EP 28: Reimagining Media Creativity Through AI

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Will AI end up being more creative than humans? That's one of the things that we're going to talk about today on Everyday I. This is your daily live stream podcast and newsletter where we help everyday people like you and me not just understand all that's going on in the world of AI, but how to actually use it. And, and Travis, our, our guest today is going to be talking about that as well. Travis Hawks. He is the director and co founder of Lunar Speedboat Productions. Travis, thanks for jumping on the show.

Good to be a part of it, man. It's good to see you again. I'm excited. Let's do this.

All right, let's do it. So before we talk about just how creative humans can be, or, sorry, AI can be, let's just remind everyone this is a live stream here. So Stephen joining us, but if you have a question for Travis or myself, feel free to leave a comment. We'll do our best to get to it, but let's first talk about what's happening in the world of AI news. So AI21 Labs, they just released a study saying 32% of people can't tell the difference between a huge human and a bot. So they have this little game. It takes two minutes and you chat with what you don't know is on the other end. It's either a human or bot. 32% of people failed, myself included. I'm going to share my example in the newsletter today. But Travis, like, what do you think of this? Is it's 32%. Are you surprised by that figure?

That's actually a lot, man. When you think about it, that's a decent amount. I'm curious to see how you panned out. I'm curious to try it myself just because I feel like every, that's one thing where, like, everybody comes in thinking they got it. Everybody thinks they come in smart. And yeah, 32% is not small.

Oh, I failed. I failed terribly. Yeah, so we'll, we'll include that in the newsletter. So the In Nvidia CEO obviously made a lot of headlines when he publicly spoke at a, at a graduation recently. But one of the things that he said is talking about the future of work and saying that AI won't steal jobs, but someone who's an expert at AI will. Travis, what's, what's your take on that? Is, is AI itself going to steal our jobs.

I really don't. I mean, in the near future. I don't think so. I think a fellow Chicagoan, Michael Wilbon, always says on pti, if you're scared, get a dog, dude. Like, I'm not trying to lose out to a machine. Like, you know, like, I remember like in the Office episode with Dwight Schrute where he takes on the, the program and outsells it. I, like, I see it as a tool. I really do see the AI right now as a tool. Who knows where it's going to go? But, but for right now, I, I definitely see it as, you know, a different kind of a hammer. And I, I also know that, you know, it can't, it can't influence empathy. It can't influence, like, taste, like what I like. I mean, it can, it can predict. But, you know, anyways, I, I don't, I don't see it taking my job anytime soon.

All right, we'll see. I think I'm going to save all my hot takes for when I finally start posting on Twitter after being a user for 16 years. All right, so, so moving, moving on. Another getting into video. So a pretty large company called StoryKit, they just announced a new tool that's going to allow text to video, but specifically for, for SEO ready video campaigns where you type in a text prompt and it spits out a video that is SEO optimized thoughts, Travis.

That, like text to video is really fascinating because on one hand you can give one sentence and it'll just run with it. I've, I've been really trying with prompts lately to try to really figure out like, if I type in this like Leviathan type prompt, I wonder what that's going to spit out. So I think that the more that you throw in, I like, I'm, I'm curious to see what happens with regards to just prompts in general. The more you throw in, what do you get out of it? Whether or not it like really drills down or whether it skews off or whether it only reads like the first three sentences and then ignores the next six paragraphs. That kind of a thing. That's why that's where I land with prompting and that kind of a thing.

Yeah, cool. Kind of one of the last stories as we get into your background here a little bit more. Travis is Runway, which is one of the leaders in kind of this generative AI space for video. So it was just announced that Google, as part of a $100 million funding round, has invested heavily into Runway. But it wasn't. I mean, yes, it was for the company, but it also seemed like it was a shot at Amazon in their web service. So AWS, kind of Amazon had really been marketing that Runway was one of its customers for its cloud computing aws, Google invested a lot of money. So before we talk about Runway, Travis, what do you kind of think of just that battle of these huge companies saying, like, no, use our service and we'll invest in you.

