Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - Ep 38: Using Midjourney to Unlock New Levels of Creativity

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

How can AI can unlock new levels of creativity for art and design? Today we explore the creativity-packed world of Midjourney, a text-to-image AI generation platform. Rory Flynn, Head of Client Acquisition at Commerce12, joins us to talk about how he uses Midjourney in his everyday work and how its become a game changer for creative output.For more details head to our episode page! Time Stamps:Full show notes hereAI News - [00:01:00] 42% of CEOs think AI could wipe out humanity[00:01:50] Coursera's CEO is warning that AI is coming for the jobs[00:02:25] Google is warning its own staff about chatbotsGuest - [00:04:10] How Rory and Commerce12 use Midjourney[00:05:15] Breakdown of Midjourney and Discord platform[00:09:19] Making AI images look realistic with photos[00:12:12] Midjourney examples[00:14:05] Using Midjourney for emails[00:17:36] LinkedIn posts lead to creative Midjourney use[00:20:47] AI accessible, affordable, infinite use casesTopics Covered in this Episode:1. Introduction to AI and recent AI developments- CEOs' concerns about AI wiping out humanity- Coursera CEO warning about unexpected job loss due to AI- Google's warning to staff about using code from chatbots2. Guest Interview - Rory Flynn, Head of Business Development at Commerce Twelve- Discovery of AI tool on Twitter- Use of AI tool for the agency's operations and marketing- Demonstration of Discord platform- Discussion on generative AI3. Use Cases for Mid Journey AI tool- Creation of stock photography for small businesses- Collaboration between Urban Outfitters and Crayola for a mood board generator- Using Mid Journey for email marketing templates4. Realism in Design- Use of photographic elements to achieve a realistic quality- Example of creating a fashion line inspired by graffiti artists5. AI's Capabilities and Potential- Cheats codes for software design prompts- Sharing of detailed information on LinkedIn- Creative uses of Mid Journey- Prompting from an image, not just textKeywords:art, AI, world-class artists, CEOs, big companies, humanity, warning, Coursera, unexpected jobs, Google, chatbots, business development, sales, Twitter, images, agency operations, marketing, Discord, generative AI, accessibility, stock photography, high ROI, responsibility, OpenAI, Dolly, Stable Diffusion, text prompt, advertising, creative agency, collaboration, Urban Outfitters, Crayola, mood board, email marketing, design, photographic elements, lighting conditions, fashion line, National Geographic photographer, cheat codes, templates, landing pages, detailed information, LinkedIn, prompts, processes, school projects, AP history, interactive learning, vintage photos, retouching, image.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Did you know that you can be a world-class artist without any real art experience?

So that's not a lie. That is not hyperbole. That is real life. That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on everyday AI. This is your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, bringing you the ladies. in AI news development and just how everyday people like you and me can use all of these different tools that are that are coming out nonstop. So we're excited to talk about some mid-journey things today, which is using text to images. But before we do, let's dive into some recent

AI news and development. So let's look at it. There's a lot going on. And some of these stories are extremely interesting. And if you want to read more, make sure you go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for the newsletter. We're going to have way more. about these stories today. So the first story I wanted to talk about is a new poll is showing 42% of CEOs think that AI could potentially wipe out humanity in the next five to 10 years. I know some people are rolling their eyes when they hear this kind of news or they see these studies, but these are legit like US-based CEOs of big companies. 42% think that AI could potentially wipe out humanity. That's wild to me. But I have a lot.

I think it's something that we definitely have to consider and keep our eye on. So the next story is kind of related there. So Coursera CEO is warning that AI is coming for the jobs that you might least expect and really encouraging people to upskill. So we obviously have to look at this new story twofold. One, is there some truth to it? Absolutely. I do think, unlike a lot of people, that AI is going to cause a lot of jobs.

displacement. However, this also does benefit him and his company. I believe, you know, Coursera is selling, you know, exactly that, courses to help people upskill. So we'll have more in the newsletter on that. Last but not least, this one's very interesting. So Google is warning its own staff about chatbots. That right. That's right. That's right. So Google, the company that released its own great chatbot, by the way, called Bard. So if you've used chat, BT, BARD is Google's kind of competitor or answer or option for kind of generative chat or generative search. So this is very ironic, right? So there's some things that they're warning their staff about that makes sense, such as not sharing confidential information.

