AI is Here to Stay, Early Adopters Get the Lead
“If I asked what people wanted, they’d probably say faster horses.” This is actually a misquote that’s been attributed to Henry Ford for years now. But if you read his autobiography, you know he did speak about human resistance to change, but he never did say these words.
Nonetheless, Ford was on to something. And so was his contemporary fellow businessman, Raymond Loewy. Loewy is best known for his MAYA principle, which is an acronym for “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable”.
This principle really hits the bullseye when it comes to explaining how we humans perceive change. We like new and innovative ideas, but we don’t like when they move away too far from what’s familiar to us. Because what’s familiar is also what’s safe and comfortable.
However, there is a change that’s been catching pace lately, and it’s related to AI. It seems like everyone from the tech world is talking about it, but it’s for a great reason: the topic of AI will have implications on how our quality of life and our work will develop in the future.
I’m in the AI creator space for a while now, so this is my honest take on the current situation.
Instead of Ignoring AI, Start Your Business
Humans have this natural proclivity toward maintaining the status quo when it comes to advanced tech innovations and I believe it’s probably a primal thing, i.e. we don’t like new territories since they could be dangerous. It’s always been that way. If you want a good laugh, you can check the Pessimists Archive, there’s your proof right there.
Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of people just ignoring AI or thinking it’s not going to profoundly change our lives, but I think it’s already happening, and probably more than we’re aware of.
But instead of resisting it, my two cents are that you should embrace the unknown and make a business out of it. There are tons of newly founded brands that are based on GPT-3 and DALL-E or they use engines like Stable Diffusion to come up with art, media, or products that are useful and functional and help people automate tasks.
History has thought us that those who don’t follow the crowd and choose to adapt gain the most. So instead of yelling “They took ‘ur jobs!” like in that hilarious South Park episode, and blaming “robots” for potentially making certain job positions obsolete, just stop and think. Think about the opportunity.
I’ll just share a couple of AI-backed business ideas that you can steal. And no, these don’t require an army of super-intelligent developers to make them happen.
1. Using DALL-E to Generate Images and Sell Merchandise
If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you know that DALL-E is an open AI system that can create realistic images and art from your input. All you have to do is provide a precise description of what you’d like DALL-E to create, and after about 30 seconds, you’ll have your generated image right before your eyes.
The trick here is knowing exactly what type of input you need to provide in order to get the image that you’ve envisioned in your mind. My prediction is that this will probably create a new job role in the future, like an “AI generator input copywriter”, or something along those lines.
But here’s what you can do. The beauty of DALL-E is that anyone can use it. You don’t have to be a designer or an artist. So, you can create a collection of your images with a certain aesthetic mark to them, create a brand out of scratch, and sell your merchandise with print-on-demand companies such as Printify or Spreadshirt. It’s really that simple. With Spreadshirt, you don’t even need starting capital as you pay for the fulfillment fee only after the customer pays you.
2. Create an AI-Driven Media Company
Imagine having a graphic design company without hiring a single designer? The idea sounds pretty “out there”, but hear me out. There are a lot of free AI generators in addition to DALL-E like Stable Diffusion or Midjourney (which is still in Beta). But with practice, you can perfect your input and create different styles of images and even videos, and turn them into branded packages.
Companies such as Flaticon or Streamline create different packages for different styles of icons, and they are based on a subscription business model. The only difference between what they’re doing and what you could be potentially doing is 1) they have actual people designing the icons and visuals and 2) they are focused on a specific niche of small images and icons.
You, on the other hand, could broaden your reach by offering all kinds of creatives packed into different styles. Think blog images, company materials, merchandise designed for the company, commissioned creatives for themed event materials... The opportunities are infinite.
Even if the client ends up wanting something slightly different in terms of colors or aesthetic direction, it’s easier to make changes in Photoshop or another editor when you already have a done image to work with. With AI, you’ll never have to work from scratch.
3. Start an AI-Driven Social Media Agency
I already wrote about content automation tools that can help you scale your content production, eliminate repetitive tasks, and optimize your current resources. By relying on those types of tools, you can decrease the budget you need for starting a business and focus on building a tech stack first, and then on scaling your team.
In my opinion, starting a social media agency is a smart way to get your foot in the door if you want to enter the digital space. This is especially true if you’re looking to change career paths. The best way to do it is to niche down to a single platform and build both your personal brand and your client portfolio simultaneously. Clients tend to trust specialists more than generalists, although you should take this with a grain of salt, of course.
When I say “AI-driven” social media agency, I mean an agency that automates as much as it possibly can to 1) provide better service to its clients and 2) save time and money. This means leveraging AI copywriting software (these solutions are getting increasingly better, by the way) and finding a way to connect different pieces of AI into a single place so that you have your own “Perpetuum mobile”.
Well, maybe that’s a bit of a strong claim, but you know what I mean: a more or less self-sufficient system that does all the major heavy lifting for you. For instance, if you use AI copywriting software, you’ll have to do some human post-editing, but everyone who has ever written anything knows the painful truth: the hardest part is just getting on with it and writing the first word.
So, you need glue that will hold different AI pieces together, right? Well, that’s what Plainly does.
Plainly Holds Different Pieces of Your AI Toolbox Together
Plainly is a video automation software that enables you to easily connect your video template to your database, mark which elements and layers you want to swap (e.g. images, texts, colors), and then automatically generate an infinite number of video variations based on your input.
So, how does it act as glue? I like to imagine it works like a factory machine where you put in all the ingredients and it assembles something completely new.
Plainly holds different parts together - the copy made by your AI copywriting software, the image generated by your AI tool, the music created by your AI songwriting assistant (e.g. Amadeus Code, Amper), and it follows the rules you set to create a new video…automatically. Just like that.
Hard to imagine, eh? Well, maybe you can check some of our customer success stories to get a better understanding of how Plainly works and what it can do.
At the very end, I would invite you to sign up for a 15-minute demo of Plainly, just so that I can tell you more about its potential. And don’t be afraid of technology: master it and work smarter.
