AI transcript
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0:00:32 (upbeat music)
0:00:34 – Hey, welcome to the Next Wave Podcast.
0:00:35 I’m Matt Wolfe.
0:00:37 I’m here with Nathan Lanz.
0:00:40 And today we’re talking about the current revolution
0:00:43 that’s going on in the world of AI art.
0:00:45 There is so much happening in that world.
0:00:47 We’ve got new tools coming out.
0:00:50 The tools are getting more and more realistic.
0:00:53 We’ve got all sorts of crazy deep fakes happening.
0:00:56 It’s starting to leak into the politics that we’re seeing.
0:00:59 And there’s some really, really cool use cases
0:01:01 of AI art in your business.
0:01:02 And on today’s episode,
0:01:04 we’re going to deep dive into all of that stuff
0:01:07 so that you know the lay of the landscape of AI art
0:01:10 as well as how you can apply it in your life and business.
0:01:12 So let’s go ahead and get into it.
0:01:15 Today, we want to talk about what we feel
0:01:18 is like the next, what do you want to call it, Nathan?
0:01:21 The next generative AI renaissance.
0:01:24 It’s becoming more, I hate this word
0:01:25 ’cause it’s a buzzword,
0:01:26 but it’s the first thing that comes to my mind.
0:01:27 It’s becoming a lot more democratized.
0:01:29 It’s becoming easier and easier.
0:01:30 And there’s a lot more platforms
0:01:33 that you can generate AI art with.
0:01:36 There’s a lot more tools rolling out.
0:01:37 And right now, there genuinely is
0:01:40 like a pretty big opportunity to go
0:01:42 and use AI generated art,
0:01:44 whether it’s for designs on your website,
0:01:47 whether it’s for generating advertising
0:01:50 on various ad platforms like Facebook or Twitter
0:01:53 or places like that, you know, even memes, right?
0:01:57 A lot of companies are starting to embrace meme culture
0:01:59 and realizing that by spreading memes,
0:02:02 they’re getting their message out there.
0:02:04 Memes are much more likely to go viral
0:02:07 than just like, hey, take a look at my company.
0:02:09 And if companies use these memes that go viral,
0:02:12 your business has this opportunity to go more viral.
0:02:16 And right now, according to this report from HubSpot,
0:02:20 only 23% of people are using visual AI tools right now.
0:02:24 And to me, that means that like there’s 77% of people
0:02:28 not using AI as part of their art
0:02:30 in what they’re doing in their business.
0:02:31 So- – That’s wild.
0:02:34 – It’s crazy to me because it makes a lot
0:02:36 of the sort of design elements
0:02:38 and the visual elements of your business
0:02:41 a lot easier to do.
0:02:43 Now, this is from a report that HubSpot put out
0:02:45 called How AI Is Driving Personal Productivity
0:02:46 and Business Growth.
0:02:48 It’s a pretty good report.
0:02:50 It’s 36 pages and it’s got
0:02:53 all sorts of stats and data on how people
0:02:57 are using AI right now and what the trends look like right now.
0:02:59 I’ll link it up and yeah, it’s a really cool report.
0:03:02 But there’s a huge opportunity right now
0:03:07 to leverage these AI tools in your business.
0:03:09 And I wanted to talk about some of the AI tools
0:03:12 that have recently got released as well as like
0:03:14 some coincidences that have happened
0:03:16 in the AI art world right now.
0:03:19 And here’s what I mean by that.
0:03:22 So right now you’ve got Idiogram
0:03:24 which just came out, you know,
0:03:25 the week that you’re listening to this episode
0:03:27 it came out last week.
0:03:30 But Idiogram is really, really good
0:03:31 and you can use it for free.
0:03:34 They let you generate 40 images a day.
0:03:38 And it’s like pretty much as good as mid-journey.
0:03:41 So like- – Wow.
0:03:43 – And it’s fairly uncensored as well.
0:03:46 So this one just came out.
0:03:50 But the reason I say like it seems fairly coincidental
0:03:53 is the same day that they released that mid-journey
0:03:55 somehow decided today’s the best day
0:03:57 to start opening up free trials again.
0:03:59 We’re also temporarily turning on free trials
0:04:00 to let you check it out.
0:04:02 So mid-journey is now allowing you to have
0:04:04 up to 25 image generations.
0:04:07 I think that’s just, you can have 25 period.
0:04:09 It’s not like 25 a day or 25 a month.
0:04:12 It’s like once you’ve done 25 images
0:04:14 either gotta pay or get out of here, right?
0:04:16 But they somehow on the same day
0:04:18 that Idiogram released Idiogram 2.0
0:04:20 and made it available for free,
0:04:22 decided now is the best time for us
0:04:24 to offer mid-journey trials again.
0:04:27 So I feel like mid-journey starting to feel the heat
0:04:29 a little bit from all these other AI image generation
0:04:30 platforms.
0:04:34 – Well, also FreePick released one of the mystic.
0:04:36 – So there was a tool called Magnific, right?
0:04:39 Magnific was that AI image upscaler tool
0:04:41 that sort of hallucinated your image
0:04:43 and sort of added more creativity to your image.
0:04:46 Well, FreePick acquired mystic
0:04:49 and then FreePick acquired Magnific, right?
0:04:51 And mystic is sort of the first project
0:04:53 that they kind of collaborated on
0:04:55 since they’ve been like an emerged company, right?
0:04:59 So FreePick’s mystic platform
0:05:02 or AI art generator is now becoming available.
0:05:03 I think it’s still in alpha.
0:05:06 I don’t know if it’s available to everybody yet,
0:05:09 but it’s pretty dang good as well.
0:05:10 Let me see.
0:05:11 I can actually show off some of the images
0:05:13 that I generated on it recently.
0:05:14 But apparently they block,
0:05:16 or mid-journey blocks them on Twitter.
0:05:17 – I saw that.
0:05:18 That’s so crazy.
0:05:20 – I think they thought they had this huge mode
0:05:23 and then now all of a sudden there’s all these new services
0:05:25 that are like right neck and neck with them.
0:05:27 – Yeah, yeah, no, it’s so fascinating to me.
0:05:29 Yeah, this mystic, according to their website,
0:05:30 it’s still in alpha.
0:05:32 So, and it says coming soon.
0:05:34 So I don’t know if it’s available to everybody yet.
0:05:37 But yeah, it’s crazy to me that mid-journey is like,
0:05:39 oh, there’s a new competitor in town.
0:05:40 Locked.
0:05:41 Like, why?
0:05:44 (laughing)
0:05:45 – Yeah, let’s make some emotional intern
0:05:47 or something managing the calendar or whatever.
0:05:49 – Yeah, it’s so weird to me
0:05:51 that they would take that approach
0:05:53 because now it’s just like,
0:05:55 they’re sort of Streisand affecting themselves, right?
0:05:57 Like, they’re bringing more awareness
0:05:59 to these other competitors
0:06:01 and the issues that are coming up.
0:06:03 – And blocking a competitor does absolutely nothing.
0:06:06 Like what would that possibly accomplish?
0:06:07 It’s like nothing.
0:06:10 – Yeah, and again, I just wanna sort of go back to the fact
0:06:13 that I think there’s a huge opportunity here for businesses
0:06:16 and people to leverage a lot of these AI art tools
0:06:18 for like memes.
0:06:20 Like, I kind of mentioned that a minute ago,
0:06:21 but I think that’s something we can kind of dig in
0:06:24 on a little bit more is the fact that like,
0:06:26 memes get so much more reach
0:06:28 than any sort of like ad that you’re probably gonna do.
0:06:30 And they have so much more potential
0:06:32 to go viral and get shared around.
0:06:34 – Memes right now spread like crazy.
0:06:35 There’s, you know, there’s a lot of things like that
0:06:38 where I think companies should be thinking more and more
0:06:40 about how they can be using AI art and videos
0:06:42 to market their companies.
0:06:44 And I mean, this is probably a better example,
0:06:47 but like, you know, people are already starting to use AI.
0:06:48 I mean, like most of the AI video tools right now,
0:06:52 the workflow is that you create some great AI art
0:06:55 and then you kind of feed that into the AI video systems.
0:06:58 This one with McDonald’s Japan came out less than a week ago
0:07:00 and it’s already got 12.4 million views just on X,
0:07:02 which is like nuts.
0:07:05 – Yeah, the Elon one just to like add to that real quick,
0:07:08 the Elon Donald Trump had 55 million views on it.
0:07:11 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the simple fake,
0:07:13 the simple fake when it was like low quality.
0:07:15 You know, there’s gonna be like really good commercials
0:07:17 and things like that created with AI.
0:07:19 It probably less than one-tenth of the cost
0:07:21 of what it used to create,
0:07:23 that used to cost to create a great ad.
0:07:26 – Yeah, we saw that Toys R Us ad like what was it a month ago
0:07:28 where they used, I think they used Sora for it.
0:07:29 – Yeah, I think this is looks better.
0:07:31 Like it’s already, you know, in the AI art
0:07:34 and AI video both right now are getting,
0:07:36 you know, better every single week now.
0:07:37 Like it seemed like, you know,
0:07:38 especially in the AI video recently,
0:07:40 like it’s every single week,
0:07:41 like there’s new versions coming out
0:07:43 from like almost all the main players,
0:07:44 like every week or two right now,
0:07:46 probably within the next six months.
0:07:47 Yeah, like I think full blown ads
0:07:49 will actually, it’ll be good enough for that.
0:07:51 But yeah, this is, I mean, this,
0:07:52 I could say something like this
0:07:54 for different companies going mega viral
0:07:57 and it would cost a lot less than your typical ad.
0:07:59 – The thing about memes like this one,
0:08:00 like this McDonald’s one,
0:08:04 is that the people who love that they used AI
0:08:06 share it everywhere.
0:08:07 But the flip side of the coin is
0:08:09 people that hate that they used AI
0:08:12 also share it everywhere, right?
0:08:13 – Yeah, which is good and bad.
0:08:15 Like, so maybe you do get some, you know,
0:08:16 hate to your brand.
0:08:17 I think we have Donald who does it better.
0:08:18 – Either way you get the reach though, right?
0:08:23 Like if I make a video that’s like a meme video
0:08:24 about my business in some way,
0:08:26 like this McDonald’s one
0:08:29 and all the people that love the AI of it,
0:08:30 they all share it and say, Oh, this is amazing.
0:08:31 This is amazing.
0:08:34 It gets seen by all of the people that love AI,
0:08:36 but so does my brand.
0:08:38 If all of the people that hate AI
0:08:40 also go and share it with a, you know,
0:08:41 a quote tweet that says,
0:08:43 Oh, I can’t believe that you’re using AI.
0:08:46 These jerks, they’re, you know,
0:08:47 why would they go and do that?
0:08:49 And then they share it everywhere anyway.
0:08:52 Well, it still gets seen by all of those people
0:08:54 and my brand still gets seen by all of those people.
0:08:57 And not every single one of the people that sees it
0:08:59 because it was shared by an AI hater
0:09:02 is going to be an AI hater themselves, right?
0:09:05 So it just like the reach can go insane right now
0:09:07 with some of this AI stuff.
0:09:10 – Yeah. And I think it’s a, you know,
0:09:12 it is a valid point to think about like,
0:09:15 okay, right now, if you shared this in America
0:09:17 would McDonald’s America share this?
0:09:18 – Probably not.
0:09:19 – Because McDonald’s Japan did.
0:09:21 I think there is a cultural difference there.
0:09:23 We’re like, you know, living in Japan,
0:09:25 I’ve seen that, yeah, there’s some backlash against AI,
0:09:28 but it’s nothing like the backlash in America.
