Me, Myself and AI: Lena Robinson’s Creative Journey

//Host Lena Robinson

Hi everyone, welcome to Creatives WithAI. I'm your host, Lena Robinson. Today, I am going to be doing something very different. We had a little bit of a scheduling issue, and one of my podcast guests couldn't turn up today. So I've decided to interview myself, Lena Robinson, the creative. So it could be interesting, it could be weird, and Dave might have a very interesting time editing this today.

So let's see how this goes.

So Lena, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and why you're meant to be on here?

//Guest Lena Robinson

Well, thanks Lena for having me on today. Just saying… a bit weird interviewing myself and me talking to you. But anyway, it's going to be an interesting podcast.

So, creativity is something that's always been in me. Both my parents are quite creative, both in their thinking, their view on the world, and in their output as well. So I think on previous episodes, we've talked about the fact that my father did his degree in art history and anthropology. The way that his creativity came out was in things like the guitar, played in bands when he was younger.

He did a lot of garden design in the landscaping business that he and my mother ran for a long time. He still builds everything. He's a craftsman, he can build furniture and create things. So that creativity is huge in him.

It's always also huge in my mother. So she executes it in things like she does photography and she trained as a florist. So she still to this day in her 70s will volunteer to do flowers for people in her church and so forth. So that creativity and the people that my parents had around them was naturally something that rubbed off on me. They had a lot of musicians and people like that, artists, very creative, what I call the happy dippy, squiggly brained arty farty types, which is wonderful.

It impacted me. I'm a natural creative thinker as well as creative in the fact that I learned how to do photography at school back in the days when it was still dark rooms and cameras and film, which I do really love.

I weirdly still have some undeveloped black and white film in my fridge. It's meant to be kept in the fridge for those of you who don't know because it's got gel in. It's made from gel, so that's why it's kept in the fridge.

And I still do photography today. I have an Instagram account that I set up for…just for myself called @Flora.lishus and we'll put it in the notes down further. And what that is, purely for me, is an outlet of creativity. It's the ability to be able to walk out into the world. It's all plants and flowers and what's happening on the outside. And it's a really amazing outlet for me and it gives me calm and some beautiful sort of mental health and wellness and mindfulness things. So that creativity has always been there. I paint and I draw.

My favorite thing, medium to draw in is, is pastels. And I don't know why, but I think it's because I like that connection.

And I've been…I've worked in the creative industry for a really, really long time. So I've had to think very creatively. I've had to understand editing of videos when we're producing film. And I've had to understand the creative briefs and things like that, which, you know, you can get those wrong quite a lot of the time. So there's that element that I've been surrounded by some of the most amazing creative minds on the globe, actually, both as strategists, creative strategists and also as designers and illustrators and 3D designers and printers and copywriters. So I've been really lucky to have been in that world and dabbled in lots of those areas.

And then the other area that my creativity comes out is my interaction with my amazing artists. Shout out to all you guys at The FTSQ Gallery.

We'll put The FTSQ Gallery down there as well.

And so I interact with and have to know, I have to choose the art that I choose to have on the website. I have to understand what I'm looking at. And it's a learning process and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

And when it comes to technology, I have always been an early adopter. Would always have the first phones, would always try and get online and do the latest things. I'm 51. And so I've lived in that world of sort of pre-internet and post-internet and, you know, technology. Back in my school days, I remember the Xerox machine was one that you wound and they'd get us kids to come in and do that for us, the office ladies. So I've lived in both camps, which in some ways you'd think there would be a little bit of fear around it. I'm a very curious person. I know that we've talked about curiosity quite a lot in some of the previous. I think Ben was talking about it just recently and Ben Southworth in our recent conversation on the podcast. And I think being curious is really key to everything. So that's my background when it comes to creativity. We'll have, I'm assuming we'll have a bit of a chat about the AI connection in a minute.

//Host Lena Robinson

That's a really interesting background, Lena. I think today will be, I'm not sure if it's going to be a conversation because it's difficult to talk to yourself. But well, mind you, I do that quite a lot.

But the question I would really like to ask, because it sort of brings up a really interesting question that we've started asking some of our other guests, is what is your view of creativity? Like, how would you describe creativity?

//Guest Lena Robinson

That is a really interesting question. It's both simple and complex.

So, creativity to me, it starts, I think, with I think everybody has the capability of being creative in some way. But I, and this might be controversial, I do think there's some people who are just naturally more creative in the output. You know, those are the people that pick up an instrument and just naturally love to play or sing. Or it'll be somebody that just naturally knows how to pick up a camera to take photos and extraordinary, knows how to take those extraordinary moments.

