Innovation Profs - 6/4/2024

Last call for June 7 Generative AI Workshop

Professors Porter and Snider are teaching a one-day Intro to Generative AI Workshop at Drake University (or virtual) on June 7. You’ll learn how you can use generative AI in your daily life. Attendees will:

• Get up to speed on the changing generative AI landscape

• Learn tips for getting more value from tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney

• Get hands-on with tools for creating text, images, audio and more

• Discuss the legal and ethical side of generative AI in the workspace

Sign up by 5 p.m. Wednesday to get the early bird rate

Generative AI News

OpenAI’s Sora to Debut 5 Original Shorts Made Using AI at Tribeca Film Festival

On June 15, OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora will make its debut on the indie film circuit, as five shorts developed with the tool will be shown to audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival. According to Tribeca CEO Jane Rosenthal, “Tribeca is rooted in the foundational belief that storytelling inspires change. Humans need stories to thrive and make sense of our wonderful and broken world. Sometimes these stories come to us as a feature film, an immersive experience, a piece of art or even an AI-generated short film. I can’t wait to see what this group of fiercely creative Tribeca alumni come up with.” Filmmakers using the tool were required to adhere to the agreements pertaining to the use of AI as secured by the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild.

ElevenLabs debuts AI-powered tool to generate sound effects

ElevenLabs, a tool for text-to-voice generation and AI voice synthesis, has released a new text-to-sound-effect tool available to all users. As pitched on the webpage hosting the tool: “Generate any sound imaginable from a text prompt.” Free users are permitted 10,000 character generations per month, which amounts to about 60 sound effects per month. Give it a try!

Custom GPTs open for free ChatGPT users

Users of ChatGPT at the free tier now have access to the GPT Store, which allows them to use custom versions of ChatGPT, including tools that analyze data, create logos, build websites, and create charts and other visualizations. One key difference between the free and paid users: only paid ChatGPT users can build their own GPTs and share them on the GPT Store.

Anthropic’s AI now lets you create bots to work for you

In response to OpenAI’s custom GPTs, Anthropic now offers “tool use,” which allows users to build custom AI agents to carry out specific tasks. Unlike GPTs, tool use is not code-free—users can only access and build custom agents via calls to the Anthropic API, which in turn requires significant overhead to implement. Still, this move continues the trend towards developing custom AI agents, which we will surely see become more widespread in the coming year.

PwC agrees deal to become OpenAI’s first reseller and largest enterprise user

Last week, accounting firm PwC agreed to become the largest user of ChatGPT Enterprise. As part of the deal, over 100,000 PwC employees will have access to the highest tier of ChatGPT. PwC had previously announced plans to invest $1 billion in expanding their usage of AI. From a PwC statement: “By embracing ChatGPT Enterprise across our workforce, we will bring our first-hand experience of our AI transformation to clients, complementing our audit, tax and consulting services with a broad array of business and industry solutions.”

Quick Hits

Tool of the week: Google Sheets

Do you dread making spreadsheets? Let Google Sheets do the work you. Click on the Gemini button on the right and describe the type of spreadsheet you want. Then let Gemini create it for you.

Innovation Profs Homework

Use ChatGPT or Gemini to improve your website. Give it a link to a page on your site, and ask it to summarize what it sees. If the summary is missing key points about your business, then you might need to rewrite what’s on your website. You can also ask for tips to improve the SEO of the page.

Reply to us and tell us if this was helpful in improving your site.

AI-generated image of the week

Testing out Meta’s image creation tool, available to use at meta.ai.

prompt: birds-eye view of Des Moines at sunset

Generative AI tip of the week: Give examples

Are you looking to improve the outputs from your LLMs? Try giving examples, such as, “Here are some examples of previous social media posts we’ve made,” or “Here are examples of previous emails.”

Aim for 3-5 examples to give a solid foundation of what you are looking for.

Get starting with Generative AI

New to generative AI? Here are some places to start…

• NightCafe image prompting tips

• Learn ChatGPT prompting

• Best AI image generators

• AI terms everyone should know

• Prompt Engineering: What to Know and Why It's Important 

What we found

Making subjects with letters…