Exploring the Future of AI and Digital Interactive Clones: Jose Larrucea

Our guest today is a longtime expert on all matters technology. He's worked with everyone from Real Networks to wix to you name it. He's been in the high tech industry for decades. He has just published a groundbreaking report, AI Driven Avatars, a market Study. Very happy to bring to the show today. It's today it's one of our special editions of the Digital Doppelganger show where we talk about all things related to clones and avatars. My special guest today is Jose Laruthia. Jose, thanks for joining us today. He is head of economy, which is, yes, a combination of economy and clones. Jose, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much, tj. It's a pleasure to be here with you guys today. Very, very thrilled.

So what got you excited about digital clones? You've been in the digital space for decades. You've worked with everyone from wix to real networks. You've worked all over the world. You've worked with startups, you've worked with big companies. Why did you get excited about digital clones?

This is a, it's an interesting question and I think, you know, people like you who've been in it, right? And from the beginning you'll understand, I think the clones, the digital interactive clones, they bring the potential in nowadays that the Internet promised back in the 90s, right? It's really the scale, the scale to many things, right? And I think, you know, in the study you'll see verticals from education to business to, you know, tutoring to basically anything that shares wisdom, right? And today there are obviously limitations and through the clones you can just break those limits. And I think that's, that's once in a lifetime that is happening right now.

It is very exciting to me. Now I know you not only write about it, talk about it, you have your own clone. And we'll talk to your clone later on in the program. But first, let's let people take a look at this new report. It's AI Driven Avatars, a market study. Now, this isn't something's just slapped together with AI and a couple of bullet points and a PowerPoint thing. This is 88 pages of content. If people want to get it, we're going to link to it. And my colleague Ben, our producer, will post the link in the comments. We'll also post it in the show notes for people who want to get this study. It's coming in, it's filtering in right now as well as Jose's bio. So tell us, let's walk us through the highlights of this study because you spent countless hours on this and you were nice enough to include me and interview me and my clone for the study. I should point out exactly what surprised you the most. What do you think people are going to grab on? And the clone report was just released yesterday, by the way, so this is fresh. You're not going to find more up to date information on cloning than this. And I know because I actually have a Google News alert come to me every day for any story that relates to clone digital avatars, AI generation, all of these terms. I get it sent to me every single day. And I still learned a lot from your market study. Learned about companies I hadn't heard of. So walk us through the report.

So before we go into the nitty gritty, I mean, you know, the idea is to really shed some light on what this is in general terms, you know, from a general perspective, then drill down into some of the specifics, right? Because I think everybody in the last 24 months has been talking about and hearing about AI and generative AI and you know, like all the wonders and the GPTs and all this. This study basically wants to bring closer and kind of like break down some of the myths and definitions and naming conventions of what this is all about, right? So for you and me, we know, but there's many people out there who will be interested about it and they have no idea what a digital avatar is, what a digital interactive clone is, or where the differences are or what is a Persona, a clone, Kind of like cloning the spec of an executive, not the people. So the idea is, look, let's, let's, let's the dust kind of like, you know, let the dust fall down and see clearly what this is all about. So you will see, you know, the definition of a clone. You know, what are the types, what are the categories, you know, what are the use, the uses for them, what are the components? Right, because it's not, it's not an email, right? Something a little bit more sophisticated, you know, how can you build your own? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the companies in the ecosystem that is before, before us and just forming, right? So just, I mean there's like 34, I think, sections. I mean, if you want, I'm happy to walk you through, but the idea here is with this study to bring light. And if a company or an individual, you know, wants to understand, they can just take it. It's kind of like a guide, right? So what do I need to know? You know, who can I go to? You know, can I Do this? Can I not do this? That's kind of like the idea of the study.

So here on the digital doppelgangers, people are used to hearing me talk about this a lot. So a lot of people are familiar with it, but some people are new. Let's just start from the basics. What is a digital clone? Because it can go in a lot of different places, it means a lot of different things to different people. It scares some people. How is that different from a digital twin? How is that different from an avatar? There's a lot of terms floating around that intermingle. Let's hear how you define things.

So I think, you know, I like this example because I think it kind of like opened people's eyes, right? A few months ago, I think Reid, I don't know if you know Reid, one of the founders of LinkedIn, he came up with Reed AI.

Reid Hoffman.

Yes, Reid Hoffman. Thank you. And basically it was like a wow moment, right? You know, he was chatting with them and at the end, you know, if you read, if you were curious, you would learn that it was something different from what it, from what it actually showed, right?

But for people who didn't see it, he interviewed himself. What looks like a real time conversation, frankly, what I do all the time here on this show. He did it, but in the fine print you found out. No, it was all edited together and sort of stitched together with a whole team of people. It wasn't a real conversation, but it did open people's eyes to the potential.

So the concept, I mean, what he did illustrating was the concept that was, you know, coming to fruition. And this is what we see today and that some companies are doing. So a digital clone or a digital avatar, generically speaking, I would say is the representation of a person, a human person like you and me in the video format, right? And then this is like the baseline. Now what can this video do? And this is when it starts to get sophisticated in different ways. One is you will see companies like hey, Gen Synthesia and a bunch of others that basically record you. They put you in, and then you can prompt the video, the avatar to say things, right? And then you can do speeches and explanations about things and concept and, you know, trainings and all these things, right? That's one thing, but it's not simultaneous interactively speaking, right? Something that you put the thing and then kind of that goes, right? What we're talking about when we mentioned digital interactive clones is the interactivity part and not interactivity in the way that some Courses do it like, hey, you see the video and then at the end, hey, you know, answer the question. Doesn't that's interactive too? But what we're saying here is conversational speaking conversational in real time. Right. And this is what the. I think this is the key, this is the point, the critical point, inflection point, call it what you will. This is what we had not seen before. We saw it when Reid did it, although it was not, let's say, truthful. Yeah. But there are companies right now doing it. And I think this is what the, you know what a real digital interactive clone is. The representation of a person, a human. Right. In a conversational method on video to exchange information and in some cases transactional, let's say capabilities. Right. I don't know if you have anything.

