How AI is changing the way we work.... even though we don't use it ourselves!

When Chat GPT suddenly burst into our lives at the end of 2022, we quickly decided that it was not for us. It rapidly became the norm for a website to be written by AI, contain images created by AI and many are even built by AI. We felt that though it’s use could save us time, it is totally at odds with everything our business stands for, and gets in the way of the personal, bespoke service we want to offer our customers and it would have felt hypocritical to embrace it.

However, though this is what we choose to do ourselves, we obviously have no control over what our customers do, and we have recently had a number of enquiries where the customer has been on Chat GPT and asked it to design a hanging sign or weathervane for us to make, which has had some interesting results!

The problems with using AI to design

• AI Produces images that may look great on a screen but are utterly impractical, for example a moon and stars hovering above a sign, we would need to defy the laws of physics in order to produce this! (see below) AI does not seem to yet have the capability to think of all the practicalities we have to think of as actual makers. 

• AI has unrealistic ideas about the concept of sign writing: It seems to favour including a massive amount of text that would take weeks to paint by hand rather than the 2 lines we include as standard. These ideas end up being prohibitively expensive, and we need to manage our customers’ expectations. There is also a trend for very ornate fonts which again takes longer and therefore pushes costs up. We have been using vinyl letters more than we used to in order to match the expectations created by Chat GPT. An example of this excessively ornate design that works on a screen but not in real life is shown below:

• AI expresses itself incredibly over confidently even when it is totally and utterly wrong, and many people have not yet got the hang of questioning it.  For example Chat GPT recently tried to send a customer to visit us, giving her Scottish Borders Council’s HQ address in St Boswells, which is 40 mins away. It’s funny now because I spotted the error, though I suspect it would not be had the customer actually travelled all that way! 
  
• On one occasion somebody sent an email that was blatantly written by AI and they had clearly not bothered to read it through as it really did not make a lot of sense! If someone is not confident in writing we are always happy to chat over the phone and would much rather this than have to decipher a garbled email from a bot!

What AI can be useful for

• AI can be really helpful if people are not creative themselves, or not confident in communicating their ideas.
  
• It’s a quick and easy way to get your ideas across. As a designer it’s always useful to have a really good idea what a customer envisages before starting work. Before AI this was often not possible unless the customer happened to be some sort of designer themselves, so it does save time in that way.

Our concerns with the overuse of AI

• The Covid lockdowns 6 years ago proved that humans are social creatures and need interactions with each other in order to thrive. It does bother me how tempting people find it to hide behind a machine in order to avoid a conversation with a stranger – this cannot be healthy long term! Social skills and interaction are skills that humans need to practice, those that don’t are in danger of losing them.
  
• The importance of using AI correctly. If you do not give it all the information it needs to correctly complete a task, it will go off and create what it wants to. This may improve as people become more practised in using it, but then again the rapid pace at which it is evolving is hard for most of us to keep up.
  
• How much water is it draining and do you really need it? As a family who live on a farm with a private water supply who did actually run dry during the hot spell this summer, it’s a major issue that should not be overlooked by any of us!

Points to consider when using AI to design

At Black Fox Metalcraft, we do not use AI in our designs or anywhere on our website, however we're aware that it can be a helpful tool for some of our customers if used well:

• If you do want to use AI to help you to understand your own requirements and tastes that is absolutely fine, however it is definitely worth being aware that AI knows nothing about the practicalities of what can physically be made from steel, and has no understanding of how long things take so do take their images with a pinch of salt! 
• Perhaps have a few attempts and alter your wording so you’re not just going with the first thing it comes up with – it’s important to have as much human input as possible at this stage.
• Remember all AI models are designed to be people pleasers - if you don't give it enough clear information, it will just spit out what it thinks you want to see.
• Think about what you do and don’t like about your AI design – this will help the designer to use it as a useful starting point.
  
• If you’re tempted to get AI to write an email to save time, quite simply, please don’t send it to us! It is always blindingly obvious to the recipient, comes across badly and just makes things harder. When we are creating a bespoke design for somebody, we need to communicate with them, not a bot. If you are unsure of how to approach us, it could be worth reading our blog about how to commission a bespoke design.

In summary, AI can be a useful tool and though we do not ever use it ourselves, we are not entirely against its use. However it can never be a replacement for human interaction, and despite it’s extremely high levels of self confidence, it currently has a lot of limitations which makes incorrect results even more misleading. So, by all means play with it to get straight in your mind what you do want and don’t want from a bespoke sign or weathervane, however keep in mind that you are much better dealing with an experienced, professional human after this point!