Filmmaking is the same. Like, I do think that there's a whole lot of the creativity is coming from the ideas that just run in your head. Like, for me, I'm constantly coming up with new ideas, whether it be for writing, or it be for something, I think, oh, I might go and take a photo of that. Or it might be an idea that I've had to write a poem or it might be an idea that I've had to do in business. I'm quite creative in the way that I think about things. So, the creativity comes out in that way as well. And I've had this conversation with other people as well, like, I think creativity, it's a thing inside you that you just cannot stop. It has to come out. Otherwise, that feeling of being squished in is quite difficult.

So, yeah, so, so creativity for me is that it's the thoughts inside your mind, visions inside your mind that you can then build something, create something. And it's a vision that comes to reality, whether it be in an idea of thinking or, or an execution of something.

Hopefully, that answers the question.

//Host Lena Robinson

Well, that's a really interesting way of thinking about creativity, vision. Yeah, that kind of makes sense. So, then the next question I wanted to ask is around let's get into the AI side of things. So do you use AI? Is the first question, and sort of, if you are, what is the impact on your business life, your personal life and your creativity? Are you using it at all?

//Guest Lena Robinson

I am. I am using it. And I'm using it in a number of different ways. I remember the first time that I'd obviously heard about it. I've been in and around the tech world for probably going on 15 years with things like three beards and being involved in the technology around advertising and marketing. So technology is not something I've been afraid of using. I just…

…AI was something that just seemed a little bit big and a bit too much for me because I'm not technically minded, weirdly enough, even though I get excited by technology. I'm trying to get my laptop set up. Don't even ask me anyway. Shout out to Ben Southworth who's been helping me with all my IT, as well as being a person that I love talking to about technology.

When it comes to AI, my first interaction with it was actually Oscar Mitchell-Heggs, who is one of my fine artists that I work with. He also is a long term friend, but he also happens to be the person that we had on a few episodes back who's an artist. We were sitting at, I can't remember where we were sitting, it was in Shoreditch, somewhere, Shoreditch Hotel, I think, or whatever it's called, 100 Shoreditch, I think.

He was telling me what he was doing with looking at AI and everything, and he showed me the very first iterations of ChatGPT when it had first been put out into the big wide world.

He said, "What prompt should we put in?" At the time I thought, "Here's a good idea." I said, "What would it do?" I really wanted to test it. I said, "What would it do if we took the manifesto of The FTSTQ Gallery that's in English, and it's on my website, and we put it in, and we say, could you translate this into Māori?” I am from New Zealand, my mum is Māori and Scottish, and it's part of my heritage, and I also knew that Māori is not a bit... It's still not a language that a lot of people know anything about. Let's test this little machine thing. We put it in, and it came out with the most amazing translation into Māori.

That got me excited. I went home that night, probably about 10 o'clock at night, and I set up my own account. It sat there for a wee while, I didn't really do much with it. Of course, we all know that AI is, in the background, been on lots of different things. It was driving chatbots. There's clearly been some interaction on my part with AI. But what I wasn't afraid to do, and this is what I say, I would advise everybody, listeners that haven't got into it yet, whether you're artists or creatives, go have a play. I know that's something that Ben and I, and lots of the other people have talked about as well. I wasn't afraid to have a play. I gave it some really simple prompts initially.

I started talking to people about how they were using it.

As some of you well know, I've had some health issues the last few years, and neurological stuff. What sometimes happens when I get really, really tired, or I've had a bad night with my sleep apnea, and my brain just is not working, sometimes I need a little bit of a helping hand because I struggle.

I'm a good writer. I've been doing it for decades for brand and positioning and writing copy and all that kind of thing. When I have a bad day and the brain's not working, I kind of need something. I can get it so far, but you're just feeling that instinct. Writers out there will know what I mean. You get that instinct if it's just something that's not quite right with it.

What I did is I got something to probably 80 to 90 percent right. I gave it a prompt. I loaded in the existing document that I'd written. I said, "I really need your help just to craft this a little bit more. Help me edit it. Make it sound…” I told it to do what tone it needed to be in because I understood, having read a bit about AI, that we need to educate it as we go. I said, "You need to do it in this tone of voice. You need to maybe make it to three quarters of the length that it currently is. Punch it up a bit. It needs to fit into a document.” I fit in an existing document that this piece of copy needed to fit into. I said, "It needs to fit into this space within this document, so it needs to fit."

