How do we use AI?

credit to grewordoftheday.com, with appreciation for their thoughtful and illustrative vocab buffs each morning

Our take on AI is somewhere between spicy and cool. Tepid, if you will.

And like anything of nuance, it has its fair share of peaks and valleys. Do we use AI? Yes. Do we fear AI? Also yes. So let's talk pros, cons, and cautionaries, and how AI works in our workflow.

First, the warts and looming elephants: AI gobbles up water, land, and energy at frightening rates and threatens the rural lifestyle many of us depend on. Its sentience is creepy at best and catastrophic at worst. It's already blurring the lines of fiction and reality. It is, undoubtedly, going to take jobs.

Yeesh. Why is anybody using this stuff?

Sadly, that's well above my paygrade. Were I in charge, skinny jeans, reality tv, and Instagram would all be joining 8-tracks in the halls of nostalgia. 

But alas, AI isn't going anywhere. No amount of online shaming is going to change that. You can't boycott it because it's already in everything, whether asked for or not. And, it turns out, the results from a couple of the places AI has shoved it's way into in our workflow have been kind of amazing.

LEFT: Original photo submission for this sale horse. While a perfectly attractive photo, the skinny orientation meant it would look great on mobile devices, and terrible on desktops.

RIGHT: Using Photoshop's Remove Tool and Generative Expand feature, both of which employ AI technologies, we were able to recreate a background that will look smashing on every user device. It's not perfect (hello random grass in the ring), but it deftly handles a problem that used to take hours to solve. And of course, absolutely no part of the horse was altered.

At its heart, AI is a productivity tool, designed to do the work of many.

Us small businesses generally survive by out-working the big guys: More hours, more customer care, more personalized service. More, more, more, but often with fewer benefits and a very tenuous grasp on work/life balance.

Artificial Intelligence allows the small biz owner to do more without working more. To produce a better product or service for our clients without the added exhaustion tax. What used to take four hours now takes one. Tasks that were contracted out are now accomplished in-house. Milestones once just a dream, due to time or knowledge or money or skill, are now in reach.

Time is freed up, to be spent with either friends and family, or to build out an even better product.

Or both.

A perfect print every time. AI assistance allowed us to develop our new One-Click Printable PDF Flyers in-house at a significantly reduced cost. Info is pulled directly from your HJx Sale Horse Listing and meticulously coded for perfect display, while customized QR codes take buyers directly to your listing. Print a dozen to take on the road!

But there is genuine value in AI as a productivity enhancer for small shops with perpetually strained budgets and finite hours in a day.

For hj.exchange, that means enhanced photo optimization for every client, and even more advanced tools and customizations for our website. It's a researcher, calculator, spreadsheet builder, and sounding board all at once when strategizing, and a nice kick in the brain when I'm down with writer's block. We never use AI to edit or alter a horse's image in any way, and would never substitute our professional copywriting services for an AI generated narrative. 

But a little zhuzh for your marketing photos? A little pizzazz for our website? A whole lot less time spent sourcing catchy graphics for this blog? For that I (tepidly) welcome my new robot overlords.