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Episode 105

The Potential of AI Video with Seth Woodall

AI video tools have created lifelike Coca-Cola trucks, festive scenes, and even Angela's face in today's episode. These jaw-dropping demonstrations highlight how rapidly AI video has evolved and the debate this technology is creating.

This week, Elena and Rob are joined by Seth Woodall, Director of AI Visual Arts at Misfits Machines and creator of the viral "Pepperoni Hug Spot" commercial. Together, they explore the state of AI video creation, misconceptions about the technology, and what's next for marketers looking to incorporate these tools. Plus, discover why AI-powered creative techniques will become standard production methods and indistinguishable from traditionally created work.

Topics Covered

• [01:00] The controversy behind Coca-Cola's AI holiday commercial

• [07:00] How Seth created the viral "Pepperoni Hug Spot" AI commercial

• [15:45] Why AI video expertise is hard to find in traditional agencies

• [18:00] Predictions for AI video quality improvements

• [21:30] AI tools like Comfy UI, Flux and LoRAs

• [26:00] Common misconceptions about how AI video is created

• [29:30] The democratization of high-quality video creation

Resources:

NBC News 2024 Article

Pepperoni Hug Spot Commercial

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Seth Woodall

Director of AI Visual Arts at Misfits & Machines

Transcript

Elena: And welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper , I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-hosts. Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.

Rob: Hello, Um, Ange. Like, what's the deal? Why, why is she doing that, Elena?

Elena: I don't know.

Rob: What?

Seth: Surprise! It's not real, Ange. I found out Ange wasn't gonna be on this episode, and I was really disappointed, so I deep faked her into this video. This is, she's all AI generated.

Rob: It's AI Ange. Oh my gosh. Elena, Do you have any big expenses you need approved right now?

Elena: Yeah, actually.

Rob: That's amazing. Wow. Very cool.

Elena: Great, Seth. Let us know when AI Rob can truly take over. Because we're very interested in that possibility.

Seth: The, podcast. Yeah, I think

Rob: Yeah.

Seth: Replace him. So

Rob: Do you know this isn't AI Rob?

Elena: We're joined by a guest, Seth Woodall, the director of AI visual arts at Misfits Machines.

Seth: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Rob: We are excited to have you here, Seth. Thanks for joining us.

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. Today, Seth is joining us to talk about AI creative, specifically the current and future potential for brands using AI for video.

Seth has a really cool background and he's on the cutting edge of AI video tools and tech, so I'm confident every listener will learn new things from this episode. And I know this is an audio first medium, but we are going to talk a lot about video today, and we're going to showcase some of the stuff Seth is speaking to. So if you want to see any of that, head on over and watch this on. But before we dive in, I want to tee us up with a little bit of spice, because this is the sort of topic that inspires a wide range of reactions from marketers and consumers. So I chose an article by Bruna Horvath for NBC News, and it's about Coca Cola's holiday marketing controversy. Famous for its heartwarming holiday ads, Coca Cola decided to experiment with AI for its latest Christmas commercial.

They created a video that mimicked Coca Cola's beloved 1995 Holidays Are Coming ad, but they had some AI generated people, trucks, and festive scenery. And the reaction was mixed. Some critics called the ad soulless and lacking real creativity. Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch even joked that Coca Cola's signature red comes from, quote, the blood of out of work artists.

What's a little interesting is that this wasn't Coke's first AI generated ad. Last year, they released an AI ad called Masterpiece, and it was pretty well received. Some suggested it's because Christmas is such a core part of their brand. It's rooted in warmth, nostalgia, and tradition, and AI, at least in this case, struggled to capture some of that emotional depth. But Coca Cola, they stood by it. They called the ad a mix of human creativity and technology. And the question posed at the end of the article, which I think we'll attempt to answer today, is this.

Will consumers ever fully embrace AI driven storytelling, or will they always crave that human touch? I thought it was only right to address that sort of AI elephant in the room before we get too far today. So Rob, you love this question. I wanted to ask what you thought when you initially saw that ad. And do you think the reaction to it says anything about the future for marketers and consumers, you know, embracing something like AI video.

Rob: Gosh, the blood of out of work artists. I mean, that just

Elena: That was brutal.

