I eagerly refreshed the website, awaiting my brand-new headshots. When they finally appeared, I squinted, bewildered. I laughed out loud alone in my office, then sent a very confused email to customer support.
Every writer I know is talking about AI tools and whether they’re ethical to use. But what’s just as interesting to me is why we’re so enamored with them even if they produce outrageous or below-average results. Why do we chase the shiny new thing even if it’s not better, faster, or cheaper?
This year my LinkedIn feed has been full of posts touting the best new AI tools for doing absolutely everything, and I’ve already fallen for too many of them. I didn’t really ask myself until months later why, all of a sudden, I’m trying so hard to be one of the cool kids. Major FOMO led to me conveniently ignoring whether these tools were actually helpful.
One of the initial offerings that grabbed my attention was Aragon, a program offering to create expert, AI-created headshots after a handful of selfies are uploaded. Before this, I utilized an image of myself jumping on a rainbow bouncy house as the centerpiece image on my page, and a vacation photo as my profile picture.
Professional photographers demand high costs and photoshoots take up a lot of time. Aragon offered a workaround for the logistical headache of scheduling a photoshoot, deciding on clothing, preparing my hair, and spending lengthy periods at a possibly uncomfortable photoshoot that would cost a lot of money and wouldn’t deliver images for weeks. Why not just spend $39, upload a few selfies and receive 40 “professional” headshots in less than two hours?
Once I paid the fee and uploaded selfies from various angles, I needed to detail what I was seeking. I requested an array of pictures both indoor and outdoor, in casual attire, and without revealing wardrobe. Some of the outcomes were genuinely unsettling. In every single shot, Aragon presented me with an Instagram face. Avoiding revealing clothing transformed into images of me in a “business casual” cropped top with exaggerated features, synthetic doll teeth, and fictional claws. Some were simply ludicrous, like an image of “me” sitting on a purse in a driveway, with my legless legs merging together. Not even the ones that slightly resembled me actually looked like me. Aragon assumed I resembled a model, appeared 15 years younger, and was definitely a hat person.
If you’ve experienced a first date with a person who looks completely different from their online dating app photos, you’ ll understand why people use this tool. We all seek to pretend we’re more appealing than we actually are. Because the majority of us are buying into the same illusion, we begin endorsing it with each other. Hey, I won’t be shocked by the fact that your skin includes pores in real life if you ignore my digital enhancement.
I’d found Aragon on one of those “173 gazillion best new AI tools you must try out TODAY” LinkedIn lists, and even though that experiment turned out to be a disaster, I continued down the list, making other people money with their affiliate links.
Matt Jancer
David Nield
Aarian Marshall
Boone Ashworth
AdCreativeAI came into my focus as it provided beautifully designed ads and social posts instantly. I just needed to input my text, logo, and image, and this tool, unnamed “the most used AI tool for advertising,” produced hundreds of unique designs that claimed to ‘outdo [my] competitors’. Brands such as Tesla, Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft allegedly use this tool. I signed up for a free trial, used it a few times, and ultimately had to pay the regular monthly subscription fee of $200. After uploading my logo, I opted for brand colors and fonts, chose a format, images, and copy (with the choice to let AI generate the text). The output is ranked by forecasted ‘engagement score’, which purportedly affects the conversion rate. How AdCreativeAI determines these scores remains beyond my comprehension.
Prior to this, I’d been using Canva for making marketing collateral (by that, I mean selecting a template and revising the text). Any user can upload designs to Canva and sometimes they’re… subpar. Since I’m not a designer, distinguishing good from bad isn’t always feasible. AdCreativeAI secured me the promise to alleviate this issue for me.
I manufactured several different AdCreativeAI ads for a writing guide that failed to attract any customers. Maybe the offer lacked appeal, or perhaps it was regarding the design. I’ll remain ignorant since I didn’t post on any social media platforms or send emails to my (non-existent) subscriber list or invest in Facebook ads. As it turns out, purchasing a pricey ad creation instrument does nothing if you don’t actually run ads. Furthermore, I noticed that while there were various options, the ones habitually marked with the highest potential ‘engagement score’ were the same 10 to 20 designs, which quickly became monotonous. Lastly, there wasn’t any provision to resize logos or adjust images manually.
I never used AdCreativeAI enough to justify the high monthly expense, so I kept Canva instead, which, at $12/month, is a fraction of the cost. I didn’t save time between choosing a design template and plugging in my information (Canva), or feeding my information into a tool first to spit out options for me to review and pick my favorite (AdCreativeAI). Canva now offers Magic Studio, their version of AI-powered text-to-image, text-to-video, magic animate, and magic switch (for automatically changing the size and format of designs).
The most important thing I learned, though, was that the shiny tools made me believe I needed them to create something I didn’t want to create in the first place. I don’t want to sell courses and webinars. I don’t care about creating ads or engaging on social media. I’m not a bite-size person. I’m a “meandering-conversation-while-lingering-around-the-kitchen-table-after-dinner” kind of person. Plus, I’m a slow writer, so it takes a lot of effort for me to write an article. I’m cool with it taking time and effort to read, too.
What I do need for these long-form articles are great images. I relied heavily on Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash before I learned about Midjourney from an AI-obsessed client who’d asked me to write a series of blog posts about the intersection of technology and art. She gave me a short tutorial on how to use this text-to-image generator by using specific prompts and sent me on my way … down a rabbit hole. Three hours later, I emerged bleary-eyed, having generated exactly zero images for her blog posts. Instead, I’d created random psychedelic fairy kingdoms, hyperrealistic characters for novels I’d never write, and album covers for nonexisting bands.
Written by Matt Jancer
David Nield
Aarian Marshall
Boone Ashworth
I’ve used only one image that I created with Midjourney, for a blog post. It was a fun process, but the image itself is low quality and has random elements that make no sense. With Midjourney, you get four square images as output and can ask to regenerate different versions of each of them. I got frustrated thinking that I couldn’t make a small change to an image I otherwise liked, or that Midjourney seemed to generate only square images, which is not what I needed for blog posts.
I realized later that adding dimensions to images in the prompt ends up creating non-square pictures, something I wasn’t aware of while researching for this article. Around the end of August 2023, Midjourney released a feature called Inpainting which allows one to edit selected parts of the image independently. This is what happens when individuals who are not very tech-savvy try using tech tools; I can’t really blame AI for this.
A subscription that I am willingly enamoured with, despite its controversial nature, is ChatGPT+, for $20 a month. ChatGPT recently shot past the 100 million active-user milestone, revolutionizing the AI landscape entirely. It’s strange how often writers publicly express criticism for ChatGPT when almost every writer I’m acquainted with relies on it – just not for writing purposes.
Inherently, you cannot employ ChatGPT for purely creative work because its responses are “based on existing data and programmed algorithms”. All it can do is summarize, condense, duplicate, and paste. However, I use it to understand the basics about concepts, devices, historical periods, or events I’m about to write about and treat this fundamental explanation as a launch point for further research. I employ ChatGPT to fish for synonyms and alternatives to complete phrases. I can narrow down research studies and articles swiftly because I can make searches using very specific prompts rather than generic keywords or terms. Its one major drawback is that the knowledge data of ChatGPT isn’t current, so it won’t locate the newest studies. I adore it for brainstorming titles, and headings for chapters and sections. Additionally, it’s excellent for validating title case and correct citation formatting. Simply put, ChatGPT serves as my go-to assistant so I don’t have to switch back and forth between Google, thesaurus, research database, and CMOS formatting tool.
Being a ghostwriter, I frequently conduct interviews with authors to gather material for books, hence I began using Otter.ai to transcribe these conversations. While the transcriptions are typically satisfactory, the technology is somewhat unreliable — it repeatedly logs in and out and only transcribes up to 90 minutes at a stretch, even in the paid version. To make matters worse, Otter pops into your meetings even when you don’t. This is the standard setting, and deactivating it doesn’t necessarily mean this function won’t glitch and cause the Otter assistant to appear uninvited. The app also has a default setting to mail everyone in the meeting the transcript and invite them to sign up for a free trial, something that has unnerved a few of my clients. I’m still on the lookout for the ultimate automated tool that records video and audio separately and provides a transcription without being overly intrusive.
My initial FOMO ended up costing me quite a bit of time and money, but gave me some clarity, too. Turns out that while I’d like to sit at the cool table, I do care more about looking like me than looking poreless. I trust my own voice over ChatGPT’s edits, and you should too. Not everything has to be captured, as the CEO of Otter argues. In fact, it’s the ephemeral nature of undocumented moments that makes me feel most alive. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get tired of learning about the newest AI tool promising the closest thing to magic I’ve ever seen.
So, here’s my super official ranking of all the tools I’ve used so far:
After I put the vacation snapshot back up as my profile picture, I called the friend who always has an eye for my best angles while capturing my most recognizable facial expressions.
Turns out, yes, she’s for hire as a photographer.
