7 – AI vs. Web Designers: Friend, Foe… or Secret Weapon?

[00:00:00] What’s up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories, strategies to help you build your web design empire. From a side gig to multiple six figs. That’s right. I’m John, joined by Kelly. We’re full-time freelance web designers who’ve escaped the real world. Broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, and our commutes.
A lot of breaking up over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back. We’re also course creators, web design, business coaches. Web design store owners, Kelly owns Airbnbs and I’m a tour professional musician. All that to say we are constantly building our empires. Today’s episode is titled AI and the Future of Web Design.
But first, Kelly, how’s it going? How’s, how was your week weekend?
Yeah. [00:01:00] Uh, well, it’s snowing right now, which makes me a little angry. I’m over it. But , this, this last weekend was my middle child’s first dance competition of the season, so I. That was my whole weekend. I was at a convention center for three entire days to watch about six minutes of dance.
Oh man. And I remember with one of our coaching, one of our coaching students, you had mentioned that the award ceremony was like super late at night.
Oh yeah. Uh, the, on Friday night, the awards started at like 11:15 PM for my 13-year-old. Yeah. Stupid.
How does that
I, you okay? You know what, I just gotta say on the off chance my, my child ever stumbles into this podcast. I gotta be nice. But, but, the whole like, you know how our generation is getting slammed for a reward or maybe it’s our [00:02:00] parents, I don’t know, . Like in sports, everyone gets a trophy or whatever. I’m pretty sure that started with competitive dance. , literally everyone gets a trophy at these, at these, at least this one. , my daughter got second out of her three, , people she was competing against , got a like 16 inch trophy,, for it. Everyone got a trophy. One of their dances got two trophies ’cause they were the only ones in their category. , , it’s just silly. And , I danced for 15 years. Like I’m a appreciator of the, of the stuff. But, , God, it’s a racket. It is such a racket. Anyway,
Rant over.
our 3-year-old, our 3-year-old is in dance, but right now it’s kind of like
Oh, there you go. That’s
where it starts.
it seems like it’s more for something to do right now than it is , like, you
not a whole lot of things
three year olds can do. It’s
dance or it’s , air quote, soccer, like, it’s not really soccer, it’s just a toddlers running around chasing a ball. , but yeah, there’s not a whole lot. , and again, it’s good. Like it [00:03:00] builds confidence. It
puts ’em on a stage. Like I, I appreciate all those things about it, but , these comps are just a, just a racket.
Oh man. Last week I was in, , speaking of snow, I was on the opposite of that. I was down in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the Tampa, Tampa Bay area. Had a, , a couple shows out there, and then a, , , an investor meeting for our tech startup that were, that my band mate and I are starting, and it was interesting.
about how that went or,
Yeah, I’ll share a couple minor things from it that I thought was interesting. So, it’s a $2.5 million raise and the investors that are at this meeting represented about 2 million of that. So it’s the majority of them, and I was so nervous. , , we were in like a little courtyard.
Area with two long tables where everyone sat at and they were served dinner and drinks. We set up , a little in the corner, little music and at the end we played three songs just to kind of lighten the mood up and everything, but I.
That’s
For the, for the [00:04:00] main part. , the lead investor who we ended up staying with, , it’s interesting that I’m like staying at the guy’s house that I’m kind of negotiating against.
Oh,
But anyway, , he made , this PowerPoint presentation and the restaurant’s like, yeah, we have a TV you can use. We show up and it’s like , a 36 inch T It’s a, it’s small. It’s very small. He’s got all these like projections up there , and nobody can see him. Nobody can see that he’s only got like six slides.
So he, he kicks it off and then he wants me to talk about. Like features , of this app or whatever. , , so , we get up there, we tell a couple stories about a couple successful events , that this startup helps do. And the investors are engaged in that. They’re like, yeah, I.
Then I start talking about features and they’re just like checking their phone, like they snore fest. , so halfway into it, I bail and in my head I’m like, they just want to hear stories. So I tell a few more stories.
And then the best part was this investor way in the back, [00:05:00] this older gentleman raises his hand. The guy asked a question about how are you gonna market this or whatever.
Brian starts answering the question 20 seconds into Brian’s answer. This guy’s like already on his phone not even looking at him anymore, which afterward , our Dennis, the lead guy told us, yeah, you get like 15 seconds of that guy’s time and then he just moves on and I’m sitting there and .
