As we navigate together the landscape of Generative AI (Gen AI), it becomes increasingly important to approach the use of dedicated tools with a balanced understanding of their capabilities and limitations. Ethical and mindful use of these tools is an essential guiding principle.
To better understand Gen AI impact on higher education, Provost John Coleman and CIO Mairéad Martin have created a Generative AI Solutions Hub. The Hub supports innovation and offers Gen AI guidance, support, standardization and essential principles.
When interacting with Gen AI tools, refrain from inputting sensitive or confidential information, as the tools do not guarantee the confidentiality of the information shared. To gain further insights and guidance on using Gen AI tools responsibly, we encourage you to refer to the University of Illinois Digital Risk Management Generative AI page. Here, you'll find valuable resources and best practices that will aid you in navigating this dynamic and transformative field while prioritizing data security and privacy.
Audio/Visual Generation Tools
Time-based media is undergoing similar innovations as the text, video, music, and image realms. Large Language Models (LLM) and GenAI are reducing production times. Adobe Creative Cloud is an official campus tool that contains several AI-enhanced media-rich products. It is available as a free download from the Illinois Webstore.
Descript is Text-to-Speech (TTS) tools will synthesize a voice to speak any written content. We've had robotic voices, but now we have incredibly realistic stock voices, and even the ability to clone one's voice.
Avatar-based platforms like HeyGen and Synthesia concentrate on realism of a character in their library or a submission process to represent the user (see example used in iMBA program). Some tools like Sora serve as a text-to-video (and even image-to-video or video-to-video) platform.
Completing the time-based media set are text-to-music tools like AIVA and Soundful. Several tools simply combine various stock instruments of the same beats per minute, but these newer tools dive deeper and synthesize while retaining continuity. For song creation, including lyrics, Suno and Udio perform very well.