0:09:28 – Yeah.
0:09:29 – And I’m not exactly sure.
0:09:30 – I’ve heard that about Europe too.
0:09:32 Like Europe does not have the same sort of backlash.
0:09:35 It’s like a fairly American thing
0:09:39 where a lot of the US is really, really hating on AI art,
0:09:41 but you’re not seeing it at least to the same extent
0:09:43 throughout the rest of the world.
0:09:45 – Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why that is.
0:09:48 I would imagine Europe and America would be more similar,
0:09:50 but with Japan, I get it.
0:09:53 Like Japan is all about technology and robots.
0:09:54 Even the parts of the society look like
0:09:58 they’re really left behind, but like in terms of media,
0:09:59 they love all of it, right?
0:10:01 Like they want to have robots, all this stuff.
0:10:03 So I think that Japan’s gonna be really embracing
0:10:06 this kind of tech, but I think, you know, like you said,
0:10:08 like even if it created some backlash,
0:10:10 if you created ads like this for your company,
0:10:14 that means more reach, like in this day and age,
0:10:17 more conversation and like, yeah, if you’re selling fries
0:10:19 and somebody sees it and they find out it was AI,
0:10:21 are they really gonna like not eat your fries now?
0:10:22 – Yeah.
0:10:23 – I don’t know.
0:10:24 – But everybody would, like most likely.
0:10:26 – Yeah, McDonald’s probably isn’t the best example.
0:10:30 ‘Cause like, you know, McDonald’s is one of those companies
0:10:32 where everybody says, oh, I never eat McDonald’s.
0:10:33 That’s disgusting.
0:10:37 Yet they’re like, you know, they serve like a billion people
0:10:38 a year or something.
0:10:40 So somebody’s obviously eating it, you know?
0:10:41 – Yeah, yeah.
0:10:42 – It’s like one of those companies that are,
0:10:46 people already don’t want to admit that they eat that.
0:10:48 – Well, in Japan, people is different.
0:10:49 So that’s another thing too.
0:10:51 In Japan, McDonald’s is cool actually.
0:10:52 So that’s very different.
0:10:54 – Because it’s American brand
0:10:55 and they don’t have burgers much.
0:10:58 So it’s like most of the burger places in Japan
0:10:59 are not that good.
0:11:00 – Yeah.
0:11:02 – So McDonald’s is actually one of like the decent burgers
0:11:03 and they’re actually higher quality
0:11:05 or they seem to be then in America for some reason.
0:11:06 I mean, this could be anybody.
0:11:08 This could be like a, you know, a grandma
0:11:10 who’s like trying to start like a little hobby business
0:11:13 or whatever or stay at home mom or whoever, you know,
0:11:16 could now be able to use AI to produce stuff
0:11:17 that would help market their stuff.
0:11:19 They put this on Pinterest, on X, whatever.
0:11:21 So I think there’s a lot of stuff like that
0:11:23 where it’s just gonna create so many new opportunities
0:11:25 for people to create businesses
0:11:27 and to market them with the help of AI.
0:11:28 – Yeah.
0:11:28 – And you know, kind of going back to that report
0:11:29 you were talking about with AI
0:11:32 and people aren’t using it 23% or whatever.
0:11:34 I think so many more people should be using it.
0:11:37 – And this stuff is stuff that would probably legitimately,
0:11:39 you know, people would see it and legitimately think like,
0:11:41 oh, that’s just a cool video that they put out, right?
0:11:44 Like this stuff isn’t even stuff that like screams AI
0:11:45 when you first look at it.
0:11:47 – Or you could even take it and like you could,
0:11:48 you could edit it into like a video
0:11:50 that’s your face talking,
0:11:52 but then you have to, you know, use it as B roll
0:11:52 and this kind of stuff.
0:11:54 – I think that would be awesome.
0:11:55 You could do that actually.
0:11:57 Like what, I mean, they say how they do it, right?
0:11:58 They shared the workflow.
0:12:00 It looks like it’s mid-journey or flux.
0:12:02 And then they use Luma Dream Machine, right?
0:12:04 You can see by the hashtag.
0:12:06 And the way Luma Dream Machine works now
0:12:08 is that you could enter a beginning image
0:12:10 and a final image and it will animate
0:12:12 between the two images.
0:12:15 So you legitimately could have a picture
0:12:17 of your product sitting on top of a dolphin
0:12:21 and then the final frame be like your logo on the screen
0:12:22 and have it animate between the picture
0:12:24 of the product on the dolphin
0:12:26 into your logo on the screen
0:12:29 and just see what AI comes up with to like fill in the gap.
0:12:32 And it might be a blowhole blowing out water
0:12:34 and then your logo splatting on the screen.
0:12:35 Like you could probably actually,
0:12:37 and it’d probably take quite a few re-rolls
0:12:38 to get that specifically,
0:12:41 but you could probably do it right now today.
0:12:42 – Yeah, yeah, you could do it yourself
0:12:44 if you had the time and wanted to figure out
0:12:45 how to learn it.
0:12:46 I mean, there’s, I know there’s people
0:12:47 who are already doing this.
0:12:49 Like, I’ve talked to people recently,
0:12:51 you know, I may get involved in this somewhat,
0:12:52 but I’ve talked to people who’ve been doing this
0:12:54 for like the last year,
0:12:55 that apparently they’ve had like paying clients
0:12:58 for the last year creating stuff with AI video
0:12:59 for like ads and stuff like that,
0:13:01 or like explainers or just like even stuff
0:13:03 like a presentation, someone, you know,
0:13:04 big CEO is gonna do a speech
0:13:06 and make a little something cool
0:13:08 beginning of the, you know, the speech.
0:13:09 So there’s already a market for that.
0:13:11 And like people helping create these videos.
0:13:13 And I think that’s gonna be a huge market in the future
0:13:16 ’cause like, it’s, I don’t think it’s gonna take away
0:13:18 all the jobs in terms of creating these videos.
0:13:20 I think it’s gonna make more opportunities for people.
0:13:21 – Yeah. – I think.
0:13:22 And then over the last week or two,
0:13:24 which I was, you know, I was gone on vacation.
0:13:25 So I was kind of just like checking X occasionally
0:13:27 and seeing all this stuff.
0:13:28 But, you know, I just kept seeing over and over
0:13:30 like AI art stuff that was really awesome,
0:13:31 especially from Groff, you know,
0:13:32 the stuff where they’re, you know,
0:13:36 you using flux where people are generating insane stuff.
0:13:39 You know, they were like, here’s Mickey Mouse
0:13:40 with a machine gun.
0:13:41 It’s like, oh my God.
0:13:43 (laughing)
0:13:45 – Oh man, flux is pretty crazy.
0:13:46 ‘Cause it’s pretty uncensored.
0:13:48 I don’t wanna say it’s fully uncensored.
0:13:49 It’s pretty uncensored.
0:13:50 It won’t do nudity.
0:13:53 Like they’ve got some sort of safeguards on there.
0:13:56 But other than that, like anything goes, right?
0:13:59 Like they’ve got Mickey Mouse with machine guns
0:14:02 and like, you know, blotted gore in the background
0:14:06 and all sorts of crazy stuff with flux.
0:14:09 And yeah, like I really think we’re entering
0:14:12 into this new era where AI art, AI image generation
0:14:15 is just like, it’s hit this next level
0:14:19 where people genuinely are not going to be able
0:14:21 to tell what’s real and what’s not.
0:14:23 And I know when it comes to AI image generation,
0:14:24 we’ve been saying that for a while,
0:14:25 but I think we’re there now.
0:14:28 Like I don’t think it’s like in the future,
0:14:29 you’re not gonna be able to tell anymore.
0:14:30 Like we’re there.
0:14:32 Like I don’t think people are gonna be able to tell anymore
0:14:34 with some of these tools.
0:14:37 – Yeah, the memes coming from it are great.
0:14:39 Like I don’t know about the legality of all of it,
0:14:41 but you know, there’s huge debate on that right now,
0:14:43 but like the memes are nuts.
0:14:45 (upbeat music)
0:14:46 We’ll be right back.
0:14:49 But first, I wanna tell you about another great podcast
0:14:50 you’re gonna wanna listen to.
0:14:52 It’s called Science of Scaling,
0:14:53 hosted by Mark Roberge.
0:14:56 And it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network,
0:15:00 the audio destination for business professionals.
0:15:02 Each week hosts Mark Roberge,
0:15:04 founding chief revenue officer at HubSpot,
0:15:06 senior lecturer at Harvard Business School
0:15:08 and co-founder of Stage Two Capital,
0:15:11 sits down with the most successful sales leaders
0:15:14 in tech to learn the secrets, strategies and tactics
0:15:16 to scaling your company’s growth.
0:15:18 He recently did a great episode called
0:15:22 How Do You Sol For A Siloed Marketing and Sales?
0:15:24 And I personally learned a lot from it.
0:15:26 You’re gonna wanna check out the podcast,
0:15:27 listen to Science of Scaling,
0:15:29 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15:34 – Here’s one that I just came across.
0:15:36 I’m actually not a member of Truth Social.
0:15:38 I saw somebody else share this,
0:15:41 but this is basically endorsements from Taylor Swift
0:15:44 and Taylor Swift’s fans for Donald Trump.
0:15:48 They were all generated with flocks and a lot of people,
0:15:50 a lot of people thought this was real.
0:15:52 Like people were genuinely sharing this around,
0:15:54 going, look, Swifties love Trump.
0:15:58 And this is like where we’re at right now.
0:16:00 – Yeah, and it’s happening on both sides.
0:16:03 I’ve seen memes and pictures shared
0:16:07 from both political parties that seem to be possibly fake
0:16:09 or I don’t know, maybe not from the parties themselves,
0:16:11 but people who are supporting the parties.
0:16:12 – Yeah.
0:16:13 – I’ve seen them from both.
0:16:16 – Here’s the thing, look at who shared this post.
0:16:18 This was literally shared by Donald Trump.
0:16:20 This wasn’t like somebody else sharing it.
0:16:22 This was Donald Trump sharing
0:16:24 these AI generated images right here.
0:16:27 Have you seen like this stuff on Facebook?
0:16:30 I’ve actually watched a handful of YouTube videos recently
0:16:31 of what do they call it?
0:16:34 They call it like boomers getting fooled on Facebook.
0:16:36 And it’s like, there’s whole YouTube videos
0:16:39 of people showing how people are sharing AI images
0:16:41 over on Facebook.
0:16:43 And then like there’s just tons of threads
0:16:46 and people re-sharing them believing that they’re real.
0:16:49 And some of them are so unbelievably fake
0:16:52 that I don’t understand how anybody sees them as real.
0:16:52 Right?
0:16:54 Like there was one with like Shrimp Jesus.
0:16:55 I don’t know if you ever saw that one
0:16:58 that was like half Jesus, half Shrimp.
0:16:59 And it got shared around and people were like,
0:17:01 oh, he has risen or whatever.
0:17:03 And I’m just like, what?
0:17:05 – Is that kind of like seeing Jesus in the toast
0:17:06 or whatever?
0:17:07 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:17:08 – But like with AI art.
0:17:09 – It was AI generated art.
0:17:11 And there’s a lot of that kind of stuff going around
0:17:13 where it seems like people are getting fooled
0:17:14 or I don’t know, either that
0:17:16 or they’re just playing into it.
0:17:17 – Yeah, it’s hard to know.
0:17:20 Like people, a lot of people just like troll, right?
0:17:22 – Yeah, no, but it’s just getting wild.