So you do. I was about to say that's one of those good problems, getting too much money thrown at you. Yeah, I, I, I'm not, I, I think the more money and the more attention that gets put into things like Runway, like, it will just, I think it's just going to get better. I don't know if anybody else that, that, that's listening has dove in on Runway and their, like, whole YouTube channel, but their tutorials are fantastic. And that's how I came up, man. I came up. I didn't go to film school to do what I do. I went to law school for a little while, then dropped out. Like, I, like I, so I've had to learn online how to do what I do, and Runway's been a fantastic way to do it. So I'm, I'm, for one, I'm glad that they're just getting clout thrown at them, whether it's money or hits or likes or whatever. But I, I, I, you know, that's, it's one of those things where if you see companies competing, there's noise being made. That's pretty good.

Absolutely. So let's, let's talk a little bit, Travis. So, you know, how, how has, you know, AI and all of these different tools that are out there specifically to help creatives. Right. Because that's kind of the first space that a lot of these tools are kind of splashing in is to help with creatives write content, better visuals, better video. How, how has that, you know, played a role in kind of your, your career specifically of, of recently?

Yeah. So I jumped in on, on Mid Journey and Dall E to after a great friend and a great architect named Steve Corliss. I think he just jumped on here after he put me onto it. I figured out, like, oh, man, you can start. You can just make stuff up. And I think the first, I just got back from Spain and the first picture I made was the Sagrada La Familia, and I made it out of Sour Patch Kids. Like, you know, like, you can just kind of create and you can just sort of have fun. And I think that there's a really fascinating way of, like, this can imagine what isn't, you know, and that's. That's beautiful. But I think that how I. So, so, so. All right, let me reverse a little bit. The way that I have utilized it is trying to more like, I'm not going to use that picture. There's no way I'm gonna, like, I'm not gonna be able to apply that. So. But I can, you know, sort of drill down and figure out what I need it for. Like, how can I. Once again, like, it's a. I saw somebody post in the comments. It's a different kind. I saw somebody on another one of your podcasts say it's. It's a springboard, man. It's a wrench. It's not a Rembrandt. It's. It's.

It's a.

It's a definite tool. So I have needed certain things that, like, didn't exist. So that's one way that I've used Mid Journey and Dali, too, I had to use. So right now I'm a. I'm a video producer at an American Stage theater down in St. Petersburg, Florida. And it's a nice regional theater, and they're really letting me run with regards to video production and social media stuff, man, it's fascinating to be involved in like a really visual art, but understand that they don't usually utilize video the way that somebody on. Ends up with like, even like a restaurant, you know, like restaurant social media accounts are blowing up. But anyway, so this theater, man, we've needed to utilize, like bringing from the past and throwing and bringing it to now. So I've had to make up images or like, go get stuff that I might have to, like, pay for, like certain things. Like, like if I wanted to get like a pixel art shot or if I wanted to go and get like a stock image, something like that, man, I can kind of just go make that stuff. And that's one. That's one way that I've. That I've been able to utilize it.

Yeah. So let's. So, Travis, you. Actually, I'm going to share this on the screen now. So you sent me a. A photo that you kind of created. So just. Just talk about kind of first of all what this photo is, and then just. Let's talk about what it means. Just. Just for the average everyday person that they can go in and create things like this.

Yeah.

Try to zoom in.

Okay. Oh, so this Jordan photo. So this is back to lunar speedboat production. So I'm a sneaker head, and I'm a big fan of basketball. I don't know if anybody can see behind me, but I was able to use Runway and key out and, like, knock out the background of a lot of Jordan highlights. I was able to, like, kind of, like, dig in stuff. And the. The reason why I wanted to share this is that although there are certain aspects of Runway, of. Of Runway that aren't, like, you know, elite yet, man, there are certain stuff there. There. The first day I tried Runway, I was able to key out, then bring in text behind somebody, and then overlap that. So now it looks like there's text between me and my background. Like, Runway is so fascinating to me. And then I've also seen. Just to kind of go off on a quick tangent, I've seen a lot of people like this kind of stuff where it's just an amalgamation of really cool shots. Like, there's. It's just fun screensaver stuff to put in the background while you're working, while you're sending emails. Like, there's a lot of really great ways that, you know, people can just sort of like, I'm just, like, go on a tangent and just make stuff up, man. Yeah, so. Yeah, so it's fascinating. And then. And then once you drill down and get into prompts, which I'm getting more and more into, I was about to say this thing's only, what, like, six months old? You know, like, it's. I. I've been. There's a lot to do, and. And. And it's. I really haven't even, like, scratched the surface. At least that's how I feel. I don't know how you feel. Yeah, I mean, you deal with this stuff, like, hourly. So I'm. I can't imagine how overwhelmed you get, man.

