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⚡️ Artistic Creativity + AI ⚡️

Creativity is a tightrope walk between inspiration and execution. Artists and designers often find themselves stuck, wrestling with blank canvases or struggling to bring half-formed ideas to fruition.

AI steps in as your creative co-pilot. It generates fresh concepts, refines rough sketches, and turns abstract ideas into tangible assets. In this issue, we'll explore how AI is amplifying human creativity, and reshaping the landscape of artistic expression.

In this AI Report:

• 💻 Case Study: IBM’s AI-Powered Advertising Revolution

• 🤖 A Key Way to Use AI to Succeed: How to Elevate Your Visuals

• 📚 Further Reading and Supplemental Resources

Read Time: 11 Minutes

CASE STUDY

💻 IBM’s AI-Powered Advertising Revolution

IBM hit a wall with its content creation. They needed to churn out tons of personalized stuff for all their digital advertising, but their old ways just weren't cutting it anymore.

So they tried Adobe Firefly, a new AI tool.

With a few simple words, IBM's team made 200 assets and over 1,000 advertising versions in minutes. Before, this would've taken ages.

The AI pictures were eye-catching on social media. But the results?

Even better. IBM saw 26 times more engagement than usual, and 20% of responses came from big-shot decision makers.

By integrating Firefly into their content creation workflow, IBM estimates their creative productivity will increase tenfold. Teams can now focus more on high-value tasks like brainstorming and design refinement, rather than time-consuming asset creation.

IBM's 1,600 professional designers are also using Firefly to revolutionize client experiences. 

"With Firefly, our design team can focus less on tedious tasks and more on what they do best — creating innovative design solutions with AI that exceed client expectations," explained Billy Seabrook, Global Chief Design Officer for IBM Consulting.

As IBM has shown, the businesses that embrace AI for content creation will be able to engage audiences more effectively, efficiently scale personalization, and ultimately build a significant competitive advantage.

🔑 Key Takeaways for Your Business

• Maximum Efficiency: In an era of tight budgets and lean teams, generative AI allows you to create more content faster, without sacrificing quality.

• Personalization at Scale: AI empowers large-scale personalization to deliver tailored customer experiences.

• Elevate Your Creatives: Automate tedious design tasks with AI, allowing your creative talent to focus on higher-level strategy and innovation.

• Align Brand Standards: Generative AI tools like Adobe Express enable teams to create on-brand content, even without deep design expertise.

➡️ Read the full case study here.

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• Future Ready: Skill enhancement and learning with AI tools

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1) How to Elevate Your Visual Content with AI 🖼️

AI image generators are everywhere these days, from social media filters to apps like ChatGPT. While these tools can create stunning visuals, they often lack practical applications for businesses and creative needs.

However, certain AI tools are precise and can generate valuable digital assets to enhance your brand, products, and projects.

💡 Looka is an AI-powered platform that designs beautiful, custom logos and brand kits in minutes.

Here's how it works:

1. Enter your company name and select your industry.

2. Looka's AI will generate hundreds of logo designs tailored to your brand.

3. Customize your favorite design by adjusting colors, fonts, symbols, and more.

4. Download your logo files and a complete brand kit, including business cards, social media templates, and other advertising assets.

Looka makes it easy to create a professional, cohesive brand identity without the need for a designer. It's ideal for startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs who want to establish a strong visual presence quickly and affordably.

Transform Your Product Photography

High-quality product photos are essential for e-commerce success, but professional photoshoots can be costly and time-consuming. That's where Flair comes in.

💡 Flair is an AI design tool that allows you to create stunning product photos by simply dragging and dropping your images into pre-made scenes and templates.

Here's an example of how to use Flair for product photography:

1. Upload a photo of your product.

2. Browse Flair's library of scenes and choose one that fits your brand aesthetic, such as a minimalist studio setup.

3. Drag and drop your product image into the scene and adjust the placement and sizing.

4. Customize the scene by changing the background color, adding props, or applying filters.

5. Download your finished product photo in high resolution.

With Flair, you can achieve professional-quality product photography without the need for a costly photo shoot. It's a game-changer for small businesses and e-commerce brands looking to elevate their visual content.

AI Turns Sketches Into Polished Images

Have a great idea but lack the artistic skills to bring it to fruition? AI can help bridge that gap.

💡 Canva's AI Sketch and Draw feature lets you transform rough sketches into beautiful, polished images.

Here's how to use it:

1. Create a simple sketch of your idea.

2. Upload it to Canva's AI Sketch and Draw tool.

3. Describe your vision in a few words.

4. Choose your preferred style (e.g., photorealistic, anime, digital art).

5. Let the AI generate multiple variations of your sketch as a finished image.

This tool is ideal for quickly visualizing concepts for advertising materials, product designs, or even storyboarding.

For a no-cost alternative, try OpenArt.ai. It provides similar functionality and can be a great starting point for those new to AI image generation.

Here's an example prompt you could use with OpenArt:

Transform this rough sketch into a detailed, colorful illustration of [describe your sketch]. 

Style: [choose from digital art, photorealistic, anime, etc.]

Color scheme: [describe your preferred colors]

By integrating these AI tools into your workflow, you can dramatically increase your visual content output, allowing you to focus more on strategy and less on execution.

⚡ AI is transforming the way we create and communicate visually.

🎧️ Podcasts & Talks

• "The Future of AI in the Creative Industry" — An interview with creative professional Kevin Lau about AI's impact on design and motion graphics, drawing on Kevin's industry experience, including his time at Fuel.

• "‘Artificial Intelligence?’ No, Collective Intelligence" — Holly Herndon, an innovative musician and AI artist, discusses collaborating with AI in music and her work on ethical AI training through Spawning.

📖 Books

• "The New Creatives: How AI changes the face of the creative industry" — Creative director Seema Sharma co-authored "The New Creatives" with AI, exploring how AI will transform the creative industry.

• "The Art of Prompts for Artificial Intelligence" — Kevin Ashley, a Microsoft developer hall of fame engineer, gives a comprehensive guide on using AI for art creation.

📲 Influencers

• LJ Rich — BBC presenter and NASA Datanaut LJ Rich specializes in using AI for music innovation. Her work combines human creativity with machine learning.

• Ross Brand — Ross Brand is a leading livestreaming and AI-driven digital media strategist, recognized by major platforms such as StreamYard, BeLive, and Wirecast for shaping the future of digital content creation.

📃 Articles

• "How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity" — Harvard Business Review article by Tojin T. Eapen and colleagues discusses how generative AI can augment human creativity in business innovation.

• "AI and Machine Creativity: How Artistic Production Is Changing" — Professors Dokyun Lee, Yannick Exner, and Ankit Sisodia, discuss AI's impact on content creation and artistic production.

📹️ YouTube Tutorials

• "An AI artist explains his workflow" — AI artist behind "Stelfie" reveals the complex process of maintaining character consistency, using 3D heads, sketches, and AI tools.

• "Generative AI ,an Inflection Point for Human Creativity" — Mike Dougherty dives into how AI is reshaping creativity, showing how humans and machines are teaming up to explore new artistic and innovative possibilities.

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Course 1 (Tuesday, November 12th): AI Readiness Reporting with the Founders Forge Team

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