What I Actually Took From Canva AI Vision London
A couple of weeks ago, before heading to Canva AI Vision London, I wrote a post about my slightly complicated relationship with AI.
I use it every day. I think it’s incredibly useful. Sometimes I think it’s flippin’ brilliant. I also worry about what happens when we start handing too much of our thinking over to it.
I ended that post wondering whether five hours at Canva AI Vision would make me love AI more, loathe it more, or somehow leave me even more conflicted.
Well…
Probably the latter.
My expectations…
I went to London hoping to hear some interesting conversations about where AI is heading, particularly around creativity, human judgement and the things we perhaps shouldn’t be so quick to automate.
On that front, AI Vision delivered.
The presentations were polished, the speakers knew their stuff and there were quite a few moments that made me stop and think.
What I didn’t come away with was a notebook full of exciting new things I couldn’t wait to try.
And that surprised me a little.
So, was it worth going?
My friend Kim from L&D Free Spirits asked me earlier whether I thought the event had been worth the money I’d spent travelling down from Glasgow.
I hesitated.
That probably tells you something.
I’m glad I went. I enjoyed the event and I particularly enjoyed seeing several fellow Canva Verified Experts and some Canvassadors too. These events are always as much about the people for me as whatever happens on stage.
I also came home with a rather funky Totally Content tote bag featuring one of my record cover designs, which I made during the event. You simply type in a prompt and AI does the rest.
So there was that. Was it brilliant? No, but it was fun.
In terms of practical things I could immediately take away and use in my work, training or creative projects, there wasn’t really a big revelation. Instead, what stayed with me were some of the bigger questions. And oddly enough, quite a few of them connected directly back to the questions I was asking before I went.
Protect the blank canvas
One of the discussions that resonated most was around protecting what happens before we reach for technology.
The blank canvas bit.
I’ve become increasingly aware of how quickly I now turn to ChatGPT when I have something to work through. Sometimes that’s useful, especially when I already have an idea and want to challenge or organise it. This post is a good example.
Other times I probably ask Chad before I’ve properly thought about something myself. I use AI every day and occasionally wonder whether I’m delegating a little too much of my thinking to it.
Some days I probably spend more time talking to Chad than actual people, which is a slightly unsettling thing to admit. Maybe some of the brain fog is simply getting older, but I’m not convinced AI gets completely off the hook. 😉
The discussion at AI Vision London reminded me that the blank page has value. I want AI to help me develop ideas without losing the habit of coming up with them myself.
Taste isn’t enough
There was also an interesting discussion around taste.
We hear quite a lot at the moment about taste becoming more valuable as AI makes it easier for everyone to create.
James Martin from Made by James challenged that slightly. His point was that simply having taste is passive. You also need the conviction to do something with it.
That resonated.
Knowing what looks good, sounds good or feels right isn’t particularly useful unless you’re willing to make a decision. Sometimes that means choosing the slightly odd idea.
The one that doesn’t look like everything else and that the machine probably wouldn’t have predicted. Perhaps that’s where our value increasingly sits. Less in simply in generating more options, and more in deciding which option is worth pursuing.
When everything becomes easier to make
AI can generate huge amounts of content very quickly, whether that’s images, video, copy or endless variations of the same idea.
The problem is that when everyone can make more stuff faster, simply producing more stops being impressive. Judgement becomes more valuable because someone still has to decide what is actually worth using.
There was also discussion around AI pushing everything towards the same safe middle, (“a race to the middle” came up a few times) which is something I already worry about.
I see plenty of AI generated writing and design that is perfectly fine but utterly forgettable. The more content we can create, the more personality, distinctiveness and good judgement will matter.
Writing should sound like the person so this should sound like me, well if you knew me.
Perhaps we’re asking AI the wrong question
Sasha Rubel from AWS talked about the difference between simply using new technology to do old things and actually reconsidering how we work.
One analogy was essentially that many organisations have been handed a smartphone and are still just using it to phone their mum. The tools have extraordinarily powerful technology but are using it for relatively basic tasks.
That made me smile because I’m probably guilty of that too.
There are still plenty of times when I use AI as a very sophisticated assistant rather than genuinely reconsidering the workflow itself.
One of the recurring themes throughout AI Vision was that we shouldn’t start with the model. We should start with the problem.
What is slow and repetitive? Where is there friction? What are we doing manually simply because that’s how we’ve always done it? Then ask whether AI can help.
That feels much more useful to me than chasing every new model, feature and shiny AI toy that appears. Frankly, there aren’t enough hours in the day for that anyway.
When did Astra come out? I’ve yet to even try it!
The humans were still my favourite bit
Before AI Vision I wrote that it was quite funny to be heading to an event about artificial intelligence while being particularly excited about seeing actual people.
That didn’t change.
Catching up with other Canva Verified Experts, meeting new Canvassadors, like Laura Goodsell, and having conversations around the event was probably one of my favourite parts of the day.
There’s something reassuring about that.
We spent several hours talking about increasingly capable machines, yet so much of the value for me still came from being in the room with humans.
Talking, laughing, sharing opinions and occasionally disagreeing.
And yes, making a funky record cover tote bag.
AI didn’t replace any of that.
What did I actually take away?
I didn’t leave Canva AI Vision London with a revolutionary new workflow or ten new AI tools I desperately need to start using, and it didn’t resolve my love and loathe relationship with artificial intelligence.
What I did come away with was a stronger sense that the more capable these tools become, the more deliberate we need to be about how/when we use them. Perhaps more importantly, what we choose not to hand over to them at all.
For me, that means being a little more conscious about when AI is helping me think and when I’m simply letting it think for me. I suspect that’s something I’ll be paying much more attention to over the coming months.
And it’s a conversation I’m increasingly having with businesses too. Canva and AI can save huge amounts of time, but only when they’re being used thoughtfully and with a clear purpose.
Need some help?
If your team is already using Canva or AI but could do with a bit more clarity around how to use them effectively, book a quick chat with me and we can talk through where training might help.
And perhaps that was the takeaway after all.
Does this event sound good to you?
You can actually watch the replays online now. I’ve been doing that myself and they’re very good.