Part of me at the time thought, "Oh, is this cheating?" Actually, if you're working in magazines, which I have done in the past, you will, as a journalist, will often get things to a certain point. Then they go and work with an editor and the editor will help craft it to the ‘nth degree’. I kind of started treating it like an editor. I stuck it in and it threw out two paragraphs, cut down to the right length, and it had nailed it in one go. That got me thinking of, "What else can I do?"

I will do things. I use it for a lot of research. I love research, but it's time-consuming. I love insights. I think insights are amazing. I got taught that throughout my agency career. That insights will often drive creative thinking and ideas and thoughts because you understand audience. If you understand your audience, then you have an insight, then you're more likely to learn what you're creating.

I've been playing. I've used it to...

Today, I wanted to come up with an idea of, "Oh, God, I've got no person coming on today as a guest. What am I going to do?" I wrote a prompt and there is an art of prompt. I know Tom Morley has talked about the art of the prompt quite a bit, and I've sort of taken that on. There is an art of prompt, possibly an idea for another show…anyway for another day.

What I've prompted it to do is I said, "Right, I'm the host of Creatives WithAI. We've had a guest drop out. I'm going to interview myself. Give me some ideas of what I could do."

Hence why we've got what we've got today.

That was really helpful just with the idea generation, for example. But then I've also done things like… In my consultancy, I have a lot of tools and documents and templates that I have created. I had created a research document in how to research different organisations when you're doing things from a new business perspective. What will often come out, and I had a methodology. This is the cool thing.

It's a methodology for me that I'd created and have been using for over a decade. Loaded that in the template. It's not just a template with blanks. It's got questions that if I send it to somebody, they can help fill in their own documents. It's a tool that is able to be interacted by a human. I thought, "I wonder what it will do as AI interacting with it to create the two things I've done actually." I did a lot of research on the audience profile, which it does brilliantly. The other one was I feed in a document to research a particular organisation.

I did that because I've got the questions and I've also got prompts in it of like, "Oh, you could go find it here and you could go find it here." Within the document, not even in the prompt, it went away and it did a reasonably good job in microseconds, which would normally probably take me at least five or six hours to do the in-depth research that I would often do for doing pitch work and so forth. It did it in seconds and it absolutely nailed it.

I am using it here and there, predominantly for idea generation and for doing the grunt work. What it's not doing is taking away anything from my capability and my creativity and my thinking. I have tried it with...this is purely just ChatGPT. Again, put that in the notes. I have tried it with images or it gets it wrong really badly wrong. It's down to my prompting. I get that. But yeah, no, definitely need another thing, not ChatGPT. Tom would be going Midjourney and blah, blah, blah. I say, "Yeah, he's absolutely right. I would be using Midjourney." I haven't been using the right tool for a start. It was kind of funny but it came out really dark, not dark in colour, but dark in…it was almost like propaganda-ish. It was weird. I was like, "Yep, don't like that because I'm as far from propaganda-ish as you can possibly guess."

So yeah, not a fan of ChatGPT's approach to imagery yet. However, recently I was creating a gift for somebody on a mug and AI is being used in Canva. Now, I use Canva a lot in creating social media posts and imagery for there and a whole lot of other things. I do it for myself. I do it for the Gallery, my clients, people that I'm working with. I absolutely love Canva. Shout out to Canva. Sticking in the notes down there as well.

What it was able to do is, I thought, "Well, let its new AI give it a go on what I'm looking for." I had a really particular vision in my mind. I wanted something Christmas-y, blah, blah, blah. He gave it a few other prompts. It came out with four different ideas, which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting it to just come up with one. It came up with four ideas.

I liked one particular idea. The other three weren't great. So I then went back in, didn't pick... because I couldn't figure out... it's probably me. I couldn't figure out how to pick that one and get it to redo that one again with some additional prompts. It doesn't work by ChatGPT. So what I did was I went back and tried to figure out what I'd done in my original prompt, copied it, put it and changed it. And this time around, it did exactly what I wanted. So going back to... it's just a tool. I can't illustrate. I'm not an illustrator. I can't do things like that.

Well, I probably could, if I took 10 million hours, but I don't have that kind of time. So within 10 minutes, it actually come up with something, giving me something that I could then put on Vistaprint, which is who I use all the time. Linking the thing down there, just for stickers and silly things. And put it onto this mug. Looked at it. Sent it off. It'll be coming soon. So that's really cool.

