Author Archives: Altan

Week 8 Summary

This week there were four tasks assigned to us, two of which I’ll reflect on here!

The first one was to pitch an AI tool to Aggressive Technologies for them to acquire. I chose NightCafe to pitch since it is an AI tool I have become much more familiar with recently. I explored more about this tool and decided to pitch based on the potential profits and the user-friendly design. I figured it would be most beneficial to sell someone on the best qualities that will keep people coming back to use it and make the most money for the site. I encourage you to check it out and generate some images for yourself.

The next assignment was three daily creates this week. You can see mine on my Mastodon page. The first one I did this week gave me the opportunity to use an interesting art tool that I had not used before. My favorite part about this daily create was seeing everyone else’s art they created and how different it was from my own. The second daily create was asking about addictions people had, which was interesting to read through. The last one was adding a modern appliance into an old image or photo. I decided to look up one of my favorite photos and see what would work best in the context and decided to add an apple watch to it. Go check it out and let me know if you know this image and see what is out of place.

AI Pitch

This sales pitch is from me, not my character since he strongly opposes Aggressive Technologies.

The AI tool that AT should look into buying is called NightCafe. This AI tool is an image generator that offers users several different styles of art generation. It can generate 1, 4, 9, or 16 images for each prompt depending on what the user requests. I have found this tool very useful for many creative endeavors recently.

One of the best features of NightCafe is that it is essentially free to use. All you have to do is make an account and they give you a certain amount of “credits” for free. Each image costs one credit to generate, so the free credits are really free images. Each user can claim five free credits per day which allows people to continue to use the platform without paying. However, for those who wish to generate significantly more images, they offer paid subscriptions that give a certain number of credits per month based on subscription tier. The opportunity to use this tool for free, but also have paid tiers makes this a useful, yet profitable website.

They also include the ability to train your own model in 10-30 minutes, which adds a level of personalization that users might not get elsewhere. NightCafe’s layout makes it easy to use and keep coming back to, especially if someone trains their own model through this tool.

From a business standpoint, Aggressive Technologies would be wise to acquire this tool. The format of the website makes it user-friendly and profitable at the same time. I believe this type of image generation technology will continue to improve and be an increasingly profitable area of AI in the future.

Week 7 Summary

The first assignment this week was to create propaganda. I created and discussed my process here. I enjoyed this assignment and thought it was interesting that not many other people seemed to create anti-Aggressive Technologies propaganda. It appears that most of the characters are on board with Aggressive Technologies and their plan to take over the world.

The next assignment was creating a PSA, which I did and reflected on here. Give it a listen and see if you agree with the announcement! I like the idea that there are some people trying to stop Aggressive Technologies but definitely a minority imposing the resistance.

We also had to do three daily creates this week, which I wrote about here. I appreciate the daily creates where we can use art generators or other websites of that nature to create something. There were two that I did like that this week, so let me know what you think!

I also looked at some of the PSAs my classmates made and, like I mentioned, was surprised they were pro-Aggressive Technologies/ AI for the most part. You can read my further analysis of the three PSAs I saw here. Hopefully Düşünür is able to contribute to the resistance and persuade more characters to join him!

Design and PSA Reactions

The first PSA I wanted my character to react to was by Destiny. I found this one interesting since it takes a conflicting viewpoint from what my character would believe. My character is trying to encourage people to be wary of the dangers of Aggressive Technologies and not let them take over the markets. I think Düşünür would strongly disagree with this message and would encourage others not to think this way and instead encourage others not to join Aggressive Technologies.

The next PSA I wanted my character to react to was posted on here and there it’s everything. This PSA is suggesting the public be okay with constant surveillance by Aggressive Technologies because it would lead to greater safety for society. Düşünür would disagree with this PSA and suggest that it is best to never allow this level of surveillance. He would be shocked that others would be so willing to let them invade the personal privacy of the citizens.

The last PSA I considered was posted on cat on a moped. This PSA is about the creation of a fully AI-operated moped by Dr. Ravioli. I think this would scare Düşünür because this is yet another way AI is taking over every market. It seems like a harmless invention, but demonstrates how wide of a net Aggressive Technologies casts and how much influence they really have.

Week 7 Daily Creates

This week we did 3 daily creates.

The first one was a picture or depiction of something pure. Of course, I used a picture of my dog giving his puppy eyes. You can check it out here.

The second one was using a generator to create “net art”. I gave it the prompt “dogs playing poker”. Let me know what you think of its interpretation!

