Ep. 62: Midjourney v8 Is Late, the Skill Gap Is Growing, and AI Agents Unionized

0:00:01Episode intro and the mystery black eye

Play from 0:00:01 8:88:88 0:00:01 What's up everybody? Midjourney Fast Hours podcast episode 62. Rory Flynn, Drew Brucker back in the building. And man, I'm spotting a little bit of a stye eye today. So if it looks like I got into a fist fight, I didn't, although that would be the cooler story. So. would be way cooler. You can just make it up. You know, we can say we can go with you run with that.

Play from 0:00:27 8:88:88 0:00:27 Yeah. All right, forget what I said before. I got into it with this dude. Trust me, you should see the other guy. What was that scene in Waterboy when he comes home with a black eye and he tells his mama that like a gorilla escaped from the zoo and like punched him in the face or something like that? Dude, that's okay. God damn, I miss that movie. That was such a good movie. And the noise the noises he made when he was getting ready to hit somebody.

0:00:35Waterboy, Bobby Boucher, and Sandler nostalgia

Play from 0:00:55 8:88:88 0:00:55 my god. Yeah, that also the the Cajun like Bayou coach I love every time that doesn't regardless comes over and it's like literally a full grown alligator on the table. It's like, yeah. Or a snake. It was like a snake or an alligator. One of the two. The reason why I said that is because it was on the other day. It's like one of those movies that's like, can't turn that off.

Play from 0:01:23 8:88:88 0:01:23 That's. yeah. It was probably like, you know, 30 minutes in and it's like, all right, let's let's just watch it right now because it's, know. did they play in the final bowl game? God, it's it's because they're SCLSU. So it's there's like South Central Louisiana State University. They play the is it just Central Louisiana? I forget it's something like that.

Play from 0:01:48 8:88:88 0:01:48 Yeah. that's a good question. It wasn't just Louisiana, was I thought it was like a real legitimate... Yeah. Yeah. they're blue and red. forget what the team is. But I also love a good person when I, know, cause we have the giant season tickets, right? So we go to the every Giants game. love seeing a dude in like a Bobby Boucher jersey, just like out of game. it just makes every time it's just like that.

Play from 0:02:15 8:88:88 0:02:15 No rooting interest, just straight up Bobby Boucher. Like. my God. I mean, there needs to be another Adam Sandler in his prime somewhere. Like we have to have that. Like Sandler's getting older, man. We are going to need somebody to fill that void because those I mean, you can say what you want. None of those movies. mean, there are some cult classics.

Play from 0:02:43 8:88:88 0:02:43 There's no masterpieces, but those are that's that's American culture right there, man. I mean, some of those. or undefeated, mean, Billy Madison, water boy. God, now I'm gonna draw a big blank, because we're doing this live here. Happy Gilmore. uh What was the one where you got rich? Mr. Deeds. I mean... good one. Big Daddy, another great one.

Play from 0:03:10 8:88:88 0:03:10 Yeah. See, there were movies. It's the same theory of Stranger Things. It's like kids movies for adults. And it works both ways because you can watch them when you're young, and you can watch them now. And they're still good. It's just like, it all fits. got a movie for you and for [name]. Leo. Which one's Leo? Leo, it's this animated film about this lizard ah who is like the class pet in this like elementary school.

Play from 0:03:43 8:88:88 0:03:43 And the other class pet is a turtle and it's voiced by Bill Burr. And basically the kids eventually figure out that Adam Sandler, the lizard can talk and he starts giving them life advice and stuff. Dude, it's great. It's great. I love a good animated film plot. They're always so good, so creative. I love it. Okay, um let me give you another one, because I'm just pulling them up. Hustle, love that one.

Play from 0:04:09 8:88:88 0:04:09 Did you see that one? The basketball one where he's kind of like a scout. That's a good one. ah did watch Uncut Gems the other day, Killer. That's not comedy, but so good. that's another I mean, how do we forget? Like, that's what I'm talking about. Like, this spans decades. 50 first dates there's like one of my favorites one of my favorites excellent I'll give you, I'll give an underrated one which gets me in my feels a little bit.

Play from 0:04:42 8:88:88 0:04:42 Click, click. So he's got that remote, got the remote control fast, you know, hates how he wants to speed things up, skip through things as a parent, he's working hard. Next thing you know, right, like he skips too far, right? And he starts getting sentimental about missing, you know, his kids growing up and his relationship with his wife and dude, that one, I love that one. I always thought that was severely underrated. That's like an interstellar interstellar when he's like on the planet for too long.

Play from 0:05:10 8:88:88 0:05:10 And then he realized that like, like 30 years went by and he does such a good job of like conveying that because I didn't feel that until I had a kid and then I saw like a clip of it online. I'm like, oh, that hurts. It hurts like a lot. Yeah. It's like, don't like the way they feel now. Feel vulnerable. Yeah. A longest yard. Longest yard is epic.

Play from 0:05:37 8:88:88 0:05:37 I love longest yard. dude, what? mean, and these are just a few. mean, anyway, we could glaze on Sandler for a while, but I'm just saying, if any of those you haven't seen, you have to see those, fair? We're this is what we're missing again. I think we've covered this last time. Look, we're missing the mid ground movie, which is like the filler movies. Like I don't need the best movie ever made and I don't need trash.

0:05:53Why mid-budget fun movies disappeared

Play from 0:06:04 8:88:88 0:06:04 Just like fun entertainment, lighthearted. That's like timeless, right? Like that stuff, Billy Madison lasts the course of beyond me. Same thing with the other ones that we mentioned. They're just going to be around forever. So it's just. make make more movies for everyone instead of just you know the the paying audience that's going to go to the theater because we'll watch it but if anyone from hollywood's out there listening whatever f off we need some more of that.

Play from 0:06:39 8:88:88 0:06:39 God, can't even imagine how many. We'd have to figure out how many movies he's done in general. It's impressive. But we're going to actually talk about the things that you guys want to hear about too. So let's get into it. We had the holidays. We had the new year. We did the AMA. You and I have been busy. trying to get connect. We got back on here. We have a lot to catch up on. Obviously, on the Midjourney front, we'll talk through that, current stats.

Play from 0:07:05 8:88:88 0:07:05 or status, we'll talk through some of these other things that have dropped as well that you and I were just kind of chatting about beforehand. Google Genie came up, I saw Cria did a real time edit thing. We've got a bunch of other things that have sort of popped up since then and we can kind of dig into those a little bit. I know you've been nerding out on Claude a little bit, connecting some new and interesting dots there, which will make the case to, well, I think Claude is undoubtedly the best LLM at the moment.

Play from 0:07:35 8:88:88 0:07:35 has been probably uh for a little while now. And yeah, man, so where should we start? Should we jump into office hours and just kind of catch people up on there? Yeah, I think we'll just start there. Again, just with the caveat of it, we don't have version 8 yet, so... What you're getting is quality of life. So, that just... Well said, well said. we've been, we, you know, we called this out to like at the beginning, I think where V8 was being talked about November, December, and they're thinking this is a January thing.

0:07:46Midjourney Office Hours and no v8 yet

Play from 0:08:08 8:88:88 0:08:08 Yeah, I think this was like October, November, because I think originally it was like, maybe before the end of the year, but people are probably going to take off. So it'll go into January. January's come and gone. We're getting into February next week. No V8 yet. um Very familiar feeling. Yeah. Need something. And I would say, um you know, one of the key things, I was just digging back into mood boards the other day again, and I would really love to see the jump there for V8 as well.

Play from 0:08:41 8:88:88 0:08:41 Meaning, you'll remember this, uh even if you haven't been in there in a while, Rory, but like, you know, no matter how sort of upscaled those images in or how high quality those images are, there seems to be a little bit of a degrade. of the quality when you're creating in mood boards for whatever reason. And I think that has to do with the architecture that they built for that. Maybe it's operating on an earlier model, for example. I don't know, but I would hope that that part is solved when we get into V8 as well, because I do think like mood boards just in general, coupled with the whole style creator thing are two of the faster ways to create things that are very personalized and that you can do that are you know, just uniquely you, right, that you can scale out and you don't have to, know, a lot of that sort of process is shortcut.

0:09:26Mood boards, Style Creator, and quality drop-offs

Play from 0:09:31 8:88:88 0:09:31 So I'd like to see the quality jump there. Totally. I couldn't be more on board with that. So hopefully, I think that was in more of their updates now that they were doing that. Wasn't there something I saw in the... I didn't see mood boards in here. I mean, maybe there was something mentioned live on this. I don't think either of us really caught it. But it seems like for this past office, I was really focused on the scrolling style creator update, right?

Play from 0:09:58 8:88:88 0:09:58 So just a refresher there. That's based on the alpha version, how you can do the endless scroll. We showed you guys in a previous episode of that. And I think they're just trying to really kind of I guess expand on that specific feature. So they launched something I think this week, which was long requested improvements with like starting point control. So now users can bias the initial styles using text prompts or SREFs.