So, all in all, my feeling on the impact of AI in my life has been positive. I think it's got a long way to go. But yeah, no, I like it. I'm loving playing. I'm finding the curiosity side of me is being peaked all the time. I was like, “I wonder if I could do that? I wonder if I could do that?” So, collaboration for me and the impact is very, very positive. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

//Host Lena Robinson

Sounds like it has been quite impactful on you and the things that you're doing in your personal life and your predominantly business life. And the putting of the two things together does sound really interesting, of your thinking and your methodologies with the technology of AI. So yeah, that's pretty cool.

Which leads me on to the next question. And I think you started to allude to it. Is…it'd be really interesting to understand what you think AI is going to be doing in three to five years time in your perspective?

//Guest Lena Robinson

Good question. I think it's moving so fast. I think everybody I talk to it's like ridiculously… everything's moving so fast with AI. I think what will happen and I saw this happen with the internet as well and social media and you know, I'm old enough to have seen all those things come into play from a work perspective, is that I think people will start to play a bit more. I think the fear will drop and that's something I want to talk about actually. Is fear will always get in the way of things moving to the next phase. I think there's a lot of, because of a lack of understanding, there is a lot of fear out there around, particularly from creatives, of is the creativity going to be taken away or the jobs going to be taken away?

I think in the next three to five years it will impact, but it's not going to take away the fact that at the end of the day, the vision is the thing that the humans bring to the table, in my opinion. And I think that there's going to be, probably, a whole lot of fine artists that are not going to go anywhere near AI and I'm…really from a creative perspective, and I'm really happy with it because I love fine art. Love it. I like art in general, but fine art…and I really appreciate and respect the visions, and the physical inputs that a lot of artists do and continue to want to do.

I mean, Oscar is a fine example of the fact that he's the one that introduced me to AI. He's made a conscious choice. He's played around with it. He's made a conscious choice. He wants to go back to using physical mediums and I think that's amazing. I think that's cool.

I think…I'm really hoping that the fear of AI will start to dissipate in the next three to five years, because I think for a creative that hates doing the business side of things, and hate/ doesn't like doing a lot of the admin side of things, I think AI is actually going to support the creative to have more headspace than less headspace. No matter what that creative does, whether they're filmmakers and like using video, or they’re photographers, or they are fine artists or they're musicians or what have you. I think if a lot of the crappy stuff that I really don't like working with is taken away with AI being brought into their lives, I think that's going to be quite a turning point.

I think there's going to be a next generation coming through in the next three to five years that AI is not even a question. There's no fear there at all. I do think the biggest thing that I think will happen in the next three to five years that will dissipate is fear. I think that's actually a really good thing. I think that nobody has to worry, I think, and this is a personal opinion, I don't think we need to worry about it either or… “it's not humans or a machine”. I think it's “how does humans and machine work well together?”

So yeah, next three to five years I think…fear, that's a really interesting area of discussion that we've not gone into very much on this podcast. So thank you for bringing that up. I think it's an important one.

It brings us on to the next question I usually ask people, which is around what do they see AI doing in the next ten years? I mean, it seems like a decade seems so far away, but actually, I just look back on the last ten years, it's just zipped by.

I think in ten years AI will just be here. I mean, it already is, but there's still a lot of toying and what have you. I think AI will have settled. We saw it with the internet. We saw it with social media.

There's excitement comes up with new technology, which is what's happening now in fear. And then you get this sort of transition period, which I think is the three to five year period. And in ten years time, I don't think there'll be any fear. I think there'll be people that decide to use it or not use it, but hopefully by that point, it won't be out of fear.

I think there'll be a whole lot of organisations that will have to readjust their policies, why they work the way that they, are trusting their employees to use. I think there's still a whole lot of dread around, you know, from both sides around the workplace. But I think hopefully that will have settled in. There'll be reasonable policies in place inside of organisations of when they should be using it, when you shouldn't.

Maybe there's not. I mean, I personally would not stop anybody using it at all, except for doing anything morally not right in my view.

But I think in ten years time, I think, yeah, the simple answer is I think it will have settled.

//Host Lena Robinson

Yeah, I think you might be right. I think the settlement point of it and hopefully the fear agreed. I think that would be really good if that's kind of disappeared and we're just getting on with it. There will be adjustments, voices with new eras in the world. But humans are flexible and they adjust.

I love the fact that my parents are playing around on iPads and they love Wikipedia, and researching that, and using Google. I'm determined I'm going to get my parents on to using ChatGPT. That's the next thing that will be quite funny.

