The biggest growth hack for AI apps is to be amusing
For the past few weeks, you would see a “Ghibli-fied” image of anything and everything on all social networks. This was all thanks to OpenAI releasing image generation with GPT-4o on ChatGPT.
There are conversations around copyright, ethical conundrums around AI training on existing art, and energy consumption by data centers responsible for running AI models. But for most folks, these are not points of consideration while trying to create a cute image for some social cred.
Users who might not have any association or recall with the phrase Studio Ghibli would just want an amusing new image and move on with their lives.
The phenomenon of people using a tool to convert their own images into a different style is not new. We have seen this with Prisma and FaceTune. But earlier, you couldn’t just type your way to a new style of photo. You had to select a certain filter and do some editing on top of it.
Right now, a lot of the new-age AI tools are firmly in the realm of amusement. ChatGPT has seen massive gains in countries like India because of the image-generation feature. Some AI cartoon apps got bumps in downloads because of the image-generation trend.
People who feel an emotional connection to Ghibli movies or art argued that in the longer run, unique things like Ghibli's style of creation won’t remain unique because technology has enabled everyone to recreate that in seconds, while the original creators had to toil for years to create an identity with art.
Founders of AI companies and tools often talk about taste. They say that even if everyone has the tools to generate images or videos by merely typing in a few sentences, they will need to have taste to create something good and long-lasting. This has been an argument with many generations of technological tools.
In the past few days, writers like Scott Alexander and Erik Hoel wrote about feelings around Ghibli images. When we users generate something in mass, there are always questions around whether it is or not.
Alexander writes:
“If you insist that anything too common, anything come by too cheaply, must be boring, then all the wonders of the Singularity cannot save you. You will grow weary of green wine and sick of crimson seas. But if you can bring yourself to really pay attention, to see old things for the first time, then you can combine the limitless variety of modernity with the awe of a peasant seeing an ultramarine mural - or the delight of a 2025er Ghiblifying photos”
For people building these apps, the measure they would want to consider is more people doing more things on their apps. They might not have thought about true artistic representation or even about art. It’s a tool to amuse people in some way. To make them feel that they also can make a good enough impression of some art they might not have been able to.
I Ghibli-fied a photo of my two cats with ChatGPT, and it got some details wrong. The abstract representation was there, and the generated image would have passed on social media as a cute photo. But some details about how they looked and what color their patches were put me off. I tried to edit my way to get a more accurate representation, but failed. Was it amusing enough? Maybe.
For AI apps, amusement — making people feel like they can ‘acquire’ a skill in minutes — is the biggest strength. Can’t write a good email? We are here. Don’t want to make a presentation? Upload the document and click this button. Want to make a video? An image is enough. The amusement of being able to do all this reels us in, and then after a while, it becomes normal. Users do want to use AI for these tasks. Not because it is good, but it is passable and it is fast.
Do I need to acquire a taste to do these? Possibly not as lo
ng as enough people are paying attention, getting entertained, or gaining information out of it. Taste becomes a throwaway word for saying only a few people will be able to make really good stuff, but the rest of you will have a makeshift version of the best thing. It is also hard to evaluate taste when so many AI tools are generating similar outputs.
AI apps are telling us that they will handle drudgery tasks, so you will have more time to do creative or productive stuff. What do I have to do that is productive or creative? Maybe go to another AI app and get amused.