I’m like, these people are already in, , we don’t need to resell them. , they’re already in, and then , one investor, as they were leaving, she’s like, let’s roll the dice.
It was, I was so nervous. I’ve never been that nervous for any show
it’s definitely a weird feeling talking to someone , who’s investing a couple hundred grand into .
Your idea And , inside you’re like, man, I hope this works out. But , all these folks are pretty well off , and it, they know the
I would imagine if they’re saying, let’s roll the dice, then, uh, .
so that was a [00:06:00] unique, I’ve never done that before.
I’ve never had to. Go out and ask for investment money before. , that was a unique experience for sure. And I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad it’s over.
that sounds stressful. yowza.
Maybe AI can do that for me in the future if I ever have to do again. So let’s, let’s dive in. Kelly. Are we being replaced by machine Kelly? Are we being replaced by machines?
Is Skynet, is Skynet from Terminator? Is is it upon us?
We had a little conversation over Slack before this, and I was like, is this even John? And he said, it’s John Connor. , maybe, I mean, maybe is this even us?
Go Google, , labs or whatever. , you can just have them spit out a podcast anymore with two, two people. I’m air quoting again.
, talk about. Whatever topic you give them. , it’s wild. But yeah, let’s talk about AI as it pertains to, , our industry, , which is web design of course. , and the reason , this topic came up, well, actually it’s come up a few [00:07:00] times and we keep saying, oh, we gotta do an episode. Oh, we gotta do an episode, , but recently , I was kind of ranting, , on Voxer with one of our mentorship students and got onto AI for whatever reason. , and , I’m just ranting and talking about the different threats that I think . Actually exist. , ’cause I don’t think it’s the tools, but , we’ll get into that. But then I went on to say, , I think the bigger threat is people using Chat GPT as a search engine , and
how it’s going to handle that. , which , we’ll get into more, but then sure as heck, something out of the ordinary happened the next week, , with John’s web design, company artillery.
So please share what happened.
Yeah. So every time a lead comes in through our contact form on our website, , it asks them how’d they hear about us. And , it was uncanny like a few days after we had this convo. I. , , how’d you hear about us? Normally you’re gonna see Google or referred by some other client, something like that, and it said, chat, GPT,
Boom.
I was I knew it. That was my [00:08:00] response.
and so. Then we went down this little trail of like, okay, well, I’m gonna ask Chat GPT Hey, what? I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. , what company should I use to build my website? And the
And then it didn’t even, it didn’t even tell you artillery, right?
it didn’t, even list artillery in the six that it gave me. And three of the six , were website design companies that are pretty bad.
, I don’t even know if they’re . One of them doesn’t even do websites. And then in the sources, like it tells you where it’s sourced.
right.
A link from our website was in the sources,
Yes,
I saw that. ’cause I did the same thing, , which is crazy, but it didn’t list you as one of the
five recommendations. Uh, and then, and then , when I asked Chat, GPT, I was like, Hey, the way I wrote it was, who’s the best web designer in Longmont, Colorado? And it like. Got all cheeky and it was like, looks like you’re looking for a pat on the back. Like it knew, it already knew that I’m a web designer because of the interactions I’ve [00:09:00] had with it. , so that was funny. But then, , that same week, I’m not kidding, the next day, , a marketing person , that I listened to a lot, had that exact same experience where someone got on her calendar for a call. And she asked the exact same question and she does like a marketing mastermind and her que, , it was, , how did you find out about me? And the answer was, chat, GPT. And this particular person uses chat, GPT for like, everything. Like she has claimed it has taken off 20 to 30% of her workload, which. Blows my mind. ’cause , there is no chance of that happening in my universe. , but since she uses it so much, she went straight to chat GPT and was like, Hey, why did you recommend me to this person
on the other side of the country, , for mentorship services? , and what it said was that, , based on its interactions with her and based on its interactions with that other woman, it just knew that it was a good fit.
. So it know like it’s, she has done so much interaction with chat GPT, that it knew, okay, this is how she [00:10:00] works, this is what she does. And then when this other person , had interacted with it a lot, and that person said she uses it like a life coach.
