGPT doesn’t require word inputs. You just ask it in clear language for what you want. So let’s say I needed to send out a quick block of copy for my new beer release. I plug this in: “Create a short block of marketing copy for Strike Force IPA, a new beer release from XYZ Brewing. Highlight Belma hops.” In less time than it took me to write the prompt, the AI kicked this out:
XYZ Brewing proudly presents Strike Force IPA, a new release featuring the exclusive Belma hops. Savor the juicy notes of strawberry, citrus, and melon in every sip of this full-bodied beer. With a balanced malt backbone and a 6.5% ABV, Strike Force IPA is a refreshing option for any hophead looking for a new favorite. Don't miss your chance to try this limited release brew, only available while supplies last.
ChatGPT found Belma hop descriptions, somehow settled on a random ABV (though an accurate one for IPAs), and pulled some basic marketing copy. It’s not the most amazing thing you’ll read, but a) it got Belma’s notes correct, and b) it’s perfectly human-sounding, grammatically-correct language. For those of you who interact with marketing copy, I ask you to raise your hand if you’ve encountered worse. (I take it everyone’s hands are up.) It’s perfectly acceptable, if slight generic.
Obviously, I’m kidding about firing the marketing department. A key insight I’ve taken away from ChatGPT is that it functions by averaging content. It goes out and finds what’s typical, and reproduces something similar. On the one hand that means it’s very natural and familiar. But average isn’t what a marketing department should be shooting for—any more than a writer or journalist. You want to cut through the average and offer something that stands out. And of course, marketing departments do a lot more than writing press releases.
I’m not entirely sure this is true with art. I’m not trained in that form, but it does seem to be a lot more impressive. You couldn’t really design a brand with AI (yet), but you could certainly grab something for one-offs. The first picture was produced by a simple request for geometric patterns on Midjourney. If you were doing a one-off can run and needed to print out some labels fast, producing something like this is basically instantaneous. Throw a text block for a title and you’re done.
It can also do more specific task, sometimes uncannily so. For my “Strike Force IPA,” I asked Midjourney to give me a lightning strike in comic book form. It gave me the second picture. With tinkering, you could produce more and more precise and evocative images. (And, because you can give it images as fodder for its algorithms, you might be able to keep feeding it an image you like to recreate similar ones for a family effect.) Again, a professional artist can be a lot more precise and give you exactly what you want, but for $8 a month, this is a pretty powerful tool.
AI’s shortcomings, however, hint at where it may be most valuable. If it’s not ideal for grand, complex projects or cutting-edge thinking, it may well save the brain for those things by doing scut work and first drafts.
Making Life Easier
As I was noodling around with ChatGPT, I wondered how well it would do with a full press release. AI is great with formulaic writing, and it works well for drafts. The result was kind of amazing, and underscored a point I’ve heard a few times recently. The press release ChatGPT created for me was a perfect case in point. (Click on the image to enlarge.) It was able to create a document with a bunch of perfectly averaged paragraphs. It even provided the same kind of canned, fake quotes people use in actual press releases. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t want it going out in place of a human-drafted release. But if we consider this a draft rather than a final product, all of a sudden its value is more obvious.
Tuning up the language by providing better descriptions within the basic form would be a snap. It wouldn’t take a genius to turn this extremely basic press release into a functional one that actually highlighted important info you wanted people like me to have. ChatGPT even created it like a working document, with spaces for factual info like the brewery’s location. ChatGPT doesn’t produce scintillating prose, but it is clean enough for professional use.
It can also help you brainstorm. I asked it to “generate 20 fun new names for a IPA. Use 1-3 word phrases, focusing on a nautical theme.” It came up with this list: “Sea Spray IPA, Salted Surf, High Tide Hoppy Ale, Anchors Aweigh, Siren's Song, Buoyant Brew, Barnacle Blast, Nautical Nectar, Salty Dog, Shoreline Shandy, Reef Riser, Sailor's Delight, Swell Swig, Seafarer's Select, Portside Pour, Deep Sea Draught, Oceanic Oasis, Mariner's Mist, Brigantine Bitter, Kraken's Keg.” Whether or not you find a name you want (and isn’t already in use) isn’t precisely the point: in a few seconds, you’ve generated a list that works as a starting place for you to find your perfect name.
On the art side, AI will be helpful at the front-end as well. I’ve fooled around with Midjourney enough to know that a downside is trying to get the image out of it that you have in your mind. It doesn’t really work that way. But what about using it like we did the names? By using different prompts, you can produce a range of variations on a theme. Are you thinking more like this elegant rendering that draws on 19th century impressionism, or more of a graffiti look? From there, it’s a lot easier to drill down to the art you want for your project. I assume commercial illustrators and branding agencies are already using it to offer visual examples for clients to consider.
In a similar vein, you can ask ChatGPT to do some work for you. If you’re doing a research project on London porter, it will offer you suggestions of places to start. It gave me these, and even provided summaries of each: Cornell, M. (2003). The history of porter. Brewery History, 117, 4-14; Brown, P. (2013). Porter. In The Oxford Companion to Beer (pp. 644-647). Oxford University Press; Mathias, P. (1999). The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830. Cambridge University Press. That last cite is actually older than 1999, but perhaps there was a re-issue; in any case, not bad! Another search asking “find me three articles about how to brew schwarzbier” produced similarly relevant results.
Last week, just as I was planning an AI week, Microsoft announced it was going to incorporate ChatGPT into its Bing search results. (You remember Bing, don’t you? I didn’t think so—but that’s all about to change.) It isn’t available to the public yet, but it will begin incorporating searches and outputs in a way that could turn Bing into a personal assistant. You could, for example, ask it to find you information about London porter (apparently it will not only summarize for you, but offer footnotes), then write a recipe based on those notes, and finally, tell you where to buy the ingredients.
AI Is Inevitable
A lot the the anxiety I’ve been seeing around AI seems to cast it as a future worry. But the AI revolution isn’t coming—it’s already here. Trying to stop it now is like trying to put the egg back in its shell. When we want to find out Patrick Mahomes’ latest stats, we don’t consider the tech that answers our query once we’ve typed in the first three letters—we just click and go. That kind of usability is going to become ubiquitous, and not in some distant future.
Creatives are worried about whether this will replace them. (I will address that fear in a future post.) But I think they may have overlooked the trade-offs. When the internet arrived, it drove down the value of writing in general. Now books and articles are just keystrokes away. Writers worried this abundance would make their work valueless. Their worry wasn’t entirely misplaced. But ask any working writer today whether they’d like to go back to the old hard-copy, card-catalogue days and I doubt you’d find a one who would sacrifice their online resources.
AI is going to further transform the way we access and use information. I do have some concern about the downsides that implies—again, future post—but it is almost surely going to be the case that our children and grandchildren, raised in a world of AI, would rather cut off their arm than lose it. The internet has its downsides, but give back my iPhone and all that it does for me? Absolutely not. AI is a transformative technology, and that comes with growing pains. But it’s also an exciting moment, one with much promise.