Anyway, so the next and final question is, what are the things that you're doing to get people to use ChatGPT?

I think that's a good question. It was not a question actually. In fact, it's not final.

The next bit that I want to do is, if there is one of the challenges that we've got out there, I want to propose a challenge to our listeners. Here's the challenge. And I haven't asked Dave about this.

I want to propose a challenge out there for any of you listeners to have a play in the next couple of weeks and create something using AI and then share it with us. Share it with us on any of the social medias using the hashtag #CreativesWithAI. If you do that on whatever you're posting, then we'd love to have a look at it.

Not sure if we'll potentially share it. We could potentially reshare it. We'll have a look at that as well. I deal with all the social media. So we'll do that. That'd be cool.

So yeah, listeners, have a go. If you've never had a go, create something. Even if it's funny or silly, tell us the story of what you did. We would love to hear what you're doing with AI that is specifically... Let's put this one. Maybe you need to put #CreativesWithAI as the hashtag on whatever it is that you're creating, whether it be film or it's in your writing or whatever. That would be really cool. Image you create or what have you. That would be really cool. But post it. Share it with us. That is your challenge.

Excellent. Right. So back to having a chat with Lena.

I've got another question for you, Lena. Will you continue to collaborate with AI?

//Guest Lena Robinson

Most definitely; I will always be a curious person. It is in my nature. I've been brought up to be curious about everything, to question things. I know my teachers used to get so annoyed with me because I'd go, "Yeah, I get that, but why? Just understand it. That's what it is. Just write it down.” Oh, they used to get so annoyed. But I think that curiosity will ensure that I continue to collaborate with AI. I want to look at other methodologies that I have in my toolkit of my consultancy and see if I can develop those into other things using ChatGPT, predominantly. But I think the other thing I'd like to start doing is start playing around with some of the other AI technologies out there like the Midjourneys and what have you. Just have a play, I think. There's a new one that Tom Morley is getting into, something called Popology. I'm going to be having a look into that in the new year as well. Who knows? We'll be putting that in the notes.

Yeah, I think we'll all definitely, sorry, I'm looking at my notes to myself.

I think, yeah, there'll definitely be a whole lot of collaboration of me just continuing to be curious and trying things out. I think it's fun and that's exciting. And I do it late at night. I do it when I've finished for the day. I do it during work when I need to do something. So yeah, I'll definitely continue to do that.

//Host Lena Robinson

Fantastic. Well, we're nearly at the end of the podcast. It's been interesting having a chat to myself, me, myself and I. I have one more question and we ask all of our guests this.

And the question is, if you could have any one guest come on to the show, who would it be and why?

//Guest Lena Robinson

Oh, that's a really good question. I have been thinking about this because obviously, because I usually ask the question, I've been thinking about what the answer to this would be. So the answer is, Stephen Fry.

And the reason for that is, I absolutely adore the man. He's particularly intelligent, smart, and an analytical thinker.

He researches a lot and he loves, he's curious and he's a bit squiggly brained like me, which is kind of cool and has bipolar, like I do. So that's something that I have in common with him. Both of us are managing it well, which is cool.

But the reason I want him is that although he's a technophile and he loves technology, he seems to have a more sceptical than usual view of AI. And I would like to unpack that with him, in person, a little bit more as to why he's sceptical. I don't think he's against the technology. I think he's…it seems from what I've read so far, that the scepticism is around how humans are going to use it.

I think there was a quote in something that I read this morning. I can't even remember where I read it actually, but he said there was something about the “$100 billion had been spent on some kind of programme or plan, and like it basically, it's got a 70% chance of killing us all”. And I was like, oh, I mean, I'm slightly paraphrasing, but I'll find the quote and I'll stick it in. But I was like, “oh my goodness, that is just quite full on”. I would really like to have a conversation with him about that. So yeah, that's pretty much Stephen Fry. That's what I'd like to see on here.

//Host Lena Robinson

Well, it's been an interesting conversation talking to myself.

Thank you for coming on board.

//Guest Lena Robinson

You're welcome.

//Host Lena Robinson

I'm not even going to get Dave to cut that one. I'm clearly talking to myself in this bit. So yeah, I would like to say thank you to myself and yeah, for everybody out there for all of our listeners.

Stay curious. Go have a play.

Definitely jump up to the challenge that we've just put out to you again, putting it up on social medias or send it to us. We'll put the notes down on there how you can do that using hashtag #CreativesWithAI on any of the social media.

So yeah, thank you everybody for listening and stay curious.