By Ian Hollidae, 2024/11/20

Up until now, I've been hesitent to make a post about AI mainly because it's a topic that's already received plenty of attention. What more is there to say? Sometimes new technology makes a big difference and sometimes it has minimal to no impact. In a lot of cases, new technology is just an evolution of something that exists.

Obviously, AI has been the big rage in tech over the last couple of years. If you listen to most of what's being written, AI threatens to end civilization as we know it. And while I'm not here to dismiss peoples concerns, this is why I decided to try and sprinkle in a few thoughts that are a little less gloom and doom.

Looking back over history, everyone can name a case where technology actually did replace something. The automobile replaced the horse and carriage. The electric lightbulb replaced oil lamps and candles. Internal combustible engines mostly replaced steam engines.

On the flip side, there are plenty of examples where technology didn't replace anything at all. Television didn't replace movies. Microwaves didn't eliminate cooking. Movie theaters weren't replaced by VCRs. It seems to me that the history of new technology falls into one of four categories regardless of what the new invention is:

1. New technology completely replaces XYZ
2. New technology leads the way in a new process with humans working in support
3. Humans lead the way in a new process with new technology working in support
4. Nothing happens at all

Right now, the big issue in multimedia is the AI generation of audio, video and photography. Can it replace professional photographers, videographers and musicians? Things are clearly in the early stages and I think more new questions will arise before a lot of concrete answers appear. However, it's obvious the success of AI will be as simple as answering the basic question of will it be useful. Since I think some form of AI will probably be with us for the foreseeable future, I thought it might be interesting to make a list of what I'd like to see. Here are three items that relate to multimedia since this is one of the main focuses of this blog. I also have to add that the services I reference aren't endorsements. They're just things I'm looking into.

The first item I would like to see is the ability to use AI in predicting weather conditions at a desired shoot location. It would be nice if a service could could access as many weather models available to show all possible conditions. Making predictions as far out as possible would be even more helpful. Right now, it seems the most popular method of seeing weather conditions is to look at a bunch of different weather apps and guestimate. Services such as Atmo and Climavision already seem to be laying claim to this space.

Second, using AI to find "off the beaten path" shoot locations. Similar to my weather request, an AI service that's a combination of 3D Google Earth and a popular sun tracker to find shoot spots could attract a nice audience. Location and tracking apps already exist but I'm thinking AI could provide far more advanced visual and data presentation features.

Thirdly, I'd like to see a dedicated AI texture generator. As someone who does X3D, finding or creating the right textures can take quite a bit of time. With AI, just input a text prompt, get back a texture. All the current leaders in imaging, namely Adobe, seem to be focused more on traditional-ish photo creation. I'm sure I could use their AI tool for textures but I'm thinking about a far more task related service. Services such as OpenArt and Polycam look to have a headstart.

Obviously, there are plenty of other ways AI can be utilized without replacing everyone. But while I've been reviewing AI uses for my own purposes, I have to wonder if anyone else notices the irony of all the doom and gloom. The main area AI seems to be really transforming is web services. And this seems to make a lot of sense as services are the one thing that have been automated for years. Would anyone really notice if your email service handled all of the filtering, tagging and flagging of incoming messages based on your prompts? Services would be the easiest of inroads for AI to take.

Anyway, who knows how this will all finally turn out. One thing for sure is that actual results will eventually replace all the talk and with that, I'll let that be my brief dive into the AI discussion.