Rob: Here. Doesn't it look? I can understand why people freak out because the pace at which new AI technologies are being introduced and the opportunities they offer are happening at a speed, unlike anything we've ever seen in human history, and it's not just for creative folks, it's in every industry. And we creative folk in particular are a bit temperamental and we like to get pissed off when someone or something threatens our precious craft, right? One thing I like to remind people of is Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Autoshop, even Shutterstock have been using AI for over 15 years. So, AI in the creative process is actually nothing new, but there's definitely headlines.

Like there's headlines in every industry, just because of the speed at which it's being introduced, but we've been using AI tools for years. So, if we want to be true purists and be that precious about our craft, then we have to go back to paper, pencils and, and paint because we've been using it a long time.

Seth: I think I understand the artist's perspective on this one. I guess I'm kind of on both sides of the line here. Since I got introduced to all of this stuff, I've met an insane amount of filmmakers who never made anything before because they didn't have a camera or they didn't have friends or a budget or anything.

So I understand that this technology may take away from someone that's been a grip their entire life, you know, in the next five years. But I also understand that there's this whole group of people that are dying to tell stories and never had the option before this technology. I think honestly, with these two Coke spots, the museum spot, which I believe was the first one that was released was primarily.

Live action with some 3D and visual effects built in, and then some of that was wrapped, if you will, sort of in some AI, whereas with the Coke spot, that was 90 percent AI work that was then fixed in post with a lot of compositing and adding logos and color correction. So I think for me, the Coke holiday spot was kind of disappointing because if AI opens up all these new possibilities visually of what we can do and new stories we can tell, then why take a campaign from 40 years ago and just try to remake it using current technology. I think that's partially why it fell flat.

Rob: That's a great point, Seth. It's like, why not show what's new and show the true opportunity that the AI can create and really break our brains with new visions.

Seth: And I wouldn't say we're buddies, but I'm acquaintances with a couple of the people that worked on the commercial. And it was a huge team of people. And I think that was the other sort of misconception with all this tech is that there's one guy in a room, right?

He's in his parents basement. He types in Coke video commercial and out the other end comes this 32nd finish commercial, whereas this was hours and hours of work. And it's silly I think to dismiss these tools just based on future implications within jobs and like these tools aren't going anywhere. And I think the quicker we can all embrace them as a tool and learn how to use them, the better off we'll all be.

Elena: Yeah. Well, Seth, that's why we have you here because you're an expert. And I didn't even think about the difference between the two spots and how they were created. I'm sure that's a nuance that's often lost in this conversation. When you see an AI video, people assume that you're right. It was maybe one person creating the whole thing, but really it took a whole team and I wonder too, if recreating that old ad, some of that nostalgia hurt them, because you probably had a lot of people that remembered that ad and now you're right.

They're seeing a replica of it that doesn't look quite right and looks odd and it might be hitting them in a bad place. Personally, when I saw it, I thought it looked nice, but I had never seen the previous ad. So I didn't really have any context of what had come before, but we're really excited to have you here today.

I was super excited for this interview because you have such an interesting background and now you're an AI video expert, which we probably wouldn't say was a thing just a couple of years ago. When you joined MA, you, your name like came up because you were a part of this sort of AI video viral moment that I know maybe now you might want to distance yourself from, but it's something that I think most, if not all of our listeners will remember. So could you tell us about your career journey that led to creating the now infamous pepperoni hug spot video, and then kind of why you created that in the first place.

Seth: I'm old enough that I grew up when we had a VHS camera when I was a kid. So I started making really terrible short films then. And then I was in my early twenties when YouTube came about.

So I spent a lot of time with friends. We painted a wall in one of my friend's apartments, green. And we made just terrible shorts that still live on YouTube and some dark corner these days. But yeah, I've just been always really interested in telling stories. And a friend of mine sent me a link to mid journey in the summer of 2022, and I didn't know any of this generative tech was coming.

So it kind of blew my mind - a few words into a text prompt and get an image out even at the time it was, you know, it's really rough and nightmare fuel by comparison to what we could generate today, but it was really exciting. And then when Runway Gen2 came out and all of a sudden we could create video, it was another really eyeopening kind of mind blowing moment. And then the Pepperoni Hot Spot was really just the outcome of a free afternoon I had. I had been interested in these tools and I had other friends that were also either in the video industry or photographers or something. So I kind of created as a gag just to share with them. And they all thought it was funny enough.

