Finding Inspiration For Daily Cartoon Gags - Could Microsoft Copilot Be Your AI Creative Brainstorming Partner Too?

This is what Copilot thinks a writer looks like.

I don't believe for a second that this guy is
a writer. He's actually a man of few words if
that blank page in front of him is
anything to go by!
Image by Copilot and TET.

Two and a half years ago I wrote an article, Is Your Next Design or Writing Partner an AI? A Look at Artificial Intelligence and the Creative Arts with DALL-E 2, Jasper, and Rytr. It's worth a read just to see how far and fast Artificial Intelligence is moving.

Today, while I do use AI image generators to create quick illustrations for blog posts or to create quick characters and backgrounds I can use in my online courses, it's actually AI writing that I'm finding more useful in my own creative practice.

Specifically, not dedicated AI writing sites like Jasper and Rytr, that I covered in my previous article, but Microsoft's Copilot, the general purpose AI built into their Edge browser. Though I've been using the Android App version of it on my phone because it's more convenient to use any time at all.

What is Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is a free, general purpose generative AI that you can chat to, either as a text message chat or even with your voice (and you can get the responses spoken too). You can ask it all kinds of questions, and prompt it to produce images. Think of it like a personal assistant.

The more you use it, the more it learns about you and the things that interest you. Conversations are secure and never public, but they may be accessed inhouse by Microsoft to help improve their service or to prevent misuse of Copilot.

Underneath the hood it uses OpenAI's ChatGPT and DALL-E for image generation. There are paid levels for more features and faster generation but, unless you really want integration with all Microsoft's productivity software, or need business specific AI tools, the free version is just fine.

One thing I have noticed is that, if you use Copilot on different devices, those conversations don't necessarily get accessed by Copilot across devices. So a conversation you've had in Copilot in the browser extension on your desktop machine may not get accessed by the Copilot app on your mobile phone.

So Copilot is usually not aware of a conversation(s) you've had or the information in them on a different device.

Copilot for Brainstorming Ideas (A Real World Example)

The main cast of Resident Dragon.

About six months ago I started drawing a daily, single panel, gag cartoon featuring my Resident Dragon cast; Red the Dragon, TET (an Avatar of myself), Cool Froyd the Cat, and Grrr Dog. Initially I was drawing a gag a day, seven days a week but scaled back to a gag a day, only on weekdays, so I could have a break on the weekends.

Currently I've completed about ten cartoons short of 100 cartoons which you can see on my Instagram. As you can imagine, coming up with a joke a day isn't easy, and is getting progressively harder as I burn through ideas.

Typically my five cartoons for each week all relate around the same theme - as this limitation actually makes it easier to think up ideas. However it's still tough to find funny situations.

This is where Copilot has really been a great help.

Initially I would turn to Copilot to list ten funny ideas based on my theme to help spark some ideas. Copilot, and most AI's I've used have a very 'Dad joke' sense of humor. Half funny, half cringe, and always very safe.

Screen shot of Copilot answering the question 'who is Froyd?'

Screen shot from the Copilot Android App.
I started a new conversation and, with no
hints at all, I asked who Froyd was?
The answer was a lot more complete
than I expected.

However, I began to realize that Copilot had some capacity to learn and remember my specific characters and their traits. Not in a lot of detail but enough for me to be able to ask, for example, ten funny ideas featuring Froyd, and Copilot will automatically know I mean Froyd the cat.

There's been a few times where I've been stuck for a cartoon for that day and I've turned to Copilot and asked for ten funny suggestion about [insert a theme and character here].

It's rare that I've taken an idea listed and just translated it into a cartoon. What usually happens is Copilot will suggest something that I maybe haven't thought of and I'll get sparked with a stronger idea based on that.

Or I might take two or more suggestions and turn them into a funny scenario.

I've found you never get good suggestions if you just directly ask for funny punchlines for a joke. However if you have a conversation and expand on Copilot's suggestions, through typing your thoughts on the suggestions you like back into Copilot, it often leads to even stronger ideas.

Copilot Doesn't Always Get It Right

While Copilot does have the capacity to learn it can forget or hallucinate ideas (hallucinate is the common term for AI just making stuff up).

For example, I'd been using Copilot for a while to bounce ideas off for Resident Dragon cartoons and, at one point, I began to realize it thought TET (my avatar character) was a robot. I'm not sure why? It just started giving me TET scenarios where he would be concerned about robotic things like eating his favorite food, nuts and bolts!

For a while it was also treating Grrr Dog and Froyd like walking, talking human characters rather than a pet dog and cat.

Each time it does something like this, I make a point to correct it by entering the correct information.

The Most Useful Use of AI I've Come Across

I'm not going to go into too much further detail. By just having a natural conversation with Copilot, as if you were talking to another person, I've found it to be one of the most useful applications of generative AI in my own workflow. More than anything else.

I would encourage you to give it a try if you're a team of one, working on creative projects. It's just a really good way to get your brain into gear, and thinking about something, instead of finding something to think about.

Just start a conversation with Copilot about the vaguest of ideas you've had for a project and see where it takes you. It's more constructive than staring at a blank page and writer's block.

Important Update: AI Live!

Since writing this article (last week) both Copilot (Microsoft) and Gemini (Google) AI's have new 'live' mobile apps where you can interact with them entirely through voice, as if you were talking to a real person. No prompting things like 'Hey Google' to get them to listen, the microphone is just always live until you turn it off.

You can talk like a regular conversation, and even interrupt the AI while it's talking. Conversations are transcribed so you can save and review them afterwards.

It really is the future.

o---o--- ---o--- o---

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