Is AI illiterate?

So by now, we’ve all seen those images of AI trying its absolute darnedest (and failing miserably) to draw hands. To be fair, the intricate anatomy of human hands is pretty difficult to capture even for the most skilled artist, but have you ever wondered why?? AI image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E can spin up “puppy playing the bassoon on a unicycle” with ease, but why is “corporate handshake” their absolute downfall? I can’t help but shed a single tear of sympathy for our robotic brethren. Turns out … much like their art-school-attending human counterparts … AI image generators are royally bad at math. More specifically, they are exceptionally bad at counting and struggle to quantify abstract concepts such as “three.” Ready for a fun soundbite? Midjourney and DALL-E aren’t smarter than a fifth grader 😢

So yeah, we’ll keep having to hire random folks for stock images such as “corporate handshake,” “jazz hands,” and “peace sign selfie,” but how is this exactly relevant to designers such as you and myself? Well, AI’s mathematical struggles similarly explain AI’s issue with generating text and typography. Letters and text characters—like numbers—are abstract concepts with no inherent meaning. AI can be trained to write text with uncanny fluency—essentially by studying infinite data points and patterns from pre-existing text—but as of now, the tech is pretty miserable at producing custom typefaces and fonts. Need an example … ??

😬 … check out this AI font generator

• No hate to the lovely and talented people at Process Studio, but if you’re looking for a real-world example of AI’s ineptitude when it comes to typography, look no further than Aifont

  • P.S. Aifont was actually a part of a pretty sick exhibition on AI and art back in 2019. The link above also includes video recordings of the model being trained and its various attempts at spitting out semi-coherent typefaces

  • P.P.S. Interested in AI-generated emojis? Check out AImoji to see how AI **cough cough** mangled everyone’s favorite smiley face

• How do you actually train a machine learning model to create a typeface? Check out Nan Berlin’s Machine Learning Font and experiment by demoing the font yourself

🔌 Featured plugins

• Fontscale: generate a harmonious and consistent typography hierarchy

• Typescale: generate a modular scale for your typography (essentially simplifies and boosts the functionality of local site styles)

• Better Font Picker: preview how a font will look before changing existing styles

• Font Fascia: list all font families and styles used and where (Top tip: this is helpful to double check whether font usage is consistent across your design!)

• Fontpair: shuffle through and select pre-vetted Google font pairings and color suggestions

• Fonts Changer: change and replace all fonts in your file in one step

🏋🏻 Typography tips & tricks

• Wanna enhance the legibility and aesthetics of your designs? Check out this Medium article with 8 micro tips for remarkably better typography