127 | My thoughts on AI as a website designer

So I think the first thing I want to address is that there are two types of AI tools that people are generally talking about nowadays, and they're actually very different and their uses are very different.

There's generative AI, where we're using things like LLMs, large language models, to essentially stitch together a load of stuff and generate new content, whether that is artistic content, like actual imagery or written content.

answering our questions creating writing whatever it is and then there are ai assisted tools so tools and softwares that are using ai in the background to achieve certain things and something confusing that's happened recently is you may have seen that instagram when someone posts a post instagram now automatically adds an ai label to any content which is it has kind of flagged that has used ai in the process of its creation and kind of whether you see this as fair or unfair um it has sort of dumped in all types of ai into this label it may change in the future but whether you have used generative AI to create a whole image like a fake photo, for example, or you've just used Canva to create an image where you've used the AI-assisted background remover tool or any of its AI-assisted tools, all of those pieces of content are now being labeled as AI created, which is very confusing because I think those two different types of AI and the way that they're being used are actually very different.

For example, another use for an AI assisted tool would be a caption generation tool.

So when you record a video, lots of video editing softwares now use ai in the automatic caption generation which i think we can all agree from the perspective of accessibility and making video and audio accessible to everyone it's actually a very positive use for ai so and there are lots of other examples of ai assisted tools that actually have a lot of positive uses and i think actually in general there's a very big missing conversation piece when we're talking about AI and that is accessibility.

And the way that AI-assisted tools are now dramatically improving things for people who are hearing or sight impaired or improving accessibility for people who have learning differences, dyslexia, ADHD, et cetera.

There are so many people I've worked with recently who have, who especially on the sort of dyslexia and ADHD front, their lives and the way that they're able to achieve things in their business now has dramatically improved with the use of some AI-assisted tools to help them with their writing, to help them with automating or getting tasks done.

Also thinking of people who have English as a second language, having AI tools be able to help with translation, polish up emails or writing and appear more professional and just be understood by more people online is absolutely fantastic.

And accessibility for just general access of information and capabilities for micro businesses around the world and in developing countries.

Lots of people online tend to focus on a um of ai or just thinking of it as more sort of like a frivolous business tool that you probably don't actually need if you just use your own brain actually no one seems to be talking about the huge positive impact it has had on accessibility and that is sort of a side note but i never seem to hear anyone talking about that so yeah we have these two different types of ai which fairly or unfairly seem to be shoved into the same bucket together when people are raising their criticisms for AI and there are a couple of reasons why there seems to be a lot of criticism about the use of AI online one reason is obviously the environmental and ethical or humanitarian impact of AI by which we actually mean not of AI but of the data centers that are needed to help run tools that run AI.

The second reason that AI gets a lot of criticism is the impact that it is having and is projected to have on creativity, copyright, people's jobs, that sort of thing.

So I want to talk about those two areas.