Failing to Create My Own AI Apps: What I Learned

Generative AI is everywhere. You can create images off a prompt. You can have ChatGPT write you a recipe. Everyone is posting their AI-generated avatars (including me).

Artificial intelligence has been used for Art for a long time. Something about 2022 made it take off. Wired has a whole article on regenerated AI images.

I thought I would try my hand at training a model on my own and build an app using no code + OpenAI. But it failed.

What is Generative AI?

Before we get started you might wonder, what even is Generative artificial intelligence? Generative AI is artificial intelligence that generates its own content.

Types of Generative AI

Images
Videos
3D models
Music
Robotic Process Automation

Benefits of Generative AI

I first heard about generative AI for art in 2019 when I read Helen Papagiannis’s book, Augmented Human. Although, I didn’t know that’s what I was reading about. Papagiannis described in her book, an app called Prisma (it’s still available today). She said the app is different from filters in that it “uses three neural networks that each perform a different task, from analyzing your image to extracting an art style to applying it to the image.”

An image of flamingos generated from Prisma in 2019 based on a photo I took at the zoo.

People use generative AI because it helps them do tasks faster. For instance, for this post, I used ChatGPT to generate an outline for this blog post. Could I come up with one myself? Sure. But by using ChatGPT, I could get the part I enjoy faster – the writing.

For years, I believed that AR and VR would take off once it was as easy to use as editing a video and uploading it to YouTube. That’s why I was so excited by the No Code movement. Now anyone can build an app without needing to know the complexities of coding. But knowing how to code helps.

Of course, using generative AI isn’t without its challenges – especially for laymen like me. I can pay for apps like Prisma and Lensa to generate avatars and images for me. Or I could use OpenAI models for free.

Train your own image AI

Anita Kirkovska shared a tutorial on how to make your own AI-generated avatars. It was the same concept as Lensa. Link a Google folder, upload 10-20 selfies, and train the AI on them. Except something went wrong. I couldn’t get the model to work.

Maybe if you have more time, you can get it to work. Or pay for Lensa.

Build a No Code App + OpenAI

Used @bubble and #ChatGPT to build out an app to breakdown, organize, and spoon feed me tasks so I don't have to 🥄🥄 pic.twitter.com/H92UC0Py3S
— andybrvt (@andybrvt1) December 25, 2022

This guy used Bubble and ChapGPT to build an app that estimates the time it takes to do a task. I created a Bubble.io account to try and make an AI-enabled app, but again, I couldn’t get it to work. Maybe I needed to use a paid tier to get the integration to work. Either way, the How To documentation was poor.

If you’re able to figure it out, please let me know.

The future of Generative AI

We’re starting to see what people can do with artificial intelligence. As accessibility comes to the masses, more people will be able to use their creativity to build with AI. Whether that’s cool AI art or naughty deep fakes is to be seen.