And said, hey, go put it on the internet. And yeah, it's kind of wild. I woke up the next morning and I had gotten a ton of hits on Reddit and Twitter. And someone was like asking for t-shirts, so I immediately ran to like set up a website and, overnight someone had picked up the pepperonihugspot.com web domain. So I was like, okay, maybe I'm onto something here.

So yes, I threw a website up and sold a couple of t-shirts and now here we are. It was a wild two months. I had agencies calling from London and New York and California, Minnesota, obviously. And that's kind of how I got hooked up with you guys.

Rob: And you had Elon Musk who tweeted about it and you were on like the Today show.

Seth: Yeah. It was an odd amount of interviews and press for such a kind of silly thing. Pizza Hut reached out and they ended up rebranding one of their stores. I believe in Canada for the day as a pepperoni hug spot. I've got, they sent me some official pizza

Elena: You've got merch.

Seth: Merch. Yeah. So not what I expected to happen, especially from something again, that was really just for like internal consumption only. And then I just put it on the internet on a whim.

Rob: Seth, for those that haven't seen the video yet, how would you describe it?

Seth: It's terrifying. It's early video technology, so nothing looks quite right. It's a pizza commercial for a fake pizza restaurant called pepperoni hug spot. And I use ChatGPT to write the script. And 11 labs for the VO for the voiceover. I use early AI music company for the background music.

And then all the video was Gen2. So it was, I think okay kind of at its time. It was like one of the first fully produced spots that was all AI, even though there was obviously some human hands involved in the actual finishing.

Rob: If someone just Googles AI TV commercials, it's organically, I think the top spot in, Google. So yeah, so if you want to check it out or just go to YouTube and type in AI pizza commercial

and you're going to, you're going to see that as well. It was remarkable as someone from the outside, seeing it show up in the press to go, wow, I mean, how long ago was it actually that you, when you actually made it?

Seth: Mid April, 2023.

Rob: April of 2023. I mean, nowadays we're seeing all kinds of AI videos being created, but this was way ahead of its time in terms of just someone going, geez, I wonder if we could do this. And it really just became an opportunity to see something that looked absolutely ridiculous.

I mean, you really used the channel for what it was best at the time or the technology for what it was best at the time, which was to create a piece of humor that, that was, you know, obviously in the news with AI starting to percolate, but holy smokes, just the possibility of this technology getting better.

And the fact that you used AI voice with it as well, and you wrote the script, it was just a framework for what's next to come. So, it's just, yeah, I think that's probably what motivated so many people to go, what in the world?

Seth: I still get a lot of comments on the video and you'd be surprised by how many folks more so then, but even now that say, Oh, this looks terrible. This technology is a joke and can't see the forecast, like this is, we're just still scratching the surface with what this tech can do.

Rob: This is just math. It's just math, right? It's just going to get exponentially better. Yeah.

Elena: Yeah. Well, Seth, I think too, you recreated it right recently. So people, if you go online and watch the commercial, you can watch the original and then just closer to where it's at today, which like it's leaps and bounds better

Seth: And the wild thing is that was with Gen 3 and even that feels antiquated now and that was maybe 6 months ago.

Elena: When the video came out I remember seeing it and it seemed like the responses were a big mix, you know. Some people were surprised, delighted. Some people were horrified. I think I just thought it was funny. What was that time like for you? Like I know you said like the response was just crazy. But were you surprised by maybe like the types of responses and obviously like Elon Musk tweeting about something you did? It's just hard to even comprehend, but what was that like for you?

Seth: You know, I've been editing or doing motion graphics for over 15 years now. So it was a little humbling to have agencies knocking on my door after I released this ridiculous pizza commercial. But, no, it was excellent. You know, it was really fun, honestly.

And, you know, I got to meet Rob and Greg from M.A. and, it was kind of a wild time. It was like every other day, again, I had somebody from the Today show reaching out or Insider or whatever it was, and I'm not used to doing press for anything, so it was really fun. And then I would even get links sent to me like this Argentinian state news program that did a special on it or a new segment.

