#9 Minds & Machines: Apple's AI announcements, Canva's AI tools + try ChatGPT mind maps
Plus, create quick email subject lines + how to make a colourful zine by hand
Hello,
I hope all is good with you.
I’m not going to lie, I’m feeling very happy – and a bit pooped. At the weekend I co-hosted my first weekend yoga and creativity retreat. It was sooo lush (pics below).
This weekend reminded me just how important human creativity is. The whole process is so connecting, freeing, inspiring, calming – and good for our wellbeing.
It’s also made me even more determined to keep nurturing and preserving our humanness in this busy AI world.
On that note, I’m sitting on a panel tonight at the London Adobe offices. The topic? How should humans co-create with AI? Exciting.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m running a Solstice Women’s Circle in the woods. Then I have workshops and talks, including one at an IT firm and one at an agency.
Plus, I’m crafting tone of voice guidelines for an innovative company. For the first time, my main guidelines will also include a tone of voice blueprint for ChatGPT. This is because the team are using the tool in some areas of their work.
There’s no point in having a great tone of voice for one part of your business, and then using the default ChatGPT tone in another, right?
If you need anything similar, you know where I am.
Anyway, I think that’s it for now. Let’s get cracking.
What’s inside this edition:
🤖 AI News and Views
Meet Apple Intelligence
Canva’s AI tools get an upgrade
Dove’s AI prompt guide
Create mind maps with ChatGPT
💛 The Human Element
I hosted my first weekend retreat
Make a zine with one piece of paper
🤖 AI News & Views
AI tools, techniques and discoveries to help you with your content creation
Top AI features revealed at Apple’s developer conference 2024
image generated on Midjourney
On Monday, Apple kicked off its World Wide Developer Conference – WWDC 2024. As expected, there were plenty of generative AI announcements, from a supercharged Siri to AI-generated emoji.
Here are some of the key AI highlights:
Apple Intelligence – A.I (see what they did there?). This is the company’s new GenAI offering and will be integral to all of its operating systems going forward. It also has privacy at its core.
CEO Tim Cook said: “It has to be built with privacy from the ground up together. All of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple”.
Siri gets an update - Thanks to Apple Intelligence, Siri will soon be able to respond to what’s on your screen and take action in/across apps. For example, Apple talked about Siri being able to find information on-device and then use it to fill out a form.
ChatGPT integration - ChatGPT will be added to Siri and Apple Writing Tools later this year. You’ll have the option to use ChatGPT for your writing, or to answer questions about specific documents on your device.
Source: Apple
Hello Genmoji – Using Apple Intelligence, you can make your own emoji and images. Simply type in a prompt and you’ll be able to generate an emoji on the fly. And if you don’t like it? Swipe and choose from other options. Sounds fun.
🤔 My thoughts
I like the sound of Apple Intelligence, especially with its focus on privacy, which feels more and more important in this era of GenAI.
Interestingly, the reveal of Apple Intelligence also sent their stock price soaring yesterday. They're now the biggest private company on the planet again with a valuation of $3.3 trillion. (Microsoft sits just behind at $3.26 trillion.)
Cool new AI additions in Canva
Sticker generated on Canva Text to Graphic with prompt: A cup of tea with a background of mountains and sunshine
Canva’s recent rap performance may have been labelled as cringeworthy (I’ll let you decide). But from what I’ve tried so far, their new AI additions are pretty handy.
Canva’s AI Magic Studio was released back in October 2023. And according to the site, it has been used over 6 billion times since then.
Here’s a quick run-down of some of their brand new AI additions.
Magic Media
Alongside their existing Text to Image and Text to Video tools, you’ll now find a new Text to Graphic option. Describe what you’d like to create, choose a style and hey presto.
Beware: it’s really addictive!
Source: Canva blog.
Magic Design upgrades
The idea is still the same, but the results are better. Describe what you’re looking for and Canva will generate a presentation or social post for you in seconds. I’ve always found the results a bit hit-and-miss, but the upgraded tool does seem better.
Personalised tone of voice in Magic Write
Canva has been using GenAI writing for a while, but it now promises to “generate text using your unique tone of voice”. Upload a sample and Magic Write will write like you – apparently.
So many tools promise this, and I’m still to find one that actually delivers. The way GenAI models are trained means they can’t ever sound JUST like you. I’m sorry, they can’t.
So, by all means upload your samples and move it away from the default tone (that’s essential). But please also add your own quirks, style and stories. That’s what will set your writing apart.
Video Editor
I tried this today and it’s nice. The Highlights tool will quickly let you choose highlights from a longer video and generate a shorter clip. Super handy for social media. I’ve still got to try it with a scripted video – that’ll be a good test.
Source: Canva blog.
AI-powered apps
You can do even more with your images by exploring Canva’s Apps Marketplace. Upscaling. Monochrome to colour. Cartoonify. Animeify. Colorify – and many other ‘ify’ things. It’s all possible. Enjoy!
