
Touchpoint Vol. 13 No. 3 – Smart Service Design
For years, AI seemed to me like a storm cloud approaching on the horizon. It was as a distant rumble that was growing louder, but the signs of its arrival were hard to spot. A mobile phone I purchased in 2021 promised built-in AI, and my bank assured me that it was spotting fraud thanks to similar wizardry. But despite knowing it was the ‘next big thing’, I couldn’t easily point to its tangible presence in my daily life. That all changed in late 2022, when Lensa pushed its way into my Instagram feed. The AI-generated avatars of friends left me slack-jawed, making AI’s capabilities suddenly very real. ChatGPT hit my consciousness around the same time, serving up uncannily-lifelike conversations that drew on vast stores of knowledge.