So it was kind of hilarious every day to wake up and see some new piece of press about this thing. And if you recall, at the same time, there was a beer commercial. It was kind of like a backyard barbecue, but everything caught on fire by the end. And it came out, I think a day or two before or after.

So we were both - I was in touch with those guys. They're at an agency called Private Island, but it was kind of fun. Cause we'd be emailing each other's stories back and forth of like, Oh, did you see so and so talking about us or whatever? So yeah, it was fun.

Elena: And we were, Rob, one of those agencies that saw this and thought, I got to talk to this guy.

Rob: I'm like, who? I'm like, where? I literally, I'm like, I got to figure out who did this, because he's going by this handle of pizza later and you can't exactly find pizza later on LinkedIn. So I'm like, okay, I went on to Reddit and I figured out his email and contacted him and yeah.

So. We're like, we just want to learn. We want to hang out, you know? And I think that was one of the things that became apparent to me as someone that's worked in the agency world for way too long is that you're not going to find talent that is doing this off the shelf. These are hobbyists.

These are people that are doing this because they want to do it because they're interested by the technology. Not because they're being told to go use the technology. No one likes to be told. And nor do you want to hire people that you feel like you have to tell them to go learn something. You want to find people who this lights up their day to go figure it out, to go look at what's next. Every day there's a new version of an application or a new application. And you want people that get excited when that comes out, not tired when it comes out to go, Oh my gosh, I gotta go figure out another thing. You're like, no, my gosh, it just lights up. You know, Seth.

The other week was like, I can't remember what the release was. If it was when you got access to VO three or something. And you're like, oh, there goes my weekend, you know, cause that's just - it's fun. This is fun. This isn't work.

Seth: Absolutely. And the technology is moving so quickly that you can't get bored with it. If there's something new literally every week, like you said, whether it's a new model or a new update to something or a new functionality within one of these models.

Elena: Yeah. Seth, I'd say you're definitely, I know you're humble, but you are an early adopter of this stuff. And there's not many people out there who have your type of expertise. I know that you're still reached out to by a lot of different industries that want and need to learn more about AI video. And like Rob said, like the people internally don't necessarily have that same experience.

So why did you decide to join Marketing Architects? Why focus on TV advertising or like the TV commercial opportunity, because it seems like you could apply this to a number of industries.

Seth: I think first and foremost, the technology is useful right now for short form content. Like commercials make sense. Maybe we're not ready yet to tell a 90 minute film. But moreover, I'm going to gush on you guys just a little bit, and I hope this is allowed, but I had met with Rob and Greg multiple times, and we all kind of hit it off. You know, I looked forward to our zoom calls where we just chat about what was going on and maybe what Greg was seeing and and Rob was saying, and then after getting to spend some time with those guys and meeting a couple other employees, it was just clear that this company cares about its employees a lot. And the angle you guys have taken with implementing AI is something that touches every employee's life, a part of making their job easier and more efficient and less about can we add to your workload?

Can we replace this whole department using AI? So I just honestly was kind of taken aback by the enthusiasm of everyone I spoke with and the culture, I hate that word 'corporate culture', but really the corporate culture was like, it wasn't there. There was no corporate culture. This was like a small business of five employees that just happens to have 100 plus folks that work at it. Honestly, that was it.

Elena: Well, let's talk about TV commercial production, which is an expertise of marketing architects. Where do you think that AI specifically for TV creative is at today? And then what might be possible in the future? I know that's a really annoying question that you probably get all the time, but maybe thinking like next year, next couple of years, you know, 10 years from now. Yeah,

Seth: I think the next thing we'll see is, an improvement in quality. So we're seeing right now a lot of platforms move to a 4k output, which is really huge for us, as opposed to, you know, a lower quality output that then has to be sort of cleaned up in post. I think we're going to see more natural movement.

That was always, to me, what I thought was going to hold back the technology we've seen very quickly with the 4k text to image generators that it went from kind of nightmare fuel mush to a beautiful portrait or whatever it is. You can craft that so I assumed the fidelity of the image would improve quickly, but I didn't think we'd be nailing things like a human walk cycle or if you see someone running on a treadmill, we all - our brains are very tuned to human movement and what looks natural.

