Ep. 11: The Next Gen (AI) Toolkit for Creatives feat. Chris Branch

0:00:00Guest Introduction

Play from 0:00:00 8:88:88 0:00:00 what's up everybody we are back Midjourney Fast Hours podcast and we're doing something a little bit different today we've got Rory Flynn of course we've got myself of course but we've also got a legend here by the name of Chris Branch who's gonna introduce himself here in a second and Chris you're our first guest on the show me and Rory obviously have known you for quite a bit you've got a ton of great information that I feel like you can share with our audience so we're excited to have you today uh why don't you just go ahead and give everybody a quick introduction of yourself and just kind of set the scene for us I really appreciate being the first guest guys that's awesome what an honor my name is Chris and I founded a creative agency called seedly about six years ago and um about three or four years ago when we first started getting involved in generative AI I founded a community

Play from 0:00:46 8:88:88 0:00:46 through Linkedin and we called this artificial inspiration and actually Rory was one of the first people that we uh curated because you know standout examples of using the AI workflows that we wanted to encourage our community about educate them on how they work and democratize creativity you know that was really the outset of artificial inspiration is that we knew AI was going to enable a whole bunch of people without a creative background in order to be creative and that we wanted to just Inspire them along the way about you know trying different tools and trying different workflows and Rory always came out with such unique ones that he made our like top five curated lists and that Community has been going about two years now and it's 200,000 people strong now almost which is uh

Play from 0:01:33 8:88:88 0:01:33 crazy that it's gr so fast insane because we all kind of got a little bit of our I think Midjourney start or we utilize the LinkedIn platform mostly or or heavily if if nothing else with Midjourney Chris you were you were one of the first Rory you were one of the first both of you guys were two of the first that I saw really doing that but it was an awesome opportunity right because no one was talking about Midjourney nobody was talking about AI image gen it was just everybody was talking about catch gbt llms what can you do with AI that that was AI but not everybody was talking about sort of this component of taking something from text and turning it into an image totally and Chris is being very humble Everyone by the way if you were on LinkedIn at you know a certain point and I remember when I started like poking arounds looking at

Play from 0:02:20 8:88:88 0:02:20 content and I was like oh what this stuff just kept popping and catching my eye cuz it looked like professional advertising done by AI now when I saw the title and it was like artificial inspiration I'm like who the hell is this and then saw that it had like I don't know at the time like maybe 75,000 followers I'm like what the hell how long have they been doing this so you know naturally you kind of do your you know because you can stalk on LinkedIn fairly easily found Chris I was like oh what's Chris doing then I found Paul and I'm like oh your your partner Paul and I was like oh these guys are these guys are legit but there's an actual background here so you know I think that was that was interesting because it wasn't just you know someone that was an opportunist coming to just take over this AI space you guys had experience in the advertising space the creative space so that's definitely want to get into a

Play from 0:03:05 8:88:88 0:03:05 little bit of that what did you guys do before this and like what was the who was the impetus like yeah Midjourney AI That's what I'm doing that's actually a really good point um I never really appreciate it until we were you know talking even recently how right place right time we were because as a creative agency prior to the AI boom we were just doing things the old school manual way but we were delivering exactly the type of things that we would later deliver with AI so you know the things that would take a month in Photoshop to create like Motion Graphics or something like this instead we were doing this in like two to three days with AI by the way I'll give you more credit because you were actually much better at doing the the social spread I noticed that you were popping up on X and Instagram and Reddit and everywhere else like this and

Play from 0:03:51 8:88:88 0:03:51 I you know I just social media is so complicated to me that I can't even imagine trying to dominate in like six or seven of them so I just like went all eggs in on LinkedIn and um actually Paul did some good work on Instagram on his personal but I didn't really get involved in that Community I just wanted to make sure that I knew how to grow a community organically on one of them because they're so difficult to learn inside out you know to the degree in which you need to get it big enough to make business sense for you so again with artificial inspiration this was actually our 17th LinkedIn community that we'd opened so really well positioned at that time to know how they grow why they grow all of the things to do in order to make them grow like the formats to post in the times in which to

Play from 0:04:38 8:88:88 0:04:38 post in uh all of this other stuff so yeah the advertising agency side of things though was a very interesting like moment in time where Midjourney reached out to us actually they actually sent us an email saying we appreciate your uh creative agency's portfolio of work and we would like to give you early access of this tool for free in order for you to basically do the human level feedback that they required to release the next model and I and I didn't realize at the time but what genius move for Midjourney to literally pick portfolios of work where they can trust they know composition they can trust they know advertising and and other things instead of just usual public users that would give feedback that

Play from 0:05:24 8:88:88 0:05:24 wouldn't come from an advertising background or a graphic design background so that's how we did get involved initially is can't give us too much credit they reached out to us and then we had a little tinkle away with it and said well this is nothing yet but given six months this could change everything and and here we are Drew and I have mentioned this a few times the shadow organization that is Midjourney we like did a h did a human reach out to you or was it like info@ Midjourney reach out to you cuz we don't know who works there other than David like it's it's like a mystery no that's a great point wasn't David himself it was one of the mods on the early servers of Discord and I wasn't so attuned with Discord because I hadn't been like you know

0:05:45Early Midjourney Days

Play from 0:06:09 8:88:88 0:06:09 following big gaming YouTubers or what other reason there was to be on Discord prior to the geni stuff NFS yeah I didn't get involved in nfts either so I was basically like what's this Discord thing and uh you know then they I thought oh this sounds really dodgy almost ignored it to be honest because it was such like a random Reach Out to my email from a non-founder mod of this AI platform that I'd never heard of in hindsight so glad I didn't ignore that email because obviously then getting really early access to it we were like oh okay we can learn and grow as it grows you know and then uh every single version of Midjourney that's come out we've Advanced with the tool and uh we

Play from 0:06:54 8:88:88 0:06:54 were just talking in the Green Room some people get left behind on every single iteration you know I I remember specifically the version four to five jump and this is getting right into the weeds here because I know you guys are really into into the mid jny stuff so we went from like digital art print to photo realism didn't we and I noticed that that out of the raw model without the sort of keywords given to it lost that magical feel for some people you know when it started to all look like raw photography instead of digital art prints they sort of dropped off in huge numbers there but now now we're talking about six and Beyond where you're taking it into image to video and storytelling much bigger drop off than the digital art to photo realism print

Play from 0:07:40 8:88:88 0:07:40 stuff everyone's sort of getting up to their capabilities and then sticking to their guns when it comes to that sort of thing I'm noticing now Chris when did you guys get into Midjourney what version was that just tell our audience curious it was between 1 and two um we had yeah we had you're the only one I know you're the only one I know that was in there at one and two that's insane yeah so we have like some screenshots from version one which was like February of 2022 or something like this and my god did it look like a cancerous pass you know like I can't even uh tell you how warped the thing like the first prompt I tried to do was a Spiderman

