So, Artificial Intelligence can now write training for us. Allegedly.

Are we all going to be out of a job in the next few years or are we safe? Can AI really save us loads of time, or does it create as much work as it saves?

The technology is still relatively new, and I’ve no doubt it will evolve. But it is a tool, and a tool is only ever as good as they way we use it. The washing machine definitely takes a lot of the effort out of doing the laundry, but we are still required to sort, load, hang out, and iron.

I feel that the same is true of AI. It can take up some of the heavy lifting in terms of content creation and it can help to get us started, but it’s a long way from doing training design for us.

I’ve had a little play with 3 systems that are currently available: Chat GPT, Learnt.ai and Canva.

You can see my efforts here:

Chat GPT

Chat GPT is a essentially a chat bot – it’s purpose is to replicate human conversation and be used in customer service. It’s primary purpose isn’t to be writing long articles as far as I can tell, but (when I eventually got onto it) this is what I found…

Learnt.ai

This is a piece of software that has been specifically created to design training. It’s not free, though you can have a (limited) free trial. Here’s a look at what it does.

Canva

Canva is well known for it’s marketing uses: graphics, posts, animated social media and slides. It recently introduced documents, and with it, the opportunity to use AI (which they call Magic Write). Here’s how it coped with the tasks I set it.

In Conclusion

AI can be very helpful to get you started – to get something onto a blank page.

It can quickly flesh out content for you.

It’s great at generating lists.

I certainly wouldn’t say NEVER use it. I can see it being helpful.

Chat GPT and Canva are superior to Learnt.ai, despite this being created for training design!

However…

You still need to decide what you want to include and carefully phrase the question – rubbish in, rubbish out. I would recommend creating your outline the old fashioned way i.e. by yourself, and then using this as a guide to help generate content to flesh things out.

It won’t format things for you. You will have to do a lot of copying and pasting into your session plan, onto your slides and into your workbooks. It won’t cross reference, add timings or trainer instructions either.

I’m not particularly impressed with any of the activity design ideas really. Use the Transform deck, a liberating structure or turn to your fellow designers for inspiration if you can.

It draws on the most common information as far as I can tell, rather than the latest information. For example, it references learning styles for example because that is abundant on the internet. We know that learning styles have now been debunked and should (at best) be taken with a pinch of salt. So you will have to fact check when it comes up with.

Finally, I am concerned that more and more AI gets out there, it will start to draw on AI generated content to create MORE AI generated content. Therefore facts will start to become difficult to distinguish and misinformation will be standard.