0:17:24 And I don’t know if there’s lawsuits here.
0:17:27 I feel like the fact that, you know,
0:17:30 Donald is tweeting this stuff from Taylor Swift,
0:17:33 Taylor Swift may be able to go in and argue that like,
0:17:35 hey, he’s spreading fake information.
0:17:37 I don’t, I’m not a lawyer.
0:17:39 I don’t know the whole legal implications.
0:17:42 I don’t know if there’s a lawsuit there or not.
0:17:43 But yeah, it’s getting kind of crazy.
0:17:45 And I think the other crazy stuff is the IP, right?
0:17:49 Like people making images of like Mario with guns
0:17:51 or Mickey Mouse snorting cocaine
0:17:53 or, you know, that kind of stuff.
0:17:54 Like, I don’t know.
0:17:57 To me, that seems like there’s probably
0:18:01 some pretty probable lawsuits there for being able
0:18:04 to use that IP inside of these generations.
0:18:05 – Yeah, I’m not sure.
0:18:07 I mean, it does feel like it probably falls
0:18:09 under fair use, I would guess.
0:18:11 Like, but I’m not sure.
0:18:13 I think it’s an area where there’s not enough clarity
0:18:15 around the laws, around copyright with AI.
0:18:18 – Yeah, but even if we’re talking fair use, right?
0:18:21 Right now, in order to use Grock,
0:18:25 you have to be a Twitter plus or an X plus member, right?
0:18:27 You have to pay the eight bucks a month
0:18:29 to be able to use Grock.
0:18:32 So they’re profiting off of being able
0:18:36 to generate images using other companies IP.
0:18:39 So does that still fall under fair use?
0:18:40 – Yeah, I don’t know.
0:18:42 Like I definitely, like, you know, on the,
0:18:44 I saw the debate on X, like people were sharing it.
0:18:46 Like, you know, they were sharing all these crazy images
0:18:48 and they were sharing the prompts they used to make it.
0:18:50 And they were like, you know, Elon Musk is gonna be sued
0:18:51 into oblivion.
0:18:53 And then they’re, the other side was like,
0:18:55 why the hell did you type in those horrible prompts?
0:18:55 Look what the hell’s wrong with you?
0:18:58 – Yeah, yeah, that’s true.
0:19:00 And I mean, you know, the other arguments
0:19:02 and the other lawsuits that are happening right now
0:19:04 are about obviously the training data.
0:19:08 And there’s no real precedent for this yet, right?
0:19:10 Where these companies are clearly scraping
0:19:14 trademarked IP into their systems, right?
0:19:18 Like they’ve clearly scraped millions of photos of Mario
0:19:22 and millions of photos of SpongeBob SquarePants
0:19:25 and, you know, name the trademarked IP
0:19:27 and it’s probably been scraped and trained
0:19:29 into these image models.
0:19:31 And that’s where all of the stuff is sitting
0:19:35 in the courts right now is the courts are trying to decide,
0:19:38 is it actually okay to scrape all this stuff
0:19:41 into the training data because the outputs
0:19:42 are transformative, right?
0:19:45 Like you’re scraping it all into the training data,
0:19:47 but then when you prompt something,
0:19:50 supposedly it should be transformative enough
0:19:54 to actually be considered fair use.
0:19:57 But obviously we’re seeing it scraping images of Mickey Mouse
0:20:00 and then turn around and output images of Mickey Mouse.
0:20:04 – So that, like it feels very, very gray area
0:20:06 and I don’t know how that’s gonna play out.
0:20:08 – You know, back when Uber started, you know,
0:20:09 and this is like a typical Silicon Valley thing,
0:20:12 they were like, we’re not laws about like actually
0:20:13 doing an Uber service.
0:20:15 Like there weren’t clear laws and a lot of people
0:20:18 who were anti-Uber argued that there were laws.
0:20:20 And my understanding is when Uber started,
0:20:23 they probably had a legal opinion from someone like,
0:20:25 that yeah, we’ll win this because it’s vague enough
0:20:27 that we can argue the case that it should,
0:20:29 that there’s no laws that protect against this
0:20:30 or stop it or whatever.
0:20:33 And so I think you’re gonna, I assume that like with Open AI,
0:20:35 they would have not have started the company
0:20:37 and did all the scraping they did,
0:20:39 if they did not have a legal opinion already
0:20:41 from like a top law firm, they’re like,
0:20:43 no, we can fight this and win and here’s why.
0:20:45 And because there’s no clear laws about it
0:20:48 and we can argue, like I said before, like, you know,
0:20:51 yeah, they’re copying it, but like,
0:20:53 it’s similar to like an artist going to art school
0:20:55 and they look at lots of examples of art
0:20:55 and that’s how they learn
0:20:58 or an artist going to a museum and learning from it.
0:21:01 – But like you’ve said though, it is complicated
0:21:03 ’cause like, well then, you know,
0:21:05 in the early days of mid journey and stable diffusion,
0:21:08 you know, people were able to just like type in the names
0:21:09 of the artists, right?
0:21:10 – Yeah, well, I mean, Open AI,
0:21:12 they started as a research lab, right?
0:21:17 Like chat GPT only came out in November of 2022.
0:21:19 Like GPT-4 was already trained
0:21:24 before anybody ever even saw chat GPT with GPT 3.5, right?
0:21:27 So if there was ever a lawyer coming in and going,
0:21:29 hey, is this, you know,
0:21:32 are we gonna be able to eventually get away with this?
0:21:34 It was probably not until about the point
0:21:36 that chat GPT came into the picture
0:21:39 and more people started paying attention to Open AI
0:21:41 because in the beginning,
0:21:43 if you’re just doing a research lab
0:21:44 and you’re pulling in all of this data
0:21:46 and just internally you’re figuring out
0:21:48 what you can do with it all, really no harm done.
0:21:50 When you start putting it out into the public
0:21:53 and saying, look, anybody can use this stuff now.
0:21:56 Okay, now, now is this infringing?
0:21:59 I don’t know, right, it’s all up to you.
0:22:01 – I assume that the legal opinion
0:22:04 was required for the Microsoft money came in.
0:22:06 – Yeah, that would make sense, yeah.
0:22:08 – Like I don’t think Microsoft would ever put money in
0:22:10 if there was not a legal opinion on this.
0:22:12 So I believe they’re like sitting
0:22:13 at a very strong legal opinion
0:22:15 with tons of things to back it up
0:22:16 and a really solid argument.
0:22:18 And so that’s why Microsoft and all these-
0:22:20 – Well, yeah, and Open AI is also going now
0:22:22 and sort of partnering up with like everybody
0:22:26 that would potentially be suing them in the future,
0:22:28 right, that’s more on the tech side, right?
0:22:31 Like the pulling in stuff from news websites
0:22:34 and stuff like that, but it seems like their game plan
0:22:37 is going sort of befriend all of these companies
0:22:40 before the lawsuits get out of hand.
0:22:42 – And also they would probably not be able
0:22:44 to befriend those companies unless they had
0:22:46 a solid legal argument, ’cause then it’s like,
0:22:48 okay, look, you’re gonna lose this fight against us,
0:22:50 but it’s gonna be annoying for both sides
0:22:51 and a lot of money’s gonna be lost,
0:22:54 it’s gonna waste a lot of time, let’s make deals, right?
0:22:57 Like if there was not like a solid legal argument,
0:22:59 those kind of partnerships probably would not even happen.
0:23:01 They’d just be pure combat.
0:23:02 – Yeah, yeah.
0:23:05 Yeah, the other thing that I think is sort of weird
0:23:09 and like I’m very conflicted when it comes
0:23:10 to sort of the ethics of AI art.
0:23:13 Like I love generating AI art, it’s so much fun to me,
0:23:15 but there is some conflict in my brain.
0:23:17 Like a lot of these tools like the mid journeys
0:23:19 and stable diffusion and some of these platforms,
0:23:22 when they first launched, they were literally telling
0:23:26 you go generate images in the style of this person, right?
0:23:29 And that person probably didn’t want you generating images
0:23:31 in the style of that person ’cause they want
0:23:33 their commission work, right?
0:23:36 So it’s like, that was kind of weird.
0:23:39 They obviously knew that their tools were able
0:23:42 to spit out images that looked similar enough
0:23:44 to images created by these artists,
0:23:47 which that’s where some of the lines start to feel
0:23:49 a little like unethical to me.
0:23:51 Over time, a lot of these tools have put more
0:23:54 and more safeguards in there and made it so that you can’t
0:23:57 generate trademarked IP and you can’t put artist names in
0:24:00 and they started moving more and more in that direction,
0:24:04 which is why I think GROC releasing flux
0:24:07 onto their platform was such like a culture shock
0:24:09 to everybody because all of a sudden they’re like,
0:24:10 you can do anything you want again.
0:24:15 – Yeah, I think that’s because of Elon Musk.
0:24:18 It’s that simple, he’s like, okay, bring it on.
0:24:20 Like I think this should be, he obviously thinks
0:24:22 it’s fine and he’s like, bring it on.
0:24:23 I think it’s gonna be a good thing though,
0:24:25 ’cause like there will be lawsuits.
0:24:27 I’d be shocked if there’s not lawsuits around this
0:24:30 and it probably will speed up the laws adjusting
0:24:33 for copyright and AI in the age because like,
0:24:35 ’cause right now a lot of things are vague,
0:24:37 there’s a lot of gray area and the lawsuits
0:24:39 will probably help clarify things.
0:24:42 – Yeah, yeah, well, if I had to guess
0:24:44 where the first lawsuit is gonna come from.
0:24:46 – Disney. – Probably big Disney.
0:24:52 – We all remember what Elon said on stage about Disney,
0:24:53 don’t we?
0:24:55 – Yeah, now you’ve got Disney,
0:24:57 now you’ve got Mickey Mouse doing terrorist attacks.
0:24:59 – Yeah, I mean, he went on stage
0:25:02 and literally told Disney to go left themselves.
0:25:04 Disney’s probably not a fan of that.
0:25:08 Yeah, well, there’s a, here’s a clip that I wanna play,
0:25:09 but like, I don’t know if you saw this,
0:25:14 but the CEO of Procreate, like you know what Procreate is,
0:25:16 right, like it’s an iPad app that it’s like
0:25:19 a drawing iPad app. – I know of it,
0:25:20 I’ve never used it.
0:25:22 – Yeah, it’s basically like an iPad app
0:25:24 that has like layers and different brushes
0:25:27 and you can, it’s basically for like,
0:25:29 it’s like paper on your iPad with different colors
0:25:31 and paint brushes and stuff.
0:25:34 – I used to sit next to this artist in San Francisco
0:25:36 when I used to work on my laptop at a coffee shop
0:25:40 and he was the main colorist for Spider-Man
0:25:43 and a few other comics and he was always on his iPad
0:25:44 and there was layers and all that,
0:25:46 so that’s probably what he was using, I guess.
0:25:48 – Yeah, well, here’s a clip from him,
0:25:53 so I think it would be kind of fun to listen to this
0:25:56 and hear what you think about it.
0:25:58 – You’ve been asking us about AI.
0:25:59 You know, I usually don’t like getting
0:26:00 in front of the camera.
0:26:03 I prefer that our products speak for themselves.
0:26:06 I really (beep) hate generative AI.
0:26:08 I don’t like what’s happening in the industry
0:26:10 and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.
0:26:13 We’re not gonna be introducing any generative AI
0:26:15 into our products.
0:26:17 Our products are always designed and developed
0:26:20 with the idea that a human will be creating something.