Play from 0:08:26 8:88:88 0:08:26 Adidas shoe because I'd come from like you know loving kicks and designing kicks prior to the AI stuff so that was my first prompt it barely looked like recognizable as a shoe or as a spiderweb it was just a mess of these two rough things you know in a blob which would you would call generation one and we've done one in version two one in version three one in version four five six and the progress is just in our workshops people can't believe it they can't believe that we stuck around since the early days considering what vers version one looked like but that's the sort of gamble you take on well this is going to rapidly get better what I didn't predict is the boom that we're going through in video right now I thought video would

Play from 0:09:12 8:88:88 0:09:12 take a lot longer to be honest with you than the photo realism of just images and now I'm really shocked I even was quoted famously as saying it might take three to five years for this AI video stuff to be as good as the image stuff and that was like 6 months ago so now I feel stupid it's it's crazy I mean definitely it's wild because I feel like video is it's still like one of those things because photography and images are static I think there's a little bit more of a give and take that you're willing to take with some of those things and I you know when you're early on something you almost have to see the bigger picture to continue to embrace it and adopt it right and I think that's sort of been the eye openening thing for me with video is seeing how many people

Play from 0:09:59 8:88:88 0:09:59 have been in on video early and still going through the motions with it even when it was extremely bad right because again different between a static photo and movement throughout a scene you want to know what's interesting about that Drew is that what kept me hooked I think it's the same thing that kept me hooked on Midjourney was the outlier Generations not the ones that happen consistently consistently it's like the random ones that are really good and you're like yeah all right like when I would do this on Runway Gen 2 specifically you'd have a lot of of really slow really like you know not a lot of movement and then out of nowhere you'd get one that just worked and it was like I you know we were talking about this in the green room also was it was this bird I did a bird that went it's a stupid video I just showed motion

Play from 0:10:44 8:88:88 0:10:44 brush and how I did this bird and the bird had this really natural version it was fast and it had it fluffed its wings and if you know no one knew that artificial intelligence existed you would not know that was not a real bird and it was just like that one got me hooked and I was like this can only get better it's not like everything else is the same right same with Midjourney like version 4 you'd get something that was wild and you're like damn all right you know there's there's a lot more to come you guys probably saw that in version I'm guessing three two two still seemed like nightmare fuel to me it's so funny you said that too because um one of the themes that me and Andrew have on the in AI nutshell podcast we do for Spotify and YouTube is that we're in this like quality versus control era you know the competing tools that each St

Play from 0:11:32 8:88:88 0:11:32 you know Dary 3 has a lot more prompt coherence but doesn't give you that raw quality from now and then that makes you go whoa like Midjourney does like you're saying with that outlier where you go holy God that looks straight out of a digital art print you know or that looks like a real movie scene or my God that one one in a 100 Generations just Wows me so I've always been like that with my picking of all of the Technologies because in the music space right now soon know has a lot more control but udio has that raw output quality that when you get it it's like gives me goosebumps and that's really why I do it because I think uniquely music Generations added to demotion and all of this stuff together we've got gen imtv around the corner now you know we

0:12:08AI in Music

Play from 0:12:18 8:88:88 0:12:18 really needed that last piece of the puzzle which was as good a beat Creations as we're getting image and video and motion and and all that stuff the next thing we need is really really good voice like singing But I I've heard that 11 Labs is uh teasing their music product soon and obviously we know those guys for voices so they're probably best placed in order to add the voices on top of like AO or udio beat and then bingo bango you've got the full MTV experience is nuts isn't it you might need to create a page for that geni MTV right now that sounds dope we bought generative beats.com uh the domain because I thought this is going to be huge because I've been following will I am quite religiously and uh he's one of

Play from 0:13:05 8:88:88 0:13:05 the early investors right in udio yeah and um I seen him open up like a digital 24/7 generative radio station the other day and I thought naturally right with Millions more people generating beats they've got to sit somewhere you know and be distributed somewhere so I'm seeing business models popping up in this space and honestly guys nothing unites people like music Art's cool and I love it advertising amazing music there's no culture that's ever lived without it you know there's like a difference there with music so like I know that music will kick off with the combination of video and everything else it's uh it's an exciting time man it's really cool and I I think you know Chris

Play from 0:13:51 8:88:88 0:13:51 and I we we teamed up on a on a track if you want to call it that when I was just getting into sunno and I was like dude this is so awesome cuz Chris has some Chris has some DJing background for those who don't know and uh yeah kind of we kind of hit it off over some of the music choices that we enjoyed and I if I'm going to create a video or I'm going to create something I I just want to put my own spin on it I don't even want to look for a song like I know what vibe I'm going for so then I'll just try to go create it it's like the same thing as using Midjourney Runway anything right you just want to go and create what's for you and uh dude it's it's really cool what is coming out of that like some of the stuff was to where it's the uh their newest feature I think it was like you you sing over it and like or it kind of like takes your voice and then like dubs it into the song and like

Play from 0:14:38 8:88:88 0:14:38 makes it a whole like jingle tune but you know some of that stuff is really funny you get you go on Instagram you see some of the funniest like some of the songs of oh yeah yeah yeah right so creative right like when I saw the humming to prompting initially I thought wow that's such a game changer but for real music Geeks out there um the big game changer for for me was when udio gave you wav stem downloads because imagine this right imagine if Midjourney gave you layers imagine if he gave you a Photoshop layered thing that you could go and take at the background and the character and the foreground and stuff that's essentially what music got straight away you know you could break things down into not just downloading the full mp3 but here's the drums in an individual stem track here's the vocals

Play from 0:15:24 8:88:88 0:15:24 here's the guitar or the bass or whatever so now that in many ways music overtook everything else because it got that downloadable thing where you can then go and Like You Know Remix things so inside a digital audio workstation now I could I could use hum to prompt and I could generate like 20 different things and I could take a violin from one a you know drum track from another a bass guitar from another and mash them all together in the background and then give the output so it' be able to like mixing Midjourney images together or mixing Runway output together in layers uh so I really can't wait for that man never really thought about it like that that's super dope yeah the layers aspect the layers piece of it is

Play from 0:16:10 8:88:88 0:16:10 that something you foresee coming through on Midjourney do you think people want that I know we as designers want but do you think the audience want I would love it um I think you know because they talk a lot about World building don't they you know and being able to actually make like a generative World whether that comes in the form of a video with layers whether it's like you know a camera pack panning through and then I don't know like you know Goran Splats technology I wonder if they could involve that somehow um but we've seen a lot of text to 3D coming out so whether or not it could be like a hybrid between video and 3D in order to make this type of Worlds I don't know it would be super cool though and mid

0:16:17Video AI Evolution

Play from 0:16:57 8:88:88 0:16:57 Journey would be really well placed to do it with like abilities in the image space is whether or not it translates to 3D in video as well I'm not sure but like layers in general like the most useful thing that anyone in professionally can have Game Changer in any AI stuff because as soon as you get the ability to take individual components you no longer rely on everything being coherent from the output 100% it's like smart we've talked about this on the Pod before like it was so odd that we were looking at Midjourney hoping that they would do something similar to photoshop gener to fill with their editor tool and then like the next week it came out we were like that was weird but we want that smart select you know we want that smart select like where then we could