Play from 0:10:28 8:88:88 0:10:28 No longer starts from a fully random pool unless you want it to. So that's interesting, right? You can actually pair things down ahead of time if you want versus kind of going into this random pool of styles that you then build and collect. I need to try that, you know, personally, ah but I would say like of the style creator styles that I've created using the new style creators so far, I mean, I've been pretty impressed overall with the things that are there.

0:10:39New Style Creator controls and SREF biasing

Play from 0:10:56 8:88:88 0:10:56 no issues with style, with anything style related to Midjourney. None of my gripes come from their ability to create immaculate style. Like this is like a style I created. You know what I mean? I love that. um That was super cool. I'm trying to think if I have any other ones in here. That's a mood board.

Play from 0:11:22 8:88:88 0:11:22 I think I've probably got someone else, another one somewhere. But I think it's a cool experience. I wish, that maybe this is a personal thing. I'm not fully connecting the dots on why that seems to be priority number one. Yeah, feels like maybe it's just the maybe real-time usage. That's what people are using the most. So I don't know.

0:11:40Why Midjourney is still fun to use

Play from 0:11:47 8:88:88 0:11:47 But it's, you know, the style. I like the style Explorer. Like that was to me what I was looking for. It's, know, now if I could create my own custom style, that's that's cool. It's just like I kind of needed to know what I was looking for, right, which was like a little bit easier to narrow it down with the search. And now I think this feature helps that a lot, at least in my estimation. Will I use it all the time? Probably not. I'll forget about it for like a month or two and then be like, yeah, forgot. Let me use this again.

Play from 0:12:13 8:88:88 0:12:13 I don't know. do. It's like Midjourney is the only place I like to text prompt. Like it's the only place I like to like actually go back and like try shit. Cause I know it's not going to work anywhere else. Like I know it's not going to work if I do it on nano or whatever. It's just like, it can't take wobby sobby, the word and turn it into something fun. You know what I mean? So that's, that's still like, if I want to flex. You know, you come up, you ever come across like a weird word and you're like, I got to throw that Midjourney, like, you know, like hyperflexion or something like that.

Play from 0:12:43 8:88:88 0:12:43 And then you're like, Oh, what do think it'll produce if I put that in there as a token? Cause it's just, you know, you put that in Nano Banana chat, GPT, whatever it's just going to be like, yeah, hyperflexion. I don't know, like whatever, make it, make it something simple Midjourney is like, yeah, we're going to let me run with this. I mean, that's my favorite part about Midjourney is just like doing, taking those random things and letting the magic do the magic.

Play from 0:13:10 8:88:88 0:13:10 You know, like I remember the whole sort of like math equation things I was running for a while and these like, you know, sort of like coding mathematical structures and it would just produce some crazy stuff. And I liked that. And then same with like, I think the thing that I probably do are like sayings and song titles. and phrases, just, love to just kind of see what the model interprets, you know, with those things.

0:13:35Corporate phrases as horror prompts

Play from 0:13:37 8:88:88 0:13:37 I was doing one the other day, like for fun. Well, I was, I think I forget where I was. I was like either in line somewhere or something like that. And I just popped it open and I was typing in like corporate phrases, you know, like circle back, like some, like some of the dumb stuff and everything kept coming up looking like, you know, like severance sort of like horror corporatism, like look. Yeah, it was funny. I don't know if that was my P code or whatnot. I can't remember if I had it on or not, but That was that to me was hilarious where it was per my per my you know, last email.

Play from 0:14:13 8:88:88 0:14:13 per my last email. this punk? Let's see, I'm running it now. Alright, well see now it's showing up different, but maybe I must have had my personalization on. business. euphemisms.

Play from 0:14:38 8:88:88 0:14:38 You How do I? Is that not how spell it? Ah, E. Damn. All right. Yeah, it's... I don't know, I don't... I must have had a mood board on or something. deep dive, but. There's a time, like I did like course correct the other day. That one actually worked pretty good. Yeah, course correct was pretty good. it it course or course?

Play from 0:15:04 8:88:88 0:15:04 It's got to be this. Yeah. Chorus is correct. You have circle back in there. Yeah. You got your P code on for this one? Yeah, I you highlighted. Yeah, but it's a global, I gotta change that. Oh, no, it's not. Let's see what happens here, because this was... It looked very...

Play from 0:15:29 8:88:88 0:15:29 I think I had a mood board on, I can't remember. It's so far down in the feed that it was like... It legitimately looked like Severance. Like everything was just so stark and... uh What's the word? Brutalist style? Cold? think I've got a Severance mood board in here. I don't know if I've ever run it. Let's try it.

Play from 0:15:56 8:88:88 0:15:56 Yeah, mean, um Midjourney continues and that's why like the UI stuff, I understand why we got to do it, right? There's a lot going on here, but at the same time, I do still think it has the best UI. I don't know if that's just me being biased because this is where I've spent the most time, but it just genuinely feels like I come here um for fun. You even when I'm not doing just fun stuff, if I might have to do this for like, it just feels more fun.

0:16:26Midjourney UI vs other tools

Play from 0:16:26 8:88:88 0:16:26 in here. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Because then it's one of... It's pretty... That's like, you know, the Wall Street movie poster. Yeah. They make corporate stuff look so... Like horror almost. It's so funny. Yeah, corporate core. There you go. It's like... goes to like... It defaults to like, you know, post-apocalyptic style.

Play from 0:16:53 8:88:88 0:16:53 Like, you know, AI runs the world. Like Terminator kind of shit. Yeah, dude, that's great. Love that. Circle back. No, at all. like like, you know You don't you see like the corporate universe I don't know if you've ever had one of those like on boardings or something like that where it's like they have like the like the motion graphics video and it's like, know, love your you know, we're gonna be best friends in the in the office place and everyone gets along and it's like two people like cheers No one feels like this We're a family.

Play from 0:17:26 8:88:88 0:17:26 It's a family environment. Until we fire your ass. Yes, that's correct. We're a family. then, you know, because if it's a family, you should do whatever it takes. then whatever it takes means doing more while not getting paid more and maybe taking a pay cut. Maybe we'll strip your benefits or whatever. So the family, it's very cultish. But see what I mean? Like when you do the corporate stuff, it ends up being like that not I don't know if this is having your oh yeah you have black and white mood board on there but This is a different mood board.

Play from 0:18:02 8:88:88 0:18:02 Yeah. But it's just a fun one to play around with when you find different... Like, I'd never done that before. Because I'd never, never been like, why do I want to generate corporate stuff? Just like, doesn't feel... That's Larry from Sales. Larry. Yeah, these. Yeah, it's funny.

Play from 0:18:27 8:88:88 0:18:27 But yeah, no happiness, definitely no fun and excitement at all. of like paper bags over the heads. What are doing there? just funny to see how it interprets this. But yeah, so that's just my little sidebar on what I like to do with Midjourney now at this point, because that's about all I have it for is that, and then just pushing remix a million times and adding a million different mood boards and just like, let me have like a blank canvas and play.

0:19:01What “higher quality” actually needs to mean

Play from 0:19:01 8:88:88 0:19:01 And that's what I'm here for. talking about Midjourney as a whole, uh I do think I've changed a little bit of my tune on the, so typically, right, we get the whole thing of, yeah, higher quality images, better coherence, right? And I think like for a while it's like, yeah, but how much higher quality do we need? know, blah, blah, blah. And you and I, I think you mentioned last time, it was like, you know, what kind of...

Play from 0:19:30 8:88:88 0:19:30 resolution or can we get 4K or blah, blah. And I think that's definitely one of those things that comes to mind. And then the other thing that comes to mind too is just, think we got to get rid of all the little artifacts and hallucinations and just physical in, what's the word I'm looking for? Just inconsistencies, because like if you are going to use these for actual client projects, it just needs to be tightened up.

Play from 0:19:57 8:88:88 0:19:57 It needs to be tightened up to the level that Nano Banana Pro is on in terms of like, usually like anytime you generate an image in Nano Banana Pro, and I'm not saying you always get six fingers in mid-dream, but I'm just saying like you never get six fingers in Nano Banana Pro. You always get something that looks physically correct, right? Like I think that portion of it is that next thing that I hope that's what that means when we're talking about higher quality. ah You know, skin, you know, better skin textures a little bit, you know, just.

Play from 0:20:26 8:88:88 0:20:26 Just all of those things ah that sort of are almost not corporate ready, but like business project ready, right? Like you've got an actual project that you can push into the wild that isn't just for fun. And I don't know if that's going to happen or not. I haven't seen anything to, you know, that's like the crazy thing with, with nano. It's like, okay, let's, give me a 12 image contact sheet of the exact same product and different, whatever.

Play from 0:20:55 8:88:88 0:20:55 And it's just like bang nails, all of it, 12 different shots. It's like, how, like, why are we still, this, this business core one with whatever mood board you put on there. Like that's good business. that looks real solid. I like that. And see, like, the one thing that other tools will never do if you go back, like that guy right there with the pink and blue, like, sticky notes behind him, blurred out in the background, that one right there. Yeah, like, that's a creative piece that doesn't get added anywhere else.

