Image source: @VisualChina
Text | Mantis Observation, Author | Whales are fat
AIGC products represented by ChatGPT, Midjourney, Wen Xin Yiyan, etc., have set off a new wave of AI technology change around the world, once again refreshing people's understanding of AI, and the business models and ecology of multiple industries will inevitably be completely reconstructed in the future.
Not long ago, 36Kr used artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT to open the first AI Taobao store - LumiWink. The speed and efficiency displayed by AI in the whole process of name opening, store design, product marketing and other actions are making people marvel at its efficient productivity.
Immediately, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, in an interview with Bloomberg, said very firmly that "in five years, 30% of the back-office positions will be replaced by artificial intelligence and automation."
For the e-commerce industry, AIGC products, which are still in the learning stage, show the ability and efficiency, which will inevitably bring new industry imagination. But at the same time, the public opinion that "the positions of art, operation, and customer service are going to be unemployed" is also very popular.
From this phenomenon, the breakthrough of AI technology to reshape the future of the e-commerce industry must be exchanged for the "unemployment" of many grassroots jobs?
Prompt: Harnessing the "spell" of AI
The boom in technical discussions and unemployment anxiety triggered by AIGC products comes from two breakthroughs that AI has achieved, one is to understand language and generate content, such as ChatGPT; The second is to create images based on the understanding of language, such as Midjourney.
Both are proper productivity-level technologies. Judging from the current public's affirmation and expectations, the future prospects of AIGC seem to be no less than the "new day of the day" brought by the steam revolution.
Long before the tech boom came across the ocean, a product design manager at a financial technology company in San Francisco used ChatGPT and Midjourney to create a children's picture book without any writing and illustration skills, which was self-published by Amazon's KDP platform.
The specific process has also become an important part of Xixi's daily work in the visual design of e-commerce.
As a design manager, Xixi is responsible for the overall visual design of many international brands operated by the company, from design proposals to specific implementation, ChatGPT and Midjourney throughout.
For example, in the PPT link of the proposal, Xixi first used Prompt to let ChatGPT give a whole plan, "although they are all some universal text, but the logical framework is what I need, which helps me save some time writing structure."
More practical for Xixi is the efficiency Midjourney brings to the design process.
"For the style you want, pad a few material images for Midjourney, and then use the more accurate Prompt to throw in the /blend command to generate, the renderings Duang will come out at once, and then drag it into the PS refinement." If you are not satisfied, swipe it a few times, or adjust the Prompt. ”
As you can see, the key to ChatGPT and Midjourney's productivity is to harness this disruptive technology with Prompt.
Prompt can be understood as the command to control AI, in AIGC products, the value of Prompt is to guide it to more accurately generate the content it wants.
However, for design, the invisible ideas in the mind, to make Midjourney into a picture that can be visualized, not only need a large series of accurate prompts, but also need to constantly debug, and output the abstract ideas in the brain into prompts that feed the AI.
Sometimes, a Prompt discrepancy, Midjourney's generated images are very different. This is why, along with the popularity of AIGC, the term Prompt Engineering was derived.
No matter what the AIGC field can develop in the future, at least at the current stage when Prompt cannot be fully automated, whether it is ChatGPT or MidjourneyPrompt or other AI products, to truly exert its power, it is impossible to leave the people behind the Prompt.
Productivity, or production tools?
One foreseeable future is that Prompt will inevitably lower the threshold as AIGC commercializes, and even evolve to communicate directly with AI as if it were a daily conversation.
Just like the iteration of the input method, from the initial need to memorize the root of five inputs, now can send a speech directly into text.
Although the expectation of "AI is productivity" has caused the unemployment anxiety of many basic mental workers in the e-commerce industry, in the view of "Mantis Observation", AIGC products can never directly become the direct productivity that brings about the explosion of the e-commerce ecology, but will only be a productivity tool in the hands of people with basic skills.
Xiao Wang, a self-employed person who has been selling accessories for photographic equipment for 8 years, said that he has tried to use ChatGPT to do product copywriting output, competitive product analysis and other work, but "the product title and copywriting written by ChatGPT look like that, but the actual conversion is very low."
For example, Xiao Wang wants to recommend a carbon fiber tripod, to highlight the characteristics of light and stable, ChatGPT will only give manual-style copywriting based on the data, but can not write more perceptual copywriting similar to "the weight of 2 bottles of mineral water, can resist outdoor windy days".
But if such copywriters want to train ChatGPT output, they need to give the person who prompts themselves to have extremely high copywriting literacy. Therefore, at the current stage when AI does not have such capabilities, as Xiao Wang said, "I have already written this effort".
Ling Ling, a designer of a pet brand, also feels that AIGC products still need a long way to go before they can really steal the "jobs" of some practitioners in the e-commerce industry.
The brands that Lingling is responsible for often have to do illustrations of various styles according to different product promotion, promotion and other needs. She said that if you want to use Midjourney to efficiently make stunning pictures, the premise depends on how deep the designer's professional skills are, and how specific and professional Prompt can be given.