Play from 0:17:42 8:88:88 0:17:42 almost generate around cuz Runway did it in gen two which was interesting they added that smart select and you could select multiple different pieces and move them around in multiple different ways it's not there yet in gen 3 I'm sure it'll come back but that was super easy cuz then it was like I can keep my one piece piece of this static which I don't want to move and I can make this piece move like I want the clouds moving in the sky right like I can have that but I can keep the you know the car static over here that I don't want to move because it's parked so if Midjourney can do something like that you know especially you know layers if you know I think they've they've kicked that around I've seen the ideas before on the the inspiration page or the ideas page where it's like can we generate you know either Vector images or in layers it always has a lot of votes but I don't I think it's I'm guessing it's probably fairly complicated to to uh

Play from 0:18:29 8:88:88 0:18:29 to achieve technologically Midjourney is this is speculation but probably at this point where it's like how how many resources how much time do we want to spend perfecting the image component versus this progression that's taking place through to the 3D the video component which they've expressed is you know coming up right it's coming up that we're supposed to see something with video at 3D by the end of the year the end of the year is 3 months away so it's closed Midjourney's also said that this is something that doesn't currently exist in terms of the format so this is a Nerf gaj and splatter but different this is a totally different type of medium but you know I I I am curious right like how they they find this

Play from 0:19:15 8:88:88 0:19:15 balance of what feels like this is going to keep people engaged with the current state of Midjourney and the images and the consistency and all this stuff versus building for the future stuff so you know walking that balance has got to be tough for them right now because this feel feels like sort of that uh that time where you've you're trying to stroke both things equally right like you're trying to pay attention to both yeah and I had rumors that they wanted to get into Hardware too you know so they're definitely Diversified and I love this magazine that they do you know I've uh I've been a long-term subscriber of their magazine so I know that they're definitely thinking and this is really smart right because I said this about runway in the early days I said if open source catches up to these for-profit technology companies having communities and film making and other things that they do is actually a very good way to

Play from 0:20:02 8:88:88 0:20:02 survive because you get like people that are brand Advocates rather than just someone that will swap to the cheaper more available open source tool M Jenny's done a really good job for all of us obviously in keeping us keep going on the platform when flux came out and everyone goes oh the Midjourney killer I said yeah right buddy it's a long way behind uh Midjourney still uh hey Chris I want to get your thoughts on this really quick Rory and I have talked about this quite a bit we make fun of Midjourney in the sense that they're doing marketing in a way that is not typically seen as good marketing right like they are they do have this community aspect and it's a little bit of like an ironic thing because they don't like with the exception of them reaching out to you via email which is unheard of yeah it's super early days and I don't think they ever did it again

Play from 0:20:49 8:88:88 0:20:49 they don't really do anything to like there's no Midjourney Creator Creator program like these other tools there's no like inner Community or uh influence aspect or hey we're going to reach out we like that you're creating content for us kind of thing because a lot of that was like tutorial based and education based and getting people to come over to the platform in the first place and it's working well for them right and so I I think you're absolutely right with this community aspect it's just ironic that they don't do anything on top of that to solidify it it's a bit risky I'm going to be honest if I'm going to say like as an advertising guy if you didn't if I take out all of my you know love for M journey and just analyze this as though I'd never used the platform and looked

0:21:24Layers in Midjourney?

Play from 0:21:35 8:88:88 0:21:35 at its business model I would say that now they're exiting the Discord era and the user interface and website's going to be the main thing what they can start to do there is less in their Reliance on the Discord mods which are the people that they've H you know basically got on board instead of influencers and marketers and creatives that they you know when the Discord stuff becomes a lot less prevalent to them they need to shift that attention into the more traditional like people light Rory you know that have been given the millions and millions of Impressions over the year one of the things that I saw very interestingly when we curated his bird stuff it went to pages that were six to seven times larger than ours because of how well it performed on our page so the Domino cascading effect upwards and the

Play from 0:22:20 8:88:88 0:22:20 earned media value would have been in the millions of dollars from that single post cuz the Impressions would have been in the billions of impressions across 10 to 15 platforms you know Reddit X Instagram everywhere it was literally everywhere it could have been as though they had done a Big Brand marketing push now they can't rely on that forever because Rory will be offered money by people that will be willing to pay for him to do it and he's been doing it you know organically because he loves the platform up till now but to keep Rory on board and others like him Midjourney will need to reach out and do this partner program brand advocate program Runway does a very good job of this with their Partnerships and stuff like that and others do as well like you said so um there's no excuses for it really they

Play from 0:23:07 8:88:88 0:23:07 they have done well up to now without it but to car guarantee that you know flux and others won't just eat them for lunch they need to stabilize marketing and advertising and and Impressions and really build those bridges with the people that have been so loyal this whole time CU if they just feel ghosted by them they will start to leave I greate I think there's a interesting conversation that I want to open up to both of you guys on this one because it just popped into my head when we got on the platform it was really I mean it was hard because you had to understand how to text prompt now we have so many controls does this get harder to bring new users to a platform when we add things like video 3D all this different

Play from 0:23:53 8:88:88 0:23:53 types of Technology because the learning curve is so big for us it's easy to learn one new feature because we know all the other features but is it hard for someone day one to come in and say how do I start with images what are the parameters what are the controls 3D how do you do video like there's a lot to learn as we double down on community right I think that's how they're going to win if they want to win is you have to double down on community you have to bring the community together more whether that be through Discord live inent live in person events different things that they can produce like that it's just like does this learning curve become too steep because they're getting too good it's like that I think it's that's a random question I don't know how you guys feel about that it's a great question feature overload is always a big issue in AI for me and the the simpler the user interface the more I get along with it because you can

Play from 0:24:39 8:88:88 0:24:39 just learn it quicker and uh it is daunting to people especially now that you know discord's no longer a thing that the user interface on the website's got all these options and uh dropdowns what would you do to solve that would you have the video and stuff separate as a totally separate tool I mean that's a great question never really thought about that I I think of the fact that IM are relevant to anybody right they're relevant to somebody that is not in marketing somebody that's not in a creative agency right whereas I think video is a little bit more Niche right in that aspect now would that extend to like marketers people like me you know like looking into it I think so right because I want to use AI in the mediums that marketing currently uses in an

Play from 0:25:25 8:88:88 0:25:25 Innovative way and especially if it's a way that's going to save me time money or compromises or make me stand out right because the other part of this equation with AI is you're getting more content now than ever so how do you stand out you got to create something that people haven't seen before or you know something that's going to shock them or something that really is you know purposeful in stopping the scroll I think that's never been more true because we're we're just inundated with content now yeah so you know if we've heard something or seen something before it's just going to continue to desensitize so you do have to figure out those those methods I I don't know what Midjourney is going to do with their approach I have no idea what that looks like but I am excited for it because I think for me whether it's a good thing or not I am a mid-journey loyalist I I you know it's

