Pay attention to what is right in front of you

Throughout 2023 and the start of 2024, we’ve seen an ever-increasing number of services and products get an AI “add-on.” This has gotten so bad that we had to start considering the possibility of a Bring Your Own AI (BYOAI) type of solution to look for ways to keep down the mounting cost of these services for those who work in creative endeavors.

AI News Fatigue

Frequently, it turns out that these little add-ons don’t really do that much for you, that you couldn’t get accomplished just using ChatGPT. In fact, most of them don’t deliver even that, as many companies try to keep their costs down by utilizing the older GPT 3.5-Turbo model instead of the latest and more expensive GPT4-Turbo.

Combining these mounting costs, less-than-stellar results, and the general “subscription fatigue” that has already been spreading through the tech consumer space makes it easy to ignore the latest news about new AI-assisted tools. Totally understandable.

What we might miss out on

What might get missed among all these myriad product announcements are those products that go one step further than simply building in access to ChatGPT. Those tools make intelligent use of the possibilities offered by GPT4 and similar models.

Allow me to elaborate. As an example, I’ll use a product called Novelcrafter. This writing tool doesn’t simply bring in AI models to write for you. Come on, if you are a writer, you hardly really want something that does the writing for you. You want an assistant to help you keep track of your characters, locations, and past facts mentioned in your book or books.

Novelcrafter does precisely that for you. By allowing you to bring your own AI API-Key, you can freely use this helper without paying an extra amount that gives you limited access to the AI model. Not only this, but Novelcrafter allows you to connect to other models offered by companies other than OpenAI.

We should all be looking for this type of AI integration in the services we might use. These tools will allow us to multiply our ability to create relevant and high-quality content much faster and without breaking the bank in the process.

It is right in front of you!

What no one is telling you is that these tools that are going the extra mile to properly integrate AI helpfully, instead of doing it just to check a box or to try to get an extra buck out of you, will leap forward spectacularly in the coming months as they not only continue to integrate AI models into their workflows but as the underlying models continue to evolve.

The combination of proper integration with evolving AI models has the potential to place a product so far beyond its competitors that those can’t even be seen in the rearview mirror.

What difference could this be to you?

How much of an impact this can have on you depends on whether you are learning to use these products well. If you are, you might be catapulted ahead with your business. If you are not, you might be in the position of being with the people being left in the dust as other people jump ahead.

It is really no longer optional to keep abreast of what is going on with AI-assisted tools. While you certainly don’t need to check them all out yourself, it would be too costly to do so; you certainly need to keep up with which ones are going that extra mile and really finding ways to bring AI into their workflows meaningfully. You will want to check out these tools and see if it makes sense to get them into your workflow, as these are the ones most likely to boost your capabilities.

Many have been discussing whether AI will replace people at their jobs. While still relevant, this discussion has been superseded by one that is presently more relevant: will professionals who know how to use AI to the fullest, replace those who don’t?

The Explorers and the Lion

When I was a young kid, I was told this anecdote about two explorers walking about in the bush and coming face to face with a lion. One of the explorers quickly starts to remove his shoes, so the other asks him what he is doing.

“I run faster without shoes,” he replied.

“You think that you can run faster than a lion?”

“No. But I think I can run faster than you,” he replied as he took off running.

This is similar to the situation that professionals will be facing from now on. It is not really a matter of whether they can do the work better than an AI (often, that will be true, for now). The real question is: how much better and/or faster can a professional augmented by AI-powered tools do the work than they can? Those are the Creative Cyborgs; they already have an advantage over everybody else today.

Don’t Just Stand Around

This is not the time to stand around and wait to see where things go. You need to keep up with what is coming out regarding tools that can impact your work area. This is definitely the time to become a Creative Cyborg yourself.