And so that particular version of chat, GPT. Obviously is the same thing, right? And so , it just put those two together. But seeing the results, ’cause it kind of works like a search engine ’cause it spits out options and , it has the links. But I imagine that will continue to evolve because it’s bringing in these other sources.
What happens when, chat GPT becomes a search engine or
whatever, like who knows what’s gonna happen,
one thing, I was really surprised when it didn’t list artillery as
right.
an option was that, if you go Google Web design Lincoln Nebraska, , we’re gonna be up there in the , top three and
we have a hundred ninety one five star Google reviews. , the next folks are like 40 something
Yeah.
I just couldn’t believe that it didn’t
So where is it pulling its data if
it’s not coming from freaking Google, , and Google reviews. [00:11:00] How is it making? Isn’t that wild? So have those companies have they interacted with chat GPT more?
Prob. Yeah, prob You know what, they’re probably doing some of this stuff that I think web design companies shouldn’t be doing. Uh, no. I wonder , , if I’m building websites. And I’m using Chat GPT constantly to generate images , and texts. For me, , is it, am I training it?
Am I training it that, Hey, I’m a web, I’m a web designer. So then do we need to go to every different, you know, chat g pt,
Right.
grock. Whatever, uh, Gemini , and have like eight conversations with them all. Like, Hey, by the way, we build websites. Hey,
or no, you train one to have conversations with all the rest of ’em.
Did you know that we’ve been willing websites for this many? Like, like,
have you seen all of our reviews?
I’m gonna have to sell. I’m gonna tell Jake, Hey, take your, take your client’s [00:12:00] slide presentation and you need to pitch to chat GPT. You need to sell it like it’s, it’s a client. So, yeah.
I know. I mean, it’s, it’s really interesting. But, but that, I think, , I wouldn’t even call that a threat. It’s just something to watch as far as like how that’s going to evolve. Because I think that will absolutely continue to evolve. I mean, ultimately, as long as there’s an internet, there’s gonna be websites and there’s gonna be web designers.
, so as long as the internet exists. We’re good. And right now chat, GPT is pulling its results from the internet. So unless it somehow replaces that, which would be a, obviously a massive undertaking. , I don’t know, it’s just a really interesting, , I don’t like thinking about it ’cause it just, , it’s wild.
It can go a lot of places there. ,
Well, yeah. Let’s go to, let’s go to threats. Let’s go to
some other threats.
I think I think when people like knee jerk would hear, , what are the threats to the web design industry with ai, they’re gonna think [00:13:00] of the tools, right? , like Elementor has an AI tool. Uh, Wix has an AI tool,
Squarespace, whatever they have these oh Divi, , shows how much I use it. , but there’s these AI tools that exist to like whip up templates or whatever. But as custom web designers, , like John and I are, those aren’t threats to us because those are like DIY tools, right? , and so for those people looking for DIY solutions for a website, then yeah, they’re gonna find those and they’re gonna use them.
But those were never our clients in the first place. So I just don’t see the actual web design AI tools as a threat.
We gotta park on that because, , I wholeheartedly agree. Like everyone’s knee jerk. Absolutely. When it first came out, people were like, what are we gonna do? Like, oh no. and it reminded me of a couple things. Number one, , and I just actually saw Super Bowl ad that Squarespace was in this last weekend, but years ago, GoDaddy came out with their own website builder, [00:14:00] drag and drop builder.
They ran this commercial during the Super Bowl that was like, Hey, build your website with GoDaddy and host it for one year for $1. And my business partner in the web design, Jake, he texted me and he’s like, what are we gonna do? And I was like, we’re not gonna do anything because these folks aren’t our customers.
Someone trying
Nope.
to DIY, their own website. Is so far away from paying us our fee to build their way. It’s, it’s just not the same. So I think that’s the, the big key is like, hey, it’s like, , what I told our coaching student was, Hey, you, she, she got brand new photos for her.
She worked building a new website for herself, for her company, and she got brand new photos. And it was like, , why did you do that? Why did you hire a photographer and spend, , a couple grand or whatever on new photos? , you have an iPhone. If you have an iPhone stand, has a countdown timer on
There’s an AI photography app that can,
There’s an ai, there’s an AI photography app, you know.
and my [00:15:00] kids were like, that doesn’t look like you.