If you have questions for Jose, you can type them right in the comments section. You can even join us on screen. We've posted a link if you want to join us right here in Streamyard. You can talk to Jose, find out more about economy. And do you prefer economy, eclonomy or both? That's part of the magic of it.

Look, I gotta be honest. I say either way. It depends, you know, if I have my American twang, I would say economy, you know, kind of like economy. If I go into the. It's like, no, no, it's not economy. It's economy, you know, at the end, doesn't matter, it's economy. It's. You save fast either way, either way.

Now you just mentioned America and we should point out you're based in Brazil, in South America.

Yes.

And a lot of us Americans, we get into of nasty habit where we think of, well, all technology people are either in Northern California or at least in the United States. And everyone else in the world has just taken our stuff as we hand it to them. How have you survived, thrived as someone in the technology industry in other parts of the world? And do you perceive bias sometimes from ugly Americans like us?

I lived in the States in a few lives before I was a young kid, you know, 17 year old at the time. So I don't know. I have a. It has a very nice place in my heart, you know, so I really, I have good American friends, so it's difficult for me to see bias. Right. So that's, I think, I think the trick is really to see what is best at the places you are and, you know, just enjoy them. You know, when I came to Brazil from Europe, the first two years, three years, it was like, oh my Goodness, you know, what's. Things don't work here. You know, this is all these challenges that in Europe you have taken from ride. And here I was looking only at the bad things. Once you start realizing the good things, it's like, hey, this is life. This is life is what happens while you're making other plans. And, you know, this is what happened to me.

You know.

Walk me through your sense of how you think the adoption rate is going to come with respect to clones, because I have some scars. I started doing online training back in 1998 and I thought, wow, I'm going to be first to market. And when you're first to market, that's great. Well, no, when you're first to market, quite often you become roadkill. You know, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is what, the 12th or 13th venture funded social media network. Um, but the VHS was not as good as beta, but it beat beta as a, as a format. So I found it took me like 15 years of losing money with online training, video online training, before it really took off and became profitable. So there's a part here's where I'm torn. The part of me says, okay, tj, yeah, that happened with online training and people getting used to it and comfortable with it. But times are different now because everything happens faster. With AI, ChatGPT got 100 million users in three months. It took Facebook five years. Part of me is very optimistic, but there's another part of me that says this thing is so different that it's going to take even longer for people to get their head around it. Because at least with an online video course there, there were previous iterations of that. You could watch an online course on a TV channel, a public TV channel. You could get a dvd, you could get a VHS video course. Those have been around for decades. So at least people realize, oh, it's kind of like that, but just in a different format. The concept, a truly interactive video based clone, I find kind of blows people's minds and they can't quite grasp it now if they get in and use it and experience it. Yes. But there's a part of me that worries that, you know, I'm going to beat beating the drums for 19 years this time before it really takes off. Where do you fall on that divide?

You know, I'm an optimist. You know, I really like to see technology in general. Right. As an enhancer of people's lives. And I think that's been true throughout all my career. I agree with you. I think there's a lot of ingredients, right? And let's say a reference that gets us today, right? And where we are, there's the pandemic you mentioned in some of your previous comments. It kind of helped us go digital, right. And I think if I can tap a little bit into my own experience when I was doing AI here in Latin America, different to the other regions, you need to start with a pain point, you know, and, and you know, I brought products that in the US would be focused on entertainment as like, hey, let's organize faces on videos and you know, see who's there and, you know, get the story about the actor or whatever. And here it was like, look, I want to find out if there was a, you know, a robber, a thief, you know, coming into the store. And it just. You see that where I'm going, right? So I think, in my view, I feel it'll be big problems that we'll be using this technology first in problems. I mean, the restrictions that we have today, right. Time and space for, let's say, in our search to abundance. And I think this is one of the moments. There's another paper that I wrote about abundance through the clones and there's really, you know, to get infinite time or very. Almost unlimited at bandwidth of time.

Right.

So if I had to give a prediction, which I'm not really good at, but I would say that we should start with the pain points and see where this technology can help us really solve those problems. And I agree with you there. You know, there's other, other fears if you allow, you know, people are thinking, oh, wow, what's happening? You know, it does. The clone doesn't have a scenario.

Let's talk. Help me, help me piece my way through this because I'm certainly aware of pain points. I have people every day take my online public speaking courses because they feel the pain of. And they tell me this, tj, I'm nervous. I'm not confident when I speak. I'm not confident going to this job interview. I'm not confident giving a PowerPoint presentation to my board. I'm nervous about pitching my startup to these angel investors, asking them for my first $20,000. So I, I know what their pain is right now. They either wing it and do a so so job or a poor job and they just tough it out or they take one of my online courses. And that helps some, although typically they don't really practice enough or they don't record themselves and see feedback or a tiny, tiny, tiny less than 0.01% will hire me for a day and fly to me or fly me to them.

Them.

