#48 - Europe's new AI Act

The new AI Act is set to become law across the EU in August this year, bringing tighter controls on AI usage across member states than in many other parts of the world. Ethical guardrails and tougher consumer protections - yes. But also creating a very visible digital divide - the first and most visible effect to many of this is Apple's decision not to release many of the Apple Intelligence features into Europe that were trumpeted as the next BIG THING at their WWDC Keynote last month (the segment on AI starts at 1.04.30 in the video below).

So we'll all be running hobbled versions of Apple software until they figure out if/how to align their new smarts with EU law... :((

Gemini for students

Gemini hasn't been an AI I've been using much, as I was underwhelmed at the initial iterations, but Google is a behemoth with a huge capability and a massive user base, so it's worth staying abreast of the developments. They've recently released additions to the AI capabilities in Google Workspace for both personal and educational users - a good article here goes into more details, as well as on the read-aloud function in Chrome.

Claude introduces Artifacts - now usable by anyone!

Artifacts are a new feature in Claude AI that will create other stuff - an HTML page, or diagram - from a prompt. The Claude window splits into 2 and the right hand one shows the code being generated to create the Artifact.

Here's a short video where I ask Claude to create an interactive quiz on the French Revolution. All this is fully editable, you can ask it to change things and it'll rewrite the code. At the end I publish the Artifact and you can access and run it - and even then use it as a template to further develop your own - at the link below the video. How cool is this!

Drop a comment and tell us how you might use this to generate compelling content for your own classes!

Take the quiz yourself at https://claude.site/artifacts/28b74409-cdf5-415a-b5ea-b40824ac52d4

Playing with possibilities...

Just after I posted #47 - Will AI avatars replace us?, for some weird reason I got the idea to translate the 12 days of Christmas into Elvish (I've always been a Tolkien nerd!). So I fired up Claude, and in a few seconds, it gave me the following:

I Erin Iven ar Atta na Rh?w-estar (The 12 Days of Christmas in Sindarin)

1. Mín erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Fileg ned aldorn
2. Tad erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
3. Nêl erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
4. Canad erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
5. Leben erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
6. Eneg erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
7. Odog erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
8. Toloth erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Toloth vendui hwesta Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
9. Neder erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Neder elleth lilta Toloth vendui hwesta Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
10. Pae erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Pae benn caeda Neder elleth lilta Toloth vendui hwesta Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
11. Minig erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Minig p?n piped Pae benn caeda Neder elleth lilta Toloth vendui hwesta Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn
12. Iven ar atta erin na Rh?w-estar, melethril nín annon anim Iven ar atta rog-rond Minig p?n piped Pae benn caeda Neder elleth lilta Toloth vendui hwesta Odog alph-aear linna Eneg ?n-orn tortha Leben c?r mithril Canad aew moril Nêl tuilinn Tad cugu Ar fileg ned aldorn

Now I'm on a roll, so I followed up by asking Claude if I could have "a pen and ink style illustration of this in Tolkien style". Nope, but it did give me a really detailed prompt as follows:

Description of a Tolkien-style Illustration for "The 12 Days of Christmas"

Imagine a detailed pen and ink illustration in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien's own artwork:

• The central focus would be a grand, intricately decorated Elvish tree, reminiscent of the White Tree of Gondor but with pear-like fruits.
• Surrounding the tree, arranged in a circular pattern, would be 12 distinct sections, each representing one of the days of the song.
• Each section would feature Elvish calligraphy of the Sindarin lyrics in Tengwar script.
• The illustrations would blend Middle-earth elements with the song's gifts: A partridge-like bird perched in the central tree Two turtle doves with slightly more fantastical, elvish features Three birds resembling pheasants but with more elaborate plumage Four blackbirds with intricate patterns on their wings Five rings designed with Elvish motifs, possibly interlinked Six geese, their eggs adorned with runic patterns Seven swans, their necks forming graceful arches like elvish architecture Eight maidens in flowing gowns, milking deer-like creatures instead of cows Nine ethereal elf-maidens dancing in a circle Ten elf-lords leaping, their cloaks billowing dramatically Eleven slender figures playing ornate pipes Twelve drummers with drums decorated in Elvish patterns
• The border of the illustration would be adorned with intertwining vines and leaves, typical of Tolkien's decorative style.
• In each corner, a small scene depicting the four seasons in Middle-earth style.
• At the bottom, the title "I Erin Iven ar Atta na Rh?w-estar" in elaborate Elvish script.

The overall effect would be a harmonious blend of the Christmas song's themes with the ethereal, nature-inspired aesthetic of Tolkien's Middle-earth artwork.

So I headed over to one of my favourite image generators - Leonardo.AI, and dropped this prompt in. And in a few seconds, I got these 4 images:

And here's my favourite one full-size:

How great is this! The creative possibilities of GenAI really are endless. I'm not artistic in terms of having little to no drawing ability, but to be able to "create" stuff like this is just amazing to me. Happy dance :)

New ILOTA Things podcast episode

OK, that'll do for this time - next issue I'll be looking at Claude's new Projects capability and all the current AI news...

EPALE - The European Adult Learning Network

Do you know about EPALE - the European Adult Learning Network? I'm one of the Irish Ambassadors for EPALE, and you can join over 100,000 educators across Europe in a free online community - it's a great way to get different points of view, participate in training from across the continent and stay up to date on educational thought. Create your free account at https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/user/login

Affiliate Links (stuff I use and recommend)

Perplexity AI - Best search and my go-to AI now... Uses the latest top AI models from ChatGPT, Claude et al, innovates constantly - give it a try!

https://perplexity.ai/pro?referral_code=VYD33BFN

Unriddle AI is a research site that lets you upload docs and then interrogate them.

https://www.unriddle.ai//?ref=JH

Check out Humata - it's another AI that let's you work on your own documents and interrogate them. https://www.humata.ai/?via=joe-houghton

My tool of choice for serious AI image creation is Leonardo. The user interface is easy and very powerful, enabling you to create just what you want in any style really quickly. https://app.leonardo.ai/?via=joe

Notion

This is my tool of choice now for collecting all the bits'n'pieces of information I squirrel away for talk, articles and presentations. I can then generate webpages in a snap and share them, and they update in real-time as I add new info to them! There's so much you can do in Notion - well worth a look:

Joe Houghton is an Assistant Professor at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business where he directs the MSc programmes in Project Management. After a career in IT in multinationals, Joe switched into a portfolio career of University teaching, management coaching and training.

He has authored 6 books to date including "Innovative teaching with AI: Creative approaches to enhancing learning in education", and "Project Management made easy...: the ECCSR approach". His latest book "Applying Artificial Intelligence to Close the Accessibility Gap: A practical handbook for educators & students!" is now available on Amazon! More on this in a future edition...

Contact Joe on email at [email protected] for any requests for training, seminars, workshops or keynote speaking.