Reading the title you might think that I am referring to myself as a non-layperson. However, I assure you, I am a layperson; probably more lay than anyone reading this. I am writing this piece not from the the perspective of arrogance, authority, or expertise. Rather, I am merely telling you some of the tools I have found most useful on my journey through the universe of Generative AI. And I highly recommend every tool, software, or program I’ll be covering in this ‘guide’ (this is NOT a paid sponsorship, although I wish it was).

Before delving in, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I give a shit about Generative AI? I don’t even use this in my job and, frankly, I don’t care about it.” To this I would say that you should be very concerned that Generative AI will replace you (future), you should understand the historical rate of technological advancement (past), and you should learn to harness Generative AI to outperform 99% of people (present). These are the reasons you should give a shit about Generative AI. Oh, and the fact that Generative AI spend is set to hit $1.3 trillion in less than 10 years.

ChatGPT & Bard (Text-to-Text)

Yes, I know it’s been talked about everywhere and it seems like it’s the ONLY topic of discussion in tech forums, but I’m still going to mention two of the most easily accessible and best conversational Generative AI chatbots: ChatGPT & Bard. There’s been a lot of hype and competition between these two large language models (giant pre-trained datasets that use predictive modeling to “guess” the next word in a sentence) that is well-warranted and intriguing. I’ve used both ChatGPT (free & plus) and Bard, and I have to say they’re each better in their own ways.

ChatGPT

Created by the popular AI research company, OpenAI, ChatGPT is an incredibly sophisticated chatbot that allows anyone to ask it questions and receive human-like, creative responses. For example, you could ask it “What’s the meaning of life,” and it will respond with an answer that is not only deeply thought out, but prolific in its own way. This capability, and the fact that anyone can use it at chat.openai.com, meant the platform amassed 1 million users in only 5 days. For reference, it took Instagram 2.5 months to reach 1 million downloads and Netflix 3.5 years to achieve 1 millions users.

I’ve personally used ChatGPT for so many things. From learning about new topics to analyzing historical trends to crafting marketing emails to questioning it about some of the most pressing, existential matters, ChatGPT has helped my productivity immensely and aided in my own personal knowledge base expansion. In my opinion, ChatGPT is the best program to get acquainted with Generative AI, and AI in general. Try using it like a browser (even though the free version has a data cutoff in 2021, however you can access live browser capabilities for $20/month) or asking it for advice; you’ll be surprised with how innovative it can be.

Bard

Bard is ChatGPT’s counterpart created by Google. And even though when you think of massive tech conglomerates and poise in technology you think of Google, Bard is not on the same level as ChatGPT; You’ll notice that its answers aren’t as “human-like.” With that being said, Bard is much better when it comes to technical aspects of search and functionality. For example, it’s incredibly good at coding and generating technical solutions to specific, niche problems.

Personally, I haven’t used Bard nearly as much since I find ChatGPT’s answers more creative and, holistically, better. I do like the fact that you don’t have to pay for live search with Bard, but at the end of the day I just find the accuracy and answers to be less intriguing than OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s super easy to start using Bard to play around with its live chatbot functionalities; all you need is a Google account, which I’m pretty sure 99% of you have.

DALL-E & Midjourney (Text-to-Image)

We’ve covered Generative AI with respect to Text-to-Text, so now let’s chat a little about Text-to-Image Generation. Two of the leaders in this space are DALL-E, made by none other than OpenAI, and Midjourney. Essentially, these programs allow you to enter a prompt of an image you would like generated, and it will craft an original art piece for you. You can literally ask the generator to make anything you’d like to see visually. For example, you can ask DALL-E to “craft an art piece of Elon Musk maniacally laughing as he looks out over earth from space. Make it in the impressionist art style and don’t forget to make the view a deep purple since he’s in space;” it will then craft an original piece for you. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s perfect and exactly what you’re looking for, as that’s subjective and not true, but I will say that both these options allow you to dip your toes into Generative expression and creative Generative AI.

DALL-E

DALL-E is easy to access as all you need is an OpenAI account (which you hopefully created to rely out ChatGPT). With this online application, users are able to make hyper-realistic images based on prompts. I’ve made images of samurai overlooking luscious greenery and Generative AI controlling humans. Although not perfect, the images I received gave me inspiration enough to either revamp my prompt or try to picture a new image in my mind, more in-line with the generated one for context. DALL-E is a great, beginner friendly tool that anyone can use to turn text into art.

Midjourney

Midjourney is not as intuitive to use and requires you to install Discord, but has more features and functionality than DALL-E. For example, you can upload your own images and get prompts based on those images to either optimize the image or create an entirely new piece of art. So if you had a picture of your grandma sipping a cup of coffee, it might give you prompts to generate new images where your grandma is sipping some coffee in space or in a volcano. There’s a lot more flexibility in Midjourney when it comes to image parameters and size, however it is a lot more complicated to use and the barrier to entry is a third-party application interface [Discord]. Personally, I haven’t used Midjourney that much as I don’t like using Discord.

WellSaid Labs (Text-to-Speech)

This wouldn’t be a proper sponsorship blog (which IT’S NOT) if I wasn’t able to plug the company I currently work for, right? I just want to briefly tell you about WellSaid Labs, which is the leading Text-to-Speech Generative AI software on the market. With over 60 avatars, accents, and dialogue styles (Narration, Promo, Conversational) to choose from, WellSaid Labs allows you to turn your written text into speech that is indistinguishable from human voices. In fact, WellSaid was the first Text-to-Speech company to achieve human parity in voice with its proprietary backend, and is used by leading organizations like Boeing, Snowflake, UCSF, Intel and hundreds of others. I know this sounds super promo-like, which it should since I work here and I want to hype it up, but I do genuinely believe that WellSaid Labs is the best way to try Text-to-Speech Generative AI. And the best part is, you can sign up for a free trial!

Conclusion

I know this blog was quite boring as compared to my other ones, but I feel as though I needed to make a quick guide on the best tools to use in Generative AI, at the moment. All of the above mentioned programs are intuitive, quick, and easily accessible if you have a computer and internet. Just start playing around with them and get yourself acquainted with the technicalities and possibilities behind Generative AI, and I’m positive that your own creativity will shine through on how to best use these programs for your everyday life.