So I've been really impressed by Google's VO two with that. And I think that's what we're going to see in the short term is just an improvement in motion and, human movement or animals or whatever it may be. And then in a few years, I think we're going to see AI get folded in much like computers did into our daily lives.

And now we're all walking around with a cell phone. I think we're going to start seeing more of it in commercial production in general. And I think it's going to be less noticeable. Like right now you said that the Coke thing got a lot of fanfare. I know Toys R Us did a AI commercial and they made a huge deal of it.

I think next year, or maybe even towards the end of this year, we're going to see a lot of brands using it and not talking about it. It's just going to be a part of the workflow. And then beyond that, I think, Rob and I have discussed this a little bit, and this is a little outside of the realms of just commercial, but I think in the long term, we're going to see fully custom content, whether it's an advertisement that Rob gets fed.

you know, a commercial break of a sporting event, and you get a personalized version of that. That's completely different from his that is ultimately marketing the same product or brand. And then I think we're going to see a lot of personalized content on streaming services.

I think you're going to sit down and either prompt out a whole new movie starring you know, as Robin, his wife, they want to do a romantic comedy and Channing Tatum happens to be our you know, our lovable sidekick or whatever. I think we're going to see that and in good ways and bad ways. I don't know what that sort of does to our attention economy right now.

You know, movies are less popular than they've been. We were constantly bombarded by distractions. So I don't know what happens when our content gets even more personalized and sort of niche. But anyway, I hate to leave it on a dark topic.

Rob: No, no, no, you know, and I do think you're right. We're crossing that chasm right now where AI is becoming imperceivable from real video. And I think that's a brand new thing where before you look at things and just instinctually, you couldn't even explain why, but you go, that's not a real person.

And now. I would challenge when you look at some of the demos that Seth creates with VO two, I could not tell you that that was not a human and you could go side by side and say, tell me which one's real. I can't. I can't tell you. I couldn't say that even two months ago.

Elena: I would say we definitely have some clients who are starting to use AI video, AI commercials in the way Seth's describing, using them to be more nimble, create spots for certain holidays. And yeah, they're not talking about it. Like you might not even know if you saw it.

And of course, only certain types of commercials can be used from this, but we're definitely seeing that firsthand with clients like starting to use it. And it's not going to be like Seth, you're saying as obvious as like, yeah, the Toys R Us spot. The Coca Cola spot pretty soon. We're not gonna be able to tell the difference,

Rob: You're not going to be able to get mad at the commercial because you're not even going to know it's AI. You won't even know. Yeah.

Elena: Yeah. You can just get mad for all the normal reasons to get mad. Well, Seth, one thing I wanted to talk about is go a little bit beyond TV because a lot of people that listen to this show, they might not necessarily invest in, in TV, but they definitely produce some sort of video, whether it's social, you know, digital video, product videos.

Could you speak a little bit to just AI video in general? Like what should marketers be aware of and maybe testing today and what's not possible today that they should be keeping their eye on? For the future.

Seth: It is a lot to sort of try to stay on top of for sure, especially if you're not as interested, but, things have been moving so fast since runway gen one and two and then, you know, last year, we had the Chinese models come in with clang and, Hailu and then this year seeing vo to and a new engine from both Pika and Luma Labs. It can be a lot to keep up with, but if you're really interested, it doesn't take too long to find a good channel on YouTube that obsesses over this and puts out updates once a week. It makes staying on top of this stuff a lot more manageable.

I think again, sort of just to touch on what we just discussed, we're going to get very soon past the point of there being any limitations. I don't, you know, I think you're going to be able to accomplish just about anything with this technology in the next 6 months or 8 months again to where it's not visible. You know, the viewer can't see it - it's imperceivable. It's not there.

I, think the biggest hurdle right now that we're all sort of waiting to overcome is the lack of control. All of generative AI is still very much a slot machine, right? Like you can put the best prompt in the world in, but it may take 10 generations to get what you want, or it may take 20.