❤️ Dove’s brilliant No-AI campaign + free prompt guide
When it comes to generating images with AI, there’s a bias problem.
Ask for an image of a CEO and you’ll get a man. (I tried again today just to make sure).
Ask for an image of a woman, and they’ll be young, thin and tick the stereotypical beauty boxes.
This is why I love Dove’s new campaign, ‘The Code’. It challenges the false beauty standards that are being perpetuated further by GenAI. And I think it’s great.
According to their research, 1 in 3 women feel pressure to alter their appearance because of what they’ve seen online – even if they know the images are AI-generated.
So, the brand has promised never to use AI for creating or distorting images of women.
To top everything off, they’ve released the Real Beauty Prompt Playbook. A guide to help you generate images representing real beauty on the most popular AI platforms. Plus, a glossary of terms to make your prompting more inclusive.
Bravo.
Generate mind maps using Whimsical Diagrams in the GPT store
Now that the Open AI’s GPT Store is rolling out to everyone as part of GPT-4o, I thought I’d share the Whimsical Diagrams GPT.
It’s a nice tool for explaining and visualising concepts with flowcharts, mindmaps and sequence diagrams.
Back in 2003 when I was a Junior Copywriter, my Creative Director introduced me to Tony Buzan’s Mindmaps. He thought they’d help calm my scattered/wild mind.
I was a bit offended at the time, but he was right. And I’ve used them ever since.
Anyway, I was quite excited when someone told me about AI-generated mind maps.
Of course, there’s something magical about going through the process by hand (that’s what calms my mind), but if you like a quick visual representation, give the AI option a go.
Here’s a prompt if you’d like to try one:
“Please create a mind map to brainstorm ideas on [enter topic]. Start with [main topic] at the centre. Then branch out to subtopics like [give a couple of examples]”
⭐ Useful AI writing prompts
Handy prompts from my toolbox
Email subject lines
Need some email subject lines pronto? Here’s a quick prompt to give you some thought starters:
“I will give you an email. Please generate 10 intriguing and compelling subject lines for the email. My target audience is [describe target audience], the tone of voice is [explain tone of voice].
[Copy and paste email]”
P.S. I’d suggest you don’t add anything private, confidential or proprietary into these models.
👁️ AI that caught my eye
My AI picks from across the web
What is your dog really saying when it barks? Maybe AI researchers at the University of Michigan can tell you!
The cost of training AI models. Yikes. And apparently that’s nothing. According to Machine Learning scientist Nathan Lambert, Llama 4 could cost upwards of $1 billion to train. While some estimates suggest the training of GPT-5 could cost up to $2.5 billion.
Medium introduces a new AI policy
Big tech giants pledge to honour AI safety commitments, including a ‘kill switch’ if can’t mitigate risks.
💛 The Human Element
A celebration of our wild minds and creative souls
I hosted my first yoga + creative retreat. It was lush!
I’m still coming back down to earth after hosting my first yoga and meditation weekend retreat. I co-hosted with the wonderful Yoga Guide Carolyn Thompson.
It was a weekend of yoga-ing, making art with nature, creating art journals, sitting around the fire, and writing with pen and paper.
We finished with a spontaneous and slightly mad idea. A 20-metre run + scream in the woods. 12 women running and howling at the top of their voices was not only very freeing but also ended in a lot of laughter.
I’m debating if I can do this in my garden without raising any alarms!
Anyway, we got some lovely feedback, including this beautifully poetic one:
“It felt like the ultimate in duvet days. I leave feeling nurtured and uplifted with deep rest hugging my body and soul.”
So, we’re doing another one next year. Yay. Thursday 19th - Sunday 22nd June 2025.
We’re still working out all the details, but if you fancy a weekend of hanging in the woods, moving and making, let me know. We might even do the scream thing again too!
Make a zine with one piece of paper
One of the workshops I guided on the retreat was creating a simple art journal/zine. All you need is one piece of paper and whatever art materials you have around.
We used watercolours, pastels and some collage bits on ours. The idea was to play. No agenda or no need to make anything perfect. Just splosh and make patterns until your heart is content. Then fold it up.
The folding is simple – and takes just one cut/rip. I used Austin Kleon’s video as my guide. He has a lovely newsletter too.
Enjoy.
☀️ Upcoming Adventures
My upcoming public talks, workshops and events
Today I’m on a panel at Conversations on AI: How Should Humans Co-create with AI? at the Adobe Offices in London.
Come along to Collaborate – I’m one of nine speakers here and I can’t wait.
Summer Solstice Women’s Circle: Writing in the Woods, Wed 20 June 7-9pm, Bristol
10% off tickets for CopyCon. I’m super proud to be speaking as part of CopyCon 2024. Give me a shout if you’d like 10% off tickets.