Build your own creative AI assistant

1. Hello & Welcome: Lovely creatives. Welcome to this class. If you've ever opened ChatGPT and thought something like, why does this feel so generic or what am I supposed to do with this? Then please know you are not alone and you are definitely in the right place. Hi, I'm Nici, and I'm obsessed with tools that make creative life easier. I'm a pattern designer and illustrator, but before I chose to try a creative business, I worked as an IT manager. So I have both the creative and the technical side. Today we are going to talk about custom GPTs and about the difference between them and the basic GPT. Custom GPTs don't guess your context. They start with it. They become more predictable and reliable. They feel less like a robot, more like a creative partner. You don't need to be technical to build a great GPT. If you can describe your creative work, you can build an AI that reflects it, and I'll guide you through every step. Throughout this course, I'll use my Color Palette Muse as an example, but you'll build your own assistant tailored to your creative needs. To create your own custom GPT, you currently need a paid ChatGPT plan. Free accounts can use many GPTs but creating them requires an upgrade. Which exact plan is available to you can vary slightly depending on your region. So I recommend checking what ChatGPT offers in your country directly. Personally, I'm using the ChatGPT Plus Plan, which costs around 23 euros per month. You don't need the most expensive option, just a plan that allows you to build custom GPTs. I recommend try it for one month, build your GPT, see if it supports your creative workflow, and then decide if it's worth keeping. I promise I'll explain all in a super cozy, creative friendly way. No tech jargon, no overwhelm, just clarity, and a few. Oh, now I get it moments. So let's meet in class. 2. Your Project: Throughout this course, I will use my Color Palette Muse as a reference, but you can build your own assistant tailored to your creative needs. Build your first small and useful custom GPT for your own creative workflow. For instance, you could build an idea spark assistant that serves you motives, themes, collection ideas or creative prompts. A cozy art director that gives you feedback and suggestions for improvement, a social media helper that delivers hooks and content ideas or writes your captions. A creative planner that helps you with weekly structure or focus and motivates you. Or just follow my custom color palette examples and create your own color companion. Whatever you choose, you will have a relevant assistant afterwards that will improve your creative workflow. You can share a screenshot of your GPT instructions in the gallery to get some feedback from me or show us a conversation with your finished GPT. I can't wait to see what you create. 3. What's a GPT?: What is a GPT? Usually, it looks like this. You open ChatGPT, type something in, and then either the answer is too vague, it sounds like a corporate email or it has nothing to do with you and your style. That's totally normal. The default GPT doesn't know you. It doesn't know your aesthetic, your workflow, your vibe, your industry, or your goals. If your results so far felt boring, it's not you. It's the tool being too general. Okay. Here is the real definition of GPT. GPT is the short form for generative pre-trained transformer. That sounds technical, but that simply means that a GPT is a tool that works with language. Just like Photoshop works with pixels, a GPT works with words. It reads what you write, interprets the intention and generates something new. A GPT adapts to the instructions you give it. If the instructions are general, the results are general. If the instructions are creative, specific, warm, cozy, the results become your style. So what is a custom GPT? This is where things get fun. A custom GPT is simply ChatGPT with a personality and purpose that you designed. One who already knows your vibe, your preferences, and the way you like to work. A custom GPTs knows things like who it is, who it's helping, what tasks it should do, how it should speak, how creative it should be, what tone to use and what to avoid. In other words, it becomes your special creative assistant, if you like. Custom GPTs are a game changer for creatives. Let me give you some examples. A default GPT might give you ten generic pattern ideas. While a custom GPT can give you ten ideas that match your style, your market, your aesthetic, and your skill level. That is a massive difference. Or here. The default GPT might give you "Here's a color palette", very random. The custom GPT could say something like, here is a warm Scandinavian inspired palette, dah dah dah, perfect for your style. A custom GPT works better because it knows you. This is what happens when you teach the AI to understand your world. And the best part of it, you don't need to be technical to install a custom GPTs. You don't need any coding and you don't need special skills. If you can tell someone what kind of help you want, you can create an assistant that actually gives you that. One last thing before we move to the practical part. If you wonder whether there's really a difference between a long ChatGPT conversation and a custom GPT, here's the simplest way to understand it. When you have a long chat in which you explain your style and all your personal preferences, ChatGPT remembers everything inside that conversation. The answers can get better over the time, in this conversation. But the moment you open a new chat, all of that context and information is gone and you start at zero. A custom GPT is like taking everything you would normally explain over and over again and saving it permanently in your instructions. Instead of starting from zero, every time, your assistant shows up already knowing you. Think of it like this. A normal chat is a good conversation. A custom GPT is a trained studio assistant. Both can help, but only one is consistent, reliable, and designed for your everyday creative work. That's why custom GPTs feel so much easier, especially for creatives. In the next lesson, we'll look at the four pillars that make a GPT truly great. This is where your assistant starts to come alive. I can't wait to build it with you. 4. The 4 Pillars: After this lesson, you'll know exactly what you need to define a good custom GPT. But first, please go to the Resources tab and download my short workbook. Here you can brainstorm your ideas and define your GPT. A GPT doesn't need to be smart. It needs to be clear and here are four pillars to define. Number one is identity. Who is your GPT? Is it your assistant, a