So, but my bigger point was like, , I’ll tell you why. Because you realize that the best use of your time isn’t, , getting these photos done. It’s a way quicker, easier, and you want that creative input from that professional photographer who’s been doing it for years. Same thing with our clients.
they don’t wanna mess with this stuff. they want us to build their site
plate and they want it done professionally and well and right the first time. And who knows what AI’s gonna spit out first, second, third, fourth, fifth time. You know, it’s just
a crap shoot.
and , before AI existed, there was Fiverr where you could go and probably get a
there’s, there’s still Fiverr. Fiverr came screaming back into my life this last week. , some Fiverr developer completely ripped off my brother’s entire website that, , that I built. So that was an interesting conversation. Anyway, so Fiverr is still out there, but
So what? Artificial unintelligence maybe. Um, and
What a great tagline. [00:16:00] That should be
I just thought of that.
good. Uh oh.
Fiverr. Hit us up. Hit us.
up. We’ll sell it to you
already trademarked.
Oh, okay. So that’s obviously the biggest threat was, oh no, we’re gonna be replaced by AI building websites for companies. Um, well, or, or like, the most ridiculous thing I heard was, well, folks won’t even need websites anymore ’cause Chat GPT will just tell them
Well, well, that’s just it. But again, when it comes to service providers, , Chat GPT can’t do their plumbing. You know what? I wish it could , the best, meme I’ve seen about AI is like, Hey, ai, can you find a way to do my laundry and dishes instead of my creative job? . That’s what it should be used for, but it can’t do that stuff.
It never will be able to. And so therefore,
therefore, people are gonna need a way to find those plumbers that can do those things for them. , home services, professional services, again, photography, , web [00:17:00] design, marketing. there’s certainly aspects like, , I’ve used SEO AI tools, . I’ve used AI tools alongside, , web design that are somewhat useful.
We will get there. We’ll get there.
well, I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry.
that’s kind of opportunity. What are the what, what, what other
What other threats
Threats. , so this is kind of a self-induced threat , that us as designers or clients can do with ai. I said us , and or our clients relying too much on AI copywriting. So. Going back to , one of our coaching students, , they had a lead come in recently and they, and, , what the lead liked about their website is they, yeah, we liked your website.
’cause it felt real, it felt like, there was a human there and I was like, yeah, probably because other web designers in your area are all redoing their websites right now, and they’re using chat GPT to write their copywriting, which is probably full of , in today’s online marketing world, stand out your [00:18:00] website with, did you know that?
You know, like, we can all still kind of tell when we read a paragraph like, yeah. Oh my. Okay. I got a funny story. So speaking of,, , when we first were trying to raise this money for this tech startup, we had to come up with a pitch deck and one of the slides had to be, each founder in a bio and
my band mate, business partner in this venture, he’s very creative. He’s, , I call him the evangelist because he’s just out there, , who knows what, where . He has all kinds of leads. They’re all just kind of floating over his head. Fuzzy math is a term that he uses. Okay, a creative bird just flying around, , being thrown to and fro by the wind. Okay, fine. I said, Hey, I need a bio from you. A week later, hey, I still need that bio, whatever. And he sends me this paragraph. And one sentence in the middle of the paragraph is like, Brian’s ability to harness his creative prowess.
I was just stopped [00:19:00] and I texted him, I said, you didn’t write this, did you? And he goes, no. And he, he goes, no exclamation point.
he is all proud.
And then all caps, he wrote back, I use chat GBT. And go, Hey, it’s chat, GPT, not chat, GBT. If you’re gonna use it, at least get the name right. So.
that’s
I feel, I feel like for the most part it’s getting better, but we can still kind of tell like, yeah, that I think that
Well, I
by ai.
Yes. And I think of people just one off use it and like, write this and give it like, you know, it, it all comes down to the prompts. , and then now I’m learning how well, , chat GPT actually knows you and how much you use it. , it literally does learn and get better. , just earlier today I sent John a, a description that chat GPT came up with for, , one of our.
Podcast episodes, and I have honed this in pretty good so that it kind of grabs our [00:20:00] personality and , it’s a little cheeky and sarcastic, but , it came up with way better stuff than, , well first then I could, ’cause I, I would still be sitting on it. I’d never do it. , and also , the, , AI tool I’m using to edit the podcast came up with really lame, boring, generic ones like you’re talking about. , so , I think there’s a way to. Use it better.
