Well, howdy there internet peeps and those past their growth spurts...
It's Troy again...
Good luck to those with issues, health issues, or water heater problems.
Terry: Keep your head down for the next few months.
Chad's post on the AI Music he's producing is a good segway into the AI topic.
A fellow author and advertising guru has a private facebook group where we can hangout and soak in her marketing wisdom. She's also created an AI report where we can submit our manuscripts, and her AI marketing whiz bot will tear it apart, analyze it, and spit out a report that is marketing gold. (I still have to do something with the ones I paid for).
Well, yesterday, she decided to open a topic on the group for discussion by we indie authors: Are we using AI in our businesses? How so? Where do we see AI and the author biz going in the near future.
I'm not gung-ho on AI, but I use it. I used to fall for the anti-AI hype. But realism set in. Genie and Bottle metaphors abound.
But there is a VERY VOCAL minority - from the data in various non-scientific surveys about Indie Authors, less than 5% of such are opposed to all AI in their businesses. But, man! are they ever LOUD about it.
1. It's THEFT! - Well, not really in most cases. Courts are deciding that as long as the bots are not retaining the data used to train there isn't an issue of using material from the web to train. Even if the training materials came from pirate sites (all of my books are on pirate sites - and it's whack-a-mole to get them down, so I don't bother) it's not illegal to use them to train. The crime was stealing them in the first place.
2. Water & Electric usage - it's the usual crowd you'd expect complaining about that. And there are some good arguments in this for regulation. Data Centers don't employ a lot of people, but do us a lot of resources. But it's on US to get our poly-tick-ians to make those regulations.
To be honest, I was gearing up to do live vendor events. Go to game conventions, pop-cons, comic cons, etc as an author-vendor. Put my paperbacks on the table and try to sell them. But, some of my covers are AI images bashed together. And I don't want to deal with the one or two people who might recognize them as such and throw a huge stink. I want to avoid that conflict.
So I'm just keeping my head down with the author name. I word the words, but use the AI in the lead up and follow up to the writing.
In other news, I'm trying out this set of sleepbuds
They bluetooth to my phone, and have a variety of onboard or in-app white noise and tinnitus-type masking sounds.
The "wing" off the bottom of the disk is very soft silicone and designed to brace the earbud into the ear. They do stay in overnight. BUT, like getting use to hearing aids, I need to build up a callous in each ear to not feel them. That might take a week.
The other downside is the volume of the "onboard" masking noises. I can download them to the buds, combining up to three (currently: Ocean waves, train clicky-clacks, and crickets)... BUT the volume drops by half when using them on-board without bluetooth to the phone.
So, I'm having to use the bluetooth to get the volume in the sound I need to mask the tinnitus.
The first night I tried them, I did not realize they were set to stop making noise once it detected I was asleep. I kept waking up and hitting the app on my phone to restart the sound. Last night was better after I set it to stay on all night.
But, the transition from the sleep headband to these caused my tinnitus to spike since I wasn't masking it very well the first night. It'll take about a week to settle down. By then, I should know if I want to keep or return these.
Have a good day!