Play from 0:26:11 8:88:88 0:26:11 tough for me to learn too many tools especially with the other things I have going on I I do see that as a barrier right like people can only put so much energy into learning new tools even if they think it's an awesome tool even if they know that so I think that component has to be soft for I agree with Chris like the lighter weight the tool in a lot of ways I actually prefer because I just know that I know how to do everything within there and I know what I can use it for and it makes very clear sense so I I don't know it it'll just be interesting to see how that plays out a lot of the new video platforms have done really well with that I'll give cing a lot of praise for that you know their interface is so clean and easy to look at it's so not daunting that's interesting cuz I think here's here's how if I was conceptualizing how to get

0:26:44User Onboarding Challenges

Play from 0:26:59 8:88:88 0:26:59 a new user on right because I do you know teach a lot of people how to use this thing from day one but really like I I look at what Runway did on gen 3 which was not add too many features they started with you can only do text to video so I was like okay I've never really done that on Gen 2 I only used image to video because I wanted the images that I wanted but now I didn't have the option so it was like I had to learn how to text prompt it then I was like okay that's awesome I figured that out then it's like next they're like okay now you can do image to video it's like cool now I can do what I want to do but I also know how to text prompt on top of it then it was the video to video it's like all right so it's a little tiered approach so what I think Midjourney has been really good at they've reached like this sort of either one like gamification phase with like the

Play from 0:27:45 8:88:88 0:27:45 style codes where it's like a little treasure hunt same thing with how they tiered the website where it was like you could only do this if you've done 10,000 images 5,000 500 100 10 zero so they kind of like have done a good job of like really opening up the the new features to the people that have been using it the most maybe it's an interesting way to bring people onto the platform is you have to start with image creation right or like you have to start with image creation then you can start to graduate once you generated 100 images you can then go to video then you can go to I know it's not ideal for maybe like a business model standpoint but it's a way to like you have to learn the platform or like in you know how some tools like when you you get an update it's like here let's take you through each thing here's how this work they highlight the section and then uh gray out the rest don't they so that you focus on just that like thing I know

Play from 0:28:32 8:88:88 0:28:32 exactly what you mean my ADHD still hates that you get that too okay now here's here's an interesting thought okay Midjourney and all these other tools don't really do this but if I'm thinking about this from a marketing perspective it'll be interesting for new users if they provide the use case and a workflow in which you can accomplish that particular use case so think about canva for examp example right by size you know that's how they break a lot of these things out like do I need something for social do I need something for a LinkedIn Banner right but the use cases are there and so what I'm getting at is new users need to be educated on use cases a lot of these talks that that you and I do it's it's about how do how

Play from 0:29:19 8:88:88 0:29:19 do I actually use this right what like why would I want to spend the time learning this these platforms what you come to learn especially if you try to communicate with them they aren't marketers they're Engineers you know they don't think about people's workflows they talk about tools and features they don't talk about problem solving problem solving is what marketers do they don't talk about features of platforms you know because you don't sell features you sell problems answers and solutions to problems so that's so that's the thing right we're all early adopters we can figure out the use cases and we actually like that whereas these these people that still aren't on these tools right Rory going back to your question of like is it does it get harder that I think has to be almost spoonfed to them a

Play from 0:30:05 8:88:88 0:30:05 little bit more and that's that's just where we're at with with I think Ai and Tech in general is you know like if if you like Tech and you like new tools you're on this early and you're willing to go through the bumps whereas those late adopters they need use cases they need the barrier to entry to be lower they need to understand exactly what they're going to use it for I think Runway is one of the only ones that's made one of these cool did you see their recent gen 3 video what someone basically bought a a throwaway camera you know one of those like disposable cameras that you can buy and then walked around New York and took loads of photos and then uploaded those photos to Runway and then added all sorts of monsters and stuff to them I love that as like a like use case workflow because it just shows you need zero skills you just need fun

Play from 0:30:52 8:88:88 0:30:52 environments and you could take still images and add anything you want to them you know that really got the message over very simply and quickly in a nice piece of content that they made in house but they're the only ones that I've seen do that sort of stuff where they really think oh you know we know how filmmakers will use this because they'll go and make their own use cases but we just want new users to be able to feel less daunted about undertaking this there was also something really interesting that I saw which I love there was uh I think maybe Dave Clark reposted it or something like that that there was uh someone had produced a a I don't know if it was a feature length but a fairly lengthy AI video and then they got it reprinted on like on hard

Play from 0:31:39 8:88:88 0:31:39 copy film stock and then they they had it so it was like remastered in a in a very analog way and it just looked really cool like it wasn't it didn't look AI it looked like someone shot I mean you could tell some of the Motions were AI but it it still looked like that's a really unique use case that you'll probably see mimicked in the film industry now considering have that's really smart tools like like like Runway who just made that partnership with Lion's gate which is I think going to set the model right yeah that's huge that's a that's a massive I wanted to talk to you guys about that actually we we discussed that on our podcast we said will we ever see anything out of that like as consumers of Runway will this be something where Lionsgate internally only get their version of Runway because

Play from 0:32:25 8:88:88 0:32:25 when we work with Coca-Cola this is the thing you know they partner with open Ai and they got a Del 3 built for themselves but no one has access to it outside of Coca-Cola employees and the partners and agencies they work with like us so there's no benefit in you know the open AI Coca-Cola partnership to other outside members essentially but is the Lionsgate one going to make the general model of Runway better as in like trained on Lionsgate stuff for users or will it just be for the benefit of Lionsgate employees I don't know I wondered that great great question yeah I was wondering that as well CU I was thinking that's a this is a model right it's a model that can be replicated we saw Ai and I think it was Ki Nast maybe they had they got their entire portfolio

0:32:37Coca-Cola Partnership

Play from 0:33:12 8:88:88 0:33:12 and it was like is that for Di and the images or is that for the actual copy CU there's both there it's interesting it's like what is that going to actually like you put come to Consumer facing where I get to use that or is that something that is you know potentially it could be an interesting structure of the model where they are building one specifically for them and maybe they're licensing the content as data acquisition as well so they're paying for it in a sense so there's a very unique like business case to be had from this stuff it's just like how creative are people going to get cuz the end or like the commodity for the tools and training is data right like that's it that's all it is you know just how do we get more and how do we get better that's so true and outside like outside of open AI I found that a lot of

Play from 0:33:57 8:88:88 0:33:57 the image and video models aren't being taken as seriously by Enterprise and Runway I'll give them huge credit for that they've got Tribeca they've now got Lion's gate they're doing all the big official ones you know like very few people are finding that level of like trust in an Enterprise partnership so good for them you know for making that like legit jump they've really positioned themselves well as a like a non-s scummy tool you know that's ripping people or SBS off and this comes at sacrifices as we found out you know because they won't allow certain prompts that others will and this is uh somewhat to the annoyance of the users that they are basically you know filtering Free Speech or whatever they determine it as we we have less of this talk over here in the UK honestly about free speech and