And then they get great results. But that's too expensive and there's just not time for the vast majority of the world. So I know what the time is. Some of those people are now coming into my clone where they can actually rehearse and get feedback. The problem is we haven't gone beyond the stage of it being sort of a curiosity. Now, my clone has been up since the last day of April and the video part, I guess for maybe three months now. So it's still early in the game. But what I'm noticing is that it's. People look at it and they're talking to it and I can see the conversations the end quite often. Oh, wow, thanks. This is really helpful. But they don't come back. They're not building a relationship with the clone coach as a useful tool the way they might be with a personal trainer where they got to drive across town, change clothes, get into a gym and have that coach say, all right, TJ get on the floor and give me 20 push ups. People are still more comfortable with that, even though there's all those hurdles of driving across town, parking, changing clothes to work with that kind of a coach. Here's a coach online that's available 247 in any language, in many cases at no cost. And people I find often trying it just once. So your thoughts on what is it going to take for this to go beyond the mere curiosity?

So I think you touched on a few good points today. The alternative is still, I would say, affordable in a way. It's like, look, I want to get the real thing, so I'm going to go through all this, right? There is an interesting example in this study that talks about education, right? And I went into the numbers because I think this is a huge pain point that we as a humanity have education across the globe. There's about 94, 93.7 million teachers worldwide. You say, okay, you know, you do the math. Eight billion people, you know, kind of okay, more or less, you know, the range of needing education. But at the end, it turns out that there's about 40 million teachers missing, right? So those people. There's people who don't have either or. Right? They don't. They cannot go across the street or across town. Get. They cannot. So when. When a solution like this will be put in front of them, this will be the best alternative for them. So I think if I take this example and put it in the. The case that you mentioned maybe your hour needs to be time x or 100x, you know, in real life. So they will say, okay, what is the next best, what is the next best option? And I'm just exaggerating. I'm just kind of like pushing it, you know, to the stretch to see maybe hopefully we don't have to go that far because, you know, other drivers will come in, you know, the adoption. I think the platforms have a role to play whenever they start. I'm thinking of LinkedIn for example, or Udemy or online communities that talk about tutoring. If these people start offering it as a feature, as an add on, it may accelerate the adoption. And this is only thinking about the pain points of the learning of wisdom. There is another set of possibilities going into the entertainment that I think is just mentioned also this study, right? And like look, you watched the film, you read a book and you want to talk to the author and say, hey, I have questions about your book. Imagine Amazon offering this like, hey, I want to talk to the, you know, to the clone of the author. I have questions about chapter three. I'm not sure what he meant. You know, this. I think these will be catalyzed which.

By the way, sorry to be self serving, but if people want to be able to talk to the author of a book and see how that would work, I've got an opportunity for you. My book right here is, you can see it right here is this particular book right here. Building an Interactive AI Video Clone. Unlocking the Power of Personalized Communication. And if you buy this book on Amazon, it gives you a link where you can then ask me any question. It doesn't cost anything, by the way. All of you shouldn't have the link by now anyway. It's simply tjwalker AI and you can ask my clone any question about anything in the table of contents of this book or anything about AI video clones that I've ever talked about and it will answer for you. And I should point out the book is now available on Kindle. It's available on Kindle Unlimited, it's available on hardback paperback and is an audio download. And as of yesterday, it's now available on 57 different platforms for audiobooks. And we'll soon have it available on Barnes and Noble and every place. But we'll, we'll see if this catches on because I am trying to make this a part of the sale of the book that hey, the book comes with its own clone. So if you get bored and you're looking for a particular Subject. And you don't want to read in a linear way based on what I thought was important. You can just go to the clone and ask it questions. So that's. And we'll get. We'll get sort of our commercial part out of the way right now. The only other thing. Oh, and I just. I just clicked away the wrong page. We do want to give another. Another plug for Jose at economy's great new market study. AI Driven Avatars. The market study. But the other thing I wanted to point out to you, those of you who are more excited about clones and thinking about how to create a clone, but you feel like you need a little more handholding than what some of the platforms. I do now have a couple of different courses on how to create your own clone, and these versions come with consulting time from me. So I know, you know, I'm not a huge techie. I need handholding when I start to use something new. And now I've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of trying to figure out how to make a clone and just. Just the nuances of how to make your voice sound better and how to not look like a stiff stooge on camera. There's a lot of subtleties there. So that's what you get in this particular course. So enough with the shameless promotion now. I guess at some point we'll have my. My clone come on and do the shilling as well to pay the bills. Jose. So, Jose, you've had a chance to look at all the major platforms your survey covers in depth, 15 different companies. And I noticed that you ended up making a clone with the same company I did, Delphi AI. Tell us about your thought process of why you selected them and your experience there. And I do want to show your clone, and we'll do that for the audience in just a moment as well.

All right, so I think one point that was clear is that the naming convention was not universal yet. Right. So the search process took me left and right, up and down, and, you know, until you really find what you're looking for because, you know, interactive avatars, personal avatars, instant avatars. These are the names that some of these companies use. And, you know, after going deep, I realized that the one that had enough depth and, you know, they were promising and they were closer to what I was looking for was Delphi. So. And this was for a couple of reasons. One was the back office, you know, the, say, the repository of content, you know, it was well structured. It gave me good options, you know, to Upload the content that I wanted to my digital brain of the clone to have, you know, was easy to handle and you know, to update and all this. The others, you know, it was not. I think there was a few that do offer the interactive clone as the one that Delphi does, but it was, you know, I think we mentioned it yesterday in our conversation. It was like the, the initial date when ChatGPT came. It was quite general in a way. It did the job, but it was quite general so you couldn't really drill down into the type of content that you wanted your clone to have.

Right.

So this was, this was a bit tricky. So I think at the end there was a platform product. There's another aspect that was support, I think support in general. You know, the guy said, hey Jen, do a fantastic job. They're quite quick. Now what struck me in Delphi was the personal, the personal people, you know, I got emails from Sam, from Dara, like, hey, you know, talking about, and.

