Let me tell you a little story about a girl who was originally quite weary of AI. This girl, upon the entry of 2023, was just plain bespooked by all the software companies coming out with little widgets and plugins, introducing the infusion of artificial intelligence to the standard, already functioning experience. At first, it felt baffling to change the humdrum while incorporating a bot for what seemed was unneeded support.
Recognizing that machine learning, robotics, and AI have been in the works for decades now… It never really “hit” me, the impact of AI that is, until last year – when the Covid dust settled and certain gravy trains were coming to a halt.
Now, ½ way into 2024, I must tell you… I’ve taken a chance, dabbled with AI, and I’m shocked more than anyone else when I tell you it’s changed my life and I’m no longer afraid (though I do still enjoy the movie Terminator).
The initial genuine curiosity came when we did an AI exercise at my current work place at the time, and teams broke out to determine which different AI softwares could make us money and save on time and resources. Major lightbulbs went off in several departments.
Then the curiosity was further enhanced when a friend of mine was using AI to generate super rad art and I thought to myself, by God! That’s amazing! How on earth is she doing that?! So then came more querying into the unknown.
The love and adoption came full swing, when I was stuck writing some error handling for an API request that I didn’t originally author, and a colleague told me to add Copilot. It cost money mind you, and I’m wee bit cheap, but he told me it would change my life… so I went ahead and tried it. Upon adding this little Copilot bot to my IDE, some magic superpowers have since developed. My toolkit comes with the ability to whisper in the comments of the code, an execution strategy, then BOOM! 💥 An auto-filled attempt and then a quick TAB saves me dozens of sacred key stokes.
With all this at hand, I’d like to provide you with my current “list” of AI superpower enhancement providers, which have evolved my abilities as a communicator, an artist, and a web developer.
Top 3 Recommended AI Software for Web Development and Beyond
Below is a list of AI softwares I use relatively regularly:
ChatGPT
We can all only have so many skills and copywriting and wordsmithing can be gruelingly time consuming, depending on which part of the brain you prefer to use. I like to use ChatGPT to get some base language going sometimes. It helps me formulate mission statements & craft proposal language for client, even do quick research on any given topic. I’ve used it to help with SEO reports and provide next step recommendations for certain problem/solution scenarios. What I enjoy most about ChatGPT is a conversation can build in shared knowledge with the bot, which becomes more informed across more dialogue given. It can be considered like a personal secretary or intern, maybe.
MidJourney
Downloading Discord and paying a small fee to use the MidJourney servers and software has completely cracked open pandora’s box for me as an artist. Giving the computer an /imagine command followed by the prompt you want it to visualize, can be “trained” and enhanced the more you work with it. I am particularly fond of the /blend mode because you can combine two images for the computer to harmonize into one image. Learning the prompts and parameters hasn’t been cumbersome though understanding server administration helps.
Copilot
Introduced in 2021, it took me until 2022 to be OK with AI helping me write code. Simply starting a comment in the IDE, telling the IDE itself (which is creepy) what you want to solve, then beginning the new line – Copilot will try to auto-fill based on what it knows. This shit is really bonkers, and I can’t believe it took me so long to start using it. I’d hella recommend to any developer to give it a try. It does NOT always get things right, but it DOES save me a TON on key stokes. And as I stay in this tech game, saving on my key strokes is A-OK with me 💅