Play from 0:34:42 8:88:88 0:34:42 advocacy and all of that stuff but um yeah it is somewhat frustrating in that sometimes you do a Runway prompt and you don't even know why it's not worked it just will not generate it'll take all of the time to generate and then say it's failed and then you've got to try again and again and again but the flip side of that is that they get lion gate and Tribeca and other things like this you know it's an interesting thing that I'm noticing now is the legit platforms the AI platforms that don't want to stay underground and and they want these big Hollywood Partnerships to do these next level things I'd love it if we get something out of the end of it ourselves though as consumers too not just bragging rights for them you know yeah when they when they brought Getty on as a partner and then Getty you know that was like the ethically sourced sort of model train

Play from 0:35:29 8:88:88 0:35:29 where it was like okay this is all liced like this is official this is we know where it came from you could just tell from that little move that they were like okay and I also got to say shout out to their CEO when the Sora video dropped I remember that first thing probably the most viral marketing campaign of all time he was just like game on and I was like okay I was like all right he has confidence so they they must have been working on something in the background but I loved that move because that got that got me fired up as a weird tech nerd now that I am somehow um but yeah it's really it's really interesting to see where these all go because we think about this with d telling this back to Midjourney right I mentioned this to Drew yeah we were like spitballing on what what could Midjourney do if they wanted to actually like go and start to monetize some different types of Partnerships it was

Play from 0:36:15 8:88:88 0:36:15 like oh could we create a McDonald's style code where they licensed you know McDonald's portfolio and then we could create a McDonald's style something like that like it's you know it's not applicable it's just a fun idea but it's like that's a way to how do we get more data you know you're gonna have to partner with the brands right but I don't know if they want to do that you know what's interesting too is is Midjourney's kind of said that they're not or or at least David said that they're not super focused on the business application for this either like thinking about business use cases which to me is just like an eye openening thing because that for me as like a marketer on a small team and I didn't have to choose between stock photography and I didn't have to hire a photographer and we could we could create images that were unique on brand customed to us

Play from 0:37:02 8:88:88 0:37:02 right I didn't have to have any creative compromises so if I had this wild idea that we wanted to create we could create it you know to me to not focus on that just seemed odd right and and I think that's still something that they bring up from time to time and I'm not really sure why but that to me seems like a a missed opportunity I have to know why that isn't the case have you ever heard of Mo yes yeah so these guys basically um yeah they built on top of stable diffusion and they built luras on top in order to basically solve business problems you know train your own mini Laura inside of moir and generate from that basically as your like little database I thought moury could crush it in that department they'd probably make

Play from 0:37:47 8:88:88 0:37:47 tens of millions and um it's no surprise actually because when I looked into David he did have a background of like was it Leap Motion or something like this like a big company so maybe he's like thinking longer term than short-term business models for you know businesses and thinking more how do I get to billions of users consumer wise you know it is frustrating to us in the short term who are monetizing it because that would be such a useful thing right mini lawers that we could train for businesses and have like these like or you know the personalization to token that they give you now if you could train one of them for each brand and make it do exactly that brand that would be so useful like the most annoying thing to me is if David didn't want to

Play from 0:38:34 8:88:88 0:38:34 do that business model all he needs to do to open that up is open the API so someone can build it on top but he's not even doing that that's the thing that's frustrating is that like fair enough you don't want that to be your future but let someone else build it cuz it's really really required I think I mentioned the Drew last time which was you know something that I thought was pretty impressive when I actually thought about it right when you're training lauras you can do character object style was you know typically you need five to 50 images to train that with with style reference you can do that with one image like you basically created a functionality that's Aura with one image which is kind of crazy right same thing with character once that improves it's the same thing same thing they'll probably roll out an object reference at some point but to me that's

0:38:44AI Art Exhibition

Play from 0:39:20 8:88:88 0:39:20 also why it's you know I thought about trying to comprehend this the other day I was like they really just created a Lura system where you only need one image to reference and you can replicate in perpetuity which was no no like the ease of use again take away all the steps take away the curation take away the fine tuning take away all that stuff and I was like it's a very simple way like we talked about Drew and I said this last podcast maybe the one before it's like Midjourney feels like mac and the other stuff feels like PC where it was like mac just kind of easy right fun little lighter uh PC was like really you could do whatever you want but you got to know what you're doing kind of thing so yes and it takes a lot more knowhow on PC it's a lot less user experience friendly and stuff like

Play from 0:40:05 8:88:88 0:40:05 that I really love the analogy of Mac though and uh Midjourney because like think about like the little input that you actually need with those lauras for that stylizing that you're talking about character reference and style reference right I remember when I had to train a voice model for myself they required 4 hours of reading a script then it was like 30 minutes now it's 30 seconds it's gone from 4 hours to 30 seconds and it does a lot better job of mimicking my voice from that 30 seconds input than it ever did from that 4 hours input so it's just you know scaling and scaling down the requirements for the Laura in order to get like repeatable outputs why doesn't Midjourney make a bigger deal of that because they bit like I've never seen a

Play from 0:40:52 8:88:88 0:40:52 one reference Laura model anywhere else again like from a marketing standpoint if that was me I'd be like I'd go try to show you how to train aura on stable diffusion and just be like walk you through the steps and then show you Midjourney and it's like oh it's one button you know it's one parameter right such a good play against each other right I think that's exactly right they don't they just don't have anybody marketing thinking like a marketer in that aspect of communicating and positioning you know from that stamp so true yeah cuz comy UI is beyond me like I look at all those nodes and think isn't art Direction this is Dev yeah yep do you know what I mean like that's too far for me like it looks like doesn't it it just looks like connecting nodes

Play from 0:41:38 8:88:88 0:41:38 between random objects and like that's no longer art direction for me it totally agree it's a lot I think you know that's where art direction and you said that Chris I think it's uh you know we definitely want to ask you about this stuff because you guys have had to me there was a few that always caught my eye I always remember this the like the variations of the sneakers that you put together where it it's it's essentially if I was going to distill it down it's two two UniQue Ideas mashed together perfectly so there was one that I remember vividly you guys did it recently it was for um the Olympics and it was a cone of pal FRS and it was in the style of a uh an Olympic torch and I was like that is just so bam like that's a print ad right there you probably did it in you know a couple runs maybe one run and that would take God knows how

Play from 0:42:26 8:88:88 0:42:26 long to conceptualize and come up with for an agency millions of dollars maybe um but that was you guys did that and I was always liked your style of how you've connected two things like background but yeah if you could talk about that man that's really it's really cool and how definitely how you're thinking about it so thank you so much firsty you know like that's come through lots and lots of practice actually and we used to do this uh prior to AI we used to have half an hour set aside from client time every morning to do our own like you know concept marketing pictures cuz we win all of our clients organically we don't reach out like you know through emails or paid media we essentially put our stuff on social and if it's big enough V virality wise then hopefully they recognize us and reach out you know that's our kind of like uh