But yeah, , it’s, the more you use it, the better it gets. , but , that’s a big ask and there’s still things I edit it. Even the one I sent you a little bit, like Yeah, I would never say that. So, , there’s still things that it gets a little, I don’t know, you just gotta edit it.
The other threat was. You’re gonna think this is stupid, but I think it’s worth pointing out it was that clip from Neil deGrasse Tyson, however you say that. I say it wrong every
time where he said, , and this is intended to be funny.
Please no one be offended. But his point was, , for those people who believe news is faked, for anyone who believes in any kind of. Faked news once they think that their fake news is being [00:21:00] faked. There’s
this whole, like he talks in circles about it, but you get the idea once that happens, the internet will implode and cease to exist. Um, and so anyway, I sent that to John. It’s just a joke like, Hey, this is the real threat. , but it’s, , it’s worth pointing out because, with the media, being wildly extreme on both sides and people just gobbling up everything they read. Like, you know, my parents’ generation is notorious for just believing anything they read because they read it.
It can be dangerous. But anyway, , that could happen. It could be , a situation where just it just all implodes , and if there’s no more internet, there’s no more websites, that’d be a really quick shift day.
That’s, doom and gloom. Oh
That’s doom and gloom.
No, I feel you there. Yeah. Like these deep fake videos are getting better and better. Audio audio’s getting better. AI is making songs , and submitting them to Spotify, so it’s all kind of crazy.
Here’s, here’s funny, , I actually, just to be as meta as possible, I use chat GPT to come up with an outline for this episode just to [00:22:00] see what it would give me. I don’t usually do that, but, , one of the things that pointed out was ethical concerns and who owns the work that AI generates.
So in those cases. , if AI is generating music and putting it on Spotify, who’s getting paid for that? This the person that generated , that pushed the button. I mean, , , that’s a whole nother aspect of this. ,
Oh yeah, they’re gonna have to figure that out. Like even with . Images , and eventually vid, you know, ai, ai video that you make and stuff like that. So the last threat I had is, and , it’s another self-harm one that, that us, that clients can do , , is using it as at, for right now anyway, maybe eventually, but using it as a chat bot.
I stumbled across this article this last week why customers hate chatbots , and why you should do, and the first one said, the false promise of instant help. Like, come on. That’s every chatbot I’ve ever worked with and you’re like, , this is taking me longer than a human.
You know? Those were all
However, Okay. Just to play devil’s
Okay.
what I, that’s what I do to you.
Um, [00:23:00] there are some good, like, against my will. I don’t like saying this out loud, but there have been a few, like, very few, , site ground comes to mind. Their chat bot is pretty freaking good. , it has solved. A handful of my problems and I did not have to talk to anyone. , granted they always have that option. Thank God for the contact support if it doesn’t, , and I would be mad as hell if that wasn’t an option. But, for the most part, when I’m reaching out for support, I wanna, freaking human, I’m looking for the phone number, I’m looking for, you know, representative, you know, as just get on the phone. But, that’s the one that comes to mind. I don’t even know if I could name another one, but yeah, there are,
I’m sure there are good ones, but in general, again, unless you train the thing and you’re just like, here are chat, GPT try to answer my people’s questions, it’s gonna be a disaster.
I should clarify too, if you’re
that takes time. That takes so much time to train these things. So.
I mean, if you’re selling sham [00:24:00] wows and your chat , and your main customer tickets are like, , when’s my sham? Wow. Arriving. , okay, fine. A, a chat bot can handle that. But if you’re selling , any kind of personalized, customized, especially web design where it’s a higher ticket item.
It cheapens the experience. If they get on and they’re like you, , they want to com , their website’s down. They just want a human that can empathize with them and be like, let me look into this right away.
Yeah. Well, and to, and to your point, most of our clients, are small businesses entrepreneurs, and they’re also . Personalized services. And so would chat bots make sense on their websites? I mean, I’ve had clients reach out about it. I’m like, you could put one if you want, but you’re gonna have to like program the heck out of it to make it act like you or even know how to answer your questions. People are just looking for that easy button constantly. , and even the easy button in this case takes a lot of time to do, right? So.
