Goodie Haul: Beaver Lake Nature Center's 45th Annual Golden Harvest Festival

Goodies!

There's nothing like autumn in Central New York. While the trees haven't dressed out in their fall colors yet in Baldwinsville, NY, Beaver Lake Nature Center's seasonal spirit was in full swing last weekend at the 45th Annual Golden Harvest Festival.

I can't seem to attend a book signing at a craft fair or festival without finding a treasure (or several) to take home. This festival was no exception.

My first stop was Link's Stained Glass Creations, where I picked up this gorgeous autumn-toned piece for a window in my living room and a sweet bookmark-sized piece featuring pine trees, which now has a home in my office.

Next, I visited Woodpecker Turnings, where I scored a tiny Russian olivewood bowl, and a larger one of spalted maple. As a graduate from a forestry and agricultural college (and an all-around fan of nature, if my name wasn't any indication), I have a deep love of trees and woodworking.

 

Finally, I nabbed the cutest, tiniest little rattan basket for an empty hook in my living room, where it will now display seasonal flowers. Bouquet of Baskets offered hand-woven baskets of all sizes and in different shades. Anyone who's seen the inside of my house cannot deny my love of baskets and lanterns.

 
Buy Local, Buy Small

It's important to buy from local artisans and small businesses when possible. Not only are you supporting your local economy and human creativity, but you're also getting handcrafted, one-of-a-kind goods that you'll never find in those big-box stores. Your purchases also act as reminders of memories made with friends and family, as I have over my years of traveling to shows with The Wandering Wordsmiths. I love looking around my house and finding little reminders of good times. Who doesn't want more of those?

Hope to see you at a future event, readers! Until then, Happy Autumn from NY!

Playing Nice With the Robot

 

AI: Your New Frenemy?

So, let’s talk about the elephant in the writing room: generative AI, or generative artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been around for decades, and everyone from Isaac Asimov to Star Trek has broached the subject of what separates man from machine. New things are often intimidating, but the advent of widespread AI is striking terror in the hearts of writers and artists who fear it may chip into our intellectual property rights, or supplant us altogether.

I created the above image in Canva in about ten minutes. The Canva engine speeds up a process which would have taken me loads more time, searching for separate images of grass, the elephant, the background, and some planets to kit-bash into the wonder you see before you. That’s not even going there about how long it might take me to paint such a striking creation…let alone cleaning it up and making it look halfway realistic.

AI Art Ain’t That Smart (Yet)

AI is only as smart as the information it’s fed, so as of now, your images are either all going to look like odd renderings of Nicholas Cage, or comically terrible mutations of human hands. Your writing is probably going to be the same as every other similarly-prompted chunk of text, so maybe it’s not such a good idea to ask that bot to churn out your Shakespeare essay for you.

All that is changing…slowly.

As you may know, until recently, the easiest way to spot an AI-generated image has been the terrible rendering of hands. That’s becoming a problem of the past for engines like Midjourney. Other engines are following suit, learning with the processing of each new item of input.

Words, Words, Words

Writing is no different. ChatGPT has been successful in fooling trained people into thinking its text responses were those of a live person. Lest you think that’s license to roll out that generated Shakespeare essay, though, consider this: AI will never replace you. The one thing artificial intelligence can’t do is duplicate the life experience of a real human being. It cannot fabricate emotion. All it can do is display an image or piece of text, and art? Art is collaborative, between the piece produced, the person consuming it, and their individual worldview. That’s a varied beauty AI will never replace.

Try Me

AI can be useful, automating tasks such as removing or replacing backgrounds or unwanted items in images for artists. It can generate prompts on which an author can build new ideas…but it’s up to the artist to enrich and enliven the content. Think of AI as a springboard. It can’t give you the emotion in the art, but it may spark the idea that draws that emotion out of you. It can be a partner in creating your art, and as it improves, that ability is only going to get better. So while I’m not advocating using AI to generate your next book, it may be just the writing-prompt generator to get you out of that slump you’ve been in.

Let’s face it: AI is here to stay, and it’s being used for tasks all around us. Better to make friends and understand this monster from the inside out, no? And it doesn’t cost anything to explore it. If you aren’t ready to spend a monthly fee on Midjourney, there are plenty of AI generators you can try for free. Among them is Playground AI, which, while not perfect, generated this image for me in seconds compared to the several minutes it took me to generate the image at the top of this page using Canva. As it improves, AI will help cover artists generate specialized content for their clients, and many engines are now allowing creators to use generated images for commercial purposes (just be sure you’re not trying to pass off that picture of Nicholas Cage as your own). You can even upload your own photos and create content based on them.

Your Thoughts?

Let me know what you think about the future of AI and what it means for you as an artist or author. I’m always happy to hear from my readers!