0:42:42Creative Ideation Process

Play from 0:43:12 8:88:88 0:43:12 Forte for All of That So based on that you know I'm a very data driven person and uh I like to put into a Google spreadsheet all of those ideal brands that we'd like to work with so that's column A and then column B might be what is a you know know thing that we think could do well as a marketing campaign for them and then column C is likely to be what is the capabilities of say Midjourney because everything that you want to do for them is not always possible in AI so you have to do sort of a b c in order to make it so that it fully uh is translatable through a 15minute workflow of AI in the morning to being what you want this is great this guy is so good so what's happened without official inspiration now is that it's become a

Play from 0:43:59 8:88:88 0:43:59 community's page kind of like this Midjourney magazine in that you know we showcase other people's workflows like this guy uses Adobe After Effects and stuff to animate uh in post production and he makes things stand out really well with a title slide that animates and the rest is still images this one's like a visual metaphor pun series that he did and uh he's really good at doing stuff like this as well as doing like um awareness for Charities and stuff this guy's completely new to it this guy is a hipop Lyricist one of my best friends from the UK he's only just gotten into generating and but he's so good at copywriting and lyric writing that he's a prompt engineer and he didn't even know it and I thought how cool is that like he's been writing bars that

Play from 0:44:44 8:88:88 0:44:44 translate into images now it's like so cool to see that transition yeah right now he has a full-time job working in waste management and I'm trying to get him into full-time AI stuff this guy is really really good as well well Mark uh Von Ram I think this guy is uh and hybrid stuff can't if you guys aren't following us on video too on Spotify or YouTube we're we're just scrolling through the artificial inspiration page that Chris uh operates and so again we're just scrolling through these images which are fantastic this is exactly the type of stuff that Rory was talking about you know a hybrid of jet skis and sneakers you know they are do not attach things but they are you know

Play from 0:45:31 8:88:88 0:45:31 got the same sort of aesthetic feel and so you can see how it matches up as like a collaborative prompt to create but then it's like figuring out how to make it work comparatively to the idea you had in your head of what it should look like how do you translate Midjourney to get that output in the same way you would have done through traditional means like Photoshop and stuff like that so that's really the uh task for us I love this series my favorite ones are the throwback Thursday ones yeah there's something about like 90s prompts in Midjourney isn't there and that you know they do um Nostalgia so well this guy's really good too super dope Gucci sand castles here yeah we got such an awesome crew of people that contribute to this

Play from 0:46:17 8:88:88 0:46:17 channel now like and I really can't give them enough credit there's about 10,000 of them worldwide submitting stuff to me all the time through the inbox of this theme page just saying had this would you like to feature it and I always think about like have we featured something similar or have we already got someone that does really good examples like Rory for example I'll know every new Runway update or video update or anything where like he's the first one I'll look for has he made a creative example of a workflow for showcasing how this can work because as we discussed they're not marketers and they don't think of these things they just come out with here's the new feature and they don't go here's how it can be used creatively it's awesome man I appreciate that first and foremost the other thing Chris and if you want to talk about this you know again I would love to just just

Play from 0:47:04 8:88:88 0:47:04 you know jogging my memory you guys were early in with uh some of the companies that were first also interested in artificial intelligence so like Coca-Cola things like that you know again you know something if you want to talk about that I think it's really cool for the audience to to maybe understand that big brands are thinking about about it for a while yeah Drew if you've still got the page up um go back to artificial inspiration because I wrote up a quick newsletter about this it was the very first edition of the newsletter on artificial inspiration but it was very intentional actually Rory to know that it was cocacola um to know that they were going to be one of the first people to do this actually um we'd seen the writing in the walls uh where did you get the newsletter from here oh there

0:47:47Brands Embracing AI

Play from 0:47:50 8:88:88 0:47:50 you go scroll right down to the very very bottom all of this newsletter has been generated with Midjourney images by the way so it's kind kind of a progression that's the one so in that was uh Midjourney 1 and Dary one uh those images scroll uh down to the that was it seeing it in Time Square it was absolutely incredible first time ever been to Time Square or there it was aund of Our Generations and uh like below you can see the capabilities of the tool that we actually used cuz we uh we showcased the actual 100 that was some of the there was a Coca-Cola app launch the back of this um so that was some of the submissions from people that had made it and there's our 100 bottles there that post above is exactly how we got the

Play from 0:48:37 8:88:88 0:48:37 attention of coke and why I brought you here basically this is Paul's idea using that Google sheet formula we talked about so Coca-Cola was in column a column B was let's make them into um a really really high-end brand so make them like Crystal and things like this you know make like diamond versions and that was our and then column C and distribution was how do we get their attention without tagging them because we really didn't want to bother Coca-Cola we knew lots of people were trying to reach them and trying to do these things so we just said we'll just keep going with Coca-Cola ideas until one hits and they can't ignore it basically and um I had a DM like two days after they started to get some really big numbers and it was Chris doe

Play from 0:49:24 8:88:88 0:49:24 if you guys know who that is who engaged with it that yeah he put it onto Coca-Cola's radar because he's a big design-based person in La so his engagement on this post uh was literally what Coca-Cola told us yeah it was so much fun and this is our 15-minute exercise every day it's actually so fun you know we actually have so much fun taking client time away and just focusing on making Concepts that could make us future clients so it's kind of like we treat ourselves like a client in that respect you know and then give ourselves 45 minutes to practice client work that's any concept that we would like for any brand that we're looking to attract and it has a KnockOn effect like we did this Adidas Tesla one and neither Adidas or Tesla reached out but Puma did

Play from 0:50:10 8:88:88 0:50:10 because they're in the space you know and they saw the work then they were like oh that's a really cool concept that we could flip into our branding so it has KnockOn effects you know even if you're not getting that exact brand that you're trying to reach out to you might attract other brands in the same space Chris how are companies like that integrating AI into their creative process right now what are some of the projects you know like are there any standout projects is there are there any typical projects or ways that they like to dip their feet in the water just paint that picture for us and and the listeners here well Coke I've got to give them all credit in the world when we went to go to Atlanta I had no idea but they invented influencer marketing they actually invented very many forms of marketing they were the first people

Play from 0:50:55 8:88:88 0:50:55 in 1940s to put people on like these like trays but they were like opos singers of the day you know holding Coca-Cola bottles never before had a brand paid a famous person to hold their products never and so Koke has been on the for yeah they've been on the Forefront of all of the newest waves of marketing and they knew that AI was going to be the next one so they invested big and they invested early they were the first brand to partner with open AI they were the first brand to partner with Nvidia they went really deep as well like we've we're now on the third or fourth edition of their crate real magic Campaign which has been the biggest generative AI campaign from a brand yet and it's basically um Christmas card creation given a cocacola

Play from 0:51:41 8:88:88 0:51:41 app that you can then generate Christmas cards send them to your loved ones digitally so this year will be another version it'll be 3.0 of that so it'll be the third Christmas in a row that this has been running and uh it's going to be bigger and better than ever before and it's like can't give them enough credit for how early they are how much they've invested who they've brought on board how they've gone about it there's very other many Brands out there that should be paying close attention to what they're doing and sort of trying to emulate it in any way they can now they don't have hundreds of millions to spend a month like Coke you know like so I understand that not every brand can be Coke they're the biggest brand of all time so like there's no real like uh competing with that Legacy but just