So the company that can really lock in the ability to change camera angles with precision or manipulate the framing or even the blocking of a scene and how the actors move within it, that will be the one that wins out, at least in the short term. Otherwise, it's, it is, it's a big open question, right?

I'm not sure. I just, I feel like we're on this cusp where it's no longer what can it do and what are the limitations? It's what can it do? What can't you, you know, imagine it can do for you? So,

Rob: Hey, Seth, how about specific tools? I mean, the models are always changing, adapting, I know you've already talked about quite a few of some of those models, but what are some of the other things that you've been experimenting with? I know there's like Loras and things like that.

Seth: Sure. Yeah, we've been doing a lot with Loras. I guess, on the surface level, there are all these providers like, Runway and Cling that, provide a very specific function on their website, and then there are things like Comfy UI and Flux, which are these open source tools.

That kind of open up a whole new realm of possibilities because again, they're open source. So there's constantly all these folks in the communities building out new workflows and functionalities within them.

So one of the things we've sort of been pursuing is taking it a step further with customization and I'm going to try to keep this not too technical, but there are these things called Loras that you can train and essentially, it is an additional piece of information that you can give the AI to, so we can fully understand what Rob looks like, or what my cat looks like here, or even a style, what a Picasso looks like,

and once you have trained that data, it's like this little USB that you sort of insert into this workflow, and now the AI can do more specialized things, so one of the things we've been specifically looking at is, can we build out Loras for products and create a whole new marketing campaign based around existing content as opposed to having to hire a photographer to come in and shoot new stuff or whatever it may be. The thing with all this is it's very technical beyond sort of just going to clang and entering your prompt and everything.

Rob: No, but why that, why that matters though, is I mean, you can't write a text prompt that's going to create a particular product in your product catalog, right? So you can train a Lora to be a particular product from your product catalog. And then you can go ahead and create your footage and insert your product in there. And it, I mean, the camera motion, it's not like you're Photoshopping your product into or compositing a product into a piece of video. You are literally generating a brand new piece of video, but your product is in it. And that's amazing. And that's something that isn't turnkey right now.

Seth: These custom workflows open up other things. There's like an ability to essentially do a try on feature. You can take a picture of Rob, you take a picture of a Hawaiian shirt and in 20 seconds, the AI can redraw a new image of Rob wearing whatever it is. So there's all these very specific functionalities that I think we'll see emerge heavily used by retailers, you know, in mobile apps or web functions very soon.

Elena: And I think if you're a marketer, Seth, the advice you gave earlier about going to YouTube, just being aware of what's out there, it's not like every brand marketer is going to go log into these tools and be creating Laura, but being aware of it's important. And I also know that agencies like us, companies like Google, they are working on creating more turnkey tools where one day you're going to be able to log into a platform and create videos for your brand.

But I still think it's important to be aware of what's out there. Another thing I wanted to ask you is just common misconceptions. It seems like there's a lot of them out there, like AI video, people are pretty skeptical. What do you think are like the most, maybe common ones you hear and yeah, debunk them

Seth: Something we kind of touched on earlier, I think is the biggest one I run into is that people assume that it's one person sitting down at a computer and they put a text prompt in and then immediately comes out this beautiful piece of media or picture or whatever it may be.

And I have sort of aligned myself with some folks within the AI video community that work in a similar fashion that I do. And like, I prefer to again, think of these as tools. And if I generate a clip using VO two or whatever it is it's my thought process then is how can I push this further?

What else can I do to this in post to make it fit the story I'm telling or whatever it may be. So I think that the biggest misconception I see is that that this stuff is easy. And I don't want to sort of play a victim here or anything. I think but there's a lot that goes into like, if you see a a well crafted AI video, there are hours and hours in posts that were spent cleaning up elements or changing prompts.

And so I think the weird part about all of this is the text tech is moving so fast that in 6 months, we may be at a point where a fully functioning commercial does come out of a text prompt, otherwise maybe you can give me some that you've seen, or like, what's something that you bump into maybe when you speak with a client about potentially using AI?

