2 minute read

a photo realistic image of a dad playing soccer with his daughter on a lake michigan beach

That’s an image I generated with AI in just a few minutes for free. The image is cool, but I think the workflow I use to experiment with these tools is the more interesting aspect. Here is a short post on that, as well as a video of how I went about creating the image.

My advice to anyone I talk to that is ‘AI curious’ – but hasn’t really done anything yet with it – is simple and consistent:

Just Get Started

To add some detail to that advice, I made a video showing my workflow for experimenting with a new AI Image Model, Flux. There was recent buzz about how Flux creates insanely realistic photos, and is potentially better than what’s already out there (e.g. Midjourney). I gave Flux a spin. Along the way, I discovered and experimented with another tool named Replicate, which allows you to try AI / LLM libraries across mediums (text, image, speech, etc.) in your browser. Replicate also gives you an easy path to integrate those models into any application you are building via an API.


For me, the experimentation workflow looks something like this:

  1. Find a new tool or concept I find interesting on Twitter (there are many great folks in this space sharing content every day, like Ethan Mollick)
  2. Figure out how to use the tool (either from the Twitter post, or by using a tool like Perplexity) to guide me
  3. Try out the tool
  4. Through the above steps, I usually find a handful of other things I want to try out - the branches appear :)

Lots of people I talk to aren’t really experimenting with this stuff yet – and I always nudge them to just try something out to help them in their day-to-day work. There are lots of reasons to not try (as Ben Tossel highlights in this post). I believe those that try will discover capabilities that help them in their work, and will soon have a meaningful advantage over those that don’t try. Ethan Mollick writes about this concept in his Co-Intelligence book – which is a fantastic read, and a good way to learn a bit more about the space as well. I wrote about my take-aways from that book in this post

If you made it this far in my post - what new tool or capability are you going to try out? I’m always up for hearing from you about what you’re building. I’m also starting to think about what’s next for me on the work side. More about that here, and if you think I can be helpful to you or your company – don’t hesitate to reach out.

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