In the course of researching my second book, ‘Future Hackers‘, I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ‘Dall E‘ image generator. It uses natural language input to create any image it’s instructed to create… Took around 30 seconds to generate these images:

The instructions I gave it were ‘Create a brochure for an accountancy software company. Use copy text from the website XXXXXXX. The theme colours are red, blue, black and grey. Find three images that relate to accountancy and ERP software. Display these images on the front of the brochure.‘ … I think it’s prevented from drawing text from websites, hence the weird characters… BUT – it’s not hard to imagine a lot of jobbing graphic designers could find themselves out of work! Since 2017, I’ve emphasised the importance of moving up the value chain and this is just another example of why it matters.

Sophisticated machines can be our friends, but we need to think differently about how we relate to them. I find the concepts of ‘digital addiction’ and ‘digital detox’ completely miss the point. ‘Digital Flourishing’ is where it’s at and that means welcoming the future while being mindful of how we relate to it.