Replacing You, 1.1: OpenAI is piloting a paid version

Hey there,

It sure feels like the future is here, huh? I’m sure your feeds are chock full of news about ChatGPT and its newest competitor, the Midjourney-created Family Guy, or the latest opinions about generative AI at large.

My favorite of the week, though, is this one from Fast Company that (smartly) believes AI writing bots ain’t taking your job anytime soon, so you might as well learn how to use them.

Yeah, that’s the vibe we like – a solid amount of skepticism towards AI seen through lens of an opportunist. Our happy medium, so to speak. And, to steal a slice from the piece, AI may not have empathy but I sure do. So, lemme quit wasting your time and get to the good stuff.

Alas, here are the three tools you need to know about so that new intern doesn’t steal your job.

Scribe: You know when you’re at work and you find yourself repeatedly explaining a process to someone and they’ve got that glazed over look in their eyes and they just keep nodding their head but you know none of what you say has a remote chance of sticking? Yeah, we’re talking about you Trevor in Finance…

Well, it turns out AI can help with that. Scribe helps you turn any process into a step-by-step guide by simply recording your process straight from the browser or desktop and auto-generating a how-to guide. Whether you’re trying to train [notice how I didn’t say “upskill” there? [insert eyeroll emoji]], document a process, enhance customer experience through instruction, or onboard new hires, Scribe can at least make it so you don’t have to talk to Trevor. Whether or not he actually remembers to watch the recording is out of Scribe’s hands – and ours!

Descript: We just freaking love a product that rethinks the way an entire (well-established) category operates and Descript has done just that. For those of you who aren’t keenly familiar [or struggling with a real dose of non-linear induced trauma], back in the day – I think it was a Wednesday – we used to painstakingly bang our heads against the keyboard late at night trying to figure out the hell to use products like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut. Well, that’s not really a thing anymore thanks to Descript’s transcript-based editing tool and, well, non non-linear format.

Throw in the AI that automagically removes “umms” and, hot damn, this thing slaps. You can record your own video or screen, add your own files, or pull in stock footage (eye roll), stock photos (where’s Ken Burns when you need him?), and Giphys! And it all gets timed out and synced up based on your transcript edits.

Listen, there were a lot of random references in the last two paragraphs. As hilarious as I thought they were, I don’t want them to take away from the fact that WE LOVE THIS TOOL. You should too.

Cleanup.pictures: Ok, this one is admittedly a bit of a deep cut, but stay with me. You ever have a really good pic but there’s some rando in the background or messing up the foreground? Well, this tool can make it like Thanos snapped his fingers and removed him – and only him – from the picture.

It’s pretty wild. I messed around a bit with the free version and it seems like they’ve taken Photoshop’s (cripes, this is the first edition of this newsletter and Adobe’s already taking a beating) “Magic Wand” tool but made it a thousand times more pinpoint and actually usable by humans. It’s actually using a retouch technology called “inpainting,” which is more akin to Photoshop’s stamp tool. It uses AI to better identify the image data underneath the unwanted area. It’s pretty wild, check it out at cleanup.pictures.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week when we highlight three more tools creatives just like you need to know about. Of course, you can always visit ReplacingYou.com to see the entire landscape. We add tools daily.

Until next time, don’t let the AI take your job! Or worse, don’t let Trevor from Accounting use AI to take your job!

Cheers,

-Ben