By now you’ll have heard about ChatGPT, Midjourney, Bard, and other AI tools, just about everywhere. Even if you haven’t knowingly touched an AI platform, you’ve still heard of it. The good news is that the “AI craze” is sure to die down soon. Just like every newest thing that comes along, its getting all the attention and investments, but there’s always something else just over the next horizon. The bad news – but only if you haven’t started working with it yet – is that AI is soon to be everywhere.

For those of us who’ve been tinkering with various AI platforms and offerings, the ubiquitousness of AI is inevitable.

And that is a good thing!!

Here’s why I am not scared of “AI taking over the world,” from someone who’s job is most definitely vulnerable to obscurity as more and more web-based tasks can be automated.

I have likened it to driving a Ferrari.

While I love my Ford Escape Titanium from 2020, it’s no quarter million dollar sports car. That being said – I’ve been driving since I was 14 and I’m pretty sure that if I had an open parking lot and the keys to a Ferrari, I could figure out how to turn it on and drive around the block. Does that mean I could drag race it? Or put gas in it? Probably not! But could I google it? Uh – yeah, I google everything.

Getting started with AI is sort of like that. In my case, I got on Discord, added Midjourney, and then I realized that it’s worth it to pay a little, if only to have your own private chat channel. I maxxed out my first account pretty fast. Yes, that’s right, I have multiple instances. It’s strategic and I’ll get to that.

Next, I started playing with ChatGPT. I had been hearing about it for weeks, and having already seen Notion and other platforms start to integrate AI prompting, I wanted to dig deeper. The obvious place for me as a Marketing Consultant, was to play with some copy.

“Give me 20 prompts for a social media campaign about nonprofit security”

“Give me 15 title suggestions for a blog about podcasting and audience engagement”

“What are the top 10 news stories from the last 30 days about #cybersecurity according to google?”

My mind went instantly into collaborator mode! As a one-woman-shop, I can always use a listening ear to bounce my ideas off of. It’s obvious after 5 minutes that this tool isn’t going to do my job for me – I still have to give it quality prompts. The more insightful and detailed I am with my line of questioning, and if I take the time to really build the information I want the agent to pull from, the answers I receive become so much better. This is LANGUAGE ENGINEERING in a way that as a writing person, can really dig.

Now the developers in the audience, if they are still with me, are likely laughing at me right about now. “Well yeah L, its a “large language model” of course it’s trained with and by language.” Then I remember that SO MANY people I work with don’t even understand the basic mechanics of the internet. This is my imposter syndrome speaking, telling me I understand less and lack more knowledge than I will need to use these tools with success.

Then I found the #hustlegpt challenge.

While online challenges and joining things isn’t really my jam, I do love a good self-paced framework to play within. After joining the Discord community for the #hustlegpt community, which the team there have done a great job with organizing and coordinating (all volunteer run), I landed on a concept. By now, my social media friends are likely to have heard of EcoMavenLabs (formerly Vulnerable Targets AI). As the framework for my practice with AI tools, I decided to dive deeper into the e-commerce and online business side of things that I have limited experience with. I started a Shopify store, and decided to center on using AI Art generation tools (like Midjourney, Canva, and Craiyon), to create products that highlight the plight of endangered animals. In my day job, I support the defenders who keep our cybersecurity safe – and at night, I work on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves.

As far as the challenge goes – we are profitable! With an initial $25 in seed money, and a $9 purchase, we covered our first month of expenses for domains and hosting, as well as paid accounts fees. Our sales haven’t been what I had hoped, after investing maybe 50 hours of time into set up and design, however, the learning that I have done along the way has been worth an immeasurable amount of value to my income if I can parlay this knowledge into my next jobs. Also, the images have formed themselves into the shape of a book series in my mind. Printable Patterns by EcoMavenLabs was our first free offering. Each of the animals featured in that book will become a standalone book. Two of them are “in the can” and now I get to learn about the nuances and very technical details of book formatting!

While being an author is something I always suspected I would eventually do, I never would have imagined that I would begin writing educational books. I don’t categorize them for “children” although they certainly could be! These books are informational about the species, including all their quirks and features, and also includes AI generated illustrations, of each of the species types, and shown in many of their natural settings and habitats. These images are for coloring!

So this one offering: raises awareness of endangered species, offers relaxation and creative expression, and best of all – a core element of our endeavor is that we will donate half of all profits to wildlife charities!

So far that means that we will be sending $2.52 to the World Wildlife Fund for our March profit sharing. I hope to keep this going to at least the publication of our set of 10 books and see where we land. We have “Pangolin Patterns” and “Panda Planet” in post production and they should be be released very soon!

While this is not going to replace my day job, it’s a lot of fun for a hobby. It feels much more productive and creative than just watching tv or browsing online. I hope you can find an AI avenue that interests you and start to play with this technology that’s about to be everywhere!

Have a great week,

L.