These are the, the co founders, the founders and co founders of the company and, and full disclosure. So I do use Delphi for my clone. I do use them as the reference point in my books about clones. But it's not that we are, we're not founders, we're not owners or not investors in it. It just happened to be. I couldn't find any other one that, that really did what I wanted to do as well. Which to me it's, it's all about the interactivity. There's so many companies out there creating clones where you have to type in a speech or a script. To me that's just completely uninteresting. By the time I type a speech, it's much faster for me just to hit record. So for me that's a complete waste of time. What I, what I like is the ability for the interactivity so that someone at, you know, three in the morning when I'm asleep can call and ask me questions about personal development or habits or focus or communication skills. And much more than ask questions, go into a live coaching session where my clone, if they want to prepare for a job interview, can actually interview them for the job, record it, give them feedback. That to me is what is hugely valuable because that's why coaches get paid the big bucks in the real world. Someone who has theories about basketball can write a book and maybe no one buys it. But if you can actually coach someone, a team to win a world championship, you're going to get paid $20 million a year. Coaching is valued in every culture, simply Answering questions. You get that for free for years on Google, Quora, Wikipedia. So I don't see the value in just having a stock answer for something. It's got to be interactive because that gives the power to the user. That's. That's my theory. And I know I'm preaching to the choir with you, but it does seem as though that gets lost. We have a couple of comments that go in. I didn't. I didn't want to ignore them. Mary says people worry about the avatar is a threat to humans. How you guys can explain the benefits of using a clone, and that's coming from Mary. The concerns are very powerful with a lot of people. Barb also writes, Udemy student comments made in our Udemy student support group on Facebook cannot by seen, can't be seen by you in the group. Please remind them how to come to your TJ Walker success page to watch the live from there. Okay, so I. I must have done something wrong. And. And Ben is not with us now. So if you are watching this, you can go to my TJ Walker success Facebook page. I believe the comments from there will show up. I'm not sure what we did wrong. You can always go to my. My YouTube page and watch and leave comments there. And that's TJ Walker's success on YouTube as well. So, Barb, apologies if we messed that up. Let's. Let's deal with Mary's question that people see this as a real threat to humanity. And I can't remember if you and I talked about this, but when the CEO of Delphi went on Fox Business News six weeks ago or so, I thought it was a pretty positive interview, straightforward interview. They, the host interviewed the clone, they interviewed the CEO, demonstrated it pretty well. And then I looked at the comments the next day, and there were 3,500 comments. 3,499 were all negative. They were all saying things like, these clones are a sign of the devil. This is the sign of the apocalypse. This person should be in prison. This person should be in jail. I hope these people are put out. I mean, it was brutal in the negativity. And it was other than one person saying the host was good looking, off topic. Everything was viciously, brutally negative. Now, part of it is that channel tends to skew in a particular negative direction. You can argue social media in general tends to the negative, but I've never seen negativity to that extent. For someone who wasn't overtly talking about a political issue, then you expect the negativity. But just A new technology. So share, share your concerns about how you think this is going to play out. And to Mary's question about how people see this as a real threat to.

Humanity, I think there is a conversation that kind of piggybacks on this general aspect or the sense of the comment, right? It's like, look, AI is going to take the jobs of certain people, right? And I think this, like it's a threat. If you think about it as a threat, hey, this technology is going to threaten my job, my well being, my source of income. So I get it. And you'll see people talking about there are already some positions that are in a way being, replacing humans. Customer support is one of them. I think we are at a moment where change is happening and I think people need to get educated about the possibilities of AI and also understand the myths. I think there is a marriage in between humans and the use of technology that I think will make us stronger and bigger. Right.

Threat.

I think it's, how can I say, I think it's a too much of a, too big of a word without context. TJ I don't know if you want to put a little threat to humans. What we're far away from the Skynet still, right? I think there has to be awareness, there has to be regulations in place, there has to be privacy tools that keep, let's say, the rights of people using AI so they need to feel comfortable using the technology. There has to be transparency, there has to be ways to control the data. You know, I mean you can, there's a privacy act happening in Europe. There was a GDPR before LGP in Brazil. There's many things that are taking place, right? So I think if somebody's saying it's a threat without context, I would say we need to ground the comment, you know, to be able to respond properly because otherwise we're just going to be, I think we're just, I would say.

All technology is always a threat to people who don't adapt. I mean There were 400,000 telephone operators in the United States in 1960 and a few years later they were basically all let go. Now they all found jobs because the economy was growing and many other things were happening. But they did lose their job because the technology got better. You no longer needed an operator to listen to someone and push a plug in here to connect. I've lost jobs because of technology. I saw a considerable drop over the last 10 years of corporations hiring me for a day of in person public speaking. So I've lost a lot of work because of technology. But I also gained a tremendous amount of work because I adapted and I learned how to make online courses. So my, my income continued to go up. It was just different. But people who didn't adapt did in fact see their jobs disappear or their income go way down. And that's been a function of technology. You know, you can go back to the days of Lou the Loom and not having to hand weave everything. That's, that's always been a part of it. But it is legitimate concern. We should point out what we're talking about here are digital clones. Now, in theory, as robotics get better, as you know, 3D printing gets better. Again, I'm not making any predictions. This may be a hundred years out, but at some point you could push a button and something that looks exactly 3D like Jose or TJ pops out and talks like us and thinks like us us. Then, then we got some big issues to deal with. But right now we're just talking about something that would show up on a screen. So I think that is a little bit less scary. Jose, I want to give people a chance to experience your clone. So let's take a look at it right here and talk to your clone a minute. And people who want to experience it, they can, they can access. Can they access on economy or should they go to. I forgot which website should they go to to access your client?

