The birth of the MRLEE hotel collection
The increasing prevalence of AI and related technologies such as ChatGPT has led to a surge in public interest and attention. One common concern that arises in discussions about AI is the fear of job displacement. Many people worry that AI will automate so many jobs that there will be no need for human workers. Others argue that while AI will impact some jobs, it will also create new job opportunities in emerging fields that we cannot even predict yet.
Despite the various opinions and concerns surrounding AI, it is clear that this technology is here to stay and will continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace but maybe, just maybe, it could be utilised by more people to follow/embrace their passion?
Below is a video walkthrough of how we created the images and text.
In August 2021, my family and I embarked on a year-long journey to travel the world, leaving behind our lives in the UK. Over the course of 515 days, we had the opportunity to explore 12 countries and stay in a total of 65 hotels. As someone who has always had a passion for hotels, this experience was especially exciting for me. We stayed in a wide variety of accommodations, ranging from tents in a field, treehouses, and even presidential suites in luxurious 5-star properties.
While I enjoyed getting to experience all these different hotels and hotel brands, it has also made me a bit of a difficult guest. I have encountered rooms with outdated technology, restaurant staff who have never tried the menu they are selling, the missing amenities, the badly designed buffet area, seen how customer feedback falls on deaf ears whilst also becoming frustrated with hotel room lighting systems.
I love working in technology and I also love hotels.
Fast forward to Thursday evening March 2nd 2023 my kids and I are having a fun quiz game about places we stayed on our travels. The quiz finishes but with a final question put to each of us “what would your dream hotel be like?”, my two children share their ideas and then it is my turn. Well I say the “Mr Lee hotel is not a single hotel but a collection spread across the world and filled with awe-inspiring experiences.” with that more activity in that part of my brain starts. We call it a night and go to sleep.
Then the next day, the afternoon March 3rd 2023, my daughter and I are chatting again about these hotels, for whatever reason we end up on MidJourney (a generative AI tool run via discord that generates art). We design the first hotel, we create a room, then a restaurant, then a spa. We head over to ChatGPT and tell it some context about our hotel and how it functions and the services it offers.
We then ask it to tell us about the hotel and the spa and the restaurant.
3 hours on Friday 3rd March
3 hours on Saturday 4th March
1 hour on Sunday 5th March
We then open Canva and after 7 hours total, I give you the MRLEE hotel collection.
We used MidJourney, ChatGPT and Canva to generate this brochure.
The AI created the images and text, but an 11 year and her dad who can't draw anything other than boxes produced the prompts, the thoughts, the layout and had the passion to think. We made AI our partner and we created this.
I am most likely not going to have a volcano hotel or a space station trampoline park in the future. Though I can say creating the MRLEE hotel collection over these 7 hours with my daughter was a truly lovely experience. Watching her understand this technology and go off and use it in different ways but also for the first time to be able to put my technical mind into a visual construct felt like someone picked images out of my dreams.
So whilst the industry argues/rave/rant/defend about this technology ask yourself what do YOU want to do, what is YOUR passion, what do YOU love. What can YOU create and maybe, just maybe this crazy technology known as AI may unlock it for YOU.
PS if you are a hotel chain or architect the MRLEE hotel collection is available for 100 million dollar or the nearest offer :)
PSS if you found this an interest article let me know in the comments or via DM
PSSS follow your passion and remember things are rarely impossible.