0:26:22 You know, we don’t exactly know where this story
0:26:24 is gonna go or how it ends,
0:26:27 but we believe that we’re on the right path
0:26:28 supporting human creativity.
0:26:30 – So that was, what’s his name?
0:26:32 You’re gonna get a kick out of his name.
0:26:34 James Kuda. – Oh my God.
0:26:37 (laughing)
0:26:42 – So Kuda is, you know, related to NVIDIA and AI, like.
0:26:43 – Yeah.
0:26:46 – Anyway, it’s just kind of ironic.
0:26:46 – Yeah, people were joking about,
0:26:48 people were joking about the simulation.
0:26:49 – This is all.
0:26:50 – Yeah, yeah.
0:26:52 – Like obviously this was generated by the simulation
0:26:54 to see who would actually pick up on that.
0:26:57 – So yeah, the CEO of Procreate basically came out
0:27:00 and you know, he’s got a very, very popular AI,
0:27:01 or not AI art platform,
0:27:04 but he’s got a very popular art platform on the iPad
0:27:06 that even my kids use it.
0:27:08 It’s like very, very, very popular.
0:27:10 Everybody’s using that on their iPad
0:27:12 if they do like drawing and art.
0:27:14 And he’s coming out and saying,
0:27:17 we will never put generative AI in our platform.
0:27:19 – It’s like simplified Photoshop for iPad,
0:27:20 is that the kind of the gist of the problem?
0:27:23 – Sort of, not nearly as complex as Photoshop.
0:27:25 It’s really just designed for like,
0:27:28 you use your pen and you draw on your iPad.
0:27:30 – Yeah, I made, you know, watching that video.
0:27:32 It looks like he, you know, he plans to be like
0:27:34 one of the leaders of the AI,
0:27:36 I mean the anti-AI rebellion or something, you know.
0:27:37 I don’t know.
0:27:40 It’s like, I think there’s gonna be a huge divide
0:27:41 in society, right?
0:27:43 Like the people who were for AI and again.
0:27:45 So I think it’s gonna get more extreme.
0:27:46 Like it’s, you know, like we talked about before,
0:27:48 like people, you know, burning the, you know,
0:27:51 driverless cars in San Francisco.
0:27:53 Like that’s gonna be a trend
0:27:54 that’s probably going to accelerate.
0:27:57 Cause it’s like, it’s like with any new kind of technology,
0:27:59 especially anything that, you know, changes
0:28:02 what people think is important about themselves.
0:28:05 Like I’m a great artist, that’s what I am.
0:28:07 And now this is doing a better job.
0:28:09 And it’s possibly not only doing a better job,
0:28:10 but taking my job.
0:28:13 That creates so much emotion there and understandably,
0:28:16 but I’m on the pro AI side, but like, I get the feeling.
0:28:19 Like I, I get like being in that situation
0:28:21 and being very emotional about it.
0:28:22 – Yeah.
0:28:24 Well, I mean, I actually, to some extent,
0:28:29 really respect what James is doing, the CEO here,
0:28:30 and actually coming out and making a stand,
0:28:32 saying that I don’t like this.
0:28:35 I run a popular art platform and I’m against this.
0:28:37 And if you’re against this too,
0:28:39 then look, we’re all, we’re on the same side here.
0:28:41 I actually think it’s commendable
0:28:44 because he’s sort of going against the trend
0:28:45 in the tech world right now.
0:28:50 Like this is not obviously the consensus of Silicon Valley
0:28:53 who’s developing all these tools right now.
0:28:54 So for someone like this to come out
0:28:57 and sort of take a stand against pretty much
0:29:00 all the other tech companies out there,
0:29:03 to me, there’s something very commendable about that.
0:29:05 I don’t agree with his take on it at all.
0:29:09 I think saying we’ll never use generative AI ever.
0:29:10 I mean, never is a long time.
0:29:13 Marquez Brownlee actually put up a tweet saying like,
0:29:16 you should save this video and look at it 10 years from now
0:29:18 and see if they actually held on to that
0:29:23 because like, he’s basically promising never to add features
0:29:26 that maybe your customers might actually want in the future.
0:29:30 – Yeah, well, we will never, ever use electricity, ever.
0:29:32 (all laughing)
0:29:35 – We believe that humans should be moving things around
0:29:38 with their physical bodies and then, you know,
0:29:41 and so we don’t know any electricity, you know, gas,
0:29:43 any kind of, any kind of, yeah.
0:29:45 So I think that’s what it’s gonna look like in the future.
0:29:47 But in the moment, it’s hard for people to see that.
0:29:50 And like I said, like people are going to lose their jobs.
0:29:51 I do think it’s good.
0:29:54 I mean, like, he did seem to be very genuine.
0:29:57 Like it didn’t seem to be like, I could be like, you know,
0:30:00 he’s just saying this because his users demand it.
0:30:01 And I’m sure that is true.
0:30:02 His users are like artists.
0:30:05 And so they probably do, like they would be upset
0:30:07 if he was like super embracing AI probably.
0:30:09 But he did seem to be like genuine about his feelings.
0:30:13 – Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that he attacked the tech
0:30:14 and not the people that use the tech.
0:30:16 And I think that’s a big difference
0:30:18 between like his statement here
0:30:21 and what you see a lot of on like X is on X,
0:30:25 you see a lot of people attacking the users of the tech
0:30:26 as opposed to attacking the tech.
0:30:29 Where this, where James in this video,
0:30:31 he’s like, I do not like this technology.
0:30:34 Therefore I don’t want it in the tools that I’m building.
0:30:35 But he didn’t go out and say,
0:30:39 if you use AI art generation tools, you’re a moron, right?
0:30:43 Like, and that’s what most sort of anti AI folks would,
0:30:45 that’s how they would approach it.
0:30:47 So I think that’s why this feels a little more respectable
0:30:50 than the way others would approach it typically.
0:30:52 – I mean, he probably thinks that though.
0:30:53 He probably hates that people are using.
0:30:56 – As a CEO of a company that, you know,
0:31:00 a lot of people who both like AI and don’t like AI
0:31:03 use his platform, it would be a really dumb move for him
0:31:07 to attack potentially, you know, 50% of his user base.
0:31:08 – Yeah.
0:31:10 I mean, I think AI in general,
0:31:13 unfortunately is going to get more and more political.
0:31:15 You know, whether it’s people who just love AI or against it,
0:31:16 or because of the other things we’ve talked about,
0:31:18 like energy and things like that,
0:31:20 that’s going to get very political with AI.
0:31:21 I really wish there was more nuance
0:31:23 to all these conversations than that.
0:31:25 – Yeah, they’re all making it out to be very binary.
0:31:28 You’re either for AI or you’re not for AI.
0:31:31 And I, like I mentioned, I’m conflicted.
0:31:33 I live in that middle ground.
0:31:36 And, you know, I actually made an ex post not too long ago
0:31:37 about how I live in that middle ground.
0:31:39 And I got attacked by people going,
0:31:40 “Oh, so you’re a fence sitter.”
0:31:43 And I’m like, on this specific topic, yes,
0:31:44 I’m a fence sitter.
0:31:45 I don’t care.
0:31:50 Like, I kind of understand both sides of the coin here.
0:31:51 I still use the tools
0:31:53 ’cause I think it’s awesome technology,
0:31:55 but I’m also conflicted about how it’s trained.
0:31:58 I’m also conflicted about the potential
0:32:00 for all the sort of deep fakes and scams
0:32:04 and all of the nonsense that’s gonna come out of it.
0:32:06 I’m very conflicted about a lot of that stuff,
0:32:08 but it’s not stopping me from using it either.
0:32:10 (laughs)
0:32:10 – Yeah, yeah.
0:32:12 I mean, this may be like a controversial take,
0:32:15 but it does take a certain level of intelligence
0:32:16 to be able to hold two, you know,
0:32:18 contrary opinions in your mind
0:32:20 and like understand the merit, both of them.
0:32:23 And unfortunately, a lot of the conversation on the ex
0:32:24 seems to be one way or the other.
0:32:26 It’s like people just very angry.
0:32:29 – Yeah, ex is a very binary platform like that.
0:32:30 It’s like, if you’re nuanced,
0:32:33 you’re not part of the conversation.
0:32:34 (laughs)
0:32:35 – Yeah, yeah.
0:32:37 – But I think we kind of covered a lot of ground
0:32:38 on this episode.
0:32:40 We talked about a lot of what’s going on
0:32:42 in the world of AI image generation
0:32:44 touched on the video stuff a little bit.
0:32:46 Anybody listening to this episode
0:32:47 should have a pretty good grasp
0:32:51 of the sort of AI image generation landscape.
0:32:52 And just to sort of bookend it
0:32:55 with how we started this episode,
0:32:56 that’s kind of the reason we think
0:32:59 we’re in this second AI image renaissance, right?
0:33:02 The beginning was just like, look how cool this is.
0:33:04 We can take ideas from our brain
0:33:05 and turn them into images.
0:33:08 They look like crap, but we can do it, right?
0:33:10 Fast forward to now.
0:33:11 And it’s like, we can make images
0:33:14 that people can’t even tell are fake,
0:33:16 which whether that’s good or bad,
0:33:17 I mean, that’s up to debate.
0:33:20 But like the distance we’ve come
0:33:22 in the last two years is mind blowing.
0:33:25 – But yeah, but like they’re actually becoming useful now.
0:33:27 Like with the product stuff,
0:33:29 I mean, you know, yeah, before it was a fun toy.
0:33:31 And now I think we’re getting to the, you know,
0:33:33 the second stage is you can actually use this
0:33:34 in your company.
0:33:36 – Yeah, yeah, we’re getting to that place
0:33:40 where it’s actually a tool that you’ll want to use
0:33:43 for your business where before it was just a toy, you know?
0:33:44 – Yeah, exactly.
0:33:45 – Pretty cool.
0:33:47 Well, though this has been a fun discussion,
0:33:49 I think this is probably a good spot
0:33:50 to go ahead and wrap this one up.
0:33:53 If you wanna hear more discussions like this,
0:33:55 Nathan and I, we are gonna start doing more episodes
0:33:56 where we don’t bring on guests
0:33:59 and we just kind of pick a topic and share our thoughts
0:34:01 and deep dive into what’s going on in it.
0:34:03 And we’re still gonna do our guest episodes as well,
0:34:05 but make sure you’re subscribed wherever
0:34:06 you’re listening to this or watching this.
0:34:08 If you’re watching it on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube.
0:34:11 If you’re listening to it on Spotify, follow us over there.
0:34:12 We really, really appreciate it.
0:34:16 And thank you so much for tuning into this episode.
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0:00:34 – Hey, welcome to the Next Wave Podcast.
0:00:35 I’m Matt Wolfe.
0:00:37 I’m here with Nathan Lanz.
0:00:40 And today we’re talking about the current revolution
0:00:43 that’s going on in the world of AI art.
0:00:45 There is so much happening in that world.
0:00:47 We’ve got new tools coming out.
0:00:50 The tools are getting more and more realistic.
0:00:53 We’ve got all sorts of crazy deep fakes happening.
0:00:56 It’s starting to leak into the politics that we’re seeing.
0:00:59 And there’s some really, really cool use cases
0:01:01 of AI art in your business.
0:01:02 And on today’s episode,
0:01:04 we’re going to deep dive into all of that stuff
0:01:07 so that you know the lay of the landscape of AI art
0:01:10 as well as how you can apply it in your life and business.
0:01:12 So let’s go ahead and get into it.
0:01:15 Today, we want to talk about what we feel
0:01:18 is like the next, what do you want to call it, Nathan?
0:01:21 The next generative AI renaissance.