The third one was using oscillators to make some fun sounds! You can try out what I suggested and see if you hear the same things I did.

Public Service Announcement

This public service announcement warns the audience of Aggressive Technologies’ plan to dominate every market, especially literature. It encourages push back against this corporation to preserve the world with creativity in it. This is the position my character would agree with and this could also show that there is a significant group of people who feel this way and provides some opposition/ obstacles for Aggressive Technologies.

I recorded myself saying the PSA after coming up with a short script. I was going to use an AI text to speech, but that felt wrong for this type of PSA, so I opted for my own, human, voice.

I searched on freesound.org for an ominous sound for the background and settled on one that builds suspense and adds an eerie aspect to the PSA. It feels very dystopian, which is what I was going for.

Using my new knowledge of Audacity I was able to put this together with more ease than I otherwise would have been able to.

Propaganda Poster

This was the propaganda I designed to make people more suspicious of Aggressive Technologies. My character is a former employee of Aggressive Technologies who no longer agrees with their mission. The goal is, of course, to cause people to be skeptical of this large company.

I used Canva to make this poster and found the perfect background after a quick search through Google Images. I developed the message after I saw the image and decided since my character is trying to save the creative work of literature, it would make sense to emphasize the importance of human brains. I added the glitch effect on the text since it just seems fitting for an AI danger propaganda poster.

Week 6 Summary

This week, we had a choice between talking to Dr. Oblivion and doing three video assignments. I decided on the video assignments and incorporated my character, Düşünür, into two of them. I decided to do these assignments since I’d rather do three smaller assignments than trying to figure out how to do a more complicated one that is not exactly in my realm of expertise.

The assignments I did were Watching Movies With the Stereo On, Make a Video Poem, and Tell Your Character’s Story. You can check them all out and let me know what you think! The process for each of these was relatively similar. I used iMovie for all of them since it is easy (even for me) to add video or images with an audio background. For the first one, I put the song Vertigo by Khalid over a scene from Asteroid City. I wanted to add a song that was uplifting and almost had an aura of enlightenment to it. I felt that Vertigo fit this description and gave it an interesting, yet different, vibe compared to the original. For the video poem, I decided to pick up a book of poetry I bought a couple months ago and thumb through until I found a poem that I felt encapsulated my character’s relatively solitary life. The poem I chose compares solitude and loneliness, which I think paints an apt description of what I imagine my character often ponder. Let me know if you think the poem and the images go well together. I am very pleased with the result. The character’s story was a fun assignment to do since I remembered one of the concrete facts about my character is that he has three dogs. I wanted to give the dogs a backstory just as much as the character itself! This is much more lighthearted than the other ones, but I am proud of how I put everything together and also happened to learn a lot more about iMovie and video editing from these rather simple assignments. I would love to hear some feedback on these videos and hear what you think works or doesn’t work within them!

We also developed our characters in relation to Aggressive Technologies. I wanted to take a unique approach to connecting Düşünür to the company. I decided to make him a former employee who no longer agrees with the vision of the company. I think this lends him to some interesting ties with other characters that can be further developed in the future!

The daily creates this week were fun and you can check them out here and here! I always enjoy doing these and figuring out how to go about responding to them. For the first one I did this week, I decided to visit our old friend freesounds. I looked for some upbeat parade music which I found! I loved picturing each parade sound with the picture and seeing what fit best in my mind. I posted the sound I felt most connected with the image! The next one was thinking about Justin Trudeau shaking the hand of a robot. I could have made it more political, but I have enough of that in my political science classes so I made it more of a humans versus robots type of agreement. Check out the posts and let me know what you think about the parade music and Trudeau saving the human race!

Aggressive Connection

Aggressive Technologies is a mega-multi-national company attempting to take control of the artificial intelligence market. They are moving into the literature realm and trying to figure out exactly how to use AI to write, edit, and publish books. Because of this, they have reached out to a number of authors to get insight into the process and help train the AI. Since Düşünür is an author, he had been brought into this process early on.

However, once he realized it would be best to keep AI out of art and literature, he had a falling out with the company over a disagreement. They are trying to get Düşünür back, but he is reluctant to help this tech giant take over the literature field regardless of how much they tried to persuade him to change his mind.

Character Story

This was the third video assignment I completed for this week and second including my character. In my character introduction I included an image of him with his dogs and mentioned that he had three dogs. This story is about how he got two of them!