Well, before we get into the opportunities, there’s an opportunity I would like to share with everyone, and that is break into web, [00:25:00] break into web.com. It’s. instructor videos from Kelly and I, there’s business training there. There’s technical training on how to build the website using the tools that we use, and we also offer web design mentoring there.
If you’re a web design. , if you wanna get started right, and hire us for a month or two of coaching to help you start your web design business, we’re down to do that. If you’re already established web designer, but you’re stuck at 80 KA hundred k and you want to get to multiple six figures, , that’s what we’re doing right now with our, , web design, , mentoring students, helping them achieve those goals.
We can help you do the same thing. Check it out. Break into web.com. Alright, let’s get into the opportunities of AI and web design.
Opportunities. , okay, so I have a list here.
Me too. I, I bet I bet’s the same.
I doubt it. You always say that? I’m like, Nope. , but one of the first things that came to mind as far as opportunities, and again, it’s one of , [00:26:00] our students that inspired this, and I know you guys use it for this as well, but , as web designers, the biggest bottleneck is always the content delivery, and so having, , a chat GPT option for copywriting, again, it does not solve all the problems. It cannot be like. Unedited, but to give a starting point or to give just, , some little chunks of content , it’s better than waiting six months from the client.
. It can help with that significant problem.
That was my first one as well. Copywriting. Copywriting and just to give folks, when we present proposals now, we give clients three options of copywriting. Number one client, you provide the copy. I. Which, cost you, which cost you nothing but, but can cause the project to drag on.
But , we charge for hosting after two months , of the project start anyway. So it’s like, okay, fine. So there’s that option. , the more advanced . Option three is, hey, hire this [00:27:00] copywriting third party person that we suggest that’s the most expensive.
That’s gonna be for most of our project. That’s probably gonna be. Two to four grand ish, somewhere in there maybe.
they’re gonna do a baller job, but it’s also gonna add significant time onto the project.
, yeah, you know what I just found? I just found out through a 10 99 mistake, a company sent me a 10 99 instead of sending , to the,
Oh no.
but it was $63,000. And I was like, what? We’re actually doing a website right now that’s probably gonna cost 80 grand and about 30 of it is copywriting.
I kid you not, , it’s this Iowa legal aid. Huge,
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Ginormous. So but most of our projects, the little 12 to 20 page website, it’s gonna be probably two to four grand. That’s the most expensive one. We call it good, better, best, good client you provide The content best is you pay this person who’s professional, they’re gonna do research, they’re gonna do a killer job.
They might actually even use chat GPTA little bit. Probably do, I bet. , [00:28:00] middle option is we have what we call a junior copywriter that uses chat, GPT, , to write content for you client that , you can do. So , that’s in-house, but we’re very clear and upfront that, hey, we’re gonna use chat GPT for the majority of this.
We’re gonna humanize it, we’re gonna edit it a little bit. , , and clients have been picking , , that option as well. So yeah, copywriting was my number one opportunity right there.
Excellent. Well, good. , another one I had, , that I don’t use, we’re Divi super fans and so that’s what we use, but we do, do, do, do, a little bit of coding here and there, a little bit of CSS and I’ve never used AI for this, but I have heard it works quite well.
Is that something you have used, John?
That’s on my list too. I put maybe someday simple code solutions. So I, I do know that, , one of our junior web builders had AI help him write a popup code. I. ’cause he didn’t wanna install plugin. He just wanted something really quick. But no, I kind of steer away from this right now because , I’m just like, [00:29:00] ah, I don’t know.
I probably could use it for CSS. Right. Some styling that probably would work, but I’d
You’re probably just, I.
mean, , the amount of CSS we do on these sites is typically , it’s a couple lines here and there. It’s not massive amounts of code required, so it’d probably take you just as long to write it yourself and to whip out the, , the coding app or whatever, , for an AI version.
Yeah. Anyway,
I have, I have snippets. I already have CA bunch of
That’s right. You do
ready to go. ,
Is
that,
considered ai? Probably not.
I don’t know, I mean, I wrote it originally, but I. , probably not, but one thing I have used it for, this is on here and Divi has this built in, and I’ve used it maybe three times now, but image editing or creation.
I’ve
used,
the Divi version of that?
I’ve used the Divi version of image editing. I had a hero, , top of the webpage and I wanted this image to stretch all the way, edge to edge, but it wasn’t quite, doing it. , and so I said, Hey, let’s. Double the width of this image, extend the street part.
