As we continue to grow as a brand, we find ourselves further immersed in understanding nascent technologies & asset classes, like AI (artificial intelligence and/or automated intelligence).

Initially, we considered utilizing various AI tools & resources to help augment our creative service offerings; but in 2024, upon further evaluation, we've determined there are serious ethical & liability considerations, to the point that we simply cannot justify their continued use in a professional and/or for-profit manner, (specifically as it pertains to GANs, VQGANs, and any other image generator models that are trained on the unauthorized use of artists' work).

We value human talent and the time it takes to cultivate the skills needed to turn determination into a lasting career. It would be weird if we didn't, considering we're a small business comprised of designers & creative problem solvers who set out to acquire these creative problem-solving skills, through rigorous trial & error, and nonrefundable time-investment to master these acquired skills. In short, we have an ethical & moral obligation to not participate in what is essentially creative theft at the hands of many AI startups that simply chose to steal from artists, rather than ask permission to utilize their work to train their for-profit AI models.

With all that said, we will continue to educate ourselves to stay apprised of how these AI technologies work, to better offer consultation for their intended use-case, and to determine if & how these AI tools & resources can be ethically applied. The AI tools & resources we'll continue to study in a strictly academic manner are the following (*please note, this list is subject to change):

• ChatGPT: a Generative Pre-trained Transformer AI tool, used for natural language processing & conversation modeling.


• DALL-E 2: a Vector Quantized Generative Adversarial Network AI tool, used for generating images from textual descriptions.


• Midjourney: a CNN, RNN, GAN, and GPT AI tool, used to generate images from textual descriptions.


• Runway: an AI tool that utilizes VQGAN, StyleGAN, DeepLab, RunwayML, and PoseNet for animation & character-rigging.


• Stable Diffusion: an LDM (Latent Diffusion Model) used for image synthesis via text-to-image prompts.


• Gemini: a Multimodal AI tool, used for cross-format generation & understanding of text, images, audio, and video.


• Claude: a Constitutional Transformer AI tool, used for safe, aligned natural language generation & conversation.