AI at Digitalfire

I am Tony Hansen. I am Digitalfire.com. I am an explainer. I use AI as a tool to enhance my work. I sometimes get what I feel is unfair criticism from "AI zero-tolerance" people. I am human, with limitations on what I can do. I make use of AI in a reasonable way. Everything on digitalfire.com, or with my name on it on social media, is original, authentic, factual, helpful; all are my opinions, nothing is created with little effort. Every social post I make links to a page on digitalfire.com where many more links enable endless research on it. Explainers explain, they need whatever visual tool is available to get through to audiences that are decreasingly inclined to understand the whys and hows of their craft or art.

I have supported potters, artists, sculptors and technicians in the ceramic arts and industry since 1980. Digitalfire.com, made using a CMS I wrote, is free, open and has no tracking or paywalls, it has more than 5000 organized in interlinked pages of technical reference. Digitalfire.com is the textbook of ceramics. I have built it on material generated as I personally helped, for free, many thousands of people solve their clay and glaze issues. And my software is either free or ridiculously underpriced. It is a labour of love, none of my ventures have ever made money. I have accomplished my goals with the help of my precious wife and code that I write. I adopted new publishing mediums and technologies as they arrived (e.g. coding, diskettes, desktop publishing, PDFs, CDs, BBSs, email, the static web, e-commerce, the data-driven web, AI). For each of these, I faced pushback, but I had to press on just to get the work done.

Only a few of my photos are made using AI, here are some examples:

When an idea needs to be conveyed, there is no substitute for the right picture. Social posts require pictures. I most often have a picture. But sometimes I either don't or the one if have is just not as good as can be created by Gemini or ChatGPT (when I do that I show the prompt used to make the photo).
Assistance in creating photos (the mug below is from a low resolution photo which only showed part of it against a cloth background; the AI completed the mug, put it in the hand and removed the background). Some of my AI created photos are awaiting replacement as real ones become available.
Refinement of titles and text in posts and articles (to make things clearer, increase engagement).
Answer certain ceramics-related technical questions better.
It is an idea-machine. And it can distill my prose into intent I don’t even see.
It helps us discover things that I overlook (especially when dealing with troubleshooting issues in ceramics).

Future uses of AI are impossible to predict. We are all using them whether we like it or not. There is every reason to believe that it is the greatest development in the history of man. It will be used for good, likely much more for evil, like everything else we've done as humans.

AI created the hand, upscaled the picture and removed the background.

AI created this porcelain bowl with layered iron red and rutile blue glazes. This will be replaced when a photo becomes available.

Danny Downsized was drawn by an artist, the factory by ChatGPT and the sign by us.

AI made this in response to a prompt to create a coffee mug with a shape having inherent strength to keep it from warping to oval during firing. We made a mold based on this.

By Tony Hansen
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