Right, so they can go directly to Delphi AI Jose or they can go to simply Jose Chat.

That's.

That will take them to.

And I am going to. I have it on Russian. Don't ask why. I'm going to switch to English and we're going to start the call. And if there is some kind of delay, remember, it's not Jose's fault. It's just that's the nature of these systems. Still switch over a little more here.

Hey, how are you? This is Jose's clone. How can I help you?

Hi, Jose, you're looking good today. Wondered if you could give me your top 10 predictions on how cloning technology is going to take off in the business world in the next three years.

Thank you, tj. I hear that that you're curious about the future of cloning technology in business. Here are some predictions. First, we'll see a surge in personalized customer service through digital clones, enhancing user experiences. Second, clones will become integral in training and development, offering tailored learning paths. Third, expect a rise in virtual influencers, where clones represent brands. Fourth, executive clones will handle routine tasks, freeing leaders for strategic thinking.

Thinking.

Fifth, Clones will facilitate global collaboration, breaking language barriers. Sixth, they'll provide real time data analysis, improving decision making. Seventh, clones will democratize access to expertise, making mentorship widely available. Eighth, they'll revolutionize content creation, producing personalized media. Ninth, expect ethical debates around privacy and authenticity. Finally, clones will drive innovation, pushing boundaries in, in various industries. These advancements promise a transformative impact on business landscapes.

And what's your prediction on who, who's really going to adopt these? First, will it be large corporations that see tremendous cost savings by not having to have as many people call their 800 number? Will it be the subject matter experts and the people that Delphi, for example, is going after? Who's really going to embrace this and use it in the most profound way in say, the next 12 months?

I hear that you're curious about who will be ballack. I hear that you're curious about the profound adopters of digital clones in the next 12 months.

Yes.

Large corporations.

How you think Large corporations.

I hear that you're interested in.

Okay, so this, this happens, this happens to my clone too. So we're not, we're not blaming Jose for that, but I, I thought the first couple of answers were fantastic. And I don't know about you, someone asked me to, to list top 10. I'll start listing things, but I'm not going to remember, you know, am I at 8 or 9 or 10? So I, I do like the way you can sort of instantly do exactly the number you want. And at least in my case, the clone does a better job of answering than I do. It's not, it's not worse, it's not the same, it's actually superior at some times. So what are your thoughts on what we just saw?

Well, I think there's a couple of. I think I agree with you. Look, this is because you're doing this at my time is 10:50, but you can do this at 3am Right? And he will just wake up nice and sharp and he will tell you probably the same narrative, you know, in a very structured way in the same, same conditions.

Right.

So this is a 247 resource, right. I think as we all saw, there is still room for improvement, right? You know, whether that can be the quality of the, of the video, the language, you know, the breakups. You know, there are things that, you know, I think technology will enhance it and will get better. I personally think this is becoming, in a way, providing access to infinite resources of information. And I think we didn't have this before at scale. So I think somebody with the right mind. Enabling technology like this to provide good. I think this is a fantastic, fantastic tool. What do you think?

Oh, well, I'm clearly very excited about it because I, unlike you, I don't have some distinguished career in technology or technology consultants. I really don't know technology very well. My background is in communication skills and to me, I'm so excited about this because I think it is the most profound tool to help humans communicate. Certainly since the Internet was created, potentially since the printing press was invented. To be able to scale one on one style conversations anywhere in the world, any time of day or night, in any language, I just think is extraordinarily profound because I've seen firsthand the good and the bad of video community on demand video. Now look, on demand video has been very good for me. I have 2 million online students. It's, you know, it's paid for a very nice lifestyle. So I don't want to sound like it's the worst thing in the world. It's been great for me. But there are extreme limitations with communicating with a recorded video. Because it's one way, it's what I want to say and here's my agenda and you have to listen to me. And then you've got to either fast forward to the part where you want or you got to look through a whole table of contents. And it's a very passive experience for 99.9% of my students. Whereas if I'm working with someone in person one on one, it's supremely interact, everything is about them in person. If I'm working with someone through a live zoom training, it's completely interactive. It's one on one. It's not me coming and giving a speech, it's we hop right into them giving a speech, recording it, critique, feedback, try again. And we do that 10, 12 times in a day, whether it's media training or presentation skills training. So what I'm so excited about with cloning technology is it gets me back to where I started in my training business, which is truly one on one style completely interactive training. That's not about me giving speeches and lectures, although I love to do that. It's about being 100% focused on helping that person transform some skill to make their life much better. So that's what I see the power of these clones doing and why I'm so excited about it.

I think. I know. I couldn't agree more. I think your case really is around condition, right? It can fully embrace what this technology can do. I think there is an aspect, you know that when we talk about all the positive, we tend to not say right now. And it's something that for big corporations and individuals to adhere to, this is the financial part, right. These technologies are not as cheap as getting a private email. Right. You know, they come with some costs and, and if you want to apply them into your business, you need to make sure that the unit economics work for you. Right. So I think once it needs to be taken into consideration because it's not free, it's not infinite.

Right.

You have some limitations depending on the packages that you buy. But I think this needs to be part of the equation to really take the full advantage of the potential.