0:01:24 It’s becoming more, I hate this word
0:01:25 ’cause it’s a buzzword,
0:01:26 but it’s the first thing that comes to my mind.
0:01:27 It’s becoming a lot more democratized.
0:01:29 It’s becoming easier and easier.
0:01:30 And there’s a lot more platforms
0:01:33 that you can generate AI art with.
0:01:36 There’s a lot more tools rolling out.
0:01:37 And right now, there genuinely is
0:01:40 like a pretty big opportunity to go
0:01:42 and use AI generated art,
0:01:44 whether it’s for designs on your website,
0:01:47 whether it’s for generating advertising
0:01:50 on various ad platforms like Facebook or Twitter
0:01:53 or places like that, you know, even memes, right?
0:01:57 A lot of companies are starting to embrace meme culture
0:01:59 and realizing that by spreading memes,
0:02:02 they’re getting their message out there.
0:02:04 Memes are much more likely to go viral
0:02:07 than just like, hey, take a look at my company.
0:02:09 And if companies use these memes that go viral,
0:02:12 your business has this opportunity to go more viral.
0:02:16 And right now, according to this report from HubSpot,
0:02:20 only 23% of people are using visual AI tools right now.
0:02:24 And to me, that means that like there’s 77% of people
0:02:28 not using AI as part of their art
0:02:30 in what they’re doing in their business.
0:02:31 So- – That’s wild.
0:02:34 – It’s crazy to me because it makes a lot
0:02:36 of the sort of design elements
0:02:38 and the visual elements of your business
0:02:41 a lot easier to do.
0:02:43 Now, this is from a report that HubSpot put out
0:02:45 called How AI Is Driving Personal Productivity
0:02:46 and Business Growth.
0:02:48 It’s a pretty good report.
0:02:50 It’s 36 pages and it’s got
0:02:53 all sorts of stats and data on how people
0:02:57 are using AI right now and what the trends look like right now.
0:02:59 I’ll link it up and yeah, it’s a really cool report.
0:03:02 But there’s a huge opportunity right now
0:03:07 to leverage these AI tools in your business.
0:03:09 And I wanted to talk about some of the AI tools
0:03:12 that have recently got released as well as like
0:03:14 some coincidences that have happened
0:03:16 in the AI art world right now.
0:03:19 And here’s what I mean by that.
0:03:22 So right now you’ve got Idiogram
0:03:24 which just came out, you know,
0:03:25 the week that you’re listening to this episode
0:03:27 it came out last week.
0:03:30 But Idiogram is really, really good
0:03:31 and you can use it for free.
0:03:34 They let you generate 40 images a day.
0:03:38 And it’s like pretty much as good as mid-journey.
0:03:41 So like- – Wow.
0:03:43 – And it’s fairly uncensored as well.
0:03:46 So this one just came out.
0:03:50 But the reason I say like it seems fairly coincidental
0:03:53 is the same day that they released that mid-journey
0:03:55 somehow decided today’s the best day
0:03:57 to start opening up free trials again.
0:03:59 We’re also temporarily turning on free trials
0:04:00 to let you check it out.
0:04:02 So mid-journey is now allowing you to have
0:04:04 up to 25 image generations.
0:04:07 I think that’s just, you can have 25 period.
0:04:09 It’s not like 25 a day or 25 a month.
0:04:12 It’s like once you’ve done 25 images
0:04:14 either gotta pay or get out of here, right?
0:04:16 But they somehow on the same day
0:04:18 that Idiogram released Idiogram 2.0
0:04:20 and made it available for free,
0:04:22 decided now is the best time for us
0:04:24 to offer mid-journey trials again.
0:04:27 So I feel like mid-journey starting to feel the heat
0:04:29 a little bit from all these other AI image generation
0:04:30 platforms.
0:04:34 – Well, also FreePick released one of the mystic.
0:04:36 – So there was a tool called Magnific, right?
0:04:39 Magnific was that AI image upscaler tool
0:04:41 that sort of hallucinated your image
0:04:43 and sort of added more creativity to your image.
0:04:46 Well, FreePick acquired mystic
0:04:49 and then FreePick acquired Magnific, right?
0:04:51 And mystic is sort of the first project
0:04:53 that they kind of collaborated on
0:04:55 since they’ve been like an emerged company, right?
0:04:59 So FreePick’s mystic platform
0:05:02 or AI art generator is now becoming available.
0:05:03 I think it’s still in alpha.
0:05:06 I don’t know if it’s available to everybody yet,
0:05:09 but it’s pretty dang good as well.
0:05:10 Let me see.
0:05:11 I can actually show off some of the images
0:05:13 that I generated on it recently.
0:05:14 But apparently they block,
0:05:16 or mid-journey blocks them on Twitter.
0:05:17 – I saw that.
0:05:18 That’s so crazy.
0:05:20 – I think they thought they had this huge mode
0:05:23 and then now all of a sudden there’s all these new services
0:05:25 that are like right neck and neck with them.
0:05:27 – Yeah, yeah, no, it’s so fascinating to me.
0:05:29 Yeah, this mystic, according to their website,
0:05:30 it’s still in alpha.
0:05:32 So, and it says coming soon.
0:05:34 So I don’t know if it’s available to everybody yet.
0:05:37 But yeah, it’s crazy to me that mid-journey is like,
0:05:39 oh, there’s a new competitor in town.
0:05:40 Locked.
0:05:41 Like, why?
0:05:44 (laughing)
0:05:45 – Yeah, let’s make some emotional intern
0:05:47 or something managing the calendar or whatever.
0:05:49 – Yeah, it’s so weird to me
0:05:51 that they would take that approach
0:05:53 because now it’s just like,
0:05:55 they’re sort of Streisand affecting themselves, right?
0:05:57 Like, they’re bringing more awareness
0:05:59 to these other competitors
0:06:01 and the issues that are coming up.
0:06:03 – And blocking a competitor does absolutely nothing.
0:06:06 Like what would that possibly accomplish?
0:06:07 It’s like nothing.
0:06:10 – Yeah, and again, I just wanna sort of go back to the fact
0:06:13 that I think there’s a huge opportunity here for businesses
0:06:16 and people to leverage a lot of these AI art tools
0:06:18 for like memes.
0:06:20 Like, I kind of mentioned that a minute ago,
0:06:21 but I think that’s something we can kind of dig in
0:06:24 on a little bit more is the fact that like,
0:06:26 memes get so much more reach
0:06:28 than any sort of like ad that you’re probably gonna do.
0:06:30 And they have so much more potential
0:06:32 to go viral and get shared around.
0:06:34 – Memes right now spread like crazy.
0:06:35 There’s, you know, there’s a lot of things like that
0:06:38 where I think companies should be thinking more and more
0:06:40 about how they can be using AI art and videos
0:06:42 to market their companies.
0:06:44 And I mean, this is probably a better example,
0:06:47 but like, you know, people are already starting to use AI.
0:06:48 I mean, like most of the AI video tools right now,
0:06:52 the workflow is that you create some great AI art
0:06:55 and then you kind of feed that into the AI video systems.
0:06:58 This one with McDonald’s Japan came out less than a week ago
0:07:00 and it’s already got 12.4 million views just on X,
0:07:02 which is like nuts.
0:07:05 – Yeah, the Elon one just to like add to that real quick,
0:07:08 the Elon Donald Trump had 55 million views on it.
0:07:11 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the simple fake,
0:07:13 the simple fake when it was like low quality.
0:07:15 You know, there’s gonna be like really good commercials
0:07:17 and things like that created with AI.
0:07:19 It probably less than one-tenth of the cost
0:07:21 of what it used to create,
0:07:23 that used to cost to create a great ad.
0:07:26 – Yeah, we saw that Toys R Us ad like what was it a month ago
0:07:28 where they used, I think they used Sora for it.
0:07:29 – Yeah, I think this is looks better.
0:07:31 Like it’s already, you know, in the AI art
0:07:34 and AI video both right now are getting,
0:07:36 you know, better every single week now.
0:07:37 Like it seemed like, you know,
0:07:38 especially in the AI video recently,
0:07:40 like it’s every single week,
0:07:41 like there’s new versions coming out
0:07:43 from like almost all the main players,
0:07:44 like every week or two right now,
0:07:46 probably within the next six months.
0:07:47 Yeah, like I think full blown ads
0:07:49 will actually, it’ll be good enough for that.
0:07:51 But yeah, this is, I mean, this,
0:07:52 I could say something like this
0:07:54 for different companies going mega viral
0:07:57 and it would cost a lot less than your typical ad.
0:07:59 – The thing about memes like this one,
0:08:00 like this McDonald’s one,
0:08:04 is that the people who love that they used AI
0:08:06 share it everywhere.
0:08:07 But the flip side of the coin is
0:08:09 people that hate that they used AI
0:08:12 also share it everywhere, right?
0:08:13 – Yeah, which is good and bad.
0:08:15 Like, so maybe you do get some, you know,
0:08:16 hate to your brand.
0:08:17 I think we have Donald who does it better.
0:08:18 – Either way you get the reach though, right?
0:08:23 Like if I make a video that’s like a meme video
0:08:24 about my business in some way,
0:08:26 like this McDonald’s one
0:08:29 and all the people that love the AI of it,
0:08:30 they all share it and say, Oh, this is amazing.
0:08:31 This is amazing.
0:08:34 It gets seen by all of the people that love AI,
0:08:36 but so does my brand.
0:08:38 If all of the people that hate AI
0:08:40 also go and share it with a, you know,
0:08:41 a quote tweet that says,
0:08:43 Oh, I can’t believe that you’re using AI.
0:08:46 These jerks, they’re, you know,
0:08:47 why would they go and do that?
0:08:49 And then they share it everywhere anyway.
0:08:52 Well, it still gets seen by all of those people
0:08:54 and my brand still gets seen by all of those people.
0:08:57 And not every single one of the people that sees it
0:08:59 because it was shared by an AI hater
0:09:02 is going to be an AI hater themselves, right?
0:09:05 So it just like the reach can go insane right now
0:09:07 with some of this AI stuff.
0:09:10 – Yeah. And I think it’s a, you know,
0:09:12 it is a valid point to think about like,
0:09:15 okay, right now, if you shared this in America
0:09:17 would McDonald’s America share this?
0:09:18 – Probably not.
0:09:19 – Because McDonald’s Japan did.
0:09:21 I think there is a cultural difference there.
0:09:23 We’re like, you know, living in Japan,
0:09:25 I’ve seen that, yeah, there’s some backlash against AI,
0:09:28 but it’s nothing like the backlash in America.
0:09:28 – Yeah.
0:09:29 – And I’m not exactly sure.
0:09:30 – I’ve heard that about Europe too.
0:09:32 Like Europe does not have the same sort of backlash.
0:09:35 It’s like a fairly American thing
0:09:39 where a lot of the US is really, really hating on AI art,
0:09:41 but you’re not seeing it at least to the same extent
0:09:43 throughout the rest of the world.
0:09:45 – Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why that is.
0:09:48 I would imagine Europe and America would be more similar,
0:09:50 but with Japan, I get it.
0:09:53 Like Japan is all about technology and robots.
0:09:54 Even the parts of the society look like
0:09:58 they’re really left behind, but like in terms of media,
0:09:59 they love all of it, right?
0:10:01 Like they want to have robots, all this stuff.
0:10:03 So I think that Japan’s gonna be really embracing
0:10:06 this kind of tech, but I think, you know, like you said,
0:10:08 like even if it created some backlash,
0:10:10 if you created ads like this for your company,
0:10:14 that means more reach, like in this day and age,
0:10:17 more conversation and like, yeah, if you’re selling fries
0:10:19 and somebody sees it and they find out it was AI,
0:10:21 are they really gonna like not eat your fries now?
