Hand-Picked Content
AI Spam Has A Name
Article, 5min
“AI slop” is a term you might be hearing more often. It refers to the increasing amount of low-quality, AI-generated content appearing online. During Hurricane Milton, this became a noticeable issue as fake AI-generated images related to the storm began circulating widely. The reason behind this influx of AI-generated content is largely financial. Digital creators are producing these fake images at scale, hoping that one will go viral. This is driven by the way social media platforms like Meta have structured their payment systems, offering financial incentives for viral posts. The result is a flood of misleading content that can spread misinformation during critical events like natural disasters.
Emotional AI Assistans
Blog post, 15min
User experience has evolved over decades into a crucial design discipline that greatly influences how much users love or hate a tool. Now, with AI, we’re adding a new conversational layer to the user experience. Traditionally, users customized tools to their needs and mastered them at different levels (think Photoshop), but it was essentially the same tool and experience for everyone. This is changing as we move from “interactions” to “relationships” by having conversations with AI. This shift could lead to a new design discipline called IX – intelligence experience. IX focuses on AI assistants that respond emotionally to all user requests. We’re already seeing early applications of this, like Hume, an AI startup aiming to make AI voices sound more human. The attached piece explores this concept in detail, outlining how IX might shape the future of our interactions with AI.
Hack your workflow
Speed Up Slide Deck Creation
At Fresh van Root, Gamma has become our go-to app for creating docs and slides, thanks to its built-in AI feature that can really freshen up your presentations.
Say goodbye to endless bullet point lists as the AI transforms them into visuals, condenses text, and rewrites paragraphs.
This AI-powered approach to improving slide decks can be a huge timesaver.
Using Gamma is straightforward:
- just create a new slide deck or copy some content into a new Gamma project.
- Then, select a paragraph, a card, or the entire deck and start chatting with the AI assistant about what improvements you’d like to see.
While many slide builder apps have recently added AI features, we’ve found that Gamma’s implementation works best.
- Bonus: Gamma can also create websites with AI.
Tools & Apps
Visualize Your Ideas
AI Design
You can paste your content and let Napkin visualize your ideas for you. I have tried the product and was pleasantly surprised by how well this works: I took a blog post, pasted it in, and got a visual perfectly reflecting the content of the post. (Explainer Screenshot)
The tool is currently in open beta and free to use, making it an excellent opportunity to experiment with visualizing your content.
Throwaway Docs Made Easy
AI Workflow
With ChatGPT Canvas, working on your generated text or code gets easier. A versioning feature helps manage different versions of your text/code, and separating the chat from the content makes working in the AI chat assistant more pleasant. (Explainer screenshot)
With the release of this feature, ChatGPT follows suit and has something similar to Artifacts in Claude (see Claude in action).
Stand Out in Online Meetings
AI Productiviy
If having a branded camera experience is important for you in online meetings or events, Boom is worth checking out. It acts as a middle layer between your online meeting software (Zoom, MS Teams, or others) and your webcam. With Boom, you can control the background, add overlays (like your logo), write your name, and much more. This tool can help you create a more professional and branded appearance in your virtual interactions. However, a word of caution: test it properly before using it live – it crashed during my test. (Screenshot)
Explode Your Static Image
AI Video
You might have seen the videos this app can create on social media: profile shots exploding, deflating, squishing, and more eye-catching effects. The app behind these dynamic transformations is called Pika. It’s a fun way to play around with images for social media, adding movement and interest to otherwise static pictures.
Fresh Reflections
A Guide to Using NotebookLM by Google
You have heard the AI-generated podcast conversations, but what’s the broader use case for this product?
NotebookLM is an experimental product of Google Labs that focuses on improving how we interact with notes and documents.
- It uses AI across the board
- You can upload your documents and use AI to interact with them
- AI audio conversations can be created about your uploaded docs
- It also supports manual note creation and collaboration
- It’s available to the public – all you need is a Google account
Prototyping: Social Media Image App
I’ve built my own custom social media image creator app with AI, and here is how I did it.
How to Detect if a Text is AI-Generated
As AI tools become more common, the line between human-written and AI-generated content is starting to blur. So, how can you tell if a piece of text was crafted by a person or generated by a machine?
Getting Started with AI Image Generators
A new mega-guide for beginners with AI-powered text-to-image tools. Comparing Midjoourney, Flux, DALL-E and others.
Off-Topic Links
Double-Sided Keyboard
Hardware
Google Japan has developed a double-sided keyboard. It looks interesting, both on the desk and on the go. I for sure want to try it out, but might send it back.