And [00:30:00] it did it great. And fortunately, the part that it created, I had content over that part. And so if there was any weird funkiness , with, letters on signs or, uh, six fingered hands. , and then as far as image creation, I haven’t used any, , I’ve done it for like mockups, , Hey,
here’s an image that could, we can’t use this one ’cause it’s obviously ai, but something like this here or in storyboarding, like, we had to storyboard a music video for the band, , where zombies were in it. And so , I
Oh yeah,
I had AI do some of, so I’ve had it do, . A little bit of that. And I also put on here maybe someday video editing and creation.
I know that’s still early on in ai, but so the whole , media editing and creation, , I’ve dabbled in it a little bit.
Okay. Yeah. Other opportunities around the web design world? Well, , you talked about image generation a bit. I use AI in Photoshop quite a bit to do exactly what you’re talking
Yes. Yep. Mm-hmm.
That’s [00:31:00] about. The extent of how I use it , in Photoshop. , I’ve tried a few other prompt.
I think it’s just a prompt problem. I don’t know how to talk to Photoshop ai. , but , whenever I try to get creative, oh my, I mean, I have had the best laughs of my year , with Photoshop ai, so , it’s worth doing just to get the giggle. But, , oh man, I’ve saved several examples anyway, , so image generation for sure , .
It’s so useful for, making I, I used it like four times last night on a website. Just making an image , a little bit
wider. . I know that there’s wireframe tools, color palette, tools. I haven’t used any of those. , I have a pretty simple process for those as it is, but
there’s certainly tools available. I put chat bot on here, , but I had the
caveat of it must be well-trained because obviously, , and it just doesn’t make sense for like my own website as a solopreneur to have it. Chat bot would be really weird. , and then, , I have used SEO tools before. They don’t do anything for, [00:32:00] like, they’re not doing the work,
they’re just making suggestions, which is, I guess helpful but not wildly helpful. , I think more than anything , it’s just looking for. I mean, obvi. Okay. There’s lots of opportunities , for using it to help you. , and I think the , long and short of it is just embrace it. , don’t fight it. Like John and I fought WordPress for quite a while, and it was
like, why are we doing this?
And then we finally embraced it and it revolutionized our businesses for the better. So, treat it like something like that. It’s embrace worthy, it’s not going anywhere. . , these opportunities are gonna continue to evolve and pop up and just pay attention to it , and experiment with the different things that you hear about.
, a lot of times it’s not gonna be anything that you’ll actually use, , but sometimes you’ll find something that actually is really useful. For example, I’m using it’s called D Script. It’s an AI tool for audio and video, and I’m using it to edit these podcast episodes and it is actually beyond like the Photoshop photo [00:33:00] extending. This is the most useful actual time saving, even though it actually takes quite a bit of time. But it will go through automatically. In seconds we’ll find every single, um, uh, or like repeated set of words and it highlights ’em. And you can , I say really quick, but when there’s 600 of them, it’s not really quick. , but you can go through them quickly and determine which ones to delete. Um. Look, there is an, I’ll delete that later. I’m still doing it, but there was one episode where I am not kidding,
it removed seven minutes
of ums us and repeated words and I was like, oh my God, I have to continue using this so we don’t sound uneducated… That is one that I’m using that is actually super useful and helpful. I can push a button to have it remove all of those automatically. I made that mistake and then I listened back through and I was like, whoa, it just chopped it up too
much.
So now I go through manually. but it is a very useful tool and , I imagine that will continue to evolve where it won’t sound all super [00:34:00] choppy when I remove all of ’em at once. And of course chat, GPT for, , research , for writing help, for outlines, for, coming up with, ideas, and analysis and , it’s so good for that.
It is, yeah.
I don’t use it as much as I probably should, , but , it is useful when I use it.
This one probably goes to when you mentioned the, , podcast editing and , it, highlighting the words transcribing , is one I put down
Oh
good at transcribing. , I think we use this one called, Super Whisper ai to, to transcribe, , a couple things.