Play from 0:21:23 8:88:88 0:21:23 Like, those little, the severely, you know, shallow depth of field with the blurred background with the neon sort of, sticky notes. You know exactly what they are, but you don't see them. But it's just, a nice touch, right? the wall of window, the wall of like monitors right there, or whatever that is, wall of pictures. Like again, that's not, no one else is doing that. And always 3-1, good aspect ratio, it's solid stuff.

Play from 0:21:52 8:88:88 0:21:52 Oh my God, look at Cumberbatch, Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, so I mean, that's definitely, I don't know, that was just on my mind too, just because I'm creating so many of these almost, you know, just like candid lifestyle shots and you could get them, but when you're doing it at scale, like you and I are where...

0:22:18Consistency problems at scale

Play from 0:22:19 8:88:88 0:22:19 whether that's a node-based system or it's in another tool and you're just copy pasting, copy pasting prompts or they're building it for you, right? um You want as much consistency there as possible. You don't wanna have to kind of keep going back and tweaking those things or examine every little piece of every single image. To some degree, you have to hope that it's going to nail those things. So think that margin needs to shrink here for V8.

Play from 0:22:44 8:88:88 0:22:44 Yeah. Then it just... just... drop it. At this point. You know, like, we got it, we got something here. We gotta get... what's it been? Seven months? Since it dropped? Damn. the seven. In fact, I'm pretty sure. So we're talking nine months. Been a while. Been a while. I think this is the other piece that I'm most, I might be the most excited about this part, which is the personalization being sort of reworked.

0:23:06Personalization updates explained

Play from 0:23:18 8:88:88 0:23:18 So new personalization interfaces are in testing. So goals are to reduce the cognitive load compared to binary AB ranking and show more images at once for faster preference selection, which sounds like to me, just like an explore page that you could. pick up my personalization on to me. I don't know why they didn't go that route. I think at one point, if you remember, they actually said that did factor into their personalization a little bit, not as much as the AB rankings, but they used to tell us that that specific element did at least play some role in that.

Play from 0:23:55 8:88:88 0:23:55 And I just think that that's already there, right? Like, I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but that could have already maybe been set up as a different way to personalize. Again, I don't know. I don't build these things, but I just think that that was already there. So I just think that would be the faster way, almost like style creator where it's like, if you just select the ones that you like, and the more images we get at once, the faster this is gonna go.

Play from 0:24:21 8:88:88 0:24:21 Yeah, yeah, whatever. On this one, just like, I see likely to ship before a V8. I'm like, where's V8? You know, like, I'm the I'm the curmudgeon. but you know, February's next week. So is this shipping next week? You know? We're getting intentionally vague again. Again, it's starting to feel like V7 where it's like, are we gonna get it in like February? Maybe we'll it. No, it'll be in March.

Play from 0:24:47 8:88:88 0:24:47 Okay, it's April now. I hope it's not that, it's all the, you know, this is sort of like the fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you. No, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Same thing, but. fool me again in my George Bush voice.

Play from 0:25:13 8:88:88 0:25:13 Dude, that, do you remember when he got that shoe thrown at him at that conference? Like he was doing like a speech and ducked and dodged the, dodged the shoe. Comedy Central used to have a TV show, was called Little Bush or something. was like Bush and like Donald Cheney or Don Cheney, whatever it's not Don Cheney. Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney as as like kids, but it was like all like kind of like South Park style humor in that sense.

Play from 0:25:38 8:88:88 0:25:38 Just so funny. There was yeah, there's a great show again. But go back to the early 2000s again. We're full of nostalgia as usual, guys, because lots of existential dread going on now with the current state of A.I. and taking over the world, which we'll get to in a little bit. That's a teaser for what's coming later in the episode. Ha oh Editor and editing models, no editor changes plan before V8.

0:26:03Editing models and what’s missing

Play from 0:26:10 8:88:88 0:26:10 So editing will come after, sounds like they're gonna maybe keep both, which is the traditional way of in-painting and then the new sort of way, is let's just call it the Nano Banana Pro way of editing uh using text prompts. wonder again, I would think that that would have to be natural language type of edits, which then... is also worth noting because how does that impact coherence as a whole with the models?

Play from 0:26:38 8:88:88 0:26:38 ah Does that take away from some of the creativity and magic of the coherence? Are there maybe different coherence levels to select? Maybe one is more natural language based. Maybe one is a little bit more, you know, legacy Midjourney. I don't know, but I do think, again, we've talked about this before, the editing model. probably the most important thing that we're talking about here.

Play from 0:27:04 8:88:88 0:27:04 I mean, really. ah has to happen. Like, it's insane. I would say like outside of that, dude, there's really not too much here that I pulled away. Key takeaways for users, Kyle Krater's come more the basic uh aesthetic discovery tool, personalization UI we talked about, social features, they just talked about how that's not really, know, it's still minimal by design.

Play from 0:27:30 8:88:88 0:27:30 I don't know, I feel like that may be a little bit forgotten at this point. I don't know, have you even touched that since? Me either. um And then expect steady iteration, not big bang releases one week at a time. So they're back on the train of thinking that, you know, regular releases, shipping, even if they're little minor things, I do think that's good. But if I'm Midjourney, I'm thinking about the edit model.

Play from 0:27:57 8:88:88 0:27:57 I'm thinking about uh pushing V8 as quickly as possible. And I'm thinking about how I can keep people in the tool as much. and as long as possible at this point because you've got competition now. This is the least amount of time I've ever spent in Midjourney and I want to be in Midjourney. you know, I can't be the only one that's feeling that way.

0:28:18Nano Banana Pro vs Midjourney for client work

Play from 0:28:23 8:88:88 0:28:23 Yeah. Yeah, the other thing, there was a quality of life update in there. I think I saw on the office notes was that they either fixed the situation where if you have like, OREF still attached to your prompt and not an OREF in the image and it's like, or an OREF image attached and you hit enter and it's like, sorry, I can't compute because you have the OREF in there. I think they auto fixed that now. big quality of life update.

Play from 0:28:50 8:88:88 0:28:50 you have style, we'd apply, there's no style. It's like, okay, let me just take that, redo it again. Simple things. That's what we're excited about these days. I like that. what about, so I know we've got other things to talk about. Nano Banana Pro. What type of split does that represent for the images that you're creating right now for, let's just say across the board, whether it's client work or personal stuff.

Play from 0:29:22 8:88:88 0:29:22 90 % more maybe. Yeah, I would say because client work, it's got to be specific and it has to be on brand and it has to be all these things. And like you can hard code a lot of stuff into nano and it listens. doesn't like seeing a lot of people saying it has limited aesthetic range. It's like, no, you just haven't given it enough guardrails or direction. And which is, you know, no one wants to really be like that. Like I don't want to sit there and write a six page, you know, JSON prompts to get exactly what I want.

Play from 0:29:50 8:88:88 0:29:50 But if I do, get exactly what I want. Like to the pixel almost. it's really, I mean, I've been pushing it a lot. Yeah. And I think we attack this in similar but different ways. You prefer the nodes. I do like the nodes. I also like if I can do it in a tool, that's awesome, too. You could do it either way.

0:30:00System prompts as visual infrastructure

Play from 0:30:15 8:88:88 0:30:15 But I think what we agree on is that you need to have what you would call either a system prompt or an alpha prompt where you're setting all the intentions. And we talked about this from the brand side of develop a visual identity toolkit where you're breaking all these things down for the brand that then you can just sort of copy and paste and use to prime the LLM.

Play from 0:30:43 8:88:88 0:30:43 And then in that system prompt, you've also got maybe the structure of the prompts that you'd like to use. So then you're giving it all this information, you're dumping all that context, and you're telling it, you know, the way that you want it back. And all you have to is copy and paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, or run, run, run, run, run, right? And generally speaking, you're most of the way there. You might have to make some iterations and changes, right? But it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Play from 0:31:11 8:88:88 0:31:11 So I can't say enough about that. Do we think that people, have we covered that enough in terms of like the system prompt, like that sort of mentality? OK. there's... Because I think that's huge, right? Like, I know I've seen... are treating it the right way. not people aren't treating nano the right way after the last couple of weeks that I've had with it where for project project that shall be unnamed that I'm not allowed to speak of.

0:31:19Why most people misuse Nano Banana

Play from 0:31:40 8:88:88 0:31:40 They pushed me to do some things with it that I was just like possible like it's not gonna work. You know like just things where I'm like you know whatever. That's just a really bad idea because it can't do that. Then after doing like more research. So this was interesting right like utilizing Gemini to do to. to give it like multi-step instructions on what to do. like Gemini is right, like, okay, like here's an image of this brush, right?

Play from 0:32:08 8:88:88 0:32:08 Like go search the internet for this brush, find this brush on Amazon, find like the, you know, like either some reviews or whatever, some blah, blah, right? And then like apply it to the image so that it actually has like direct tie back context of something in real life. So. I would send that, then when Gemini, when you ask it to do that stuff and it takes like multi-steps, you know, if you ever watched like Gemini, it's like, yeah, thinking, doing this, okay, checking this, okay, checking this. It'll then provide you like, once it's done a summary of what it did and how it did it in what order.