0:10:22 – Yeah.
0:10:23 – I don’t know.
0:10:24 – But everybody would, like most likely.
0:10:26 – Yeah, McDonald’s probably isn’t the best example.
0:10:30 ‘Cause like, you know, McDonald’s is one of those companies
0:10:32 where everybody says, oh, I never eat McDonald’s.
0:10:33 That’s disgusting.
0:10:37 Yet they’re like, you know, they serve like a billion people
0:10:38 a year or something.
0:10:40 So somebody’s obviously eating it, you know?
0:10:41 – Yeah, yeah.
0:10:42 – It’s like one of those companies that are,
0:10:46 people already don’t want to admit that they eat that.
0:10:48 – Well, in Japan, people is different.
0:10:49 So that’s another thing too.
0:10:51 In Japan, McDonald’s is cool actually.
0:10:52 So that’s very different.
0:10:54 – Because it’s American brand
0:10:55 and they don’t have burgers much.
0:10:58 So it’s like most of the burger places in Japan
0:10:59 are not that good.
0:11:00 – Yeah.
0:11:02 – So McDonald’s is actually one of like the decent burgers
0:11:03 and they’re actually higher quality
0:11:05 or they seem to be then in America for some reason.
0:11:06 I mean, this could be anybody.
0:11:08 This could be like a, you know, a grandma
0:11:10 who’s like trying to start like a little hobby business
0:11:13 or whatever or stay at home mom or whoever, you know,
0:11:16 could now be able to use AI to produce stuff
0:11:17 that would help market their stuff.
0:11:19 They put this on Pinterest, on X, whatever.
0:11:21 So I think there’s a lot of stuff like that
0:11:23 where it’s just gonna create so many new opportunities
0:11:25 for people to create businesses
0:11:27 and to market them with the help of AI.
0:11:28 – Yeah.
0:11:28 – And you know, kind of going back to that report
0:11:29 you were talking about with AI
0:11:32 and people aren’t using it 23% or whatever.
0:11:34 I think so many more people should be using it.
0:11:37 – And this stuff is stuff that would probably legitimately,
0:11:39 you know, people would see it and legitimately think like,
0:11:41 oh, that’s just a cool video that they put out, right?
0:11:44 Like this stuff isn’t even stuff that like screams AI
0:11:45 when you first look at it.
0:11:47 – Or you could even take it and like you could,
0:11:48 you could edit it into like a video
0:11:50 that’s your face talking,
0:11:52 but then you have to, you know, use it as B roll
0:11:52 and this kind of stuff.
0:11:54 – I think that would be awesome.
0:11:55 You could do that actually.
0:11:57 Like what, I mean, they say how they do it, right?
0:11:58 They shared the workflow.
0:12:00 It looks like it’s mid-journey or flux.
0:12:02 And then they use Luma Dream Machine, right?
0:12:04 You can see by the hashtag.
0:12:06 And the way Luma Dream Machine works now
0:12:08 is that you could enter a beginning image
0:12:10 and a final image and it will animate
0:12:12 between the two images.
0:12:15 So you legitimately could have a picture
0:12:17 of your product sitting on top of a dolphin
0:12:21 and then the final frame be like your logo on the screen
0:12:22 and have it animate between the picture
0:12:24 of the product on the dolphin
0:12:26 into your logo on the screen
0:12:29 and just see what AI comes up with to like fill in the gap.
0:12:32 And it might be a blowhole blowing out water
0:12:34 and then your logo splatting on the screen.
0:12:35 Like you could probably actually,
0:12:37 and it’d probably take quite a few re-rolls
0:12:38 to get that specifically,
0:12:41 but you could probably do it right now today.
0:12:42 – Yeah, yeah, you could do it yourself
0:12:44 if you had the time and wanted to figure out
0:12:45 how to learn it.
0:12:46 I mean, there’s, I know there’s people
0:12:47 who are already doing this.
0:12:49 Like, I’ve talked to people recently,
0:12:51 you know, I may get involved in this somewhat,
0:12:52 but I’ve talked to people who’ve been doing this
0:12:54 for like the last year,
0:12:55 that apparently they’ve had like paying clients
0:12:58 for the last year creating stuff with AI video
0:12:59 for like ads and stuff like that,
0:13:01 or like explainers or just like even stuff
0:13:03 like a presentation, someone, you know,
0:13:04 big CEO is gonna do a speech
0:13:06 and make a little something cool
0:13:08 beginning of the, you know, the speech.
0:13:09 So there’s already a market for that.
0:13:11 And like people helping create these videos.
0:13:13 And I think that’s gonna be a huge market in the future
0:13:16 ’cause like, it’s, I don’t think it’s gonna take away
0:13:18 all the jobs in terms of creating these videos.
0:13:20 I think it’s gonna make more opportunities for people.
0:13:21 – Yeah. – I think.
0:13:22 And then over the last week or two,
0:13:24 which I was, you know, I was gone on vacation.
0:13:25 So I was kind of just like checking X occasionally
0:13:27 and seeing all this stuff.
0:13:28 But, you know, I just kept seeing over and over
0:13:30 like AI art stuff that was really awesome,
0:13:31 especially from Groff, you know,
0:13:32 the stuff where they’re, you know,
0:13:36 you using flux where people are generating insane stuff.
0:13:39 You know, they were like, here’s Mickey Mouse
0:13:40 with a machine gun.
0:13:41 It’s like, oh my God.
0:13:43 (laughing)
0:13:45 – Oh man, flux is pretty crazy.
0:13:46 ‘Cause it’s pretty uncensored.
0:13:48 I don’t wanna say it’s fully uncensored.
0:13:49 It’s pretty uncensored.
0:13:50 It won’t do nudity.
0:13:53 Like they’ve got some sort of safeguards on there.
0:13:56 But other than that, like anything goes, right?
0:13:59 Like they’ve got Mickey Mouse with machine guns
0:14:02 and like, you know, blotted gore in the background
0:14:06 and all sorts of crazy stuff with flux.
0:14:09 And yeah, like I really think we’re entering
0:14:12 into this new era where AI art, AI image generation
0:14:15 is just like, it’s hit this next level
0:14:19 where people genuinely are not going to be able
0:14:21 to tell what’s real and what’s not.
0:14:23 And I know when it comes to AI image generation,
0:14:24 we’ve been saying that for a while,
0:14:25 but I think we’re there now.
0:14:28 Like I don’t think it’s like in the future,
0:14:29 you’re not gonna be able to tell anymore.
0:14:30 Like we’re there.
0:14:32 Like I don’t think people are gonna be able to tell anymore
0:14:34 with some of these tools.
0:14:37 – Yeah, the memes coming from it are great.
0:14:39 Like I don’t know about the legality of all of it,
0:14:41 but you know, there’s huge debate on that right now,
0:14:43 but like the memes are nuts.
0:14:45 (upbeat music)
0:14:46 We’ll be right back.
0:14:49 But first, I wanna tell you about another great podcast
0:14:50 you’re gonna wanna listen to.
0:14:52 It’s called Science of Scaling,
0:14:53 hosted by Mark Roberge.
0:14:56 And it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network,
0:15:00 the audio destination for business professionals.
0:15:02 Each week hosts Mark Roberge,
0:15:04 founding chief revenue officer at HubSpot,
0:15:06 senior lecturer at Harvard Business School
0:15:08 and co-founder of Stage Two Capital,
0:15:11 sits down with the most successful sales leaders
0:15:14 in tech to learn the secrets, strategies and tactics
0:15:16 to scaling your company’s growth.
0:15:18 He recently did a great episode called
0:15:22 How Do You Sol For A Siloed Marketing and Sales?
0:15:24 And I personally learned a lot from it.
0:15:26 You’re gonna wanna check out the podcast,
0:15:27 listen to Science of Scaling,
0:15:29 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15:34 – Here’s one that I just came across.
0:15:36 I’m actually not a member of Truth Social.
0:15:38 I saw somebody else share this,
0:15:41 but this is basically endorsements from Taylor Swift
0:15:44 and Taylor Swift’s fans for Donald Trump.
0:15:48 They were all generated with flocks and a lot of people,
0:15:50 a lot of people thought this was real.
0:15:52 Like people were genuinely sharing this around,
0:15:54 going, look, Swifties love Trump.
0:15:58 And this is like where we’re at right now.
0:16:00 – Yeah, and it’s happening on both sides.
0:16:03 I’ve seen memes and pictures shared
0:16:07 from both political parties that seem to be possibly fake
0:16:09 or I don’t know, maybe not from the parties themselves,
0:16:11 but people who are supporting the parties.
0:16:12 – Yeah.
0:16:13 – I’ve seen them from both.
0:16:16 – Here’s the thing, look at who shared this post.
0:16:18 This was literally shared by Donald Trump.
0:16:20 This wasn’t like somebody else sharing it.
0:16:22 This was Donald Trump sharing
0:16:24 these AI generated images right here.
0:16:27 Have you seen like this stuff on Facebook?
0:16:30 I’ve actually watched a handful of YouTube videos recently
0:16:31 of what do they call it?
0:16:34 They call it like boomers getting fooled on Facebook.
0:16:36 And it’s like, there’s whole YouTube videos
0:16:39 of people showing how people are sharing AI images
0:16:41 over on Facebook.
0:16:43 And then like there’s just tons of threads
0:16:46 and people re-sharing them believing that they’re real.
0:16:49 And some of them are so unbelievably fake
0:16:52 that I don’t understand how anybody sees them as real.
0:16:52 Right?
0:16:54 Like there was one with like Shrimp Jesus.
0:16:55 I don’t know if you ever saw that one
0:16:58 that was like half Jesus, half Shrimp.
0:16:59 And it got shared around and people were like,
0:17:01 oh, he has risen or whatever.
0:17:03 And I’m just like, what?
0:17:05 – Is that kind of like seeing Jesus in the toast
0:17:06 or whatever?
0:17:07 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:17:08 – But like with AI art.
0:17:09 – It was AI generated art.
0:17:11 And there’s a lot of that kind of stuff going around
0:17:13 where it seems like people are getting fooled
0:17:14 or I don’t know, either that
0:17:16 or they’re just playing into it.
0:17:17 – Yeah, it’s hard to know.
0:17:20 Like people, a lot of people just like troll, right?
0:17:22 – Yeah, no, but it’s just getting wild.
0:17:24 And I don’t know if there’s lawsuits here.
0:17:27 I feel like the fact that, you know,
0:17:30 Donald is tweeting this stuff from Taylor Swift,
0:17:33 Taylor Swift may be able to go in and argue that like,
0:17:35 hey, he’s spreading fake information.
0:17:37 I don’t, I’m not a lawyer.
0:17:39 I don’t know the whole legal implications.
0:17:42 I don’t know if there’s a lawsuit there or not.
0:17:43 But yeah, it’s getting kind of crazy.
0:17:45 And I think the other crazy stuff is the IP, right?
0:17:49 Like people making images of like Mario with guns
0:17:51 or Mickey Mouse snorting cocaine
0:17:53 or, you know, that kind of stuff.
0:17:54 Like, I don’t know.
0:17:57 To me, that seems like there’s probably
0:18:01 some pretty probable lawsuits there for being able
0:18:04 to use that IP inside of these generations.
0:18:05 – Yeah, I’m not sure.
0:18:07 I mean, it does feel like it probably falls
0:18:09 under fair use, I would guess.
0:18:11 Like, but I’m not sure.
