Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad AI?

USUALLY, I WOULDN’T date an Editor’s Note with recent news, but just this morning I saw something debuting from OpenAI: Sora, “an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions,” per its website. Type in “two pirate ships battle in a coffee cup” and there you have it. Some of the “imaginative scenes” (short videos) can be pretty convincing.

Yet another amazing “model” from the company that brought us ChatGPT. I’m imagining how sign companies might make use of this: “a Sprinter van wrapped in royal blue with bright orange accents drives down a street.” And I’m imagining those threatened by this, such as video-production companies.

Technology has always brought change, sometimes radically so. Around four decades ago, computer-aided design and signmaking revolutionized the sign industry. To address the question of AI and signs specifically, we’ve covered or mentioned it in several parts of this issue — from our feature on ideas shaping the sign business to whether or not your peers already use AI, when they plan to (if ever) and what they fear most about it.

I admit it: I’m a bit afraid of AI. Afraid it could render my creativity obsolete, replace me at my job, become dangerously self-aware and more. Luckily, (I guess?) OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also claims to be a little afraid. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this,” he told ABC News in an interview.

Whatever change AI brings to the sign industry, on behalf of Signs of the Times, “I’ll be back.”