, and then the last one I had was maybe someday the starter layouts that Divi has. So Divi, the framework we use to build websites has a AI tools built in and you can say, Hey, make me a homepage for a floral shop, and it’ll generate images and everything, a layout copy. And you can use it all.
but obviously, the image creation is still a bit wonky, as we all know. And the text can be a little robotic, [00:35:00] but it’s not bad for like a, , okay, cool. Yeah. I’ll start out with this. I, I’m,
point. Yeah.
I’m still kind of. Like layout too, like sections and everything. It’ll give you a full like, boom. There you go.
now do I trust it enough to be responsive already and things like that? Ah, I don’t know. Not yet. Maybe, but it could help, like you mentioned a wire framing tool. You could just spin that up quick and be like, oh, I like that. Let’s, the other thing that it can do is if I did make a brand new page on the artillery website, supposedly div’s AI will source.
Content for that page based on your writing style of your other pages in your website. Um, so supposed supposedly it, it’ll do something like that. Yeah. And so that would be, that’d be nice. At the end of the day, it’s a tool to help us build websites better, faster, stronger. that’s what it is.
And I think you have to look at it in an optimistic way. I’m not gonna lie. Up until now, I have been negative. I’ve been opportunistic on [00:36:00] here’s what someday it’s gonna be doing. But I’m a pretty big hater right now on, on, , when Jake’s like, let’s redo our website.
We can use chat GPT for the copy. I’m just like, no. That’s the exact opposite of what I wanna do., I want to keep our vibe, but eventually though it will, eventually it will be great. And it reminded me of back when we fought WordPress and then when I started building WordPress websites, , just like. Oh man, just like right now, I’m saying I don’t know if I can trust , chat, GPT or Divi AI , to do a full layout of a webpage, you know, in the same way. I was building custom themes, like with PHP and all that stuff, and I had heard of these drag and drop tools, but it was like, how good can they be?
Like how good? And I even tried one early on and it wasn’t that great. I’m like, yeah, no, this is not it. And then , you try a garbage one like WP Bakery and you’re like, ah, but eventually. I landed in Divi and I’m like, Hey, this, this works. This is great. And so then the developer that I [00:37:00] was using on every project, a hundred percent of my projects, he was getting between a grand to two grand per project to help build these custom themes.
Now I’m only using it now. They don’t use ’em at all, , but it cut him down to like 10% of projects only like a unique custom coded feature we need. But you know what though? Even though my work for him went down 90%, he got creative, he adapted, and he found a way to stay. He’s just as busy as he is ever been right now.
And I think that’s what’s gonna happen with AI and web designers. Like, sure, you can look at it as, , is it gonna take away 90% of how I’m building websites today. Maybe someday it will, but you could be like that developer I mentioned and figure out how to use it as a tool to even get busier.
So that was a long way of, of saying all of saying all that. What are your final thought? That was my final thought on ai. What is your final thought on
Yeah, no, I would just echo the same thing. Look for the opportunities. And then [00:38:00] evolve and adapt. That’s the name of the game, especially in industries like ours that are constantly changing. , it’s just, whoever evolves and adapts will continue to be successful.
And another thing I’ll say is , I’ve said for a long, long time, the number one reason I have been successful for 20, 21 years as a freelance web designer is because of my customer service. And that is something that AI cannot replace. , at least not in the near future. I mean, there’s certain elements of it that maybe could. , but having , , genuine interactions , with your clients and making them, feel good about the project, and I mean, I still constantly get messages like, you’re the best. You’re, you know, like, , that’s something that AI , just, , can’t, uh, can’t do yet.
And I. Feel like there’s a trend, especially in music right now, where it’s like the days of sleek pop and everything sounding perfect and to the grid, and now it
That’s why vinyl’s coming back.
yeah, [00:39:00] now, now people want the vinyl crackle. They want, they want the warbly that the vinyl , can give you. They want the imperfections in a creative way though.
They want it in a creative way. They want happy accidents. That cool to, you know, that. That turned into really unique things, , and that, I think that’s what , I wonder if
That’s a good point.
in other
good point. It’s hard, it’s hard to tell AI like, Hey, do this perfect, but keep some happy accidents in there. Like it would just combust.
Totally. Totally. All right, y’all, with that, thanks for tuning in and joining us today. I. On the web Design Empire. Also, check out break into web.com. Learn how you can break away from your daily grind. We’ll help you become a freelance web designer and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. All right, until next time.
Cheers, y’all.[00:40:00]