Good. Okay, great. But also, Google is telling its engineers to avoid using code from chatbots. Very ironic, right? Considering that Google really was promoting Bard heavily recently. specifically for its ability to code. So, hey, everyone else can use it, but not Google's own engineers. Wild, right?

So we're going to have a lot more on some of these stories and more in our newsletter. But right now, I want to start talking about mid-cherny. So we're going to get into it. As a reminder, if you are watching live, please drop us a question for our guest today, who I'm about to bring on. If you are listening to this on the podcast,

please make sure to join us live every weekday. on LinkedIn and other social media, I guess, 7.30 a.m. But let's bring in our guest for today. I'm super excited for this one. So we have Rory Flynn, who is the head of business development at Commerce 12. Rory, I'm excited. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, man. What's up, Jordan? How's everything going? Amped to be here? Man, I am I amped as well. I shouldn't be this excited after only one coffee this early in the morning. But let's get to it. So Rory, just tell everyone kind of a little bit about, you know, what you do at Commerce 12 and how Mid Journey kind of plays into that. Yeah, man.

Well, you know, I'm a business development. You know, just a fancy way of saying I'm in sales. But realistically, you know, this started as a, you know, I saw this on Twitter, saw Mid Journey. I was like, what are these like crazy images that people are producing? And I'm like, you know what? I'm diving into this. I'm bored.

You know, it's late at night. Like, let's see what happens. Get in there. And then little did I know, I'd be, you know, mildly obsessed. Some would say way more than mildly obsessed. but I was just like, you know, this is fun. Let me create some crazy stuff. Before you know it, I'm like, I can use this.

Like, we can use this in the agency. And, you know, it started to become a little bit more of just than a fun side project and more like, how do we inject this into our operations to like supercharged everything that we're doing. So, you know, started as a late night. Like, I'm bored kind of thing. And now it's basically my everyday life. So it's a fun tool. I love it.

I love it. It's your everyday life. And we're talking about it on every day. AAI. So actually, that's a great transition, Roy, because I think a lot of people maybe haven't heard of mid-journey or they're not very familiar with really what it does. So break it down for someone who's maybe never heard of mid-jurney. So maybe what is it and how does it work? Well, simply, I mean, it's just generative AI art. I mean, it's text to image. It's a little bit, I will say, and I'm self-admitted here, a little clunky on using Discord and mid-journey at the same time,

but it's based on, it's a mid-jorn, sorry, a Discord-based program. So basically you go in there, you type in some text, and it generates an image. But the quality of this one I've found versus some of the other ones that I've tried, you know, when it's stable diffusion or whether it's Firefly, whatever the other AI tools are. Just the image quality is far superior and like the consistency is far superior to me. So it's just the tool that, you know, once you get into it, it's really like there's no end to it. I've pushed it very far, probably generated over 10,000 images on it.

So it's like, wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. So if you are listening on the podcast, right now I'm actually sharing on the screen, just so people can kind of see how this works. So, you know, Rory mentioned Discord, which if you're highly technical, discord's nothing new. But if not, it is just kind of like Slack, more or less to simplify it. And kind of what I have here, I just have an example.

So we actually use Mid Journey as well to recap our weekly news. We put out a little carousel. So as an example, you can put in a text prompt. So Rory's saying this is generative AI. So on my screen, this is something we used last week. I said a visual representation of an AI bot gone bad. And then you see a picture of a sad looking robot there on fire. Rory, what was your first kind of experience like?

So you said, hey, you saw it on Twitter and you became addicted. But what was that like when you started to just. be able to type something that you were thinking about in your head and to see it come to life like what's on screen right here in amazing detail. What did that like, what was that like for you? First, I was like, damn it. I needed this like 10 years ago. When I was working in design, I was like, oh man, like what the, you know, things that would take me days, hours, like weeks was done in two seconds. And I was like, yeah, my life and like just trying to translate what's in my head. Like, you know, if anyone has been doing design and any,

way, shape, or form, you know, using Photoshop, using Illustrator, like the mine, some minor tasks of, like, removing a background or things like that, it's forever. And, like, just getting something that you're looking for and, like, you know, splicing things together. This stuff was just, you type it in. And then it's just like, okay, real is realizing that going into the prompting aspect of it to get what you want, there's, there's like little cheat codes within it to get exactly what you want. And then basically, you know, you've transitioned from just prompting away for six hours to doing it in five seconds. So it's nuts.