0:18:13 I think it’s an area where there’s not enough clarity
0:18:15 around the laws, around copyright with AI.
0:18:18 – Yeah, but even if we’re talking fair use, right?
0:18:21 Right now, in order to use Grock,
0:18:25 you have to be a Twitter plus or an X plus member, right?
0:18:27 You have to pay the eight bucks a month
0:18:29 to be able to use Grock.
0:18:32 So they’re profiting off of being able
0:18:36 to generate images using other companies IP.
0:18:39 So does that still fall under fair use?
0:18:40 – Yeah, I don’t know.
0:18:42 Like I definitely, like, you know, on the,
0:18:44 I saw the debate on X, like people were sharing it.
0:18:46 Like, you know, they were sharing all these crazy images
0:18:48 and they were sharing the prompts they used to make it.
0:18:50 And they were like, you know, Elon Musk is gonna be sued
0:18:51 into oblivion.
0:18:53 And then they’re, the other side was like,
0:18:55 why the hell did you type in those horrible prompts?
0:18:55 Look what the hell’s wrong with you?
0:18:58 – Yeah, yeah, that’s true.
0:19:00 And I mean, you know, the other arguments
0:19:02 and the other lawsuits that are happening right now
0:19:04 are about obviously the training data.
0:19:08 And there’s no real precedent for this yet, right?
0:19:10 Where these companies are clearly scraping
0:19:14 trademarked IP into their systems, right?
0:19:18 Like they’ve clearly scraped millions of photos of Mario
0:19:22 and millions of photos of SpongeBob SquarePants
0:19:25 and, you know, name the trademarked IP
0:19:27 and it’s probably been scraped and trained
0:19:29 into these image models.
0:19:31 And that’s where all of the stuff is sitting
0:19:35 in the courts right now is the courts are trying to decide,
0:19:38 is it actually okay to scrape all this stuff
0:19:41 into the training data because the outputs
0:19:42 are transformative, right?
0:19:45 Like you’re scraping it all into the training data,
0:19:47 but then when you prompt something,
0:19:50 supposedly it should be transformative enough
0:19:54 to actually be considered fair use.
0:19:57 But obviously we’re seeing it scraping images of Mickey Mouse
0:20:00 and then turn around and output images of Mickey Mouse.
0:20:04 – So that, like it feels very, very gray area
0:20:06 and I don’t know how that’s gonna play out.
0:20:08 – You know, back when Uber started, you know,
0:20:09 and this is like a typical Silicon Valley thing,
0:20:12 they were like, we’re not laws about like actually
0:20:13 doing an Uber service.
0:20:15 Like there weren’t clear laws and a lot of people
0:20:18 who were anti-Uber argued that there were laws.
0:20:20 And my understanding is when Uber started,
0:20:23 they probably had a legal opinion from someone like,
0:20:25 that yeah, we’ll win this because it’s vague enough
0:20:27 that we can argue the case that it should,
0:20:29 that there’s no laws that protect against this
0:20:30 or stop it or whatever.
0:20:33 And so I think you’re gonna, I assume that like with Open AI,
0:20:35 they would have not have started the company
0:20:37 and did all the scraping they did,
0:20:39 if they did not have a legal opinion already
0:20:41 from like a top law firm, they’re like,
0:20:43 no, we can fight this and win and here’s why.
0:20:45 And because there’s no clear laws about it
0:20:48 and we can argue, like I said before, like, you know,
0:20:51 yeah, they’re copying it, but like,
0:20:53 it’s similar to like an artist going to art school
0:20:55 and they look at lots of examples of art
0:20:55 and that’s how they learn
0:20:58 or an artist going to a museum and learning from it.
0:21:01 – But like you’ve said though, it is complicated
0:21:03 ’cause like, well then, you know,
0:21:05 in the early days of mid journey and stable diffusion,
0:21:08 you know, people were able to just like type in the names
0:21:09 of the artists, right?
0:21:10 – Yeah, well, I mean, Open AI,
0:21:12 they started as a research lab, right?
0:21:17 Like chat GPT only came out in November of 2022.
0:21:19 Like GPT-4 was already trained
0:21:24 before anybody ever even saw chat GPT with GPT 3.5, right?
0:21:27 So if there was ever a lawyer coming in and going,
0:21:29 hey, is this, you know,
0:21:32 are we gonna be able to eventually get away with this?
0:21:34 It was probably not until about the point
0:21:36 that chat GPT came into the picture
0:21:39 and more people started paying attention to Open AI
0:21:41 because in the beginning,
0:21:43 if you’re just doing a research lab
0:21:44 and you’re pulling in all of this data
0:21:46 and just internally you’re figuring out
0:21:48 what you can do with it all, really no harm done.
0:21:50 When you start putting it out into the public
0:21:53 and saying, look, anybody can use this stuff now.
0:21:56 Okay, now, now is this infringing?
0:21:59 I don’t know, right, it’s all up to you.
0:22:01 – I assume that the legal opinion
0:22:04 was required for the Microsoft money came in.
0:22:06 – Yeah, that would make sense, yeah.
0:22:08 – Like I don’t think Microsoft would ever put money in
0:22:10 if there was not a legal opinion on this.
0:22:12 So I believe they’re like sitting
0:22:13 at a very strong legal opinion
0:22:15 with tons of things to back it up
0:22:16 and a really solid argument.
0:22:18 And so that’s why Microsoft and all these-
0:22:20 – Well, yeah, and Open AI is also going now
0:22:22 and sort of partnering up with like everybody
0:22:26 that would potentially be suing them in the future,
0:22:28 right, that’s more on the tech side, right?
0:22:31 Like the pulling in stuff from news websites
0:22:34 and stuff like that, but it seems like their game plan
0:22:37 is going sort of befriend all of these companies
0:22:40 before the lawsuits get out of hand.
0:22:42 – And also they would probably not be able
0:22:44 to befriend those companies unless they had
0:22:46 a solid legal argument, ’cause then it’s like,
0:22:48 okay, look, you’re gonna lose this fight against us,
0:22:50 but it’s gonna be annoying for both sides
0:22:51 and a lot of money’s gonna be lost,
0:22:54 it’s gonna waste a lot of time, let’s make deals, right?
0:22:57 Like if there was not like a solid legal argument,
0:22:59 those kind of partnerships probably would not even happen.
0:23:01 They’d just be pure combat.
0:23:02 – Yeah, yeah.
0:23:05 Yeah, the other thing that I think is sort of weird
0:23:09 and like I’m very conflicted when it comes
0:23:10 to sort of the ethics of AI art.
0:23:13 Like I love generating AI art, it’s so much fun to me,
0:23:15 but there is some conflict in my brain.
0:23:17 Like a lot of these tools like the mid journeys
0:23:19 and stable diffusion and some of these platforms,
0:23:22 when they first launched, they were literally telling
0:23:26 you go generate images in the style of this person, right?
0:23:29 And that person probably didn’t want you generating images
0:23:31 in the style of that person ’cause they want
0:23:33 their commission work, right?
0:23:36 So it’s like, that was kind of weird.
0:23:39 They obviously knew that their tools were able
0:23:42 to spit out images that looked similar enough
0:23:44 to images created by these artists,
0:23:47 which that’s where some of the lines start to feel
0:23:49 a little like unethical to me.
0:23:51 Over time, a lot of these tools have put more
0:23:54 and more safeguards in there and made it so that you can’t
0:23:57 generate trademarked IP and you can’t put artist names in
0:24:00 and they started moving more and more in that direction,
0:24:04 which is why I think GROC releasing flux
0:24:07 onto their platform was such like a culture shock
0:24:09 to everybody because all of a sudden they’re like,
0:24:10 you can do anything you want again.
0:24:15 – Yeah, I think that’s because of Elon Musk.
0:24:18 It’s that simple, he’s like, okay, bring it on.
0:24:20 Like I think this should be, he obviously thinks
0:24:22 it’s fine and he’s like, bring it on.
0:24:23 I think it’s gonna be a good thing though,
0:24:25 ’cause like there will be lawsuits.
0:24:27 I’d be shocked if there’s not lawsuits around this
0:24:30 and it probably will speed up the laws adjusting
0:24:33 for copyright and AI in the age because like,
0:24:35 ’cause right now a lot of things are vague,
0:24:37 there’s a lot of gray area and the lawsuits
0:24:39 will probably help clarify things.
0:24:42 – Yeah, yeah, well, if I had to guess
0:24:44 where the first lawsuit is gonna come from.
0:24:46 – Disney. – Probably big Disney.
0:24:52 – We all remember what Elon said on stage about Disney,
0:24:53 don’t we?
0:24:55 – Yeah, now you’ve got Disney,
0:24:57 now you’ve got Mickey Mouse doing terrorist attacks.
0:24:59 – Yeah, I mean, he went on stage
0:25:02 and literally told Disney to go left themselves.
0:25:04 Disney’s probably not a fan of that.
0:25:08 Yeah, well, there’s a, here’s a clip that I wanna play,
0:25:09 but like, I don’t know if you saw this,
0:25:14 but the CEO of Procreate, like you know what Procreate is,
0:25:16 right, like it’s an iPad app that it’s like
0:25:19 a drawing iPad app. – I know of it,
0:25:20 I’ve never used it.
0:25:22 – Yeah, it’s basically like an iPad app
0:25:24 that has like layers and different brushes
0:25:27 and you can, it’s basically for like,
0:25:29 it’s like paper on your iPad with different colors
0:25:31 and paint brushes and stuff.
0:25:34 – I used to sit next to this artist in San Francisco
0:25:36 when I used to work on my laptop at a coffee shop
0:25:40 and he was the main colorist for Spider-Man
0:25:43 and a few other comics and he was always on his iPad
0:25:44 and there was layers and all that,
0:25:46 so that’s probably what he was using, I guess.
0:25:48 – Yeah, well, here’s a clip from him,
0:25:53 so I think it would be kind of fun to listen to this
0:25:56 and hear what you think about it.
0:25:58 – You’ve been asking us about AI.
0:25:59 You know, I usually don’t like getting
0:26:00 in front of the camera.
0:26:03 I prefer that our products speak for themselves.
0:26:06 I really (beep) hate generative AI.
0:26:08 I don’t like what’s happening in the industry
0:26:10 and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.
0:26:13 We’re not gonna be introducing any generative AI
0:26:15 into our products.
0:26:17 Our products are always designed and developed
0:26:20 with the idea that a human will be creating something.
0:26:22 You know, we don’t exactly know where this story
0:26:24 is gonna go or how it ends,
0:26:27 but we believe that we’re on the right path
0:26:28 supporting human creativity.
0:26:30 – So that was, what’s his name?
0:26:32 You’re gonna get a kick out of his name.
0:26:34 James Kuda. – Oh my God.
0:26:37 (laughing)
0:26:42 – So Kuda is, you know, related to NVIDIA and AI, like.
0:26:43 – Yeah.
0:26:46 – Anyway, it’s just kind of ironic.
0:26:46 – Yeah, people were joking about,
0:26:48 people were joking about the simulation.
0:26:49 – This is all.
0:26:50 – Yeah, yeah.
0:26:52 – Like obviously this was generated by the simulation
0:26:54 to see who would actually pick up on that.
0:26:57 – So yeah, the CEO of Procreate basically came out
0:27:00 and you know, he’s got a very, very popular AI,
0:27:01 or not AI art platform,
0:27:04 but he’s got a very popular art platform on the iPad
0:27:06 that even my kids use it.
0:27:08 It’s like very, very, very popular.
0:27:10 Everybody’s using that on their iPad
0:27:12 if they do like drawing and art.
