OpenAI and images

Yesterday, OpenAI dropped a new release of ChatGPT and today the internet has exploded. Again. My social feeds across the five or so — sigh — networks that I regularly check are bursting at the seams with images created with OpenAI’s new image functionality. And it’s hardly a surprise; it’s fun. Who doesn’t love cartoons of Creed and paintings of Don Draper?1 Legible text? Be still my heart!

I’ve felt a lot of dread in the last few days. It’s the same thing I felt when I first started playing with image generators a few years ago.

Something is shifting under us.

ChatGPT has accidentally become one of the biggest consumer tech companies, and when it does something the whole world I know pays attention.

As an illustrator, graphic designer, product designer, and writer—well frankly it’s been a tough couple years.

That’s not to say I haven’t been experimenting, playing with every update, and trying to figure out how to fit things into my workflows. But let’s be real here. This is absolutely going to change how everyone in the fields I described works going forward.

It’s akin to the technology shifts before I was born. I heard about them, read about them. But now it’s happening to me.

That’s not to say I haven’t gone through major shifts. I started working around 2006. A lot has happened since then.

But I had nothing but time on my hands. If a new technology came along I poured myself into it, figured out all the intricacies of it, and adopted it into the whole. The new thing became part of me as I pushed forward.

I’d help out the older generation with their tech issues and found joy in just solving things. I also appreciated their praise and bewilderment at how I could understand it.

Now, to be clear I don’t feel like I’ll be left behind.

I’m embracing this technology and figuring it out. But it’s different this time. I’m walking into it with something to lose. I’ve built my career on top of technology and am incredibly grateful for it. I don’t want to lose that.

But then I remind myself that I’ve been willing to change often. I’ve shifted where the market goes and been able to stay aflot. I’m just worried it might shifter faster than I can go.

I’m willing to change. But I’m wondering how many more times I can pull this off before I just get tired of it all.

Via Spyglass.