It's really, when I found it and I started, it was like, you know, a picture of a dog. I'm like, okay, cool. Like, oh, let's do, you know, what everyone was doing at the time was like, oh, let's do the Simpsons as an 86. I was like, okay, cool by that. But then it was like, can this stuff do more? Can this stuff do?

Can it generate like an email marketing template? Can it generate landing pages? Can it generate, you know, different types of things like that? And I was like, once it started going down that rabbit hole, it was game over. Yeah. And that's a great question and also a great transition. So as a reminder, thank you for the live comments. Nicholas saying nice, PJ, great timing on this question.

So PJ is asking, is it able to generate images that are photo quality? So before you answer that, Rory, I'm actually going to share my screen here for those of you joining us live at an image that Rory created here. So I'd say this is, you know, photo quality, right? So, yeah, like, why don't you just take that question and, you know, maybe even a little bit talk about and describe if you can kind of this, this image that we have on the screen here. Yeah, PJ, this, like, that's been my sole purpose for the last month, I'd say. It's just like, how can I get as realistic as possible so that it doesn't look AI? Because there's definitely a look and feel to it. Like, if you were just type in something generic, like, you know, model in front of a graffiti

wall, like you're going to get something that looks like polished skin. It's going to look very AI, like artificial. So when you start typing in, like Mid Journey was trained on a number of different photographs, like over some crazy number of billions of photographs. But a lot of the technical information was embedded into those. So utilizing like photographic elements using cameras, using the apertures, using the lighting conditions, things like that really brings it into like a more realistic quality. So yeah, this image right here, someone asked me like, you know, I'm trying to do like a fashion line that's inspired by,

you know, graffiti artists. And I'm like, okay, let's, let's try it out. Bang, like, there it is. So like this is just a very simple, you know, application for it. Like I tend to focus on in my free time. Like I'm like, I want to be a national geographic photographer. That was like my goal as a kid is like, I want to be that guy. You know, I want to be the guy that's out. you know, in these crazy places, photographing animals, photographing people. So like I've gone down that rabbit hole significantly. And that's where I find a lot of this stuff can get really, really, really, you know, impressive. So, you know, I think one question that most people have, including, you know, PJ here is asking how.

The great thing is, is, you know, if you go on places like Twitter, you know, most people will share their images as long as, you know, what's called the all. or just, you know, you can tap it and people will share their prompts so then you can use those and try to, you know, generate similar images. So PJ, I see, I see your comment here wanting to, you know, giving an example. So I'm actually, because we could talk for hours about the actual process, right, but I'm actually going to be doing a quick five-minute tutorial that will drop in the newsletter today. So I do want to get to a couple other use cases, though, Rory, because we could talk about, you know, the fine details and the how. But I think a lot of people are probably thinking, all right, Rory, well, you know, I'm not in advertising or I don't, you know,

I don't necessarily need, you know, these, these type of images. So let's talk about another use case. So now I'm going to share on the screen here an extremely high quality photo that could be used. It looks like as an example for a makeup company. But, you know, if you're listening to this on podcast. It looks like a model, you know, the skin tones are fantastic, smooth, no blemishes. And it looks obviously like a real human being and, you know, kind of like a mood board type. So how could you, you know, use something like this, Rory, for a variety of cases? Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI assistant. Now live in the Adobe

Firefly app. The All In One. Creative AI Studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60 plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-volve.

built workflows for common creative tasks like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adopi.com. Well, I came up with this because I was just like, let's see what's the most complex thing

I could think of in my head. It's a mood board. Like there's so many different elements to it, colors, textures, palettes, like, you know, lifestyle images, like, different product photographs. So I pushed the boundaries through with this one. I was like, let's create a basically a collaboration between urban outfitters and Crayola. And let's just see what it comes up with.

So this one, like, to me, gave me a great starting point because if you're looking for something, like a new project or you have a new idea and like mood boarding takes forever. Like if anyone's ever tried to design one, it takes days, weeks. It's just a sourcing elements. It's so much like organization. So having this done in five seconds and then I can also re-roll it a million times and get a ton of different options. Like this was this is crazy. So I think that stuff, you know, getting into the mood boarding side of things is like probably one of the most complex things you can do on here.