Now you did in your survey. Let's give a brief plug again for your survey. And I know you know someone like Barb, who's watching would absolutely love to study this survey. Barb. So if you haven't gotten this, we've posted a link in the comments. This is the new. It's an 88 page survey. Tremendous research that Jose conducted the AI driven avatars market study. And in this you talk about various pricing things. Now that the history of pricing and technology is always that the early adopters pay a lot. You know, I'm old enough to remember what was the name of that phone they advertised constantly in 2000, the anywhere phone. It was this giant brick and it was like $2,000 a month or something like that. And now you can basically call anyone in the world for almost nothing. Certainly if you have an old cell phone that you got for $20 in an Internet connection, you can call Anyone anywhere on WhatsApp for. For nothing. So the price always goes down. I certainly would anticipate the price going down on people's ability to create actual full fledged video clones rather than just text or audio. But in your survey, what did you find? I know that the Delphi has some kind of free program. I don't know if that's just for text, but are you seeing any, any clone companies out there that are giving, giving away free access to cloning capabilities? Or do they all have at least one free tier where they're giving you a taste?

So they.

And by the way, I'm going to show people the list of resources. Do you know remember what page list all the.

I think all the different floor. I think it is pricing overview 6 to 4. So what I've seen TJ is that some companies, they have like a full suite of services, right? They will give you free access to a certain part in most of the Cases, the digital avatars, they are not part of that plan. You would need to go into the premium to get access or to unlock it. Right. So you can start building certain things. But what we just discussed, it's, it's, let's say deeper down the line.

Right.

So it's not. You can do a digital avatar that is static, like the way you describe it, you put text and then it will.

A text. A text chatbot.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I guess the point I wanted to get across is to people who don't have a client base or a business that, that kicks off a lot of extra cash for this or an employer who will pay for it, there are ways of starting right now where it's just your time. And I, I would certainly recommend to anyone who's forward thinking and planning for the future, start now, even if it's just a text version to get, get into the game. Because it's like a lot of things you'd spend time in. Something little observations come to mind. Oh, I can make this a little bit better. Or here's a use that only happens by getting in the game. You know, it's, that's what I stress to people for years with online courses. I talked to so many people over the years who want to debate with themselves for a year about the perfect title of a course or the perfect camera to you. I'm like, just get a course out, learn from it, make another one, make another one. You know, the perfect course title, you know that's going to sell well for you, often only comes after you've done a dozen and you figured out how to make 11 that don't sell well. Certainly that was my key to success, is I made 250 courses and 225 didn't really do that well. But the 25 that did well did really well. And I'm not saying everyone has to have 250 versions of their clone or 250 clones, but start with something, get in the game. Is there, is there one from your own research that you thought is going to be the best for people who really don't want to spend money and maybe just want to get a simple taste of uploading? Let's have the case study of someone who's a consultant. They haven't written any books, they haven't made online courses, but they have been a guest on half a dozen podcast YouTube shows. They have recorded maybe three or four webinars for. So they have some intellectual body of content. Right. Is there one platform that you would recommend for them right now if they want to start either for free or very little money.

So if they're just, you know, kind of getting their feet in the water just to taste it, I would say, hey, Gen probably has the less friction in terms of costs. Also for the production of the clone. This would be, I would say, easier in terms of, hey, I want to upload the content, get my video start, you know, configuring stuff to understand the mindset of what these tools are all about. Right. And then if they get serious, then I would definitely recommend going into Delphi because I think this is where the serious stuff happens in terms of content collection.

And I don't remember how they pro. What do they get for free. And I believe there's also a, a program that's 29amonth that they could get on Delphi, right?

Yes, I think it goes 29 if you pay monthly. If you pay yearly, it's about 20 bucks, 19 something. If you go to the advanced, I think it's 99. If you pay yearly, obviously you get a deduction. And then I think it's the, the Prodigy, which is the, the highest.

That's the 399amonth. What do you get for free on Delphi right now?

So I've, I've checked it and in the past they advertised it, but it wouldn't give in. At least I couldn't find it. I didn't get anything for free.

Okay, so that be coming soon. We got. We've got some more questions coming in from, from some of our colleagues. Barb is asking, do you feel threatened by your clone's abilities in any way as you are producing new online training videos? And let's assume that's directed to both of us, but I'll, I'll take a crack at it too. But Jose first. Do you have anything.

Oh, well, that's, I'm not. Yeah, I think you can answer this better.

