AI Designing, Michael Sellick & The Crochet Crowd

Is Mikey using AI for design?

The quick answer is no.

Mikey, being in his 50s, is old-school when it comes to learning concepts, implementation, and recording procedures. He pre-dates the existence of the internet in people's homes. With this, critical thinking and thought processes were the only tools available.

Design Steps

• Designs by Mikey are done manually with a pencil and a pad of graph paper.
• Written in crochet graph format for most items, unless it's a simple thing like a hat.
• He then tries the concept, row by row, or round by round... Confirm it works and move on to the next instruction, adding to the graph paper.
• Once completed, the pattern is translated into a computerized crochet diagram if it is complicated. This is completely manual and done through Adobe Illustrator.
• Once completed, it's written in long-form to accompany the pattern.
• The pattern is then given to a select group of people for testing, in this case, the Journey Level Membership on YouTube. Feedback is taken, tweaks and adjustments.

Use of AI

A polished image may take seconds to look at, but the project behind it may involve years of skill, pattern writing, testing, filming, editing, teaching, and answering questions. AI doesn’t erase that work.

I don’t believe AI belongs everywhere. I use it where it helps with presentation, brainstorming, layout, or visual storytelling. For actual crochet instruction, accuracy still matters, and that comes from real experience.

Resources of Energy - Data Centres

I respect the resource concern. I also believe small creators can use modern tools responsibly. The issue is not one thumbnail. The issue is massive-scale digital consumption, wasteful generation, and lack of transparency. I’m trying to be thoughtful, honest, and practical.

More recognizable is who is actually using the data centres that don't get the hype as a creator.

• Amazon (online shopping)
• Microsoft
• Google, including YouTube, searches and storage.
• Meta, which encompasses Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
• Apple, including iCloud.
• Oracle, Alibaba, IBM and others in this.

The above are using about 45% on their own.

Video, including Netflix, YouTube, Instagram Reels, Facebook, Disney+, Prime Video and others like this, takes an enormous amount of resources to keep us entertained.

Systems like Adobe, Zoom, Dropbox, Google Drive, Shopify, and more use resources such as apps that constantly reference data centres.

Every time a regular person presses refresh on their phone or opens an app, it calls the data centre to check and send new data to you. EVERYTIME!

While a creator may be making a few thumbnails, it's a blip compared to people constantly refreshing their cell phones for a dopamine hit. If you are on a phone, you are part of this system that you may be complaining about.

If you are generating a video to tell people not to use AI, you are already part of the data centre to distribute this message and using far more resources than a creator doing a thumbnail.

AI images do use resources, and I don’t dismiss that. But the major pressure on data centres comes from massive-scale systems: cloud computing, streaming video, social media, AI training, search, advertising systems, online backups, and millions of daily users. A small creator using AI intentionally is not the same as industrial-scale data-centre demand.

If you are online, you are using the same resources as the creator but most likely creating more demand on the servers versus a creator intentionally creating a thumbnail or having AI check their work.

Watch Out For ETSY

He believes that AI Design is not foolproof and that some people don't design patterns using AI and end up with mismatched or completely wrong results. The only way to protect consumers is to leave a review of your experience. Unfortunately for ETSY, there are no refunds for digital downloads, so buyer beware. There currently aren't any safeguards to protect the consumer from buying AI crochet patterns, and the 'so-called' designer will still get paid even if you realize you have been duped.

Mikey doesn't own an ETSY shop for The Crochet Crowd. He sells through his own website only at Mikey's Stitch Studio.

Mikey has a writing style that is consistent for him. Following the lead of the Yarnspirations Design Team in the execution of ways of sharing information. Every company and designer has their own method of communication, but he found that following Yarnspirations' lead was easiest for cross-referencing information and for being consistent with a major national yarn brand.

When Does He Use AI?

• Knowing Google uses AI for search, Mikey uses ChatGPT for anything he needs to look up. Yes, it can be inaccurate and critical thinking is needed. Google is already doing it, so admitting to using ChatGPT shouldn't be a big deal to anyone.
• Sometimes, just a different way of saying the same instruction can be the world of difference. He may look up to see other ways to write instructions.
• Mikey also uses it to clean up photography, such as removing backgrounds and adding graphics.
• He stops using it when the results kick back, and the final look doesn't match the project. He is learning to use it more effectively by being specific about what to ask for when generating.
• It is the future, and it's coming so quickly, whereas the internet in our homes took a long time to roll out.

Highly Controversial

There is a high concentration of negativity directed at creators or anyone using AI to generate photography. It's not uncommon, at this time, to be hit by people who are pretty raging at others.

Even the programs we use to make graphics, such as Adobe and Canva, now include AI to generate content and presentation formats.

Being a creator, even at Mikey's level of engagement with crocheters, doesn't mean money is endless. In the creative world, people demand mostly everything for free. Including emails requesting free yarn, cruises and more. There appears to be a lack of value placed on creators.

It's easy to complain to the creator about hiring people, but realistically, was there money in the first place to hire a graphic designer? If that were true for Mikey, he wouldn't have been making his own crochet charts, graphics, illustrations, and more, and he wouldn't have contracted someone to do it in hopes of recouping his costs through pattern sales, which isn't happening.

Some say that due to its usage, it's killing off jobs and more. But maybe this is the dawn of a new era of freeing up time to get other stuff done? It depends on your point of view, of course.

Pilot Project with Google - Machine Learning

Mikey was part of the Google Pilot Project as a test dummy in 2019, using Machine Learning. The goal was to listen to his voice in a tutorial format and for the computer to understand it, pick up the voice inflections, grammar, and more. The more people AI could listen to, the more it could learn to adapt to the way things are said. He's very slangy, but if you try to write a script for it, it may not make sense formally, but could be the difference between talking to a friend and an English Major.

Why did he choose to participate? It was simple; machine learning would allow the scripts to get closer to the real things on the first pass when trying to tell people who are deaf through the on-screen scripts. It would save our team member who captions the tutorials from spending endless hours. It takes 11 minutes of time to correct scripts for every 1 minute of the tutorial. It's a significant amount of time, and people demand it be done without consideration of the work it takes to provide it in the first place.

Once the script was written and confirmed, the language could then be translated into 300 languages. From here, with the evolution of AI, auto-dubbing in many languages has become possible. Opening the world of education for crochet.

Yes, this would have been a job for voice-over actors and scriptwriters, but as a creator, it's not financially within reach. He did try a service, and it was thousands of dollars, and the return on investment wasn't there.

AI opened the doorway of accessibility, and if you don't have the issue, you may not consider what others need, such as visual aids in scripting and more.