If you want to get a cute cat real picture, in the imagination of many ordinary people, you may directly tell Midjourney's needs. But in fact, the Prompt given by Ling Ling will not only be accurate to how to compose the layout, detail the atmosphere, but also involve what camera needs to be used for Midjourney imitation, shutter aperture value, and so on.
These, for AI without thinking and creative ability, even through the feeding of countless big data, there is still no way to reach the other side.
Of course, both Xiao Wang and Ling Ling are very sure of the efficiency improvement brought by AIGC products, helping them to free themselves from basic repetitive work and better devote themselves to creative work that only humans can do.
This is also the most positive significance of the entire society's pursuit of AIGC products.
Jihong shares, which hitched a ride on the ChatGPT express, announced a set of data: since accessing the ChatGPT interface, in just a few months, it has completed the launch of 1w+ new products, output new advertising copy 7W+, processed image materials 2W+, and taken over customer chatter and pacifying conversations 10W+...
Behind such data, although it is impossible to know how many truly valuable products and copywriting there are, the optimization of the work efficiency of business personnel in various positions must have an improving effect. Just like Xiao Wang, Ling Ling and other industry insiders affirmed AIGC products.
Perhaps, since the advent of each new technology, there will be a group of radical new technology adherents who will go to great lengths to advocate the replacement of human jobs by technology. Since the emergence of large machines after the steam revolution and the replacement of countless manual labor, every technological advancement will be accompanied by "unemployment anxiety" in the corresponding field.
But in fact, no matter how exciting the ever-changing new technology changes human life, it has never really snatched the "rice bowl" from human hands. The coachman disappeared, but the driver appeared; The number of workers needed on the assembly line is getting smaller and smaller, but there are more and more jobs related to operating machines and computers.
Humans with brains and intelligence can always evolve into "magicians" who can harness new technologies again and again.
The biggest anxiety that AIGC should have about the "grabbing jobs" of e-commerce basic positions may be how to learn the "spell" well.
"35 seconds of humanity"
Judging from the current market reaction, there are high expectations for AIGC to become a tool to take advantage of.
For example, Baidu Wenxin, the most complete large-scale model in China, has attracted 150,000 enterprises mainly in e-commerce, retail, media and other industries to join the internal test. Among them, content creation, intelligent customer service, and office efficiency improvement are high-demand scenarios.
Even if it is only a tool for transmitting labor, AIGC products still need to solve many problems if they want to truly help improve productivity.
For example, the Midjourney used by Xixi and Lingling has serious copyright problems. As far as they know, the gallery that Midjourney currently uses for training is all from the Internet, and authors and copyright holders are not registered.
As Ling Ling complained, in Midjourney, it only takes a second to achieve "painting style freedom" such as Pixar, Ghibli, Disney, etc., and become a master such as Van Gogh, Monet, and Matisse.
In the case that the intellectual copyright of the gallery used in AI training is not clear and the legality is questionable, the current use of related products to produce content is equivalent to the "AI is a bandit" as stated on the Internet.
Even if the image is produced, there is a very complicated question, the image generated by Midjourney, the copyright belongs to the development company, or feed the users of Prompt? If two designers competing with each other use similar Prompts to generate very similar diagrams, but make a small number of modifications according to different brand tonality, can they become independent works?
When AIGC products do data training, the problem is not only copyright infringement. Privacy leakage, information fraud, etc. are also big problems that will have a negative impact on society.
Therefore, if AIGC products want to become a tool to drive the great leap forward in productivity, it is urgent to establish sound laws and regulations to ensure their healthy and sustainable development.
Another question that cannot be ignored is that with the continuous progress and iteration of AI technology, whether this new technology, which is regarded as the most objective, rational and logical, will become the criterion for dominating human behavior.
The film adaptation of the real story "Captain Sully" has explored this issue.
Veteran captain Sally, who has more than 40 years of flying experience, saved 155 lives by making a forced landing on the Hudson River when the plane was completely incapacitated. However, based on the results given by the simulator, the investigation team believed that the plane could have returned to LaGuardia Airport and did not have to make a forced landing on the river, leaving the entire crew in danger of waiting for rescue.
Although in the end Sully proposed to give a "human 35 seconds" reaction time, and the simulator really could not return to LaGuardia Airport after 35 seconds more, in the process, Sully endured a lifetime of flying experience, was completely rejected by the icy AI that could not go wrong, and led the investigation team as a human behavior.
Although such incidents are rare in real life at present, with the widespread application of AIGC in the commercial field, as a cross-era new technology that can derive "new content" based on the conditions of the past, it is difficult not to worry about being held in the hands of people with the right to speak and used as a measure and weapon to beat workers behind the trial technology.
The world welcomes the addition of AI to create a better life, but no one will allow the wheel to run over at will in the human world.
Only if AIGC itself has standardized development and grabbed the "rice bowl" of the e-commerce industry or other industries, can such arguments stand. Although it is itself an AI that humans give "rice bowls", it may never be able to do it.