- Google’s Gemini gets multimodal upgrades and “Agent” tools, closing in on GPT-4’s capabilities.
- New image & video AI tools let creators animate, colorize, and generate in ways previously only in SciFi.
- Venture capital pours into AI in education, healthcare, and productivity — opportunities for ministry tech too.
AI is here to stay. So, throughout the month I read four AI newsletters—Fry.ai, Superhuman.ai, The Neurondaily.com and Neonpulse.beehiiv.com and try to cull out what may be interesting and relevant for church leaders. Here’s what I’m seeing this month:
Quote to ponder:
“If you know how to imbue your work with things that feel personal, then AI is your intern. If you create things that are formulaic, that just about anyone in your space could have created, then AI is your replacement. “
Jay Acunzo
BIGGEST NEWS OF THE MONTH
Probably the biggest news this month is the introduction of Open AI’s Sora—a clever new text to video model from Openai. It is absolutely amazing. See a demo below.
It is almost unbelievable! (SOURCE)
To see more of Sora’s work go to OpenAI’s TikTok page HERE (SOURCE)
One more thing about Sora and rapid editing. Check it out HERE (SOURCE)
The second breakthrough is the ai company, Eleven Labs, the company that adds sound to the Sora videos. Watch it now. (SOURCE)
IN OTHER NEW
- Valentine’s Day: Nearly 40 percent of men used AI to craft a valentine’s message this year. Love is in the air SOURCE
- Three takeaways on how pastors use AI by Barna. Read it HERE
- A study of over 1,000 college students showed that robot companions curing loneliness and preventing suicide SOURCE
- ELVIS spotted in Nashville. The Tennessee House Banking and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee has unanimously passed the “Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act” (HB 2091), A.K.A. the ELVIS Act, aimed at safeguarding musicians from AI infringement on copyrights. SOURCE
OTHER INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS
- Do you need text-to-image ai that doesn’t botch the spelling? Try Ideogram. It’s not quite right but will only get better. SOURCE
- 42 AI terms everyone should know
- In a similar educational vein: BetterAI: Explore, compare & find the best AI solutions HERE. This is a directory of WHAT TOOLS solve WHAT PROBLEMS. SOURCE
- ChatGPT 4 can turn your hand-written notes into text. Simply take a photo of your scribbling on your iPhone, airdrop it to your computer, save and label photo. Then on ChatGPT click the Attach icon, upload the photo and kindly ask ChatGPT to transcribe your jibberish. I tried it on my chicken-scratch into legible chicken-scratch.
- Top AI tools to begin to master:
| Tool: Perplexity AI |
| What it Does: An AI-powered search engine that saves you time and provides conversational, personalized results. |
| How We Use It: While it may not be the most technically impressive AI tool we use, it’s definitely our favorite. Instead of giving you a list of links when you search for something, Perplexity makes searching online a breeze by finding answers itself and giving you a summarized response. Some of our staff haven’t used Google in over a month — and that’s saying a lot. It’s our go-to tool for researching. |
| Price: Free for most use cases, $20 monthly for some advanced features. |
| Tool: Midjourney |
| What it Does: An AI-powered image generation tool. |
| How We Use It: If you’ve ever seen an image in this newsletter, chances are it was generated with Midjourney. Midjourney takes text prompts and turns them into realistic images. While there are other image generators on the market, like ChatGPT (which uses Dall-E 3), we’ve found Midjourney to generate the most realistic and high-quality images by far. |
| Can Also Be Used For: Generating logos, website graphics, blog images, presentation visuals, product photos, ads and more. |
| Price: Plans start at $10 a month. |
| Tool: Gemini |
| What it Does: Multi-modal AI chatbot that can generate text, images, and more. |
| How We Use It: While it’s similar to ChatGPT in many respects, we’ve found Gemini to be superior when it comes to text-related tasks. But this wasn’t always the case — Gemini’s recent performance upgrades and ChatGPT’s ‘laziness‘ bug which occasionally gives incomplete answers make Gemini our default option for ideation, summarization and other text-based tasks. |
| With the upcoming Gemini Pro 1.5 update that brings larger data uploads and more accurate responses, we can only see Gemini stretching its lead. |
| Price: Free for Gemini, $19.99 per month for Gemini Advanced. |
| Tool: Zapier AI |
| What it Does: Describe what tasks you’d like to automate and Zapier AI will create an automation instantly. |
| How We Use It: From automating data entry tasks to streamlining our research process, Zapier AI helps us save a ton of time. It also works with other AI apps like ChatGPT and Jasper. |
| Price: Free for basic features, paid plans start at $19.99 per month. |
| Tool: ChatGPT |
| What it Does: AI-powered chatbot that kinda does it all. |
| How We Use It: Whether you want to generate a blog, analyze a spreadsheet, create a data visualization or generate an image, ChatGPT is the best all-in-one AI tool. While we find other tools like Gemini and Midjourney better for some tasks, we still use ChatGPT frequently for data analysis and visualization, as well as custom GPTs that let us do things like find and summarize research papers. |
| Price: Free for basic features, $20 per month for advanced features. |
- Here’s another look at the popularity of useful AI tools:
- ValueProp: A tool that helps business owners and entrepreneurs visualize and develop a clear value proposition. I used it to create a value prop for City Leaders Collective. Very solid outcome. check it out SOURCE
- Two articles by our friend Sangeet Paul Choudary.
- AI won’t eat your job, but it will eat your salary
- AI won’t eat your job, but it will eat your promotion
Both articles stress that every job can be broken down into “tasks,” some of which will be taken over by AI. If you have read Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, this concept will be familiar.
- 10 Best side hustle ideas to make $$$$ using AI. These would be great for your teens trying to figure out how to pay for college. The first one is a no-brainer. SOURCE
- OpenTaskAI: A marketplace that connects AI freelancers and business / ministry need. SOURCE
One day pastors could be doing this….but should they? MyCompanions is an AI tool which allows celebrities and influencers to clone themselves in the form of an AI chatbot and engage with their fans individually. SOURCE
INTERESTED IN INVESTING IN AI (not to be taken as advice or recommendation)
| If you want to “invest in AI”, you’ve got tons of options: |
Companies making AI models (public: Meta/Google; private: OpenAI/Anthropic).Chipmakers (Nvidia/AMD).Those supplying to chipmakers (ASML).Server builders (SuperMicro).Cloud providers (Microsoft/Google/Amazon).SOURCE |
