Introduction

2022 turned out to be a fantastic year for Artificial Intelligence. Remarkable advancements in the field, like OpenAI's GPT-3 and Stability AI's Stable Diffuson AI Model, was released, and VC investments in the field in 2021 were at $118 billion. Despite all these mindblowing releases, the surface has barely been scratched in use-case applications, and 2023 might actually be the year of AI.

Consider the following statistics:

• The global AI market is expected to reach $160 billion by 2025

• The number of AI-powered devices, like smart speakers and smartphones, is expected to increase from 2.6 billion in 2019 to 8.4 billion by 2024.

• In 2021, 65% of organizations planned to increase their AI investment over the next three years.

As a front-end developer, you are no stranger to the constantly evolving landscape of technology. And with the rise of artificial intelligence, it's more important than ever to understand how to build AI-powered applications. In the past, only Machine Learning and AI developers could build AI apps, but with recent advancements in AI models, any developer can plug advanced API endpoints into their apps.

What To Build?

At the core of our jobs as front-end developers is creating engaging and dynamic app experiences for all users. In this guide, we will explore various use cases, project ideas you can start building right now, and the resources that will help improve your apps' user experience and functionality.

1. Improving Accessibility With AI

As front-end developers, we're primarily responsible for the face of the web, and it's our duty to make it accessible to all users. Beyond adding image alt-tags and cool color contrast, we can employ AI tools to improve the accessibility of front-end applications, making them more usable and accessible to users with disabilities.

For example, text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology can enable users who are blind or have low vision to access and interact with apps. In contrast, AI-powered image recognition like Google's Vision API can allow users who are deaf or have hearing impairments to understand the content of images and videos.

Resources

A sample resource is Microsoft's Cognitive services text-to-speech service. You can plug in the accompanying SDK using Javascript to create a natural screen reader for your web app.

npm install Microsoft-cognitive services-speech-SDK

There's a Javascript quickstart to guide you: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/get-started-text-to-speech?tabs=macos%2Cterminal&pivots=programming-language-javascript.

The Google Cloud Speech API also enables developers to convert audio to text in over 120 languages and variants. https://cloud.google.com/speech/ via the @google-cloud/speech npm sdk.https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/transcribe-client-libraries#client-libraries-install-nodejs

2. Leveraging AI for Personalization

You can also build intelligent interfaces for your front-end applications, enabling users to interact with apps more naturally and intuitively. For example, AI-powered chatbots can provide personalized and natural language-based customer service and support. In contrast, AI-powered virtual assistants can enable users to interact with apps using voice commands.

Conversation commerce (e.g., chatbots and automated SMS) is a huge trend and is expected to reach $290 billion by 2025. If you're an indie hacker or work for a company that sells products, you can employ AI to improve customer satisfaction rates by 24% and increase sales by over 50%. Unlike when you had to pay expensive subscriptions to inefficient chatbots, you can build your own quickly using available APIs.

Resources

OpenAI GPT-3 has a massive treasure chest of code examples you can easily embed into your app. For example, to build a chatbot that handles sales and customer queries, you need to import the openai npm package and start building: beta.openai.com/examples/default-chat.

const { Configuration, OpenAIApi } = require("openai");

const configuration = new Configuration({
 apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY,
});
const openai = new OpenAIApi(configuration);

const response = await openai.createCompletion({
 model: "text-davinci-003",
 prompt: "The following is a conversation with an AI assistant. The assistant is helpful, creative, clever, and very friendly.\n\nHuman: Hello, who are you?\nAI: I am an AI created by OpenAI. How can I help you today?\nHuman: I'd like to cancel my subscription.\nAI:",
 temperature: 0.9,
 max_tokens: 150,
 top_p: 1,
 frequency_penalty: 0.0,
 presence_penalty: 0.6,
 stop: [" Human:", " AI:"],
});

If you own a course that teaches newbies Javascript, you can build a teacher Discord bot built on GPT-3 javascript helper: https://beta.openai.com/examples/default-js-helper.

How exciting, and with the new ChatGPT, things will only get more fun! Combine that with Microsoft Text analytics API: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/products/cognitive-services/text-analytics/ for detecting text sentiment and emotions, and you've got a near-human customer rep.

3. Boost Productivity by Automating Repetitive Tasks

AI technology can also automate repetitive tasks in front-end applications, reducing the workload for developers and improving productivity. For example, AI tools can be used to automatically generate code, perform code reviews, and refactor code, freeing up developers to focus on more challenging and creative tasks. Less is more, and as front-end developers looking to build scalable apps effectively, we can integrate algorithms that make our coding more efficient.
You can also deploy AI tools that automate the testing of your front-end applications, reducing the time and effort required to perform manual testing. For example, AI-powered tests can automatically generate test cases and test data, execute tests, and analyze the results, providing valuable feedback on the functionality and performance of front-end applications.

Resources

Again, you can use OpenAI GPT-3 SDK or REST service to implement the aforementioned use cases. You can create an AI' rubber duck' bot:

• That walks through code with you: https://beta.openai.com/examples/default-explain-code,

• Find bugs and errors in codebases:

• Or even pair programs with you, building out complete feature sets using natural languages like with the GitHub Copilot https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/quickstart

While it might sound counter-intuitive for job security, mastering these powerful productivity tools can make you more efficient and valuable to your company.

4. Build Generative Art-based Applications

The release of the Stability AI's Stable Diffusion Model has inspired many art-based side projects and startups. If you work with apps that are image or video-heavy, you can use newly introduced AI tools to abstract most of the work away. Front-end developers in the game industry can also build out generative game assets that speed up production.

Resources

Replicate, the AI startup that allows you to run open-source models, has a fantastic API for image diffusion.

curl -s -X POST \
  -d '{"version": "27b93a2413e7f36cd83da926f3656280b2931564ff050bf9575f1fdf9bcd7478", "input": {"prompt": "A happy cat with a laptop"}}' \
  -H "Authorization: Token $REPLICATE_API_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  "https://api.replicate.com/v1/predictions"

The opportunities are endless. There are other use cases where AI tools can be handy for a front-end developer like:

- Optimizing Your Web app performance

- Improve Your Technical Content creation quality

- Develop Adaptive User Interfaces

What Next?

Even if you're not building a fully-fledged app, it makes sense to incorporate some of these recent AI advances into your existing app.

In conclusion, as a front-end developer, you are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the growing opportunities in the field of AI. With the rise of artificial intelligence, the demand for skilled developers who can create intuitive and intelligent user experiences will only grow. Now is the perfect time to build your skills and expertise in this exciting and rapidly-evolving field.

So why wait?

Start building your AI-powered app today and take the first step of staying ahead of the curve and relevant in a rapidly changing market.

I've also created an awesome-ai repository filled with the resources shared in this article and more.

Feel free to make a PR to add your projects to the above repo. I am excited to see what you will build!