Okay. And also Barb says I've been browsing Jose's AI Driven Avatars market study while listening. Excellent work. So I knew Barb would like that report and I, you know, I've passed it on to a number of people as well, so it really is in depth because this is something I study every day and I learned a lot, so that's great. So Barb wants to know if I feel threatened. I mean, I feel liberated in a sense because it's giving me more power. Now I have some new courses. I have one in particular where it's entirely my clone Teaching and I'm a little apprehensive, like, is this going to get trashed by people? It's just going to get horrible reviews. I was very careful to let people know this is taught by a clone. I let people know right at the beginning, so I'm not trying to fool them. And the course is very inexpensive. I mean, people typically, most of the time they're paying 10 bucks. In some countries they may be paying 5 bucks and it has a lot of good content. So I used my clone to. So here's what I did and I think people are gonna do more of this. I did not just go to chat GPT and say, write a course for me. I went to my own GPT different from my clone clone on Delphi. I created a GPT for 20 bucks a month. You get in their program, you can create your own GPT. So I uploaded not 12,000 videos and books and podcasts, but I did upload my books, text documents into a clone, a GPT clone, just text based. And then I asked my clone to come up with an outline for the course and then I asked it to go ahead and write a script. Now it's pulling from my words, from my expertise. And then I, once I got a script, I then put it into my clone and said, make a video out of it and it comes out pretty much perfect. And then I cut and paste and uploaded that. So did it really save me time? I'm not sure. It was more of an experiment I wanted to try. But I'm also in partnership with other creators where we have things entirely AI generated. Here's my Barbie. Answer your question more thoroughly. I think in the short term, and I don't know if that means six months or 47 years in the short term for people who are willing to learn, they don't even have to be tech geniuses, as Barb and others have heard me say. I'm a tech. I don't know what a gigabyte is, a python. I really just. My brain doesn't process tech jargon like that. I think in the short run, for people like me willing to read, type and click, we will be able to use AI technology, generative AI, cloning technology, in a way that will help us help our careers, help our income, help us economically a lot in the long term, again, when general artificial intelligence comes out, when it's so good, at some point we're going to get to the point where a general AI is going to give such better advice than I would or Jose or anyone else that it does become irrelevant and there's not a lot of added value. And if someone could get coaching and critiquing a thousand times better than what I can do and for free by just going to one website, then I think it does put us out of business. But, but I think that is likely going to be many years. But could it be three years? Could it be 33 years? I don't really know. Ray Kurzweil, the author of the Singularity is nearer. I mean, he's predicting that could be 2028, I think. So it, it might not be that far away. Barb also writes, I'm impressed by the quality of delivery from your clone, tj. As you know, I listen to more Udemy courses than watch them. I glance at the screen for stats and demonstrations, but that's about it. Well, Barb, thanks. Thanks for those comments. Our special guest today is the head of economy. Let's show your website again for people who want to know more about what you do. It's economy. It's just like it sounds. It's economy and clone together. E C L-O-N O M Y.com for those of you listening on the podcast, we put the link in the show notes as well. For people watching live with us today on social media or on demand, you'll see that in the description and the comments and the show notes as well. Jose, tell us more about economy. We do have a lot of people who watch this and listen to this who are always excited about what's new, how to help people, the intersection of technology and consulting and communication. Where do you see the biggest opportunities? I mean, what would be your advice to someone who is already, let's say a technology consultant and they want to get into this. Where are the business opportunities? And where, where do you see your own business evolving over the next 18 months?

So I think that's a good question. I think there's opportunities where in general, you know, like I said from the beginning, it depends on the region. But I think, you know, from my perspective, solving pain points and I think, I think. Sorry, just got interrupted here.

You sound good, I'm hearing you fine.

Okay. It's just another call got in. This is the problem of the multi connectivity tj. So I think that's.

Let's make that a learning moment because I'm breaking my own rules. I always tell people, you're doing a podcast, you're doing an interview, a media interview. Don't put your phone on silent. Literally turn it off. And I broke My own rules. So I'm gonna, I'm not chastising you, I'm chastising myself. So I'm gonna do that right now. So I'm gonna literally power off now. I know I can give you 100% attention. Please continue.

Right, so it's, I'm gonna take the, the, the last word you said attention. This is where, where the, the whole, this is what it's all about, right? You know, to get people's attention. And I think individuals and companies using this technology to fulfill people's attention. This is in general where we're at, right. I think and this can be transposed into platforms for online education. Platforms like LinkedIn where people basically, you know, they like a vitrine of their services. This is, you need to be creative right now through the AI capabilities along with the cloning technologies and digital. It is, you know, anywhere where you can reach a critical mass of people when you have this window of opportunity and get your wisdom. I think, you know, in this going into what you said, it can be coaching, you can be mentor, you can be a teacher, you can be, I don't know, online tutor. You can be, you know, anyone who has knowledge, experience and can't pass out on to other people. I'd say, you know, be creative and use this technology because it has literally very few limits right now.

Tell me where I'm wrong in my prediction. I actually think we're going to get to the point where there are no online courses. Nobody wants a course that things ultimately shift exclusively to a coach, a digital coach, a digital clone coaching. Right now that's clearly not the case. People come in every single day to my online courses and buy it. And you know, Udemy has millions and millions of students. So clearly people still like the idea of courses. But you know, think of the number one soccer team in Brazil. They don't send the players to an online course on how to kick better. They don't sign people up and oh, we're going to go to this, this course today on goal, on how to block the goal. No, they hire a really good expensive coach who's everything is a hundred percent interactive with the players. They don't sign up their players for classes or courses on how to be better soccer players because the stakes are high and there's money there. So get the best. I think the reason people take online courses and in person courses and workshops is it's more efficient and it's more of a cost savings than hiring a one on one coach. But if you Eliminate the problem of cost. Why wouldn't everyone want a personalized coach? Steve Jobs famously talked about how Alexander the Great, you know, he didn't go to school, room with 20 other children. He just hired Aristotle to come and tutor him every day because he could, because he could afford it. And that's where I see this happening is after a while, people want to use a coach. And of course there are couples going through problems where they might read a new relationship book every, every week. But the more common thing is people read one or two relationship books and then if they get a therapist, they'll spend a lot more money in one hour than they would on all the books they buy in a year. And they might go every single week, sometimes for years. People do that, whether it's a relationship coaching or a therapist, because it's seen as much more valuable because someone's actually, or something is listening to you and interacting to you. So that's where I see this headed. What are your thoughts on that? Am I off base?

I think again, you touched on a lot of good points. I think there is some differences in the cases that you mentioned, Right. You know, when you're. You're talking about elite sports, you're on the other side, you're talking about couples problems, right. Obviously, very different scenarios. Right. When it talks about relationships and marital relationships, you know, you may have, let's say, privacy issues, interacting with a clone of, you know, something that is not a person. You can see who the. Who the data, you know, goes to, you know, these types of concerns that yet are not mainstreamed. Right. This is like something new. I don't know. Right. So I'm kind of like put off.

Right.