Play from 0:52:28 8:88:88 0:52:28 having that like open-mindedness to all of this and not letting lawyers determine too much and just going with the flow and getting part of the action now will pay huge dividends to having to play catchup in like 12 to 24 months I can't emphasize that enough like if you wait another two years like Rory said it's already daunting what you need to know now so like imagine when we've got video and 3D World and music and all of this other stuff we're all completely used to doing that all of the time and then someone's got to go and start from scratch and try and catch up with all of that it's almost going to feel hopeless at that point so really now is like the best time to get involved in AI it's cool man the stuff you did with the

0:52:30AI in Hollywood

Play from 0:53:14 8:88:88 0:53:14 stuff you guys did with Coke really like caught my eye cuz that that was interesting I had um you know short story I did a I did a spec ad for Nike like a year and a half ago and it was on Runway gen was feathers and it went fairly viral and it pissed off 80% of the people in the comments there was one person that like came to the defense and it was a it was a marketing executive from Coca-Cola and he's just like if you guys don't see what he's actually saying you're going to be in trouble after this you know like really he's not saying this is an ad he's saying this is what's capable right now and I was like holy like that's I've never gotten a response like that so I thought that was really cool but the other thing that was was interesting is Coke on Midjourney always felt like it was the one brand

Play from 0:54:01 8:88:88 0:54:01 you could put in and always get the logo right so to me from like a branding standpoint right just let if everyone starts to know that and then they're sharing their Creations it's just added impression value like you it's Coca-Cola who's going to steal your brand at that point you know like McDonald's McDonald's was easy too McDonald's was easy too yep yeah and same thing you know they're not the easiest logos either are they if you think about it like apple or something is a lot easier from like an aesthetic point of view is because of probably the amount of images that are proliferated on the internet in the training data sets um so brands that are aware that they are highly you know generated should be taking advantage of that otherwise it's just ignoring the elephant in the room at this point isn't it it's like I've seen Louis Vuitton and others like this just ignore it and

Play from 0:54:47 8:88:88 0:54:47 you're like guys there's people generating millions of Impressions using your branding on concept stuff like really you you should be seeing this as user generated content they could do exactly what you're doing with artificial inspiration right give them a just as a community a community where you're sharing images Rel to the brand and then people are feeling connected to the brand I mean you're you're going to gain loyalty and trust and you know have a newfound respect for the brand just by doing something so simple that people are already doing that's the hardest part you don't have to create you don't have to convince anybody to do it all you have to do is create some structure around it and you get to create that structure so it is interesting that there's there there's really no one taking advantage of that with the

Play from 0:55:33 8:88:88 0:55:33 exception of you know some coca-colas for example but yeah it seems like a huge missed opportunity the other thing I would have to think is going on with some of the bigger companies is they've got to at least be thinking through operations workflows how they could use it use cases even if they're not already putting anything public or external they have to be um because maybe that's the intermediary step right because you have to be prepared for something that is inevitable this feels inevitable I would certainly say that's been our um feedback from the workshops that we've been doing is uh people are using it in house and not talking about it publicly you know they're building referral for pctures they're doing all sorts of social media concepting that's not actually the stuff that sees the light

0:56:00Monetizing AI Skills

Play from 0:56:19 8:88:88 0:56:19 of day but all of the you know slack messages and like here's what it could look like and all of the pitch decks that's all being generated without anybody being aware of that's what's happening but then publicly no usage of AI it's kind of interesting isn't it yeah yeah it's safe you know it's safe when it doesn't have to be it's safe is exactly the word for it Dave Clark said he's OG enough that he used to get death threats for his concept ads from the advertising industry and over time Dave Clark has been telling me that these same people that were giving him death threats in the early days are now begging him for workshops the irony of coming full circle to all of that you know and being that like bitter Twisted person to the early

Play from 0:57:04 8:88:88 0:57:04 change but then recognizing its like strength over time and oh it just is so it's twisted isn't it like the early days were just so so depressing everyone was so negative about this stuff and now as it's improved everyone's starting to see its possibilities and start to be a bit more positive about everything but I can't believe it took that but then looking through history every major technology change has aced that you know the printing press hated the electric guitar hated the turntable hated all of it you know autotune hated everyone hates it initially and then it just becomes impervious it's like unignorable it's mainstream after a while it's everywhere every single pop song uses autotune to this day you know just to

Play from 0:57:49 8:88:88 0:57:49 shift a few notes around I remember the electric guitar too I studied this in music um my uh master's degree was in engineering and when the first electric guitars started going out onto the stage people said this is no longer uh music it's electronification [Music] the Grassroots of all this stuff it's always it's always these movements they start small communities people realize it's cool gets bigger you know it's it's this stuff cuz we're screwing around

Play from 0:58:36 8:88:88 0:58:36 with it you know we're nerding out on it Drew and I back in you know even when we just started to meet you know it just be like just even like in LinkedIn DMs like dude do you like are you are you getting these kind of results and it was just like yeah this is awesome and it's like started like oh we can't really like talk about this stuff out loud because people are like mad at us for certain things I mean even like the going back to that point on what Dave said I mean it used to be so much worse crazy like oh you just want to you just want to take away you know the work of agencies and small businesses I'm like no actually that's the best like Avatar to use it because you've never had access like this and it's never been this cheap do you know another crazy bum Chell that he dropped was um he said that there are so many pseudonames being used by Major Hollywood directors that don't want to

0:59:15Future AI Predictions

Play from 0:59:22 8:88:88 0:59:22 be known for their AI stuff and that makes a lot of sense you know consider during that like huge backlash in the beginning uh he said that he's one of the only ones he knows that actually attaches his real name towards his AI stuff because everyone in real Hollywood you know wrer strike and all this other stuff it goes against everything that they're sort of you know standing up for at the moment so they're doing it through a totally Anonymous pseudo name which is wild to think about like how many accounts we maybe follow that are like you know Ridley Scots or people like that you know using this t but you've got no idea it's them it'd be so cool to learn that once it's like comes out after a certain point but there's a few I know I know them they put like Emmy award-winning director or something on there and then they're suud inm it's

Play from 1:00:08 8:88:88 1:00:08 like oh okay like you know who who are you you start to see that pop up more but how could you not be curious like especially if you're a producer or a director how could you not be curious to go in there even for a pitch a movie this is what I'm thinking right like this is how I Vision visualize it can this be done can we have the budget for this right like you know that to me it's a whole new sales pitch too but super super interesting you know where this stuff is has gone in 6 months from just even adoption and like a mindset standpoint again crazy but there is something else that I wanted to ask you about Chris I'm I'm just remembering all this stuff now because I think it's useful um for for our audience to even know that this stuff is available you guys did an actual in-person art show

