4 Fun and Responsible Ways to Use AI

Like many people worldwide, I’ve had a fear that the plague of AI, which continually taints emails, social media, online shopping, books, art, therapy, and even doctors, could someday lead to fewer or even no jobs left for humans. AI is everywhere, particularly on social media taking over Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. What especially disgusts me is the YouTube channels that are made fully by AI, including religious content creators making videos entirely with ChatGPT, which risks spreading lies people could buy into.
​
Being an author and illustrator, I see AI affecting children’s books as well, with Amazon being flooded by the ugliest book covers you’ve ever seen—many of which are generated by an AI prompt. The people responsible for these don’t seem to care about the art of writing or illustrating, or the buyers they’re fooling. I wish they cared about supporting the work of real authors and illustrators, but it seems to be only about the money. In my personal research on how AI can be used to work for me rather than in place of me, I have found four fun and responsible ways to use AI: 

---

1. Photo Editing
As someone who enjoys photography, both for leisure and volunteer work, I could benefit from AI during the photo editing process. Photoshop has a feature called Generative Fill that can simply remove objects from a photo, replacing them with more natural looking elements like grass, rocks, or trees. On an AI platform like Adobe Firefly, a simple prompt could brighten a specific uploaded image, straighten it, give it a warm tint, brighten a specific area, or make other edits. It can be even more creative, in ways like generating an image of scratches against a black background, turning the background transparent, and using the image as a layer to make a photo look old.

2. Photography Tests
Besides photography, my journey of exploring AI’s potential has included graphic design, particularly when previsualizing a finished product for a client. Perhaps a photographer might want to see how a photo taken in broad daylight would look on a cloudy day or even change the direction of the lighting. Multiple images can then be generated with different types of lighting and different directions the light’s coming from to help plan out a photoshoot. (My mind was blown when I discovered this.) A photographer could also see how a photo would look with a filter applied to look like an old photograph before applying those edits via Photoshop. Graphic designers, likewise, can test a logo for a company by typing in multiple different prompts that a client could easily look at and provide feedback on before production begins. Even for personal use, one could ask AI to generate a birthday invitation with a specific description to gain inspiration before creating the invitation themselves. Though it shouldn’t be used to replace actual photography or graphic design, just to previsualize an idea.

3. Design Options
I enjoyed playing around with this, as I got to essentially play the role of a designer or even someone looking to redecorate their home. A hair stylist could take a headshot of someone, then type in an AI prompt to give the person a certain hairstyle so the customer could easily decide whether they want to go with that look. The same can be done by changing the color of someone’s shirt in a photo, changing their makeup, or even changing what they’re wearing entirely, to aid fashion and costume designers. Put these two together, and AI could help a bride and her bridesmaids decide on their dresses, hair, and makeup for the big day in a fraction of the usual time. The interior decorating industry can similarly benefit from this practice, by providing options to help a client decide what type of carpet or wall color they want.

4. Illustration Previsualization
As an artist who’s worked with authors on their children’s books, this is the point that I personally see the greatest benefit from. If working on a commission for a client, an artist could utilize multiple approaches to test out different looks for the illustration that a client could then provide feedback on. A file of an illustration, one without any color, could go through an AI prompt requesting for it to be colored in a specific way and in a specific style. A completed illustration could also go through a transformation process, like making a watercolor painting look like it’s made with oil paint or changing the scene’s time of day. An artist about to create an illustration could likewise type into an AI prompt exactly how they’re visualizing the finished product, which can help inspire the artist’s use of colors and lighting for the art piece.
​
While learning about AI, I have tried not to be hopeless about our future as people rely more on its convenience and efficiency, especially as its technology continues to improve. My discoveries about the potential behind AI give me hope that our world can still preserve heartfelt work. We don’t have to live in a time when AI runs every step of production in social media content, written files, recording audio, customer service, or what have you. We can live in a world where AI is used for quality-of-life tasks like quickly summarizing long documents, recording audio of meetings to take notes, and finding recommendations for movies, restaurants, shopping, travel, or housing. Background tasks like debugging, coding, translation, and revision feedback are also strong uses for this new technology. Yet really, I feel that the key to mastering our relationship with AI is to not treat it like a human relationship; people are there for bouncing ideas off one another to create something great. AI can facilitate the interaction, but hopefully will not replace it. 

---

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, Tipper Takes the Mound, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.