🧙🏼‍♂️ Lore AI Newsletter #1

Welcome to my newsletter! I'm glad you're joining me on this journey.

For the last few months, I've been more and more fascinated by the potential of generative AI for creative work. I had seen tweets with fascinating results from Dall-E for months, but I didn't have access.

Then, I got access to GitHub Copilot while working on a C++ hobby game project. It blew my mind. Type a few comments, and it generates whole blocks of code that (usually) work. How freakin cool.

Then I discovered Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and OpenAI. And realized this is all moving way faster than I thought. I can't stop thinking about AI and ideas for how it will change the future. Keeping up with everything in AI is almost a full-time effort tho. Things are changing so fast.

I spent over 10 years in Silicon Valley, seeing amazing tech. And I have been in crypto since 2013. I have to say, what I'm seeing with AI right now is the most inspiring and revolutionary thing I've ever seen. It feels like the beginning of a new world. And we have no idea what it will look like. But it's coming. And I'm excited.

Since I am reading about AI every day, it makes sense to share what I learn along the way to help others.

That's what this newsletter is for. In it, I hope every week to share news, tips & ideas. And to learn and grow a community together.

In today's issue:

• 💡BIGGEST INNOVATION: Stable Diffusion on the phone.  

• 🧠THINGS I LEARNED: Midjourney + Motionleap = Awesome.

• 💸FUNDRAISING: Stability AI and Jasper raised huge rounds.

• 🤯 COOLEST THING: Midjourney + Unreal Game Engine design workflow. The future of game design is gonna be very different.

 💡BIGGEST INNOVATION 

Replit

The most exciting tech I saw this week was a demo from Amjad Masad, founder of Replit.

A big barrier to entry right now for getting involved with AI art is you need a powerful graphics card. Or you pay for a cloud service to use one. And if you're on an M1 Mac, like me, everything is way more complicated to set up.

In this demo, Amjad shows Stable Diffusion running locally on a smartphone.

Unfortunately, it's not out publicly yet, but this sounds incredibly promising. Amjad says this will be in the hands of millions soon. Imagine if this technology becomes available to people worldwide from their phones!

🧠THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK

Midjourney + Motionleap is awesome

I've been experimenting with different ways to create AI art that does well on social media. Videos do great, but they take a lot more work to get right(for now).

The easiest thing I've found by far that performs well with minimal effort is to create art on Midjourney and then add small animation to it with the Motionleap app. Things like rain, an animated book, etc., go a long way. And it's easy.

💡

These kinds of videos

do especially well on Instagram. If you look at the top posts on #aiart, you'll see that many of them use this exact technique.

AI writing is about to get a lot better.

I've heard from several friends in the know that 2 startups have incredibly impressive private demos that haven't been shown publicly yet. One of them was announced yesterday, called Lex.

Currently, there is a long waitlist(I'm ~25,000). From what I hear, it's essentially an experience where you write in your text editor, and it gives you suggestions and helps as you go. Which sounds like something I need. And from what the founder has said on Twitter, they'll be opening up completely today or tomorrow.

I'm excited to see how Lex compares to Jasper and Copy.ai.

Jasper.ai

❤️ We've partnered with Jasper to offer you 10,000 free credits if you signup using our affiliate link. Bonus: it helps support our newsletter and community.

Free Trial

Artists are successfully selling NFTs created by AI.

This one caught me a bit by surprise. I thought that collectors of NFTs would dislike AI-generated NFTs because of the whole "AI artists aren't artists" debate. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

The top NFT influencers are now talking about AI. And one artist, HODLFrance, is doing very well selling AI-generated art. And his work is pretty awesome, you should check them out.

Regulation is coming for AI.

Several members of congress wrote a letter this week declaring Stable Diffusion unsafe.

And a website was created to promote a lawsuit against GitHub. Their argument is Copilot hurts people because it learns from its open-source code.

I have a feeling this is only the beginning. The implications of this technology can be scary. I understand the concern. But AI is inevitable. It's a natural evolution of our technology-focused society.

Hopefully, American politicians will be careful with how they approach AI regulation. It could have a huge impact on the future of the USA.

Fundraising 💸

• Stability AI, creators of Stable Diffusion, raised a $101M seed round.

• Jasper, the AI writing startup, raised a $125M Series A. Thread below about Jasper's journey. 👇

🤯Coolest thing

Midjourney + Unreal Engine 5

When I saw this video, it blew me away. It shows an artist creating a 3D world using Midjourney and Unreal Engine 5. The thread below shows their whole process, it's definitely worth checking out.  

Imagine a future where game designers can type what they want and instantly have a world to build in. That changes as they tell the AI what modifications they want to make.

As someone who began my career in video games, I'm so excited. The future of game design is going to be awesome.

Further Study 📖

📼

9 Business Ideas To Profit From The 2022 A.I. Gold Rush

- My First Million Podcast. 

Closing  

Thanks for reading my newsletter! I'll be sending out a new issue every week and blog posts occasionally.

I'm excited to have you all part of this together.  :)

See you next week!

-Nathan Lands

💌

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