Play from 1:00:54 8:88:88 1:00:54 like for fre to col was it for that was Miami something I'm J I remember correct yeah walk us through that for a second cuz I remember that a little bit and I remember seeing you guys taking pictures of it it was really cool oh that was amazing um so to cut a long story short um Paul decided and thank God he did do this that he was going to make uh an Instagram page for his own personal Midjourney works so these were things outside of the lot like you know Enterprise level brand concept advertisings we were putting on LinkedIn and more traditional like artworks and stuff that he loved you know he's really into Marvel and pop culture characters and certain artists Freda being one of them and so she had been someone that we'd constantly generated around since

Play from 1:01:41 8:88:88 1:01:41 the beginning and um someone who like you said a Miami based Art Gallery owner uh reached out to Paul's Instagram page and said look we uh we actually work with Freda Carlo Foundation like the actual foundation so we can get the Estates IP rights holders to sign off on a real art exhibition like in collaboration with the Freda Carlo Foundation if you'd be interested in this I know you've never done work like this because you mainly work with advertising in Brands but would you be interested in this so it's in Miami right now at the Avant gallery and um the printing job they did I can't give them enough credit by the way this came

Play from 1:02:27 8:88:88 1:02:27 at magnific version one thank goodness for that upsc scalers are just been basically like introduced at this point and um that really made it so that we could do like 500 megabyte upscales you know like much much bigger than what Midjourney was giving us of 100 times bigger than the 5 megabytes we could upscale to in Midjourney basically and um then when they were printed on like really big like metal canvases it turns out they just looks stunning and we were just like whoa you know um they've done something special there with the physical printing of an upscaled AI image that made it look even more special than the thing that we sent them so it was like a combination of things

Play from 1:03:13 8:88:88 1:03:13 to really make that project special and now that same Gallery is going to be holding our Einstein collection we reached out to the Einstein foundation in the same way as Freda Carlo and they've just agreed to like having an Einstein art exhibition using the exact same sort of flow and techniques and so that's really exciting to us as well it's so crazy right they literally said we want you to be the first people we ever featured in our Gallery that's not going to be from a traditional fine arts background and they're A Fine Arts Gallery so I was just so honored at first like Coke we had to pinch ourselves and say is this even real is this guy just pulling our leg you know it's amazing dude like literally I remember hearing that one that one would to me was the most crossover that I

1:03:52Community Building Importance

Play from 1:03:59 8:88:88 1:03:59 could remember from the Fine Art world and Midjourney where it hadn't been so contentious and I was like oh that to me feels like a turning point that I'm sure it's still hated but you know having it right now where that's even a possibility and someone's interested in that I why not I mean why can't bid Journey do that either you know it's something along those lines where they're doing those types of marketing Partnerships or those type of events but yeah it was so flattering honestly is cool it's very super interesting that's something I've done for a few clients now on the art side that's really cool so the crazy thing with the AI upscale is you don't even need a crisp image no right so so actually in a in my first time using that workflow I got phone pictures a nice of a painting I got

Play from 1:04:46 8:88:88 1:04:46 phone pictures of a painting that I needed to create highres upscale do the whole thing and then you know right you've got this tool like magnific or Korea now where you can make that possible right like it's just it's unheard of and I I don't know that a lot of these art consultancies art providers curators know about these tools right I'm going to start looking through my 2020 uh 2021 pictures and before just for the old footage to to think about running it through magnific that's so that's such a good point there's there's a lot Midjourney three Midjourney four some of that stuff even with the little Baseline fractality yeah right like you could totally wow old images that's genius too true

Play from 1:05:32 8:88:88 1:05:32 yeah Drew and I talk about this a lot like there's so many lost in like the memory bank like you can't even remember all the good ones you know there's so many good ones that you likeed and you just when are you going to go look back through 200,000 never see them again yeah like it's I wish they do a better way of smart tagging those in Midjourney you asked earlier about things we'd love to see in Midjourney the website explore page uh you know sifting through that better as well as your own gallery and like folders of Galleries and stuff like that that would be really smart if they managed to figure that element out to be able to look cuz yeah you must be are you 100K images in yet have you try have you done 100 Generations I'm I'm getting close to it at this point I think I check yeah I checked my binfo or whatever it is through Discord the other day and it was

Play from 1:06:18 8:88:88 1:06:18 like 88 or something like that getting close D definitely got to be getting close I've got 122,000 12 2,000 holy God you made the 100K Club bro congrats yeah I thought there was like a special I thought there was like an award you get or there was a private group or something guys there's nothing there's nothing sorry they should send you a plaque dude that's a 100,000 attempts Plus getting images they're about to expand that batch to talk about heard about that so so that that's going to happen but we'll see um Rory before we wrap this up man you got anything else you want to talk through with Chris covered a lot I think uh I think you know there's a lot to digest here Chris awesome to glad we got

Play from 1:07:04 8:88:88 1:07:04 to go through the coke stuff because that was something that I think if anyone here is listening and you're using Ai and whether you're on the brand side or on the Creator side that's not an experience that many people have so that one is uh awesome to bring the audience glad you were you know appreciate you sharing that too cuz there's some people probably wouldn't want to talk about it but people people are doing this you know and and if nothing else like you're seeing a guy like Chris and Paul and right like they jumped in and now they're reaping the benefits right it's a consistency it's the abil the willingness to adapt with the tool it's all the things that we're talking about and if you didn't know this was possible guess what it's possible right and that's why I think sharing these experiences with you guys in terms of this the speaking

1:07:45Closing Thoughts

Play from 1:07:49 8:88:88 1:07:49 engagements that you know Rory just had a speaking engagement the clients we work with the use cases you know the partners this is important because it's not necessarily us sitting up here bragging it's that this is happening and you can be a part of this so there's so many ways to do it isn't there like I've seen people doing t-shirt businesses I've seen people doing digital downloads I've seen people doing workshops keynote speaks like you said client work there's just so many ways to monetize this so yeah I'm glad that we can be like uh a nice example of someone that should never have got an Enterprise brand cuz we're a twom man band you know like we went into that referral for pitch against coke with like agencies the size of a small City here in the UK you know they they have thousands of employees

Play from 1:08:35 8:88:88 1:08:35 and then we somehow uh run against them to be able to work with them long term as like a contracted partner so that was something even different because initially it was just that you know do this piece of AI work and we'll see how it goes and then now we're like signed on officially to the Coca-Cola roster of agencies to work with them constantly on this stuff but yeah if if someone working out of their spare bedroom at home and just doing 30 minutes of creative ideas in the morning can do that then yeah there's so much that can be achieved through these platforms really it's like you're you're limiting yourself by creatively not thinking of outside the box about how you can monetize it that's the big thing for me I mean there the hardest thing I think is just focusing in on one or two things that speak to you because there are so

Play from 1:09:21 8:88:88 1:09:21 many different ways that you could apply you know the AI stuff right seeing this take place in all these different verticals all these different Industries and all these different types of use cases so there's something out there for you as we wrap up this episode want to say thanks for joining us we had a great time with our boy Chris first guest on the podcast Midjourney fast so we're excited about that boom and uh it was no doubt filled with a ton of great info thank you guys for joining us and we'll catch you in the next one