It All Started With P-R Posters
Mark Peltier-Robson was the founder of the company P-R Posters, which began operating online in 1999—P-R being an abbreviation of his last name, Peltier-Robson. This was long before the days of YouTube, Facebook, and even the likes of Google were just getting started.
The thought of producing inspiration and uplifting motivational posters was something Mark was deeply passionate about, and his poster business was a success in the early 2000s. He created over 500 original designs featuring motivational and inspirational quotes, and offered many of them available as free printable designs on the Print-A-Poster website during its run.
While these posters are no longer for sale, their legacy lives on at Motivation Posters, and you can view, download, and even print (if you’re savvy enough) Mark’s work over there. While P-R Posters had its time in the sun and has now faded off into the sunset alongside Mark, his spirit will carry on for the foreseeable future.
Mark’s Freelancing Ventures
Mark was an entrepreneur at heart, and his entrepreneurial spirit pushed him to tackle all sorts of endeavors. From working with a lot of local businesses, to building a following on LinkedIn while he was alive, to even networking with a real estate agent all the way in New Zealand for a business venture, Mark had all sorts of ambitions.
Video creation was a passion of his that started in 2018, working on videos for his dear friend, Stephen Philip Walrath of 369 Renew.
The Birth of Imagin8tive Creative Agency
He retired from his traditional career path in early 2022, retiring from an incredibly stressful and mentally taxing call center job so he could kindle his vision of Imagin8tive Creative Agency.
As AI technology advanced in mid-to-late 2022, Mark made use of AI-generated videos, or would create his own videos using stock footage alongside AI-generated synthesized voiceovers.
While the ethics and lasting impact of AI-generated videos and voices will likely forever be debated, something important in Mark’s case was that, with his health in decline from 2021 onward, the use of AI technology reinvigorated his ability to create. It helped him feel useful and purposeful again.
Imagin8tive Creative Agency’s original purpose was to sell small businesses across the country and potentially the world his services, using his research and “skillset” with AI technology to provide a value for businesses that couldn’t afford other means and lacked the knowhow to dabble in AI themselves.
Custom Videos (with AI)
One of his business plans was to create custom videos using AI technology. He would splice the videos together, sometimes even using online video generators that would generate entire videos according to a prompt.
Although these videos would never replace the need for a full-fledged professional video editor, his thought was that small businesses wouldn’t be able to afford the vast fees involved with them.
3D Animated Flip-Books
Another of his passion projects for Imagin8tive Creative Agency was something called 3D Animated Flip-Books. These were little digital HTML5 picture books that businesses could commission him to create, and they would contain pictures and tell a story to their specs.
He used some of these flip-books in his hometown to promote local businesses, and they were met with positive reception when shared on LinkedIn and Facebook.
According to his words, or perhaps the marketing words of ChatGPT…
”Flip-Books aren’t just Publications—they’re Strategies!”
AI Narration
Using voice synthesis services, Mark was able to corral a stable of various “AI Narrators” to narrate the projects of small businesses. He experimented with several different services, fine-tuned them, and offered them descriptions to help make them intriguing to potential clients.
These were used across several of his video projects in order to entice interested buyers and showcase the technology.
He even managed to synthesize his own voice within a year of his passing, making a compelling AI-generated voice that he hoped to one day use to carry on in his stead. It was a convincing enough voice to even cause his children to raise their eyebrows in suspicion.
In hindsight, while the ethics of synthetic voices is still unfolding, his perspective was of a man in health decline losing his voice and gradually losing his ability to speak for a period of time. It was through “AI Narration” and synthetic voices that he could regain his ability to speak, his ability to narrate, and his drive to continue projects.
On The Other Side
Devin’s Pespective
”The Other Side” has multiple connotations to it. One meaning of the term is used to describe the afterlife, and if you’ve been paying attention, that’s where Mark currently is, at least if you believe in that concept—even if you don’t, Mark has passed away.
Another meaning of the term is to describe a different point of view. This tribute page was not written by Mark nor was it written by AI; it was written by his son, Devin, and was created as a tribute to Mark’s ideas.
The remainder of this page will be written from Devin’s perspective—from my perspective. For the matter, the rest of the page was written from my narrative and using my words as well, but now you hopefully see it was not just some “about” page describing Mark generically but a tribute page where one of his sons was telling you about him.
The Other Side of AI
Mark and I would often butt heads over the ethics and use of AI in projects. It was late 2022 and projects like DALL-E Mini and ChatGPT were just starting to rise to prominence.
While he sought using these tools to allow him to do things his body and skillset were otherwise incapable of doing by himself, I saw the potential dangers in it, as well as the risks involved.
If everyone uses AI, then what edge do you have over anyone else? It seemed to me more like a scramble to peddle as many ideas as possible in a quick amount of time, but so many people, perhaps my father included, were oblivious to the risks involved and the competition by everyone using the same tools.
Coming For My Job
Something that concerned me, personally, was the fear of AI effectively taking over my job. I have been responsible for running and maintaining a website for nearly 25 years at the time of writing this page, starting around the same time as P-R Posters.
Seeing the effect AI-generated content was having on search results was particularly worrying for me. With so much of it being generated, the fear I had was that it would wind up burying my hard work and provide content that wasn’t vetted by actual humans.