Elena: Well, I think sometimes it seems like people, especially consumers are just confident. Like I would know it when I see it, which I know that there's a lot of brands right now using AI in small ways, like you're saying, like to augment commercials versus producing from the ground up. And you'd have no idea just how much it's already present. Maybe that one, like people, marketers not wanting to use it because they feel like it's going to look like AI. I think we're starting to move past that,

Rob: Right. I think it's becoming almost a social issue. In some people's mind, like, okay, well, I don't want to support that type of work right now. It's, you know, like driving a Tesla, I don't know if I can say that or not, but, the point being is sometimes activities, things can take on additional meaning and are people scared of the boogeyman of AI right now?

And what would that mean if it gets connected to my brand? People don't want to have negative press, so they don't want to be Coca Cola, even though it generated how much earned media, because they used AI to promote a holiday spot. So, that's just going to be probably a comfort level for a while, but the more that you don't know that it's AI, I think the more brands are just not going to care because the benefits are there, there's so many benefits for marketers to be thinking about when it comes to the utilization of AI in their workflow. When you think about the opportunity for massive content efficiency, I mean just the time, the cost, and the constraints involved in shooting, I mean just the time, the cost, and the constraints involved in shooting, I mean if you've ever been on a set. It is the most boring experience that you can possibly have.

And it doesn't matter what you're shooting. It could be the most awesome shot in the world, but you had to sit there for umpteen hours in a video village, waiting for this setup, waiting for shooting one angle. Now shooting the next angle. Now, I mean, there's just, there's so much complexity in a shoot when someone who on their computer can text prompt an amazing piece of footage in a matter of under a minute.

It's light years ahead of the production process. I think to personalization at scale. You talked about that earlier, Seth, our ability to create custom content. We already see the benefits of that in online marketing. So now being able to bring that same type of idea to video is huge.

And quite honestly, your competitors are going to be doing it. So if you don't think it's a good idea, your competitors are excited because they do, and they're going to be able to outsmart you, the process.

I think also just, you know, why does it ultimately matter right now when you think about the acceleration of consumer expectations and just their need to have better content, their need to have more diverse content, more interesting content. They're going to want to see what your marketing team, what brilliance they can create with AI. It also is a huge, and you've mentioned this earlier, Seth, this is huge democratization of high quality creative.

The iPhone made it so that anybody had an amazing film studio in their pocket. And AI is really going to take that to the next level. Agencies are going to be able to compete like they've never competed before, because it's not about budget.

Seth: I also kind of understand the brands that are hesitant to touch this stuff or the consumer that maybe has a little fatigue just around the word AI in general, you know, in the last two years. We've been inundated with it. Your refrigerator has smart AI tech that can tell you your eggs are going bad or whatever, you know, it's like it really is in like every function of our life. So I do understand that fatigue that comes along with that. But also, as what you were just saying, I think we're going to see a lot of really fun storytelling.

And user, generated, I hate to call it content because that feels really disposable, but really like people that have been aching to tell these stories that over the next few years will. So I don't know what that means for Hollywood or, you know, your favorite brand, but, I think we're going to see things change dramatically over the next five years.

Rob: You made such a great point, Seth. And I, I'll even go back as marketers. I think AI has a branding issue because everybody just throws it into the AI bucket. I mean, you're totally right. Like it's in your refrigerator, it's in your car, it's in your garage door opener. Now it's okay, but what are you actually talking about when you're talking about AI? It's just right now it's sort of become this catch all.

Seth: And it also has become something, and again, I'm sympathetic to a point, but like I still get comments from people that say AI slop even, you know, I made this short film poof that was important to me and I spent way too much time obsessing over every little detail and I still get comments from people that said, this was great, but it's trash because it's AI or someone says, oh, I watched your behind the scenes and realized you put 50 hours into this.

So you reached the criteria for me to approve of what you made, even though you, They didn't say in so many words, but that's what they were saying. So we're in this weird place. And again, I can sympathize with the artists that's concerned about losing their job, but, you know, Rob, you and I have talked about this multiple times, the cat's out of the bag, guys, it's here, it's not going anywhere. So you can stick your head in the sand or scream at the clouds in the sky all you want, tech is here. So. It's a tool. Figure out how to use it.

Rob: Lean in.

Elena: Lean in. Well, Seth, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been great just to, to have you here to provide your expertise on this stuff. We like to end on kind of a fun note. So we each came prepared with an AI fact that people might not necessarily know about. And this could be not just, you know, marketing related, but anything. So Seth, do you want to kick us off?