coach, a helper, you name it. How is your GPT? Do you like answers in a gentle tone or should it be playful or minimal? An example for the identity might be, "You are the color palette muse, a cozy, intuitive and friendly color companion." Number two is the audience. Who is it for? Beginners or professionals? Completely different answers. Your GPT needs to know who it's talking to. An example is: "This GPT is for surface pattern designers and illustrators who value aesthetics." Number three is tasks. GPTs fail when tasks are vague. Clear tasks lead to useful outputs. What do you want your GPT to do? Start with a maximum of three to five tasks. Examples for tasks are: "Generate color palettes" or "Offer variations" or "Plan my week". Number four of the pillars is boundaries. What should your GPT not do? Boundaries prevent chaos. They keep your GPT focused. For example: "Avoid overly technical explanations" or "Don't overwhelm with long lists". Before we move on, pause this video for a moment and answer the questions in the workbook. If you can answer these, you are more than ready for the practical part, which is next. 5. The Surface: Okay, let's actually do this. To create your custom GPT, you don't need the app. It's sometimes not working correctly in the app. Just open ChatGPT in your web browser and log into your account. As mentioned in the intro video, you need a paid plan of ChatGPT to be able to create a custom GPT. Which special one is working for you depends on your region, and please check that out by yourself. I have ChatGPT plus and it costs me 23 euros per month. At the moment, January 26. Here you see the general chat that you probably often use. Down here is the list of the history of your chats. Above that, you find the GPTs. If you've never used or created GPTs, this section is empty. Click on Explore GPTs and here you see a bunch of public GPTs that others have created. On the top right corner, you find Create. Let's click that. Don't panic. You don't need to know everything here for now. We'll focus on what actually matters and go through it step by step. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed. The left side here with the white background is where your assistant lives and on the right side, you get a preview of your GPT. At the moment, it's quite sparse because we don't have defined anything here. Let's concentrate on the left side. Here on the top, you can choose between Create and Configure. Under Create, you can have a chat and your GPT will be built based on that conversation. But I prefer to go to the configure tab where you have the full control of the whole GPT and the building process. I'd say let's start with the most important part, the instructions. This is the core of your GPT. Here, you type everything in what we've talked about in the previous lessons. Remember, the four pillars. Now it's time to fill in all your answers from the worksheet. 6. Basic GPT: Okay. Now you can type all your instructions in as you have defined it in your workbook. The more precise you are, the better. You have 8,000 letters space here, so it should be enough to define a great GPT. I have, of course, prepared my GPT details, so I simply paste it in. Try to keep it organized so it's easier for you to update or change later. By clicking these two arrows at the bottom right, you can have a bigger window, bigger sight of your instructions. And I have divided my instructions into the four pillars from the workbook to have a nice overview and keep all organized. Okay. Let's start with the identity. I have: "You are color companion, a friendly and inspiring color companion for pattern designers. Your tone is warm, encouraging, aesthetic, and easy to understand. Your job is to generate beautiful usable modern color palettes in seconds." You can choose any identity that fits to your style and your needs and your workflow. The audience. "This GPT is designed for surface pattern designers and illustrators who want to create patterns and illustrations with aesthetic color palettes". And the tasks. So that's the most important thing here. I would like to have a GPT that is able to create color palettes just by choosing one word. I would like to type in, for instance, "summer cocktail" and the GPT should give me five colors that fits this theme. For that, I write: "When the user gives a theme, vibe, season or even a single word, you create firstly, a five color palette, each color with a name and a hex code." So it's not enough to say use green or red. I would like to have a specific hex code. And the name is also helpful and nice. I would like to add a second task. I'd like to have a short mood description for this color palette, which could also be inspiring for new illustration and pattern ideas. Okay, so second: "Short mood descriptions. One or two sentences are enough." Okay, and the boundaries. This is also important. You don't want to have very technical answers, for instance, if you are not a technical person at all, and if you need some motivating words, you don't need to get teachers answers. Okay. My boundaries are: "Never ask too many questions, never explain color theory unless asked. Keep everything simple, aesthetic, and helpful. Always give hex codes and every palette must feel intentional and cozy." Okay. When you are finished with these four pillars, you can close this window again and let's make a first test in the preview window on the right side. Without defining the other options here, the name, the description, I would like to make a short test with the instructions. I type in summer cocktail. Thinking. Oh, okay. Great that this happens. On the top, we have three pictures to the defined theme summer cocktail. I got no pictures when I prepared for this class and here you can clearly see that AI is changing and evolving constantly. I didn't have to say that I don't need pictures earlier, but now it seems we have to define it. I don't need pictures here because I think without image generation, the request will run much more faster. But the rest is looking nice. I have five colors with the hex codes and a mood description. That's very nice. Let's define this image thing. Go to the instructions again. I think the boundaries, we need one more boundary. And I type "Don't generate any images." Because we have changed some thing here in the instructions on the left side of the GPT, the history of the preview has gone. Every time you change something here on the left, the preview starts from zero. Your test starts from zero. Let's type again. Summer cocktail. It's looking good now. The colors with the hex codes, a name for the palette, and a mood description. It's looking good now. I would like to go now and check these hex codes if I like the color palette. I do this on the "Coolers" website where I can copy and paste the hex codes for a visual output. Okay, here's the result. It feels like Summer, so the output depending the theme is okay. I like to ask for alternatives now. Give me an alternative. Of course. Okay. So I go and check this on Coolers again. 