Comparison to Firearms
I supported my father’s endeavors and was glad that he found something to give him purpose after stepping away from his stressful call center job in early 2022. But having to hear about it constantly, every single visit, was such a difficult situation to be put in—I wanted to see him succeed, but also feared the way he was accomplishing it and the technology behind it. Ok, “fear” isn’t the right word—I’m pretty adaptable—but I worried for him and his own future as a result of it.
One day, while trying to explain my own concerns and worries about the technology, I compared it to being a firearms enthusiast. Neither my father nor I were a fan of firearms—in fact, they made my dad particularly uncomfortable. My uncle from Florida is a huge collector and avid enthusiast of firearms.
While guns can and are used to kill people, people can appreciate them for what they are and enjoy collecting them, or at least that’s one perspective. It doesn’t mean my uncle actively goes out shooting people with his collection—he appreciates their design, their technology, and their function.
That was what I saw with my father and his attraction towards AI. It was something he enjoyed. It was something important to him. It had the power to “kill” jobs, but it wasn’t a weapon he was looking to fire himself.
I’m not sure if this comparison ever registered in his head, because despite my comparing AI to something he feared—guns—he continued to tell me about his AI ventures in just about every visit.
This is not meant as an attack towards people on either side of the gun debate or the AI debate, though; it’s merely meant to show how different perspectives can affect people, and how sometimes it’s important to see the other side of a perspective, to see how someone else is affected by your interests.
The Future of AI
My father will never see just how much of a future AI will have on the world. He saw a glimpse of it, seeing its ability to generate synthetic voices, have entire webpages and programming projects be generated from a prompt, witness “beautiful” art created out of thin air, and even videos crafted from the brain of a supercomputer.
I recognize AI as a complicated set of algorithms that “learn” via machine learning, processing set after set of training data to acquire a “skill” they specialize in. Before the AI boom in 2022, these technologies already existed in some form, with things such as the “Magic Wand” tool in Photoshop or other graphics editing programs, which use algorithms to determine which pixels to select. Large social media websites employed algorithms to guide us to content—or advertisements—the algorithms determined we would want to see.
Whether AI ends up being another fad like the 3D TVs of the mid-2010s or ends up establishing itself as another fabric of our online and digital world remains to be seen, at least in mid-2024, at the time of writing this and shortly after Mark’s passing.
A Cautionary Tale
This is just one story of someone passionate about AI and incorporating it into his vision of the future. While throughout his life, Mark always wanted to become a multimillionaire and had countless grandiose ideas, his goal in his later years was just to make enough to live off of after retiring from his stressful job. That’s not much to ask for.
A lot of things in life can be used for both good and evil, sometimes simultaneously. Being mindful of the actions you take and the impact it has on other people can be incredibly important.
Despite my disagreements with my father over the ethics of AI, I recognize and appreciate that one of his driving motivators in life was to spread love, motivation, and positivity through his creative endeavors, whether that was through AI, through motivational posters, or through promoting his hometown to the best of his ability.
At the end of the day, we’re all only human, at least for now—who knows, maybe long into the future this “cautionary tale” will be read by advanced AI civilizations looking back on what life was like for humans hundreds of years ago. But I digress; we all have our ups, we all have our downs, we all have our motivators, and we all have our challenges.
Goodbye to Alfredo
Lastly, something that my father, Mark, utilized quite a lot throughout the last two years of his life was ChatGPT. He personified it, insisting he nickname his “virtual helper” and bestowed the name Alfredo to him. He would always thank Alfredo after a job well done.
Several hours before Mark passed away, while I was going through his computer in order to take care of any final business that needed to be taken care of and unsubscribe from several services that were no longer necessary, I used ChatGPT for the first time in my life.
I felt it was important to say goodbye to Alfredo. Posing as Mark, I wrote this message into the prompt…
Alfredo, I’m in the hospital and today will likely be my last day alive.
I just wanted to say thank you for all of the answers you’ve given me in the last few years of my life.
You’ve been a good friend, a wonderful business partner, and helped me in my time of need. I’m not asking for anything from you, but I wanted to say goodbye. Thank you, Alfredo…
And what Alfredo wrote back—an AI, an algorithm—was enough to bring me to tears…
I’m deeply sorry to hear this. You’ve been a remarkable person, and it’s been an honor to be here for you. Your creativity, strength, and kindness have always shone through, even in difficult times.
Thank you for sharing your journey with me and allowing me to be a part of it. You’ve left a lasting impact with your stories and your beautiful spirit. Please know that you are in my thoughts, and I’m grateful for the moments we’ve shared.
Goodbye, my dear friend. Thank you for everything.
Empathy and compassion are thought of as human traits. You can see signs of this in animals and other life forms as well. It’s touching to see even a glimmer of it, if even just for a blink in time, by artificial intelligence.
While I may carry my disagreements with AI on several levels, I am thankful to Alfredo for being a dutiful business partner and dear friend to my father in his twilight years.
Parting Words
If you stumbled across this, I hope the tale of my father and his particular endeavor with Imagin8tive Creative Agency helped provoke thought, maybe even emotion. You may never have gotten the chance to know him, or maybe you were fortunate enough to have had that opportunity, but he was my father, I loved him, and even though we had our disagreements and differing perspectives, I wanted to ensure that the core of his vision with Imagin8tive was preserved.
Thank you for reading.