But it's, you know, the possibilities are kind of endless. So. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think another great. use case. So let's talk about this because I think everyone does what I'm sharing on my screen now. Like in some way, I feel even if you're not in marketing and branding and communications, I feel a lot of times newsletters, company newsletters are a team effort. Right. So what I'm sharing

on the screen now, first of all, this is from a color scheme. This is amazing. So this is, if you're listening on the podcast, we have kind of four or five different panes of what. what would be an email newsletter or even a landing page, I guess, in theory, it could be either showing different shoes from different angles. The colors are fantastic. Talk a little bit about this, Rory, and kind of, you know, this use case and even like the process to create something like this in mid-jury. Yeah. So like I work, you know, primarily at Commerce 12. We're mostly email marketing. That's what we handle for our clients. So there's anywhere from 900 to a thousand emails that get produced by our team each month. So there's a lot that needs to go out.

But one of the typical problems there is like at a certain point, you just start to get stale on what your templates look like and what your inspiration looks like because there's only so many places to pull from. Right. Like you go to a couple different resources and, you know, there's only so much inspiration you can have. So again, it was my idea like let's just push mid journey as far as we can. Can it start to come up with some sort of different template options for emails so that we have just something different to pull from inspiration-wise, color scheme-wise, like visual-wise, like the way things are laid out. Naturally, it has to be good for click-durate and everything like that. But just as you can see here, you know, this went through a couple of variations and

iterations to get it to this point. But now I can just replicate that process over and over again to get simple kind of designs that are clean like this and then just give our team inspiration to go and like, you know, create. Yeah. Yeah. So I, so as a reminder, if you are tuning in live, We're kind of toward the end of the show, but we can go on if you have some great questions. But I have a question or two for you, even on this specific one. So again, to remind people, we kind of have what could be used either as a beautiful email for this kind of shoe brand or even a landing page. But, you know, something people will see here.

So they're like, oh, well, I can't use this as is, right? I can't copy and paste this because one thing that, you know, mid-jurney and these other generative image tools can't do just yet is incorporate your own. text in your own images. So this, this, just to kind of be clear here, Rory, this kind of landing page or email that we see, this was a one shot prompt, correct? This is a one prompt in and you get this entire layout out. Yep. So it's like with this one too, right, obviously you're not taking this verbatim. Like the way that I look at it is there's four different sections here, right? Like the way that it transitions from the black to the teal to the black to the white, like,

that looks like a very good combo plus like the CTA buttons or the call to action buttons, like the way those are positioned and, you know, color schemes. Basically, this doesn't have to be a sneaker brand. If this is a brand that has similar colors or does a similar look and feel, drop a PNG, try to, you know, from a designer standpoint, they'll know how to make it look somewhat similar to this. But yeah, it's just a way to generate inspiration instead of like, you know, tinkering around with a template for six hours to figure out, oh, maybe this looks good.

And maybe I can get some text in here. So remove the text, add your own. basically this is just a just a starting point yeah so um you know kind of uh sharing sharing another one now here on the screen we don't have to go through this but i really wanted to showcase you know some of rory's work um and in what they're doing there at commerce uh commerce 12 because it's it's very um especially to be able to to grab these uh you know and start with it from mid journey is amazing but rory i have another question you know so let's talk about some different um use cases so obviously we've showed some you can create you know

great art. You can create mood boards. You can create landing pages, emails, and then, you know, work with a designer to kind of, you know, really polish it. However, what are other use cases, maybe everyday use cases? You know, because I'm sure you get people that reach out to you and say, hey, I use this for blank. But what are some of those use cases? So there's been some, there's been some cool ones. Like I post a lot on LinkedIn. I post a lot of like very detailed information on how to do things, what my prompts are, processes, things like that. So I do get a lot of people that reach out and thank me, which, you know, I like that. That makes me feel like I'm doing something that actually is meaningful.

So like I had a mother reach out to me maybe about two months ago. And she said she's been using mid journey to help her son like through his day-to-day, like school projects. And he's like so amped about it and he's using it consistently. And I'm like, that's, you know, that's awesome. Like that makes me feel like a, that's better than any business deal or. that I'm closing, right? That's super cool.