7. Variation Rules: This on the bottom is the second palette, and the top is the first palette, which we created first. I like it both, but I think some colors are very similar. So these two oranges or the pinks or these two. So I think we have to add some more rules, and I have to define this in the instructions again. When the user types give me alternatives, the GPT should define a totally different palette the second time. Okay, I go back. To the instructions. The four pillars are the core of the GPT, but you can always add more and other instructions as many as you like to. So you don't have to stick only to these four pillars. They are essential, but you can always add more. I go to the bottom and type "variation rules." Keep it organized. I have prepared some, so I paste them in. I have: "Absolutely avoid monochromatic palettes, never give five colors that are just different saturations or value levels of the same hue unless the user explicitly says monochrome, tonal, et cetera. Otherwise, always mix at least three different hues. The second point is, "Alternative palettes must be truly different. If the user asks for variations like three alternatives, each version should feel like a distinctly different creative direction." I close this and I make the test, summer cocktail, and ask for alternatives and come back to you after checking at Coolers. Okay, these are my results, and I think for now, it's okay. Maybe I come back later to my GPT and fine tune some instructions after using it for a certain time in real life. But I like the result, and I think the alternatives are different. That's okay for me for now. And the core of your GPT is finished at this stadium. But you can go a step further. For instance, if you like to share your GPT to other people, you probably like to have a short onboarding, so they or you don't have to start with a blank GPT. Let's make the onboarding in the next video. 8. Onboarding: With the onboarding, you say the GPT what to do when a new conversation is started, and we define this also in the instructions. For my GPT, I have, if the user is new or the request is unclear, ask only one question, so we try to make it nice and simple. What vibe or theme would you like your palette to have? Examples are allowed. Cozy botanical, et cetera, then start immediately. Additionally to the onboarding, close this window. You can set a conversation starter, which is a small button that triggers an action. For example, you could say, give me a random color palette. You have additionally to the chat box, a button that triggers this action. You can Click here, and the system creates a random color palette. In the other case, if you don't click the random button, moment. If you only type, for example, hello, the GPT starts with the onboarding. I'm so happy you are here, et cetera. We are done with the onboarding and the conversation starter. In the next video, we talk about the final settings. We are nearly there. 9. Final Settings: Additional to the onboarding and the nice random button, I'd like to have a welcome text for users, and you can type that in the description here. This GPT creates color palettes. Just type in your style, mood or theme and you get a five color palette or click the random button below. Do you see on the right, the preview. here is the welcome text. And knowledge you could upload any paper or special knowledge. Or if you write blog posts, for example, you could upload examples of your work so the GPT gets to know your writing style. That's very useful and will make the output much more in your words. Recommended model. You can leave this on no recommended model if you use it only for yourself. If you are planning to share this GPT to other users that are not in a paid plan, you can select the GPT 40. That's working for all plans. If you leave on recommended model, the free version will have a problem with your GPT. Finally, on the top, you can upload a logo or a small illustration for your GPT, if you like. Lastly, choose a name. I name my GPT color palette muse. That's it. You can always come back later and update your GPT. So you can click on the top right corner, Create. Here you get different options to save and share your GPT. If you like it only for you, for yourself, you can select only me. So this is your GPT and it's not shared anywhere. Or you could select anyone with the link. You could send out the link to other users too. Or you can upload it to the GPT store and sell it there. For now, let's click only Me and say safe. Okay. And here you have your GPT on the left side under GPTs. When you use your GPT for the first time, let's say hello. A new chat starts down here where your custom GPT is working in the background, and that's it. You can always come back and update your GPT. If you like to update or change any instructions or the logo or whatever, you can go back to GPTs. Explore GPTs, on the top right, my GPTs. Here I have a bunch of GPTs. This one on the top is the right that we have created today together. To update the GPT, simply click the pencil button and you are back at your instructions. That's it. That's all the magic. Congrats. You have built your first GPT. It was not as difficult as you thought, right? I know I'm right. 10. What's next?: Before you go, I just want to say, thank you for taking this class and for spending your time with me. I hope this course helped you see AI a little differently, not as something overwhelming or intimidating, but as a tool that can gently support your creative process. If you have any questions, thoughts or reflections, please feel free to use the discussion section below. I read along and I'm always happy to continue the conversation there. If you'd like to explore this topic further, you are very welcome to visit my website, museflow.co. That's where I share blog posts about AI for creatives, calm workflows, and creative thinking. You'll also find my free color palette muse, a similar one that we've created in this class, and my cozy pattern muse, a more in depth creative assistant for surface pattern designers and creative thinkers. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I really appreciate you being here and I wish you lots of calm, clarity and creative flow. Take care. Bye.