Imagine this: it’s 4am, and I wake up in a fit of laughter from a ridiculously vivid dream. After calming my righteously alarmed and annoyed parter, I hastily jot down “budget horoscope” in the notes app of my phone with a mix of excitement, confusion, and fall back asleep as the sun starts to rise.
Now, normally, my late-night scribbles would remain in the digital pages of my phone, collecting pixel dust. But this time, my partner was about to go out of town for the weekend (and enjoy uninterrupted sleep for a couple nights), leaving me with two whole days of solitary freedom.
And let me tell you a secret: I had plans. Secret, burger-related plans. So, amidst the anticipation of indulging in a secret burger for dinner, I made another decision. I was going to turn “budget horoscope” into something real and tangible. Cue the tale of “Budget Pigeon,” where laughter, astrology, and personal finance collide in unexpected ways.
When AI met Reality
Armed with a craving for both burgers and creativity, I set out to turn my dream into reality. First, I stumbled upon an irresistible email offer: domains and WordPress hosting for less than the cost of my fancy burger. For the domain, I was inspired by Barclays Bank’s majestic eagle logo, and opted for something relatable — the humble pigeon. “Budget Pigeon” had a self-deprecating charm that made it accessible and fun to work on, and was open as a domain name.
Surprisingly, the hosting came with drag-and-drop functionality, reminding me that “AI” has been in our lives for a long time now in many different forms.
Onto the content. I found myself addressing Chat GPT politely, almost believing that if I treated it with kindness, it would grant me better results. It seems my people-pleasing personality disorder seeped into my interactions with both humans and machines. Nevertheless, Chat GPT was a great brainstorming partner on strategy and implementation of a financial blog.
Meanwhile, Midjourney’s visual prowess dazzled me with high-detail, fantastical illustrations — perfect for the horoscope-loving crowd, and surprisingly consistent with the right prompts about the stye of illustrations that I wanted. By generating options for imagery, I could quickly make animated gifs to give the thing a bit of fun.
What was important to me was not a refined look, but a general direction. I comforted myself with screenshots of what Google and Facebook used to look like at launch. It’s fine for now!
In a whirlwind of creative energy, “Budget Pigeon” took flight in just a matter of a two days. As the weekend drew to a close, the site stood proudly (well, maybe not proudly as much as humbly) as a testament to the power of bringing an idea to life with AI technology.
The Pigeon of Wall Street
Budget Pigeon” harnesses the power of AI to craft personalized horoscopes for each zodiac sign, blending character traits associated with the signs with budgeting advice. The AI-generated content served as an excellent starting point, providing a foundation for further refinement. As the curator of financial wisdom, I reviewed and edited each of the horoscopes, ensuring that the information was not harmful and adding specifics and details that seemed to be missing.
Drawing inspiration from the enigmatic nature of Tarot readings, I created a simple form for readers to reach out and have their specific questions answered, adding an extra layer of intimacy to the “Budget Pigeon” experience, and allowing me to first-hand see what my audience wanted to read about.
Pigeonception
As “Budget Pigeon” took flight, it not only defied my assumption about the conventional boundaries of financial information but also unleashed a cascade of surprising, humorous, and emotionally touching results. In a domain where we seldom expect such experiences, this project demonstrated the incredible potential of AI to re-contextualize financial content as a form of entertainment.
The fusion of AI’s creativity and a human touch allowed “Budget Pigeon” to not only share knowledge within my circle of friends but also reached a wider audience, sparking conversations and fostering a community centered around positive financial empowerment. Funny questions posed by an anonymous audience made me wheeze from laughter. Answering “How Do I Become a Rich Evil Gay Person” with Chat GPT was a lesson in reframing and harnessing the power of humor.
The WordPress Job
Creating “Budget Pigeon” was not limited to content creation alone. I quickly realized the need for technical guidance to bring my vision to life. Fortunately, AI came to the rescue once again, offering invaluable support in sourcing expertise for building a WordPress site. Whether it was troubleshooting code, implementing plugins, or optimizing the site’s performance, AI provided practical solutions and step-by-step guidance.
With its assistance, I navigated the complexities of web development with newfound confidence, propelling “Budget Pigeon” closer to its full potential. And all it took was a separate tab open in Chat GPT for all my technical questions. The most impressive was seeing code I could plug in directly to WordPress.
The First Rule of Pigeon Club
The growth and sustainability of any creative endeavor hinge on cultivating a dedicated audience. Here, AI proved to be an invaluable ally, generating a myriad of ideas for expanding and retaining our readership. It helped to analyze user preferences, identified emerging trends, and suggested strategies to captivate and engage our audience. It suggested things that might seem obvious, but are easy to forget. From frequent posting on social media, to finding similar voices in the world and engaging in conversation, it seemed my Chat GPT sidekick was warning me: starting a blog and developing an audience from scratch is no easy task, and needs work. Daily work. I was impressed with how the information I was receiving was structured, from marketing to adjusting strategy, listening to the customer, installing tracking on the site to find out where folks spend the most time and focusing on those things first. All of this was making me want to develop more and more ideas, and I had to remind myself to keep it simple. The weekend was almost over, and I needed to go for a few runs to work off that secret burger.
AI Wars: The Battle for Creativity’s Future
The integration of AI into creative processes has unleashed a wave of articles featuring deeply coded words like “efficiency” and “acceleration,” igniting a sense of excitement within the realm of innovation, and a sense of alarm at the loss of humanity in design circles.
Witnessing the swift development of “Budget Pigeon” over a mere weekend, I couldn’t help but marvel at the newfound possibilities. AI’s ability to generate ideas, refine content, and provide technical assistance in record time has indeed revolutionized the creative landscape, at least for me. The speed at which we can now bring ideas to life is nothing short of remarkable, paving the way for a future where our imaginative endeavors can be evolved and tested in the real world swiftly.
Amidst the excitement surrounding AI’s role in creative processes, it becomes crucial to maintain a thoughtful approach to consuming information. “Budget Pigeon” raises broader questions about the line between entertainment and truth in various aspects of our lives. As we embrace the imaginative possibilities of AI, it is vital to cultivate discernment and explore how we can strike a balance between entertainment and reliable information across different aspects of our lives. Like any tool, AI can be used to bring delight, or to deceive and exploit our weaknesses with the same ease.
Inter-lunch-stellar
It is a beautiful afternoon in Chicago as I’m finishing up sushi from Whole Foods. I’m outside in a hidden spot overlooking the downtown skyline, with my laptop and AI companions, basking in my favorite activity, almost a meditation on the cascade of possibilities ahead of me and the world based on that short weekend. Will my partner now understand being awakened with laughter in the middle of the night? Remains to be seen.
What I am certain about is that creating Budget Pigeon allowed me to try out new and remarkable tools that will forever alter how I work, and how I consider what I see in the world. It makes me contemplate what I want to bring into reality, who am I creating for outside of myself, and what how will my creations change the landscape of where we all live.
In the midst of what feels like a technological revolution, I’m shifting away from my first fear-based reaction of “will this tech make me obsolete” to thinking about all the opportunities ahead of us to imagine a new future, and live in it.
Seeing is Believing
Visit BudgetPigeon.com to read your financial horoscope, sign up for a custom reading, or read an article. Let me know what you think!
All images in this article were created with Midjourney, then animated using Adobe Photoshop. The outline of the copy was created in tandem with Chat GPT, but written primarily by me, manually. Huge thank you to those on the forefront of AI at IDEO for encouraging me to write about my experience.
