I’ve got a confession to make. Most of the time, I find a lot of what we do in safety to be boring. It isn’t that I find the work boring. I consider myself lucky to have landed in a profession I can honestly admit to liking. No, it’s just that many practices, activities, and even sometimes the language that has emerged around the practice of safety can be mundane. Job hazard analysis, risk assessment, safety program manual, behavioral observation – these aren’t exactly adrenaline inducing terms.

Why do I bring this up here? I do so because as I’ve been experimenting with how generative AI can help with construction safety, I’ve been struck numerous times by the same realization: Long before AI kills the safety professional, it will unburden those practicing safety from the tedious and monotonous aspects of their jobs.

I want to explore some of the ways that AI has made managing safety “funner” for me! Granted, some of the ways I use AI are gratuitous, but every effort is made in the pursuit of making something (safety) that is ultimately banal to most, just a little bit better, more engaging and ultimately more effective at saving lives and preventing injuries and illness. So, with that in mind, here are some ways that generative AI can make your safety content slightly less unbearable.

Make your Own Safety Comics

As AI image generators improve, making usable visual content becomes more of a reality. I’ve been using AI image generators like Ideogram and Flux to create safety-related images for publications, notices, and even procedures. It often takes numerous iterations to land on something you like, but if you’re patient enough, image generators can bear fruit.


 
Figure 1: Made using Ideogram on Simtheory with prompt: "A single frame comic in a style similar to Dilbert. A construction safety professional is getting up from their computer. He says to his assistant, "Ok, now that we've got compliance out of the way, we can focus on safety.”


Other things I Use Image Generators For

  • Training Materials: Create customized visuals for safety training presentations or manuals to help illustrate concepts.
  • Simulated Scenarios: Generate images depicting potential hazard situations or emergency scenarios for drills and preparedness exercises.
  • Custom Infographics: Design infographics that convey safety statistics, procedures, or protocols visually appealingly.
  • Safety Campaigns: Develop images for safety awareness campaigns, posters, and banners to promote a culture of safety.
  • Interactive E-Learning Content: Create visuals for interactive online courses or modules that make learning about safety more engaging.

Making your Own Safety Songs

Ok, this one might fall into the gratuitous AI use category, but I want to include it anyway. There are now a few AI song generators out there. They’re all fun to play around with. Just provide a prompt, a music genre, and some lyrics (if you want), and click generate. After you’re done pranking your coworkers with songs about their work habits, you might find some bona fide safety management use cases. My favourite song generator is Udio. You can try it for free, and the results are astounding. I made a theme song for my safety team. This doesn’t exactly further the project's safety, but might it boost morale?

Make a Safety Podcast

This one is new to me. I recently discovered Google’s newly released Notebook LM. The notebook feature is worth checking out. Essentially, it enables you to converse with Google’s Gemini model while working within an interactive notebook. You can add your own content, including videos, text, audio, PDFs, etc. It’s an excellent tool for idea generation and not taking. It also has this fantastic feature called Audio Overview. When you generate an audio overview, the AI creates a podcast about the content in your Notebook. Right now, all podcasts generate as a deep-dive conversations between a man and woman, but you gotta think this will evolve and more voices will be added. Rather than describe how cool it is, I’ll allow you to listen to this article as a Podcast.

With tools like this, you’re now just a click away from offering two versions of your safety policy. One, the usual plain text, the other an engaging conversation between two podcast hosts who will make that policy sound exciting if it’s the last thing they do.

So, can safety finally be sexy?

I think we're getting there. By embracing generative AI, we're breathing new life into a field that's often seen as dull. Tools like AI image generators and song creators aren't just novelties—they offer the potential to make safety content more engaging and memorable. Instead of slogging through tedious manuals and monotonous protocols, we might use a little creativity to capture attention and reinforce important messages.

If leveraging AI makes safety more interesting and effective at protecting people, then maybe, just maybe, safety can finally shed its boring reputation, even if it’s never sexy.