Yeah. So. So, Travis, you mentioned, like, just being able to create something right, From. From nothing, and. And how valuable that is for people in a variety of roles. Right. So you were saying, like, he. I worked with, you know, with. With your company. So right now, you know, I'm kind of sharing on the screen Runway, which is something that we talked about in the news today. And then, you know, Travis, you know, you said that you're also using this as well. So kind of on the screen, if you're listening on the podcast, there's examples of different videos, and if you wouldn't know any better, you would think these are animations, something that teams. That teams had to create, you know, things that visuals that in the past would have been either extremely expensive, would have taken people weeks and. Or large or large teams. But these are all things that you can push out in a matter of seconds or minutes, just using text prompts to get these videos that we're sharing on the screen now. So, Travis, talk a little bit just about how you're even using Runway, because I think we do on the show talk a lot about chat GPT, and we talk about the image generators that, you know, mid journey. But Runway is. Is really pushing, I think, in terms of just creativity in general. What are some ways that you've been using Runway? And how do you think the everyday person, maybe even if they're not in video product, can. Can use something like this?

I think if you want to get your idea across, if you just write it out, if you're just kind of like, you have to be kind of brave. You have to be sort of like, let's just see what happens here. And then if you. Like, for instance, I've used. I've seen people use it to portray their ideas and, like, in a, like, storyboard format. So obviously, if it's going to be in a storyboard, man, that's PowerPoint. You can use that in any sort of like a presentation for anything that you need. You can just make like, just flex, just like, say whatever you want. It's. It's interesting to just like, verbalize, talk about it, man, because you can make stuff up, man. And I'm. I. That. That's a really fascinating part to me that you can sort of, you know, go in and just build a house. My. My buddy Steve Corliss, he's an architect, and that's how he sort of came to it. And he has built cathedrals that are. That like, really don't have any right angles, man. And it's like, oh, well, I guess that kind of looks like it could be built anyways, man. There's a. There's a whole there. There. I'm sure. I'm sure there. There are just a litany of industries that, you know, might only need like a microcosm of creativity. But if somebody, you know, in their team needs it, you can just sort of like pull on this lever. I. Yeah, it's a. It's a fascinating thing, man. And what. What's. What's fun for me anyways, with regards to Runway, is that there's a lot of cool effects that you can use and then bring out what you've exported. Now you can bring that back into Your video editing system like Premiere or Final Cut Pro, you can once again use it as a tool and sort of shave off an edge or knock out a background or color. Correct. Or I've seen stuff slow down. And that's utilizing an effect called optical flow where it's sort of like bridges one frame to the next. You know about optical flow. That's awesome. So anyways, man. Yeah, so, okay, yeah, so.

Real quick, Travis, because you mentioned, so sorry, you mentioned Stephen and we actually have a comment from Stephen, so. And a lot of comments. So we're gonna, we're gonna go through these, these rapid fire and if you do have any questions for Travis, please, please go ahead and drop them in in the comments here. So Stephen asked, curious if the different kind of hammer will make users build different products. How are these new tools making filmmaker think plots, stories, effects and workflow to create films and movies? So Travis, what's your quick hot take on that?

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Rethink plots. If you sometimes if you type in a prompt and in Dall E2 or Midjourney, it'll go off the deep end. And like that's not anywhere near what I wanted. Man. It takes a lot of. You need some wrench time. I don't know if you've dove in on those like, but you need some real wrench time to like, sort of like nail something down. So sometimes that's good. Sometimes I can take you on a tangent where it'll lead you down a really cool idea. For a story, man. But sometimes, you know, it's. It's like I said, man, it's not 100 yet. It is still a little clunky. You can tell that when you type in photorealistic. Ah, man. It's soft edges. It's kind of clunky. Does that person have another limb? Whatever, you know.

Yeah, this. The sixth finger always pops up.

Yeah.

Jolene asked if we can share a link to the theater. We absolutely will. We'll make sure that in the newsletter. So make sure you're signed up. Go to your everydayai.com. every day we send out a newsletter kind of recapping what we talked about on the podcast with not just things that Travis is speaking about. So, yes, we'll have a link, but also just other techniques and how the everyday person can learn from the show today. So, Jolene, we will definitely have that in there. Lillian with a great question for Travis. Travis, have you used Photoshop Generative AI feature? Lillian staying on top of this Shout out. Lillian, she told me she was telling people about the show. Thanks for that. But, Travis, this new Photoshop Generative AI feature, brand new. It's been out for like five days. Have you toyed around with that?

I did it in preparation of this, man. I used it. I. I wiped. I wiped away. Appear in a photo. And yeah, it's cool. It's cool. The thing is, is that you need to, like, once again, it's a tool. It's. But it's not like an end all be all, man. You can't just like, stamp it and run away. Like, you need to sort of sharpen things up. So, for instance, with this, if I were to go out and generate the yellow submarine in this really cool shot, you might need to go in and then and like, tweak the submarine because it might have, like, I don't know, something come off of like, a spire or like an extra, you know, like flange or something like that. Like, you can. You can use it and it's really like, that's such a. I wonder what they. I Wonder what Paul McCartney thinks of this photo.

Yeah. So if you're listening on the podcast, I just shared a. No, no, it's all good. I just, I just shared a photo. This kind of went, you know, Lillian's question about, you know, Photoshop Generative AI feature, what that means is you can expand, you know, you can expand on a photo and reimagine what the rest of the photo is or what Travis is saying, you know, very, very easily. You Know, delete something in a photo, but have it do a fantastic job. So there's actually a lot of viral Twitter threads when this first came out. So this is, you know, imagining what's happening outside of that famous Beatles, you know, album cover where they're walking, you know, on that famous road. So, yeah, Abby Road there. So, yeah, we'll share a lot more of those. But great, great question, Lillian. So we have another one here from Professor Muhammad, always coming up with great questions for us. So thanks for tuning in every day. So asking, do you think it'll be possible to create chat GPT movies by. By script, mixed with existing characters, actors and scenes just by sitting on a computer? Oh, that's a great question, Travis. You're doing this stuff daily. What do you think?

Yeah, I. But my fiance did this, man. She. She. Well, because her brother. Her brother Ray. Shout out to Ray. He's a coder and he. He's. He's neck deep in this, man. He. He's on. He's on your level. And he showed her chat dpt. So she made a story she'd like, hey, write a script about. I think it was a rose. Anyways, man, long story short, it made a script and there are some really cool parts, but also it's predicting off of what's already been created. So there is something that's sort of rudimentary and not necessarily grandiose, not necessarily like emotional. Although, like, it taps into certain aspects, man, it does sort of like get parabolically close to it where it might not intersect. But bro, that's close. So I definitely think it's possible. But once again, there is a human element that is necessary. So yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, you, you. You definitely can. My fiance did. And by the way, she's like the co founder of Lunar Speed both. So we both are sort of in on trying to produce. And that's what's real fun about, you know, obviously staying creative with your better half. But then once again, man, like, once, like, like if. Even if somebody who doesn't that, like, I'm. I would say I'm more on the creative side of, of our company. She's definitely the more logistical side and handles the stuff, you know, to keep the lights on, man, which is so great. But I think that even somebody that might not have as much of a creative input on something can saddle up and ride, man. Runway mid journey. Do you have ChatGPT? Those are the apps that I use a lot. And it's a blast to just be able to Create.

So Travis, you're obviously, you know, knees deep in, you know, media and creativity on a day to day basis. For someone who's not. Or maybe they, they wear more hats and, you know, they're, they're, they're handling a lot of everything. Say maybe a, or, you know, a small business owner, entrepreneur. What's, what's the most practical and easy advice that you can give to someone and how they can start using some of these tools to really push and enhance their creativity? If you just had to say, hey, start here and do this, what would you recommend or suggest?

I would start on like, like figuring out, like taking a second and figuring out what, what you actually want. Because I think that a lot of people are drawn in by these hyper neon self portraits, you know, like the, the Abbey Road shot where you can sort of like, you know, build an entire galaxy behind them, that kind of thing. It's really cool. But then again, it was also kind of like intimidating, man. You run up and you see people that have made entire fields of flowers and it's like, oh, that's what I'm sort of like dealing with or maybe even competing with. And I would hope that people wouldn't do that. I would hope they would just like, think, what do I, like what do I need to do here? So I think that's one aspect. And then secondly, I think joining in on the conversation once again in the human element, you got to be able to talk to people about this stuff. I think that there's a lot of great discords and Reddit threads and message boards, which I'm sure you're all plugged in on, man. Like, there's a lot of ways to find. There's a lot of pathways towards getting what you want to do that you didn't know that you wanted to do. And that's just because other people have done it before. And it's not like they did it three years ago. They probably did it three weeks ago or three months ago at the most, man. Like, this stuff is evolving so fast. I think that everybody that's in on this sort of ground floor with regards to AI, well, I, I just dig it. I just, I also think that you need to know what you're trying to do. If you're just gonna like, you know, if you're just gonna jump in, that's, that's cool too. But I think if somebody that doesn't necessarily know like what foot to plant first, just understand that, yeah, man, you can create text, you can create photos, but you sort of need to know. You need to have a target.

Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's great advice. That's great advice.

I'm glad that made sense.

All right, so I never like to leave a question hanging. So real quick, before we wrap up the show, Travis, another great question from Stephen, so saying is there a possibility that we enter an era of AI generated feedback loops where the content created is used as data for new content generation and if so, will future generations lose innovation? This is such a great question from Stephen. And just real quick, before you answer that, Travis, I just want to give the everyday person some quick context. So all of these, these generative AI tools, so ChatGPT, you know, the, the mid journeys that create images, Dall e that creates images, everything is trained off of something that humans originally created in these, these learning models. Learn it and ingest it. Right. So it's kind of Steven's question that now, Travis, you can get to is what happens when now what the machines are learning off of are from AI generated content. So what's, what's your thoughts, man?

My thoughts are that, that makes perfect sense. But I'm more curious about what you think, man. You're so plugged into this. I like, I'm more about feedback loops and sort of what starts them. Like, like, like what I'm, I'm like, what, what, what do you know about feedback loose, man? Because I feel like there's certain aspects that I can understand. But man, I, I just create cool stuff, dude. I just try to get the shot, you know. I feel like you're really way more plugged in than I am with regards to this.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll give my, my, my hot take, please, man. So, so my hot take on this is the, what we're getting now in terms of output from all of these, these tools, these chat GPTs, you know, mid journey for images. I'm not saying this is the height of it, but it's hard for me to imagine in five years from now that the output is going to be that much better just from what kind of Stephen said, just because there will be less and less original content out there for these machine learning models to be trained on. Not only this, but we're going to have to have a whole podcast separately in a deep dive on this one. But what this also means for the consumer, because I think when you know a lot of this AI content first hits, we're blown away because it's, you know, oh, like, like the Beatles album cover. It's like, oh, we've never seen that.

Cool. And by the way, they made it in six seconds. What? Like, that's. Yeah.

But I, I do think that as consumers, we're going to be hit with so much amazing written content, so, so many stunning visuals over the next coming months that it's, it's, it's really going to be hard for us as consumers to continue to really be attracted to new content, to new visuals, to new creative ideas just because they're, they're going to be coming at us so quickly. But that's another conversation for another day.

Yeah. Because then, because then there's rights, then there's like, you know, copyrights and all. Yeah, man.

Yeah. It's crazy. Travis, thank you so much for joining the show today. Really appreciate your time and tackling all these great questions that came along. So thank you for coming on the show.

Dude, it's been a blast, man. It's great to see you and hope to be on again soon.

Yeah. All right, so real quick, as a reminder, please go to your everyday AI.com and people. Some people don't know this. This is a live show where we interact with the audience, but we also put every single episode out on podcast. So make sure to check out your Spotify, Apple podcast, whatever. Please subscribe, leave us a rating, and tell us what you want to hear and see more of. So thank you for joining us and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day on Everyday AI. Thanks.

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