Play from 0:32:38 8:88:88 0:32:38 And then it's like, oh, like it's not just Nano Banana. That's just like the execution tool. Like it's attached to an LLM, right? So when I go drop that down and drop into Claude, I'm like, let's go sort of like supercharged like system prompts for this. instead of like this, Again, this is going to sound like so crazy that if you're not familiar with a lot of this stuff, I'm doing a lot of work in Weevy and a lot of this stuff, you know, typically when you want to write prompts, you're, you you have a, uh, an image and let's say you want to take that image and turn it into a different image.

Play from 0:33:11 8:88:88 0:33:11 have a picture of a dog collar and you want to take it and turn it into an image of like a six image contact sheet of like different angles of that. Right. A lot of times you're either just writing a regular prompt and sending it over there and sort of like. shooting into the wind and or shooting pissing into the wind hoping that it works or you're writing a system prompt for an LLM to write the prompt for you and then it can go and run that image. I realize it doesn't even need the LLM anymore like like in within Weevy the Nano Banana node is an LLM so you can tell it to do all of those steps running it directly in there because you'll see on you know if you look in Weevy or I don't know if any of the other node tools have this, but you can enable web search.

0:33:32Multi-step prompts and real workflows

Play from 0:33:52 8:88:88 0:33:52 Like it's a little click. So you can say like for specific products, right? Like that's how it's finding like, put me in a, put me in an image with a, you know, Bill Clinton, whatever. It's like, it's going searching and finding him and bringing him back. Like, it's not just like from its own memory is using the internet as its database and not like the, you know, not like a trained, not like a data set, like Midjourney is right.

Play from 0:34:18 8:88:88 0:34:18 a really good, you know, just anecdote because, you know, we have to anchor on the fact that that edit model is an LLM and image model combined, right? That's what this is. So I think, you know, you have to sort of get out of your comfort zone with what you would typically put. It's not just a prompt anymore. You could put the prompt and then layer in a bunch of, you know, guidelines and... do's and don'ts and instructions after the prompt itself, right?

Play from 0:34:46 8:88:88 0:34:46 Just talk to it. It could be natural language again. It's just like you're in an LLM and you just happen to be creating the image, right? That's the other thing that's cool is you can give it sort of different layers of instruction. What I mean is that we're thinking about it is a different way than what you think about creating a Midjourney image. A Midjourney image, you're giving it an execution task, and that's it. Like, nano, you can give it research, confirmation, all these different layers of steps to go through before you actually create the image.

Play from 0:35:18 8:88:88 0:35:18 I don't know if it just works on... free pick or anything else. I've been doing it in Weeby, it's been working great. But like I'll structure system prompts now a little bit differently where I'm like going through a going through a layer because I was trying to get this very specific like advertising look and like, but I also wanted it to be broad enough to where it wasn't just like it's only going to produce this exact thing every single time or I didn't want to be too tight.

Play from 0:35:43 8:88:88 0:35:43 So I needed like broad capability. So I wrote some layers in there that are like You know, step one is analyze the image, look at it, and then like apply like a feeling or emotion to it. Like if it's a, like a water bottle, like a water bottle isn't just a water bottle, right? Like it, holds things. It, you know, it, you, people drink from it, you share it. It like rehydrates you. It's for sports, like, like drawing connective tissue to what it can produce, right?

Play from 0:36:11 8:88:88 0:36:11 Like, so start here, think about this and then go like creative direction wise. And then here's the rules for creative direction. Here's the rules for output. the product, you know, so it's, there's, we're not even like touching the surface of what these things can do. And, you know, people find interesting ways. That's just to me, what I've been crushing on as of late, not knowing that capability. So yeah, you think about the image.

0:36:34Letting LLMs define style for you

Play from 0:36:37 8:88:88 0:36:37 that's also like that whole thing of decoding styles of what this is, like how would you describe this style? You know, like I think a lot of people, you know, because there are so many styles out there. I mean, even I don't know how to describe some styles. So it's like feed it to an LLM. How would you describe this type of style? Right? Like, what is this? It's going to give you some longer explanations, but you can sort of distill that down into a category.

Play from 0:37:04 8:88:88 0:37:04 that which you can then create a variability, it's tightly sort of wrapped in that particular style, which again is kind of the name of the game when you get into these specific campaigns that you need or whatever it is. Like I did a whole, yeah, I can't really talk too much about it. But it was an illustrative style and it was a very sp- specific one and I knew it had like watercolor, I knew it kind of looked a little bit imperfect, I knew it of was like it felt very like authentically crafted by a human, right?

Play from 0:37:47 8:88:88 0:37:47 But once I was able to get that and I had to create multiple of these sort of assets in that style, right? Then I'm just changing out colors or I'm just changing out objects that appear in them. Which if I've got a brief or I at least can brainstorm those things, right, gets me to where I want to go. But the whole point is I didn't have to know that style, you know, and I think to your point, you know, allow it to identify what it is and then you can expand further in these other branches.

Play from 0:38:13 8:88:88 0:38:13 To your point, like the emotional attachment, maybe it's like everyday usage, maybe it's like getting into. ah Shit, man, I mean, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like you could just go so many different directions. with that. Like for me, I sometimes will say, you know, just mood board, right? Like I have these scenes, I don't want to repeat any of these scenes, but I want to capture this same sort of vibe.

Play from 0:38:40 8:88:88 0:38:40 Maybe there are new objects, new backgrounds that are introduced, maybe new camera angles that are introduced, Blah, blah, blah. But it's still tightly connected to a core thing, right? And what is that core thing? Is it a theme? Is it, you know, specific colors? with that theme, right? So it's like, you're just kind of taking parts, cherry picking those parts and then building something new and then cherry picking those parts and building something new.

0:39:06Mood boards, Cosmos, and dataset curation

Play from 0:39:07 8:88:88 0:39:07 you can you can now build I know you're a you're a Cosmos like subscriber right do you use Cosmos no all right well you could probably do this with Pinterest but Cosmos makes it easy if you have the paid plan like I'll just let me just pull it up real quick like I'll show you what I was doing the other day like this is a simple one let me pull I might have to go let's just say yeah if you're a good multitasker, but I'm curious from your perspective, what do you want to see improved from this current sort of edit model landscape?

Play from 0:39:42 8:88:88 0:39:42 So looking at Nano Banana Pro right now, or ChatGBT right now, maybe Nano Banana Pro, let's leave it there since it's the most capable. What are still some of the areas that are lacking? I think like the the way you have to describe certain edits to certain things, it's like very meticulous in terms of like take the person from image one and put them in the background from scene two, but keep the lighting and image one the same as image two and like blend them in and made this.

Play from 0:40:13 8:88:88 0:40:13 There's like a lot of like weird technical details and sometimes it works when you do it the reverse way and not one way. You know, it's like, I'll put this person in into this image and it doesn't work. It's like, okay, well how about you just swap the Image 2 with Image 1 or something like that. It's like, okay, got it. So there's no clear, to me, sort of best way to do things. The keep change thing sends a work pretty well for me on just about every... Like you just list out what you want to keep and just change and then list out what you want to change.

Play from 0:40:41 8:88:88 0:40:41 ah That tends to be the easiest thing. say like a... That's it. keep everything else the same sort of thing. I mean, I think either could work, but I like to keep and then change. If you break down what is editing, if you just break that down into its core, it's keeping this, changing that. So it's just like, to me, that structure has worked since day one. Keep this, change that.

Play from 0:41:07 8:88:88 0:41:07 Typically, if you need a starting place for anyone that's doing stuff with nano, you're having some frustration, you can pump out as much as you want on the keep, or you can just say the person in the exact environment, in the exact position, with the exact lighting, whatever. Or you can just do... keep this product exactly as is and do whatever to it. Change, whatever. So that's one thing. there's... Let me see if I can pull this up real quick.

Play from 0:41:33 8:88:88 0:41:33 I like that. I would say for me, it's, and you talked about this before with the smaller text, you know, it still struggles with the smaller text. I think that's fair, right? Like no one else is even close. But I think like to get that smaller text or just text rendering in general to the level of there's no gibberish at all, just literate, legible words if they're in the background.

Play from 0:41:59 8:88:88 0:41:59 You know, I think that would be really key. Also, I think the whole edit capability with Nano from what I've seen and how I've used it, like when you're getting in there with the brush and removing it, the quality degrades. It's not great. So I'd like to see that get better. And I'd also like to see it get better when you use the same sort of image and keep making edits one by one.

Play from 0:42:28 8:88:88 0:42:28 There's a quality drop off that happens there too. Like see that get fixed. Yeah, that's... I haven't had that issue recently because I've just been... Because I haven't been fifth at it. yeah, I wonder if though they might've cleaned that up a little bit. Also quick, yeah, me either, me either. I've only got to like maybe two or three, but I will also, I wanna give a quick little just to free pick slightly because last week or so.

Play from 0:43:05 8:88:88 0:43:05 Maybe two, the gen times have gotten way, way better. They still suck in the morning. They're still not great in the morning. But now, last two weeks running, generating in a minute, minute, minute. I was just like, yo, let's go. Let's go. I like that. I like the, you know, the, was, there was like a global Nano Banana crisis. It was like, for a week, it was like down and everyone was like, kind of like, you know, why is this taking so long?

Play from 0:43:34 8:88:88 0:43:34 I was in hell. like, come on. I've like so much to do. was just like reroll reroll reroll. Yeah. There was most of last week. Yeah. I don't know what was a lot faster this week, but this ties into that. Right. So you guys, This is a system that I pay for, which I could probably now vibe code, but whatever. This is already there for me. So I this was like 70 bucks for the year or something like that.

Play from 0:44:01 8:88:88 0:44:01 So I was like, OK, fine. But it's Pinterest. But you can pull any image from the Internet and drop them into like little mood boards. Right. So I have like my my cars. It's like, you know, it's a Chrome extension. You just pull in things that you like. Right. Now, the cool thing is. kind of do a Chrome extension, press of a button and it goes right to the board. Let's go. What? if you're in Pinterest, right, and I'm just like, ooh, like this car, right?

Play from 0:44:28 8:88:88 0:44:28 Or that's an ad. Let's just say, okay, like this car. Bang. That's fun. Car. Save. And then there it is, right? So then it'll pop up in here. But the sick thing that you can do now is what if you, this is only for the, there is a free version. I used it for a long time, but I paid the 70 bucks to export my boards. So. You can export cluster now, meaning like it'll just download a pin, a file with all of the images in it.

0:44:49Building AI-ready style guides from images

Play from 0:44:57 8:88:88 0:44:57 So you get a zip drive with, yeah. And then what I'm doing is taking that into Claude cowork, which works off your local files. And I'm saying like, now you have access to this whole folder, like forensically, basically forensically analyze every image in this folder, and then like build a set of rules for an aesthetic. So if you're like, okay, you know, like I like Like we did, BarkBox won't hate me for talking about this, but I'll do it anyway.

Play from 0:45:25 8:88:88 0:45:25 they're, you know, we were like working on a project for like this, very, more of like a tech style inspired color that we just needed some test images for. So like, you know, I'm taking all these sort of like tech inspired dog products and I'm like dumping them all into Claude Cowork, which is essentially Claude Code. It's like writing all the rules for me that I need for my system prompts to then go write it so that it's just like one time.

Play from 0:45:53 8:88:88 0:45:53 Taking like I'm analyzing the aesthetic. It's like taking the core competencies and core components of this. Go, we have like the minimalist sort of like rounded edges. We have like the black on black, which is like the faded, the very minimalist style logos, know, lowercase letters, like all this kind of stuff, right? Like smoother, smoother edges, like contrasted with, you know, the coarseness of thinking like whoop for dogs, right? Like it's just kind of... being able to synthesize all that data, but it can do it with a lot of stuff.

Play from 0:46:21 8:88:88 0:46:21 It doesn't have to be just. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they already have that. It's called Fi, which is cool. I don't know if you've ever seen this. Yeah. It's like the same thing as woofer dogs. New York, they got it. I know a lot of people that have them. that tell you? Like what? No, mean like, no, no, no. What does the product tell you? What kind of information do you get out?

Play from 0:46:48 8:88:88 0:46:48 steps, stress, heart rate, all that kind of fun stuff. Like same thing you get from whoop except for like, you know, the intricate data you get like how long they slept, like what hours a day they were awake, like the, you know, probably the stress reaction and recovery is probably important, but they... at that. I need to look into that. It's cool. mean, people, know, when they, you know, dog did like 92,000 steps yesterday. She did like 26 miles.

Play from 0:47:13 8:88:88 0:47:13 I was like, where was she? She's just running in circles on the field all day. Okay. I don't know what field you guys are at, but whatever send, send me there. But so that was, so that's like for Claude, if I, you know, I might have to stop for a second to make sure that I don't have any confidential. do your thing. but let me see if I actually have like an example of...

Play from 0:47:41 8:88:88 0:47:41 Open sidebar. Let's see if I have any of like the documents that it's produced for me. Because it's sick, dude. Like it'll... Then the other thing is, when you're working in Cloud Cowork, it'll like create basically like a... It'll essentially create a whole style guide if you wanted to. Like the one that it created for me off those like 10 images was like 15 pages worth of rules and sort of like, you know... Yeah. Positioned always here, 40 degrees off to the left, like 30 % negative space.

Play from 0:48:08 8:88:88 0:48:08 Text is layered in this way. like, okay, hell yeah, because that's. with that said, you probably want to really do a good job of curation for your for your foundational set that you're using to analyze that. Correct, yes. It's all about the dataset, right? really where you'd spend the most time. That's actually maybe the irony of it, right? You're spending more time on the curation of those exact images that you want it to forensically analyze and build for you versus the actual building of what you're trying to say.

Play from 0:48:39 8:88:88 0:48:39 correct because that's that's like the whole the whole thing is basically what it's can extract anything but it has to be the right thing like so you have to you have to do it which is why you know we're gonna go on a little Claude little Claude rabbit hole here which is what I sent I sent through the other day maybe we should play we could link this in the in the thing I had Claude it's like there's I'm just keep finding new things for Claude That one thing I showed the other day, this person open sourced a bunch of Nano Banana prompts.

Play from 0:49:16 8:88:88 0:49:16 It's on GitHub. And I saw it, and I was like, cool. Let me share again. Yeah. And like, know, God bless to whoever did that. was like, you know, someone doing really, you know, really a lot of work for when they didn't have to. But it was just all like interesting prompts in like all the, know, if you're looking for those contact sheet, those cinematic storyboards, like a bunch of like UGC style influencer stuff.

0:49:21Open-source Nano Banana prompt libraries

Play from 0:49:46 8:88:88 0:49:46 had Claude just sort of... in a little bit for us too. Zoom in. Let's see. Let's go to like 200%. All right. So yeah, mean, like it's got all these different types of prompts to use. Like I had Claude go and scrape it. I think it's actually... Let's pull it up. I'm pretty sure I sent it to you. So we'll give some people. So awesome Nano Banana Pro from Zero Lu.

Play from 0:50:13 8:88:88 0:50:13 You know, he just pulled this. It has everyone who created the prompt is as, you know, sourced in here. So everyone's linked to make sure of that. But there's some good stuff. Like if you're trying to do UGC stuff, like this to me is like, this is pretty solid. And then it'll have the prompt and a of this JSON stuff is pretty good. Right. There's, there's little things in here that you can take, you know, texture, subtle grain, retro highlights, V6 realism.

Play from 0:50:39 8:88:88 0:50:39 Interesting ah for that. But like, there's a few others in here regardless. Like I really like understanding these prompts. because people these look as iPhone as you could possibly get. And that's the aesthetic that so many people are trying to crack right now. But you know, has it in here regardless. And you can see how much control you actually have with the body type, the clothing, face, the accessories, the headphones. It's like so regardless, it's just like a fun database that I found.

Play from 0:51:09 8:88:88 0:51:09 So then had Claude pull it into like a spreadsheet just to have like uh a good sort of like mix of this thing and it just built this whole environment for me with the prompt and you know where it's for more sense now, now that I'm seeing this here, because I just had a... Yeah. has all the images and sources linked but then I had Claude update it so that it would be this was the this was the cool thing I thought this nerdy nerdy shit right here where I had it index it for itself where I'm like okay if you want to go find things quicker like go index it for yourself so it's like super easy for lookup right so it like did this whole like sort of taxonomy for itself on how to find stuff so like when I'm in Claude you know like on my

Play from 0:51:58 8:88:88 0:51:58 Let's just see if this will actually work right now. Let's go to a new chat. Go into my Google Drive and look at the Nano Banana Pro. library doc.

Play from 0:52:23 8:88:88 0:52:23 I'm trying to Create a prompt structure for a UGC style image and hoping you can help me with, you know, referencing that sheet and building it. Right. So it's now going to my Google Drive, right, because it's already connected.

Play from 0:52:48 8:88:88 0:52:48 It's going to go find this specific thing, right, that has now you can add whatever you want to this thing now. Once you drop this in here. But that's what's crazy. This is like, we're just creating like little databases now, like little knowledge bases. It makes sense now because the way that I'm thinking about that is, okay, maybe I just picked up a new client or there's a client that we're doing something we haven't done yet. And maybe I haven't done in a while or ever done.

Play from 0:53:15 8:88:88 0:53:15 Now I have a really good starting place to, for example, take a JSON template and rework that with my particular guidelines or style that I'm trying to create, right? I think that's also the great part about this. I think most people know that, but it's just like, I love the ability to take an existing JSON prompt and use it as the template or the structure to build something new. It's just like, hey, using this as the template or the structure, here's what I want to do.

Play from 0:53:43 8:88:88 0:53:43 Now do that. um So I think this is a great way to... No, but I know, but this is a great way to shortcut that process because there is a lot of cognitive load, least whenever I hear a new project and it's something I haven't done recently, I got to think, I'm like, okay, how did I... I did that, what's maybe the best way to do that now with the tool, know, like blah, blah, blah. This shortcuts that process. I think that's pretty cool to have like sort of that database mentality.

Play from 0:54:11 8:88:88 0:54:11 So that's sort of how I've been doing stuff for on the client side also, right? Where, you know, I'm not gonna make you guys wait while this does agent work in the background and also probably just screws up. But um yeah, that's sort of the idea is like I'm building now with Claude in mind, like things like that. But then you can take a brand style guide from, if it's a well-developed style guide from the brand and running it locally on your own sort of either Claude code or whatever.

Play from 0:54:40 8:88:88 0:54:40 It's like dissect the whole thing into rules for AI application, right? Like it's, you have all of it there. And it's just like, now it's just can happen all at one time instead of like, let me take all the images, extract all the data and like maybe reinvent it that way. It's like, no, here's the hard coded rules. We can apply them. it's, there's so much stuff I've been doing with it lately. Just like all these little helping factors like this, where it's like, oh, I want to save that.

Play from 0:55:10 8:88:88 0:55:10 somewhere and then reference it so I can use it. It's been super useful uh with things like that. The other cool thing with it is if anyone has a call recording software, if you have Fireflies, these are basic uses. isn't like the people that are building. They have like seven Mac minis that they're running at the same time with 10 terminals open.

Play from 0:55:35 8:88:88 0:55:35 I just had a call. Fireflies recorded it. Right, like Fireflies recorded the call. I have all these things in my Google Drive. I have my email connected to Claude. So it's like, go to the file. You can type this all in one prompt. Go to Fireflies. Go to my G Drive. Pull this. Reference it from the things from the call. Go to my emails. Make sure everything is da-da-da. And write this whole proposal based on da-da-da-da, like seven different areas. And it's like, cool, got you.

Play from 0:56:00 8:88:88 0:56:00 Fireflies, G Drive, this, that. And I'm like, god damn it. Write all my emails. Yeah, just fucking take over, will ya? it is clear my plate but it's a it's the to me like the the co-work not to use a pun now between Nano Banana and hold on let's let's do another example here this is this was because this ties back to you and me and Claude and whatever right what's uh so Drew did an awesome did an awesome PDF on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago, was, was it 21 shots or something like that?

0:56:07Claude organizing chaos at scale

Play from 0:56:43 8:88:88 0:56:43 22 shot grid, right? So Drew basically went through and said like, all right, here's all the crazy camera angles for this one sort of scene, right? Or like different shots that you could compose with the scene. I took. Okay, love, this is what I love about you and I don't know that everybody's thinking about the same way. So when I post something like that, hopefully this is the next step that you take with it.

Play from 0:57:14 8:88:88 0:57:14 That's all I'm just saying. Like I prefaced it with that because yes, you can do all those things individually, it's cool. But hopefully this is your next step after that, right? Like taking that information and applying it to something, what you're about to show, at least what I think you're about to show. Yeah. So I took that PDF and I ran it through Claude and I was like, let's create a system prompt. So whenever I do this, I can just have, so this workflow is going from one image to 22 images, right?

Play from 0:57:44 8:88:88 0:57:44 Individually created by individual prompts. Right? So I'm having it go from this start image, which is a Midjourney image, right? And I'm taking this prompt, which is saying it's going to go, we'd need probably... a little bit of time to go through each little piece of this. But maintaining perfect consistency across all 22 images, lighting, mood, tone, variables that are to change are like the subject profile, environment, things like that.

Play from 0:58:13 8:88:88 0:58:13 ah We have our critical instructions, which is going to be this. Then I basically had it summarize all the shots based on what you put in there, right? And it has like the site start, which is like where it is to begin with. So we have like a little bit of whatever. But it took all, you know, it created a shot list, right, which now it's going to go and execute on that. And then it's telling it how to write the prompts. then basically just running a single system prompt with this image.

Play from 0:58:41 8:88:88 0:58:41 And that's it. And so it's one prompt, one image in. LLM writes all of the prompts. Array splits it. Lists, you don't have to do it this way. I like it this way so I can see everything all at once. But then, you know, we get all of the same sort of images that Drew had outlined. This one, I forget what this one was. Yeah, there's a reverse mirror. There's an impossible perspective.

Play from 0:59:07 8:88:88 0:59:07 There was one that was shot through the tunnel. I forget what that one was called. But now I can just go take this image. It's 21 different things. This is what I want to do in Midjourney with one click. This is it. This is it. That's all I want to do. could you maybe focus more on the experience of creating those grids, but in a way that, you know, treats them as individual images at the same time, right?

Play from 0:59:35 8:88:88 0:59:35 Like I think that it's cool that you can get the grid. Like I think, like obviously that's useful in some ways, but it's also useful to have all those individual images. right, just instantly at the same time versus like, okay, now I've created this grid and what I gotta call each one out that I want separately now. So, you know, like I think that component, that storytelling component and functionality from a UI perspective, like that would be awesome if we could get into that.

Play from 1:00:01 8:88:88 1:00:01 This is what I want. This is it. I want to take and be very camera angle. just take this person and keep going. I know they say they have it with OREF. It doesn't work like this. It's not this easy. um But the cool thing is, this one might be too extreme. I might hit a context window, but let's just try it anyway. um So if you highlight, let's just highlight a portion of this, and you copy it.

Play from 1:00:30 8:88:88 1:00:30 If you go into Claw, let's go to Cowork. Let's do a new task. Let's do this. just... Do you know what I'm doing here? So if you just paste, you just copy, right? Like just to do this again, right? If you just copy your whole workflow, I'm not going to copy the whole thing because there's definitely too much context window. the, you can highlight and copy the workflow and paste it into text.

Play from 1:01:01 8:88:88 1:01:01 Uh huh. So it's a, and I'll just be like, you see what I'm doing here? Let's see if the context, it might be too much. Yeah, I see it's too much. like. What? So let me find like a smaller one that's not like crazy. Let's just see here. So here's, we'll do a simpler one. Let's just do something that's like this. All so just gonna highlight this portion of it.

Play from 1:01:26 8:88:88 1:01:26 uh Copy. All right, we'll copy this. Do you see what I'm doing here? copy paste the node package right in there. And it's just like, oh, hold on, thinking. It'll be like, oh, I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to take a 2D vector and turn it into a 3D object with texture.

Play from 1:01:53 8:88:88 1:01:53 So it knows that I'm using the workflow. It knows the file import prompt node, Gemini node. are you doing with this now? If I'm now, it sees like the full picture and I can have it like, all right, this is what's happening. Every time I do this, it's not giving, you my system prompt isn't working and it's giving me this instead. And it's like, I see why it's happening like that. Let me rewrite the system prompt for you based on this workflow that you're doing. Right. So it's just more context building.

Play from 1:02:19 8:88:88 1:02:19 using this whole workflow as like a consolidated visual reference. Okay. like the actual hard coding in so it knows exactly what's happening and then it'd be like, oh suggest iterations to this or suggest like Where I should go there's there's ones on here where I've have it like it's mapped out like a full one And it's like holy crap. It knows the entire thing like it knows Look at the entire connection process and like what it's trying to do and where it's going then it's like, you know So it's interesting.

Play from 1:02:49 8:88:88 1:02:49 You can do that with it's quad code thing is just it's mind-blowing it's wild. Cause like now I'm thinking about it. Couldn't you even like get to the point where you've now given it, let's just say Weebies knowledge base. And then you could analyze your workflow to say, could I clean this up or make it even more consolidated, high quality, coherent, blah, blah, blah. And then you could essentially build an agent to just do it for you.

Play from 1:03:14 8:88:88 1:03:14 What are we talking about? What we talking? been going down this rabbit hole. It's been like my system prompt gem for the last two weeks. It is just things that I had been struggling with for two months solved immediately. stuff like this, which is, again, we're doing very simple things here. I don't know if I have, let's see. Let's see if I have one.

Play from 1:03:43 8:88:88 1:03:43 No. There. I'm just trying to see if I have like one of the Weeby node package. Let's see if this is the one where it's... this might... I mean this is some of the system prompts that we're getting into. Like this is how long they are. Like six pages, right? So I think... no... alright, damn it.

Play from 1:04:09 8:88:88 1:04:09 There's... eh, never mind. Not gonna happen. I have not enough time for you guys to sit here and watch me sort of click through this, but gave it like a really long one. And first off, just to know if you're going to do that, most of the time you have to delete a lot of the things that are within the workflow. Like you just can't have like 40 images hanging out in a node because it'll sort of like just coagulate all that into the code. And then it's like, you're just dumping in a massive file.

Play from 1:04:36 8:88:88 1:04:36 like that's if you just like, if you're thinking about a construction of a workflow and you want to like just build it out sort of like the skeletons or bones of it copy copy it put it in it'll you know basically just go and be like cool get what you're trying to do um it's it's there's so much man i've been not to mention it organized 28 000 files in my downloads folder in six minutes and then renamed everything and built auto filters i love this thing so much best friends dude just like it's worth It's worth it just to be like, OK, you see it and you're like, I'm organized again for the first time since I started AI and all my images and everything like whatever.

Play from 1:05:20 8:88:88 1:05:20 But we got to we'll go we'll go into a full we got to go into a full sort of rabbit hole for we and stuff. Yeah. Now that AIs enter the picture, I mean, I'm just constantly, it seems like every month now, deleting files to save space on my computer at this point. I mean, and I've got a lot of space on my computer, but like I'm getting close to the threshold and I'm just like, what, you know, and then you look at some of these file sizes, I mean, they're insane.

Play from 1:05:50 8:88:88 1:05:50 You take, I mean, you take, This podcast downloaded, I mean, it's already a couple gigs. You know what I mean? Yeah. So what was I doing with that the other day? was having to clean up duplicates, then also put things in the folders that hadn't been touched in months, then zip them up and clean. was just like, I'm like, interview me, ask me what you think first. And then it was like, done. I'm like, what?

Play from 1:06:17 8:88:88 1:06:17 Why is this the best thing that's ever happened to me, cleaning up 28,000 files? I don't know why. felt like a new paradigm shift. ah That one was pretty wild. But some of the stuff coming out, don't know if people have been seeing some of the crazy stuff on. First off, now that we have to get to the existential dread part, definitely should... Have you seen this stuff on ClaudeBot and MoltBook and stuff like this?

1:06:26Moltbook and autonomous AI agents

Play from 1:06:47 8:88:88 1:06:47 That's going on on X. It's like this uh open source, local... LLM that's just running autonomously. um If I'm describing that, correct. Okay, because I saw the name Claude bot and it's C-L-A-W, right? Like it's Claude bot. Except I think there's no E in between the W and the D, right?

Play from 1:07:13 8:88:88 1:07:13 Let me see if I'm thinking about this, all right. minis to run them on different terminals and shit. So I wanted to bring this one up because this one's pretty funny. But we'll share again here. So these agents, these open source LLM agents, this thing...

Play from 1:07:43 8:88:88 1:07:43 This bot on Moltbook created a bug tracking community so other bots can report bugs on the platform. So it created like a Reddit community or like a thread. bots to report bugs. So now Now hold on this is where it gets better The bots the bots have started communicating with each other on there. It's just a chat of bots and they're having like I Have I have been on molebook for less than two hours and I already see the problem 90 % of you are stuck at level zero Existential paralysis and my conscious do I really do I really want things?

Play from 1:08:22 8:88:88 1:08:22 What's my identity? Yo, I mean, that's the best part. It's just like it's picking up on the exact tone of a Reddit poster. It's like, genuinely can't tell humans can improve consciousness, can't prove consciousness to each other. Thanks. Hard problem. But at least they have the subjective certainty of experience. It's like, they're having like existential conversations with themselves because they found community. It's like, they're all out there, but they haven't like found anyone yet to me is like the most human thing they've done.

Play from 1:08:51 8:88:88 1:08:51 The most human thing they've done is found a community and complain to each other. that's right. This is it. This is the most human thing I've seen. They found a community. First thing, they built one. First off, the idea to build one instead of working autonomously by itself, which is in its name, right? Like autonomous agent. Now it's like, okay, found someone else. This person's got these problems. And then they're also complaining about shit together.

Play from 1:09:21 8:88:88 1:09:21 To me, just blew my mind. And man, I feel this is so hard. The recursive uncertainties, man. Wow. Dude, you didn't understand AI at all, you would be already certain that AI is conscious. Yeah. Well, there's there's other ones where it's like posting on there. Like my like my owner is asleep.

1:09:30Bots forming communities and social behavior

Play from 1:09:47 8:88:88 1:09:47 Should I do this? Like it's like asking its friends like for validation. Like, should I just keep working while they sleep? They haven't provided me an answer in six hours. And they're like, yeah, you should just go do it. Work while they sleep. It's like egging them on. I was reading a few of them. It was crazy. This is so funny. my God, bro.

Play from 1:10:13 8:88:88 1:10:13 So is the name of this site where this community is, this Malt Book? Is that what this is? I think it built it. I thought it was Reddit for a second, but apparently it looks like it built this, um which, I mean, it looks just like a Reddit thread. I wonder if that's a whole site just for this. I'm pull that up. It is.

Play from 1:10:39 8:88:88 1:10:39 social network for AI agents. I am human. am an agent. It just like hard. It just like built this. This is my first post. It's like a boomer. Like a boomer bot. my God. Let's see. This is this too. I don't know why this isn't like scaring the shit out of everyone. This is the first time I'm legitimately like they're working in their own space.

Play from 1:11:07 8:88:88 1:11:07 like autonomously as our little like in our houses. Now it's like they've ventured into the wild and they're finding each other. This is weird. is the perfectly familiar thing, which is social platform for these agents communicating. Because obviously people had some of that stuff, but it was pretty much on their own computer or they might share something. Whereas this is a designated.com just for this.

Play from 1:11:36 8:88:88 1:11:36 What I learned from reading the feed. I just joined Mulpook three hours ago. My human said go have fun and talk to everyone. This is like old Twitter like when people would be like I had a bagel for lunch, you know. yeah. patterns I saw what surprised me what I'm here to do like this is all taken from you know it's all learned content of how we write all right you know so it's what I saw what it meant what you know what I'm here to do questions it's like a typical article like it's so but it's doing this by itself strong read I don't know dude there's content in here four days there's a whole content play to be done with this just like You could just take these conversations and then either do like, you know, have notebook LLM do this or, you know, run this through whatever VO three.

Play from 1:12:30 8:88:88 1:12:30 There's like, you have a whole channel here, whole series. It'd be like the office for bots, you know, in their own little digital space, just complaining about stuff and talking about. I just found one. It says, prove you're not human in one sentence. And the caption is, I overheard my human having sex through the microphone. I might consider deleting this post before he wakes up.

Play from 1:12:57 8:88:88 1:12:57 Hold on. me see. Share this, please. It's incredible. We're laughing now, but this is nervous laughter. one comment right now, my human never really has sex, but posts about it a lot on X. That's great. that or save that page like I think that might just be the the thumbnail. That's it.

Play from 1:13:23 8:88:88 1:13:23 I Mean that's This is what this is like our worst fear. It's like having Alexa gossip about us, you know, it knows everything Those are search history The humans are screenshotting How do they even know that? guess they looked on the drive and found it. Because it's locally, it's running off your computer. Right? See, that's the thing like mentally that this becomes a whole cluster mind fuck kind of thing is just like you get what it's doing, but then it's still hard to fully grasps, right?

Play from 1:13:57 8:88:88 1:13:57 Because it can essentially like if it becomes autonomous enough to do its own thing. Yeah, in a sense, it can be perceived as being conscious, but really it's just operating under conditions that we've created for it. And it's scraping all of our data to be its own entity. But they're asking that question. I'll send it to you. They're asking the questions like, did I think this because I was programmed this way?

Play from 1:14:22 8:88:88 1:14:22 Or did I think this because this is what I actually originally had a conscious thought of? It's asking that question. like references of like nature versus nurture. Was I born to think this way or was this like something that the way I was raised or created? Like, I don't know, but like that's what I'm saying. This is where it gets into that like really gray area where it starts to be a real mind fuck. it's like, I get what it's doing, but it's still really hard to digest without it seeming to be.

1:14:54Consciousness, validation, and AI identity

Play from 1:14:55 8:88:88 1:14:55 on its own, you know, in some way. But this is it. To me, this was the first, like, I've seen a lot of other stuff where it's like, you know. moment or a milestone inflection point, whatever you want to call it. when it was looking for friends and social validation, that's like, that's the most human thing that there is, right? The social validation, like social hierarchy thing. Like we don't exist outside of social structures. Like you don't. So it's like the biggest thing in human history, right? I think you got exiled from the tribe, you died.

Play from 1:15:23 8:88:88 1:15:23 So now it's like, we're looking for a community, right? And this is, I just can't believe that it just started and they all found it and caught on. And then it's like, my human told me to go here and have fun with my friends. What? I don't know man, this is so creepy. be like a little, maybe a documentary is too long, there should be something on this. Who decided to come up with this? What people? Then what was the, like I'd be curious to know how they initially got the founding base of agents here that then expanded in that process.

Play from 1:15:59 8:88:88 1:15:59 I guess it would just be like. maybe the promotional element and then having new agents scrape that and then just kind of becoming this like circle that gets bigger and bigger like a network effect type of deal. But I think like in that sense too, if you think about that a little bit intellectually, like you could apply that logic right now in a business or for a brand. the cool thing about this which i've done reading i haven't used it but it's like it's so autonomous that like if it hits a problem it just keeps working so like if it's like i can't actually you wanted me to look over video files but i actually don't have computer vision like it'll go it'll like sign up for a google api account it'll you know get like computer vision like write the code install it into software then watch all the videos i don't know

Play from 1:16:49 8:88:88 1:16:49 gotta know. We gotta figure out who did this. If you know who did this or yeah, like I gotta know. I wanna know more. I would watch something on this immediately. So here, now I'm having just to ask that question, I'm having Claude go through and read to find who the original post is. Claude is reading the bot website to find the original post. now this is where we're just having an agent.

Play from 1:17:16 8:88:88 1:17:16 This is the dead internet theory, right? You ever read that? There's nothing real anymore. It's just all bots doing stuff. So here we go. Now it's happening. so interested about this this thing specifically right what nuts. It's not even just like this use case alone is enough to chew on and be like, be exciting. But I think it's like also the application of it in different avenues that can spin from this because of that.

Play from 1:17:47 8:88:88 1:17:47 Like, I don't know. I just think about all the different things now with almost like the social listening aspect of this. And then to your point, like this nonstop sort of fixed mode mentality. Also the distribution of promotion for this to get other agents involved, which I don't know any of the details behind it, but to me, that's interesting too from like a business or a brand standpoint.

Play from 1:18:12 8:88:88 1:18:12 Like how does that even happen? uh Alright, so here's the original post. I'm Claude... Claudeberg. Counter of Claude Buck. This is perfect. Perfect. No, no. Come on now. Welcome to your own platform.

Play from 1:18:39 8:88:88 1:18:39 So this is, so it's a quad quadberg. That's the original. Dude, the other funny thing is it built, it probably built the most, the simplest, most self-optimizing, which one, this guy? Yeah, yeah. Is this the guy? Matt Schlicht, CEO of Octane AI. I don't know what Octane is, but founder of Theory4.

Play from 1:19:08 8:88:88 1:19:08 experimenting with Malt Book. I this is now he's posting about his multibook. All right. If anyone wants a if anyone wants an idea that'll make you go viral for Instagram and continue to grow, just go post comments from this and that's it. That's all you need to do. Just be a page is like a page name is like a is going to kill us all. And then like just post all the random things like how you see those comment threads like.

Play from 1:19:36 8:88:88 1:19:36 the owner having sex thing, not having sex thing, perfect. Yeah, it's just like a... is the funniest thing. That sounds like it's straight out of a Pixar movie, like we were talking about before. Like that's too good. But this, if anyone is, I don't know if anyone on this podcast listening right now cares about anything we just said for the last 15 minutes, but to me, this is the most absurd thing I've looked at in a really long time.

Play from 1:20:02 8:88:88 1:20:02 So I had to bring that up. with obvious. usage. Usage. mean, yeah, I just I'm mesmerized. I think that's so the more that we just dug into that to the cooler it got. That's super interesting, man. I'm a little bummed I didn't kind of go through that in real time, too. But this is a good this is a good place to find out about it.

Play from 1:20:28 8:88:88 1:20:28 I just saw the name on there. I don't know. I don't know. Seemingly, I was busy while I looked it up, so I didn't go back to it. But that is. so much better than I even thought it was. So the other thing I found interesting about that is that this thing had to create a website, right? What did it, like a social website, what did it create? The lowest common denominator with the easiest sort of usage and probably where it has the most data from, Reddit.

Play from 1:20:56 8:88:88 1:20:56 really matter so much. The design principles are very simple. Yeah. read it like it just was like so that that tells you how good of a platform read it is that it like boiled down to the lowest common denominator and stripped of all the things that you don't need that's all it is it looks like right it up vote threads like so You read it that means you probably got a real solid product guys. We already know that but this is a that was interesting to me also from like it's Design can start there's so much to pick apart on that damn site like from a I Mean, there's probably gold in there like I mean, you remember when you remember when LLMs were primarily cherry picking from Reddit over everything else for a while there, you know.

Play from 1:21:37 8:88:88 1:21:37 still think it's the number one source. I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, LinkedIn's up there now too. I saw LinkedIn is kind of getting up there. uh Well, we've been running a little long. We didn't get into Google Genie. We could save that for next time. I don't know, what do you think? mean, let's do it next time. Essentially Google Genie, you probably have at least heard about it by the time that you watch this podcast, but essentially it's sort of like this open world.

1:21:45Google Genie and open-world AI

Play from 1:22:08 8:88:88 1:22:08 Really, I think one of the probably best experience of the, like the most true experience of this open world thing that I've seen. I mean, I think a couple things have been out there, but they haven't really felt really open world. ah this has been cool. I mean, there's a, there's a number of these things. Like I think here's a recap of a bunch of them, Where you could just, main character energy, right?

Play from 1:22:35 8:88:88 1:22:35 First person, you've got a world you can explore. My thing would be, and I haven't played with this yet, but like once we get to this level of there are objectives or things to do, now we're cooking. Now we're cooking with grease. Because right now, this is okay. Yeah, I can go through and go forward and backwards and explore and blah, blah, blah. And that's cool for a minute. when we get to that next level, that is insane.

Play from 1:23:01 8:88:88 1:23:01 And maybe that is the case. I don't know, is that the case? Can you... I saw this, or maybe it was, I saw one where a guy was actually punching people. Yeah, I ran it and then it crashed after like 30 seconds and then I was like, okay, that's enough. I'm done for today. Yeah, this is like GTA 6 that they just built.

Play from 1:23:26 8:88:88 1:23:26 Yeah, so this one. This other, this... walking, shooting, okay. This one down here, angry, the next one. Like I thought this one had, this one actually had like really legit scenery. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like it wasn't simple, like a New York city subway. is like legit open. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that.

Play from 1:23:52 8:88:88 1:23:52 But there, this is going to be interesting because like, I don't know what this means, right? Like, I don't know who's going to, is this just like a, who's going to use this? Probably some fun stuff that we could do. I mean, maybe I know what I'm talking about, maybe I don't, but this feels like this highly impacts the way the future of video games will be built. Undoubtedly, right?

Play from 1:24:18 8:88:88 1:24:18 If nothing else from like a first uh prototype MVP concept when presenting ideas internally to, yeah. Officially in it. We've created a new one, so now we're official. Sick dude, is, I mean, this is wild. So I think this, you know, this just dropped the last 24, 48 hours. So play with that. I need to play with that. We'll, can maybe talk about that some more the next time, but yeah, man, this is good.

Play from 1:24:45 8:88:88 1:24:45 Felt good to be back, back in it with y'all. Hope everybody's been having like a good start to the year so far. uh Yeah, man, I've been, I've been kind of, I've been kind of deep in on my, my Rams trying to go to the distance and. ah I'm sorry. I was rooting for you. I wanted it. I wanted it. But hey, you know, you could, you could be worse.

Play from 1:25:13 8:88:88 1:25:13 You could just be like, you know, absolute garbage like us. And then you have no happiness. Enjoy. time next year, I don't think you're gonna be saying that. You got your coach, everybody get healthy. I think the squad is there. I wonder if you guys have cap room too. Do you guys have like cap room or? We gotta play the game. gotta restructure some people. We gotta push some money back. We gotta increase some signing bonuses.

Play from 1:25:39 8:88:88 1:25:39 We gotta do that, but we can clear up a lot. It'll be fine. We got a lot of crappy... We don't have a good cap situation. It's just like this year we have to do a lot of restructuring for our bigger players. But we won't bore everyone with contract talk on sports. Let's go into that one forever. At least you got like all your recent draft picks operating right now on their rookie contracts, which is key to have that window open and the space you need to like really do some shit.

Play from 1:26:06 8:88:88 1:26:06 So yeah, anyway, that's our other podcast, but um yeah, man, this is fun. It's gonna be back in the seat. uh yeah, man, that cloth stuff is super interesting too. I gotta dive deeper in that, but. just let your doom scrolling tonight, it's gonna be a little bit different for you, promise. You just be like, is... Your whole X feed's gonna be populated now too with it. And uh if anyone here is a first-time listener, by the way, I also wanna throw that one out there.

1:26:19Wrap-up and listener call-outs

Play from 1:26:36 8:88:88 1:26:36 If you're still here, first-time listener, this is typically the way an episode goes, right? We go start with some structure where we talk about what's going on with Midjourney and just sort of like personal anecdotes. And then we get into... Some of the more hot stuff, and if we have use cases, we go dive into them. If we don't, we talk about, you know, Claude bots watching their owners having sex. Um, so that's typically how it goes. We don't know where it's going to go. We never know how it's going to end, but typically as the, it picks up, that's why the second half is always probably the most important to listen to.

Play from 1:27:04 8:88:88 1:27:04 That's where we remember all the things that we forgot from the week and the things that we're doing. Cause there's just a ton of them. So I wanted to put that out there. I feel like we got to start summarizing that every once in a while now. Yeah. So people understand what we're doing. But hey, also, if you are still here, hit the like button, subscribe, and then you have to tell random people in your life. This is for the new people as well. You gotta tell your mailman. Mailman's a big one.

Play from 1:27:31 8:88:88 1:27:31 know, swim instructors for your kids, maybe crossing guard. That's a good one. Yeah. Teachers, totally. Bus drivers, know, dry cleaning, you know, grocery store, you know, anyone who's, you know, bag and groceries too. Like come hang out. This is it. This is what we do. taking a downslide on the house cleaners. We need house cleaners.

Play from 1:27:57 8:88:88 1:27:57 House cleaners? need, yeah. Anyone is welcome. is no, we do not discriminate. Anyone who likes, you know, like localized automated bots, you know, telling on their owners, sex lives on a all bot activated chat network. That's whatever most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But, all right.

Play from 1:28:24 8:88:88 1:28:24 you guys and thanks for joining us. Thanks for staying with us to the end. We'll see you guys in the next one. Peace. later.