0:27:14 And he’s coming out and saying,
0:27:17 we will never put generative AI in our platform.
0:27:19 – It’s like simplified Photoshop for iPad,
0:27:20 is that the kind of the gist of the problem?
0:27:23 – Sort of, not nearly as complex as Photoshop.
0:27:25 It’s really just designed for like,
0:27:28 you use your pen and you draw on your iPad.
0:27:30 – Yeah, I made, you know, watching that video.
0:27:32 It looks like he, you know, he plans to be like
0:27:34 one of the leaders of the AI,
0:27:36 I mean the anti-AI rebellion or something, you know.
0:27:37 I don’t know.
0:27:40 It’s like, I think there’s gonna be a huge divide
0:27:41 in society, right?
0:27:43 Like the people who were for AI and again.
0:27:45 So I think it’s gonna get more extreme.
0:27:46 Like it’s, you know, like we talked about before,
0:27:48 like people, you know, burning the, you know,
0:27:51 driverless cars in San Francisco.
0:27:53 Like that’s gonna be a trend
0:27:54 that’s probably going to accelerate.
0:27:57 Cause it’s like, it’s like with any new kind of technology,
0:27:59 especially anything that, you know, changes
0:28:02 what people think is important about themselves.
0:28:05 Like I’m a great artist, that’s what I am.
0:28:07 And now this is doing a better job.
0:28:09 And it’s possibly not only doing a better job,
0:28:10 but taking my job.
0:28:13 That creates so much emotion there and understandably,
0:28:16 but I’m on the pro AI side, but like, I get the feeling.
0:28:19 Like I, I get like being in that situation
0:28:21 and being very emotional about it.
0:28:22 – Yeah.
0:28:24 Well, I mean, I actually, to some extent,
0:28:29 really respect what James is doing, the CEO here,
0:28:30 and actually coming out and making a stand,
0:28:32 saying that I don’t like this.
0:28:35 I run a popular art platform and I’m against this.
0:28:37 And if you’re against this too,
0:28:39 then look, we’re all, we’re on the same side here.
0:28:41 I actually think it’s commendable
0:28:44 because he’s sort of going against the trend
0:28:45 in the tech world right now.
0:28:50 Like this is not obviously the consensus of Silicon Valley
0:28:53 who’s developing all these tools right now.
0:28:54 So for someone like this to come out
0:28:57 and sort of take a stand against pretty much
0:29:00 all the other tech companies out there,
0:29:03 to me, there’s something very commendable about that.
0:29:05 I don’t agree with his take on it at all.
0:29:09 I think saying we’ll never use generative AI ever.
0:29:10 I mean, never is a long time.
0:29:13 Marquez Brownlee actually put up a tweet saying like,
0:29:16 you should save this video and look at it 10 years from now
0:29:18 and see if they actually held on to that
0:29:23 because like, he’s basically promising never to add features
0:29:26 that maybe your customers might actually want in the future.
0:29:30 – Yeah, well, we will never, ever use electricity, ever.
0:29:32 (all laughing)
0:29:35 – We believe that humans should be moving things around
0:29:38 with their physical bodies and then, you know,
0:29:41 and so we don’t know any electricity, you know, gas,
0:29:43 any kind of, any kind of, yeah.
0:29:45 So I think that’s what it’s gonna look like in the future.
0:29:47 But in the moment, it’s hard for people to see that.
0:29:50 And like I said, like people are going to lose their jobs.
0:29:51 I do think it’s good.
0:29:54 I mean, like, he did seem to be very genuine.
0:29:57 Like it didn’t seem to be like, I could be like, you know,
0:30:00 he’s just saying this because his users demand it.
0:30:01 And I’m sure that is true.
0:30:02 His users are like artists.
0:30:05 And so they probably do, like they would be upset
0:30:07 if he was like super embracing AI probably.
0:30:09 But he did seem to be like genuine about his feelings.
0:30:13 – Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that he attacked the tech
0:30:14 and not the people that use the tech.
0:30:16 And I think that’s a big difference
0:30:18 between like his statement here
0:30:21 and what you see a lot of on like X is on X,
0:30:25 you see a lot of people attacking the users of the tech
0:30:26 as opposed to attacking the tech.
0:30:29 Where this, where James in this video,
0:30:31 he’s like, I do not like this technology.
0:30:34 Therefore I don’t want it in the tools that I’m building.
0:30:35 But he didn’t go out and say,
0:30:39 if you use AI art generation tools, you’re a moron, right?
0:30:43 Like, and that’s what most sort of anti AI folks would,
0:30:45 that’s how they would approach it.
0:30:47 So I think that’s why this feels a little more respectable
0:30:50 than the way others would approach it typically.
0:30:52 – I mean, he probably thinks that though.
0:30:53 He probably hates that people are using.
0:30:56 – As a CEO of a company that, you know,
0:31:00 a lot of people who both like AI and don’t like AI
0:31:03 use his platform, it would be a really dumb move for him
0:31:07 to attack potentially, you know, 50% of his user base.
0:31:08 – Yeah.
0:31:10 I mean, I think AI in general,
0:31:13 unfortunately is going to get more and more political.
0:31:15 You know, whether it’s people who just love AI or against it,
0:31:16 or because of the other things we’ve talked about,
0:31:18 like energy and things like that,
0:31:20 that’s going to get very political with AI.
0:31:21 I really wish there was more nuance
0:31:23 to all these conversations than that.
0:31:25 – Yeah, they’re all making it out to be very binary.
0:31:28 You’re either for AI or you’re not for AI.
0:31:31 And I, like I mentioned, I’m conflicted.
0:31:33 I live in that middle ground.
0:31:36 And, you know, I actually made an ex post not too long ago
0:31:37 about how I live in that middle ground.
0:31:39 And I got attacked by people going,
0:31:40 “Oh, so you’re a fence sitter.”
0:31:43 And I’m like, on this specific topic, yes,
0:31:44 I’m a fence sitter.
0:31:45 I don’t care.
0:31:50 Like, I kind of understand both sides of the coin here.
0:31:51 I still use the tools
0:31:53 ’cause I think it’s awesome technology,
0:31:55 but I’m also conflicted about how it’s trained.
0:31:58 I’m also conflicted about the potential
0:32:00 for all the sort of deep fakes and scams
0:32:04 and all of the nonsense that’s gonna come out of it.
0:32:06 I’m very conflicted about a lot of that stuff,
0:32:08 but it’s not stopping me from using it either.
0:32:10 (laughs)
0:32:10 – Yeah, yeah.
0:32:12 I mean, this may be like a controversial take,
0:32:15 but it does take a certain level of intelligence
0:32:16 to be able to hold two, you know,
0:32:18 contrary opinions in your mind
0:32:20 and like understand the merit, both of them.
0:32:23 And unfortunately, a lot of the conversation on the ex
0:32:24 seems to be one way or the other.
0:32:26 It’s like people just very angry.
0:32:29 – Yeah, ex is a very binary platform like that.
0:32:30 It’s like, if you’re nuanced,
0:32:33 you’re not part of the conversation.
0:32:34 (laughs)
0:32:35 – Yeah, yeah.
0:32:37 – But I think we kind of covered a lot of ground
0:32:38 on this episode.
0:32:40 We talked about a lot of what’s going on
0:32:42 in the world of AI image generation
0:32:44 touched on the video stuff a little bit.
0:32:46 Anybody listening to this episode
0:32:47 should have a pretty good grasp
0:32:51 of the sort of AI image generation landscape.
0:32:52 And just to sort of bookend it
0:32:55 with how we started this episode,
0:32:56 that’s kind of the reason we think
0:32:59 we’re in this second AI image renaissance, right?
0:33:02 The beginning was just like, look how cool this is.
0:33:04 We can take ideas from our brain
0:33:05 and turn them into images.
0:33:08 They look like crap, but we can do it, right?
0:33:10 Fast forward to now.
0:33:11 And it’s like, we can make images
0:33:14 that people can’t even tell are fake,
0:33:16 which whether that’s good or bad,
0:33:17 I mean, that’s up to debate.
0:33:20 But like the distance we’ve come
0:33:22 in the last two years is mind blowing.
0:33:25 – But yeah, but like they’re actually becoming useful now.
0:33:27 Like with the product stuff,
0:33:29 I mean, you know, yeah, before it was a fun toy.
0:33:31 And now I think we’re getting to the, you know,
0:33:33 the second stage is you can actually use this
0:33:34 in your company.
0:33:36 – Yeah, yeah, we’re getting to that place
0:33:40 where it’s actually a tool that you’ll want to use
0:33:43 for your business where before it was just a toy, you know?
0:33:44 – Yeah, exactly.
0:33:45 – Pretty cool.
0:33:47 Well, though this has been a fun discussion,
0:33:49 I think this is probably a good spot
0:33:50 to go ahead and wrap this one up.
0:33:53 If you wanna hear more discussions like this,
0:33:55 Nathan and I, we are gonna start doing more episodes
0:33:56 where we don’t bring on guests
0:33:59 and we just kind of pick a topic and share our thoughts
0:34:01 and deep dive into what’s going on in it.
0:34:03 And we’re still gonna do our guest episodes as well,
0:34:05 but make sure you’re subscribed wherever
0:34:06 you’re listening to this or watching this.
0:34:08 If you’re watching it on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube.
0:34:11 If you’re listening to it on Spotify, follow us over there.
0:34:12 We really, really appreciate it.
0:34:16 And thank you so much for tuning into this episode.
0:34:18 (upbeat music)
0:34:21 (upbeat music)
0:34:23 (upbeat music)
0:34:26 (upbeat music)
0:34:29 (upbeat music)
0:34:31 you
Episode 21: Are AI Image Generators crossing the line from tool to threat? Matt Wolfe (https://x.com/mreflow) and Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) discuss the rapid advancements in AI image and video tools and their implications on marketing, legal frameworks, and cultural perceptions.
In this episode, Matt and Nathan dive into the astonishing progress of AI-generated content, its advantages for businesses, and its potential downsides. They cover the viral success of AI-generated ads like the McDonald’s Japan campaign, the democratization of AI tools, and the cultural differences in AI adoption. They also highlight the competitive landscape of AI image generators, legal concerns surrounding copyrighted content, and the future of AI in marketing and content creation.
Check out The Next Wave YouTube Channel if you want to see Matt and Nathan on screen: https://lnk.to/thenextwavepd
—
Show Notes:
- (00:00) Rapidly growing AI art usage offers opportunities.
- (06:03) Memes, AI art and videos changing marketing.
- (07:40) Controversial video reaches diverse audience, promoting brand.
- (11:24) Luma dream machine animates images creatively.
- (13:38) AI art entering new era, blurring reality.
- (17:36) Lawsuits over scraping trademarked IP for AI.
- (19:50) OpenAI’s research lab began and evolved.
- (23:52) CEO opposes generative AI, earns respect.
- (26:10) Potential for AI rebellion causing societal divide.
- (32:26) Transitioning to regular episodes, encourage audience engagement.
—
Mentions:
- Get the free ChatGPT Bundle here https://clickhubspot.com/chatgpt
- Grok: https://x.ai/
- Procreate: https://procreate.com/
- James Cuda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-cuda-56007333/
- Idiogram: https://ideogram.ai/
—
Check Out Matt’s Stuff:
• Future Tools – https://futuretools.beehiiv.com/
• Blog – https://www.mattwolfe.com/
• YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow
—
Check Out Nathan’s Stuff:
- Newsletter: https://news.lore.com/
- Blog – https://lore.com/
The Next Wave is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Darren Clarke // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano