Exploring AI’s evolving role in our lives

In 2023, I wrote extensively about Artificial Intelligence, primarily because it was experiencing it’s breakout year. Like F1 driver Lewis Hamilton back in his rookie season in 2007, AI blew us all away but it wasn’t yet a world champion.

*Apologies to those not into F1 or Lewis Hamilton.

So, how are we using AI?

Instead of using Google to verify the year for that F1 comparison, I used ChatGPT to look it up and provide context.

Instead of recording myself reading this blog for accessibility, I used ElevenLabs to create a computer generated version of my voice to do it. Scroll to the bottom if you want to listen!

Finally, here’s a picture made by Dall-E to give this blog some visual flavour!

So, is AI going to continue improving how we work? Do we love it, or do we hate it?

Let’s dive in.

AI in Hybrid Events

Design

As ever with my content, I try to link my technology interests back to events, and as I summarised back in 2022 with this blog “imagine if an AI could do all your design work”, AI is great for inspiration. It’s sped up the ideation time for many projects we’ve worked on at Virtual Approval and on so many occasions, using tools like Photoshop’s Generative fill & Illustrator’s Vector tools has allowed us to amend and alter content, in pre-production, that we would have taken weeks to change before.

However, even with tools like ChatGPT, Adobe’s Creative Suite AI tools, Midjourney, and Krea.ai, a new tool allowing real-time manipulation of AI visuals, the tools are not perfect when it comes to design, and we can’t submit an AI-made graphic to a client or use it on an event, but it can help.

Project Management

Have they improved our project management ability? With Zoom & Microsoft Teams both adding very reliable AI note taking and meeting summary tools, our ability to improve efficiency and effectiveness of our meetings has been great. Although there are a number of AI productivity applications, helping us to write emails, schedule our days, check for mistakes and automate tasks, the problem isn’t what’s available it’s more the trust we have in it.

In an event planning situation everything is critical, projects move at a high speed and if something breaks or in the case with some AI, we are given regurgitated misinformation, it can put the project back days, sometimes weeks. I suppose what I’m trying to say is in order to deploy any AI tool into our workflow, a member of our team is required to undertake several weeks of testing before we can safely implement the tools.

Analytics

One area we can utilize AI though without too much concern is analytics. Understanding ticket sale ebbs and flows, summarizing demographics and highlighting trends is a dramatically improved process once you understand the prompts needed to get it right. However, this takes a little while to test and implement so it’s not the perfect solution immediately.

Impact on Event Marketing & Social Media

Click of a button

Despite doing the majority of my research with AI image generators, the majority of AI tools that I think the industry is using for marketing and social media are not for design. They are for optimization, they are for SEO. Within a click of a button, or a short prompt, AI is helping us and other companies improve the quality of content to better align with our goals.

It’s not only helping us analyse where we can improve with keywords but giving us solutions on how to grab attention, it’s reducing the need for rigorous research.

AI’s Impact on Virtual Workshops

The Human Connection

I’ll keep this short: we use AI in various aspects of our workshop support services. Although there are plenty of ways we could potentially use AI – e.g. record notes from each workshop and have them summarised or helping us build interactive elements. It just clashes with the philosophy of what training people in soft skills should be about: human interaction.

We do however use automation, which I’d argue is in the same ballpark, to speed up the booking & scheduling process.

Time is often the biggest perk with AI & automation, it speeds up most processes and when it delivers a task that would take humans more time, it’s arguably a no-brainer. When the task requires a human connection, AI falls short and in my opinion shouldn’t be considered.

Beware of Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Mum, Mum, Mum: have you seen this cool AI app I’m using?”

“I don’t use chat bots, I read we cannot trust it”

With any new technology, adoption is the biggest challenge, especially with a tool made famous by a certain Austrian bodybuilder playing a robot terrorizing a woman because her son is destined to be humanity’s only hope against a sentient Artificial Intelligence.

I’ve never known a science fiction to be taken so seriously, but honestly with the wrong management, AI can be dangerous, but I’d argue the approach should be to train and educate ourselves on how to work alongside the tool and manage it responsibly.

• We will see bad graphic designs from lazy artists only using AI.

• We will see false information from content writers who don’t check copy from their AI tools.

• We will have hours and hours of wasted time when projects have invested in AI tools but haven’t tested them.

But we will also enjoy:-

• The possibility of saving time and resources on projects allowing us to spend more time on more important tasks.

• We will get support on ideation and complex calculations so we can enhance the quality of our work.

There are numerous reasons to both love and hate AI. However, my verdict is to keep an open mind.

I’d love to hear your experiences of AI in the comments!

See below for an audio recording of this blog – made with elevenlabs