Seth: Yeah, sure. And I feel like you guys will have heard of this, but, back in 2017, the researchers at Facebook were testing AI chatbots, trying to see if they could get them to negotiate like humans and they could use them on like Facebook marketplace.

Two of the AIs were left alone. And after an undisclosed amount of time, the AIs ditched English altogether and started communicating in their own language. That the developers could not understand, and basically they realized after the fact that the AI had invented its own language to optimize its ability to, conversate. So they unplugged that very quickly. That's pretty cool. Right?

Elena: Right. Gosh, it's like severance a little bit. Like, I kind of feel bad for the AI. Maybe they deserved a chance to continue on. It's like, our innies are these AI chatbots.

Rob: A do you

Elena: Rob? Yeah, what's

Rob: Oh, okay. So I grew up, I was a kid in the 80s and I loved a show called Knight Rider. It was awesome. David Hasselhoff and this black Trans Am named Kit. With a red light and that car had artificial intelligence in it. And today cars are catching up, right? You've got cars that can detect your emotions. They have karaoke mode. Like how cool is that? You can have virtual backseat drivers that are talking to you.

Pet detection. You can do like a dating profile, apparently, like you can do like a photo shoot, like in your car. So, I mean, just the cars, they're getting smarter and you know, who wouldn't want a really smart car that can talk to you and maybe at some point they'll even have that at, the ejection seat, like, like the Knight rider, There you go. I love, I would love a talking car.

Elena: I will say that riding in a Waymo over Thanksgiving, I loved it. I just loved the experience. I cannot wait for all cars to be autonomous AI.

Rob: Right. Those waymo's are awesome. But do you feel like weird driving in one? Cause they're kind of a show, like it's got all those spinner things on it and everything. They're kind of funny.

Elena: Yeah, it is a little embarrassing for some reason, but you once you get in one it's fine.

Rob: Check me out! No driver. Look, no hands! Well,

Elena: I was interested in looking into like AI in movies because it turns out AI has been used for a long time to produce some of our favorite movies. We just maybe didn't know it. So back in 2019 they remade the Lion King into a live action film and they used AI and deep learning to train like the animals faces to have more of a realistic look that was cool. In 2022 and Black Panther Wakanda forever, Chadwick Boseman had passed away.

So they used AI to recreate his voice in that movie, like, such a cool thing that we wouldn't have been able to do before that. And then I know there's a lot of examples like this, but in Indiana Jones and the dial of destiny in 2023. They used AI to de age Harrison Ford. So AI helped us see Harrison Ford in another Indiana Jones movie. That's a beautiful thing.

Rob: That is and that technology's gotten so good when they did the latest ant man they showed a younger version of Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas and having watched their movies growing up just like Harrison Ford you're like I can't believe it's totally looks like them. And that's one where like Mark Hamill when they did the Star Wars Mandalorian one I'm, like, eh, not quite but wow, it's gotten so good now. I mean, I believe that was Michael Douglas, you know a

Seth: Yeah, I watched a breakdown last night for here. The Robert Zemeckis, um, Tom Hanks movie, I think from last year. Yeah. And there's a ton of de aging. And then actually they age them up in a few scenes as well. And they were doing deep fake face replacement.

And the guy was talking about in the past when they've done this. They would have to build out a 3D model of the person's face. They have to scan it. They have to go in and build the pores. They have to set up these systems that show how blood works in the face. And it still doesn't look right. Cause your brain's been staring at human faces your whole life.

And so, you know, when something's wrong and there's something about this deepfake technology that speeds up the process, but also can trick the brain. It gets past that uncanny Valley. So I think we'll see a lot more of this in the future. Yeah.

Elena: I think that'll be great because there's a lot of movies where they show like a younger version of someone and they have to get a different actor or actress and it kind of takes you out of it because you start to be like, oh, that doesn't, no,

like they never look good. So I think this will be better when we can just de age someone.

Rob: 100 percent.

Seth: Sure.

Elena: Great. Well, thank you so much, Seth, for being here. This was a lot of fun.

Seth: Thanks for having me.

Rob: See you later.