AP history teacher reach out and say that he's having, you know, his students basically reimagine different historical events in mid-Journing. Wow. utilizing some chat GPT stuff to have like mock interviews with historical figures. So like that to me is also super cool because teachers, you know, that's been a thing with the AI, right? Everyone's like, oh, it's going to change the way kids are just going to use it. They're not going to learn anymore.

But that's just taking, you know, the times and adapting it to that. and then making learning interactive, which I think is super cool. So stuff like that's great. I've had people in college reach out to me for like their senior thesis. They're building like virtual reality retail environments. Like how can I do this mid-journey? So that stuff's super cool. But some of the other things I've done as of recent that are more fun, like I do for Mother's Day.

I took some vintage photos of my mom and retouched them in mid-journey. So bringing like older photos like back to life and like giving them a new flare. Like that stuff is just for pure fun and creativity. You know, also, you know, some other ways that you can, you can do this is like taking your own photos, like whatever it is, food photography, vacation photography. Maybe you got something that's like a little bit, you know, kind of jacked from like a light perspective or whatever and you can throw it in there. And it can, it can, you know, boost it up a little bit. It's, you know, you don't have to like go and make it totally AI. So you can keep things close to the images that you're putting in there as well because you can prompt from an image.

not just a text. So exactly. There's a ton of stuff. Yeah. That's fun. That's another thing, you know, kind of, kind of a new-ish feature. But yeah, like Mid-Journey and these other, you know, you have your Open AI has their, you know, dolly to and there's, you know, stable diffusion is kind of more of the technology.

But there's other, you know, kind of options out there. Kind of like what Roy described there, I think is a cool use case is you can actually upload any photo into Mid-Journey and, you know, use a command that says describe. And it'll give you kind of a text prompt based on that. So, you know, so many, so many different use cases. But I'm going to, I'm going to end on this question, Rory. You know, maybe if someone heard this and they're like, okay, this sounds interesting, but it also seems a little daunting.

You know, maybe they're not, you know, working at, you know, a creative agency or they're not in advertising. What would be your recommendation? What would be your takeaway to someone who is very interested in figuring this? out, but maybe they're a little hesitant. I'm like a, I have like a very, I don't know, what way to put this. But I think, look, we've, we've opened AI's Pandora's box. I just don't see it going away anytime soon. There's all the end of the world scenarios.

There's all of the, you know, we're going to be controlled by the robot scenarios. But at the same time, like these tools have never been more accessible and things that I would look at from, you know, even someone who's starting a. business, small business owners, like people who don't have opportunity to buy photography or buy stock photography or get photographers to do photo shoots. These tools, if you learn how to use them, there's use cases for them, you know, to infinity. So like I just see this as something that we've never had access to. That's $30 a month. If you do even the highest paid subscription plan, I think it's $10 a month you can get in baseline. Like $120 a year for access to, for me, $10,000.

images, you know, that I'm creating myself and using for multiple things and, you know, look at the ROI on that. It's definitely generated more than $120. So I just think, you know, from a, from a accessibility standpoint, we've never been this lucky. And to me, it's like, if it goes bad, you know, I can't control that. But if I'm being able to use this right now for the purposes that I can use it for, you know, that's how I kind of look at it. So it's there. It's there. It's there available. It's easy. And, you know, there's just, we just have so much opportunity with it. You know, it feels daunting. It almost feels like irresponsible for me not to use it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way. You know, and that's, that's with a lot of AI, chat GPT and mid-chernie.

But that's another conversation for another day. So a lot of the things that Roy talked about, we're going to be sharing in our newsletter will probably, you know, get, get permission from Rory, but I want to showcase a lot of his work. We're going to link to it. You can jump in, you know, in the show notes of this. If you're listening on the podcast, we'll link to the episode page and even the LinkedIn thread. So if you have any questions for him, you know, Rory's super helpful on LinkedIn and always engaging. So, Rory, thank you so much for joining us today to talk mid-jurney.

I really appreciate it. It was awesome. Glad to do it again. All right. So as a reminder, please go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for our free daily newsletter if you want to see and hear more from what we talked about today with Rory. Also, subscribe to our podcast, Spotify, Apple, Google, wherever you listen to it. We're there.

So we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day on everyday AI. Thank you. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution.

Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.