But I think in general, I think you really touched on a very good point in the education. Why would you break it can break the paradigm of why do we need education in the conventional way? Like we all go to a class and you get one teacher doing the broadcast, all of us. Because in a way the online courses are individual, but at the end it's the same thing. It's like one recorded stuff to everybody. So I think education is one of the industries that will be revolutionized if certain criteria are met. Right. You need to make sure that certain infrastructure pillars are in place. And you know, depending on the region, they may be different. So technology may need to be adapted. I'm thinking about Africa. You know, maybe the wire lines for Internet is not as good as in the States. So you see there needs to be a little bit of adjustments in that. But I think education, anything that anyone can learn, obviously in that format, I think it'll be disrupted, obviously. You know, you touch a point on the sports, right? One thing is to have the coach giving confidence one on one and kind of like the team spirit, right? You need, you may need to be in place, but I wouldn't see, I wouldn't see it so crazy to have like that coach sessions on one on one for questions that, hey, you know, coach, you mentioned something in the session today I want to, you know, something different, separate, you know, the team. One of the team members may not be at ease to ask a question to the coach, like, look, I have a problem because they will know that that digital clone will be the one of the coach. So I think there is nuances and specific specificities to be somehow polished. But I think. I agree, I agree with you. I don't, I don't disagree generally. I think there may be things to consider in terms of law, privacy, these types of things.

Other comments coming in A viewer said, we're in a time of awakening, just like where we were when the World Wide web became accessible to the general public. I do see it as very similar times. Techies in general hate to sell their clones, cannot be trained to be super sales people. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, part of, you know, part of the value I see is any company having a clone so that if someone is a prospective customer or just fishing around, they can find out exactly what they want to know rather than having to wait through press releases and go through some length, the faq. So I see it as hugely, hugely helpful in the sales process. And I think that's, that's what's going to drive a lot of this, is companies are going to see an ROI in terms of increasing sales or reducing the need of having so many people man, an 800 number. I think that's going to be an issue as well. Here's what I think might really kick this industry off and maybe it won't happen. But imagine someone like Taylor Swift, arguably the most famous successful popular singer in the world today, if she were to have a clone and said, okay, you can hear me sing directly to you, where I mention your name in the song and you can access me 24 hours a day and I can even sing to you in your language. But it's going to sound like me, it's going to look like, like me and you can pick the concert venue and it's going to be $800 a month. I just, I can't. People are willing to spend $10,000 to go to her concert. Now for one time, I just think she would possibly make billions of dollars from that and that something like that might kick start this industry in a huge, profound way because there would be such a demand for it. Do you see artists or singers doing something like that?

So specific. I agree with you. I think this could be a really booming industry. And especially because of the entertainment part and the emotional aspect of it, you know, where, you know, you would, you would spend money on things that don't make, you know, economic sense in a way. So I think this would be easy or let's say, yeah, I think it will go for it. I haven't seen artists do this. What I have seen though, I don't know if you're familiar with a platform called suno suno.com suno.com is a generative AI on music. So basically you will just prompt your way in and you will just create songs. Right. And there was a lot of skepticism a few months ago, like, you know, the usual thing, the rights and the training, those types of things. Yeah, I think it was last week they released a piece of news where an artist, I'm not going to say the name but an artist did a partnership with them and say, hey, here is my track. I don't know if he's giving it fully or part of it. And he's making it available in the platform for users to build stems out of that track. So you see what it pretty much goes in line with. Hey, Taylor Swift will just put in generative AI all her wisdom in terms of career and hey, do the.

And there's no issue of theft or copyright there. If she's owning it, she's doing it for herself. She's making the monetary gains from it's. There's no copyright issues at that point. Point, presumably. Although I guess if she's making one song, I mean my daughter for example, is a huge Taylor Swift fan. So if, if Taylor has now changed the lyrics to say and Rossa, you're the greatest, I guess there's still a copyright issue of her downloading that, putting that on Spotify somewhere and monetizing it illegal. There's always some way of cheating. I should point out I just made a blunder. Barb had said that. She said that clones can be trained to be super sales people. That's a function of me putting my contacts in for distance and not for reading and not having my reading glasses on. So apologies, Barb. And she does point out it's suno s u n.com the generative AI for music creation Jose we're about at the end of our time. I wanted to again spotlight for people, people who want to know more about you. They should go to economy.com and they also, if they're at all interested in learning really exactly what's going on in the whole industry, they should download your market study. So I've read it now twice and there's. There's so many nuggets there. There's details, extensive table of contents. I want to, you know, I want to stress this is not something it was just thrown away, you know thrown together in an hour and a half of giving a few prompts to chat GPT. By the way, how many hours did you spend creating this?

Hours? It's difficult to say. I would say two to three weeks. That's.

Yeah, I mean it's just extensive, extensive time and I thought I knew everyone by the way. Interesting that you did that. I think it was smart you gave credits to you because you did most of the research but you also have your own GPT and you also give credit to your clone. I think that's transparent and smart and interesting all together. And it's for people who don't know that much about the AI clone avatar industry. They're going to learn a lot. It'll get them not only up to speed but you're basically an expert on this industry because it's such a brand new just it's in its infancy. So by reading this report you're sort of automatically in the know and can position yourself as an expert. I'm going through this quickly, not expecting everyone to, to read it but I just, I do want to give you a sense of how comprehensive it is and the fact that he, he really goes into the weeds. Yeah Synthesia he talks about hey Gen the deep brain Vide Colossian which is one I've, I've spent some time there. I've been to most of these websites hour one and video unique but some of them I have it Coach Vox, you talk about some that have raised tens of millions of dollars and others that have just bootstrapped.

Right.

So it's all over the Synthesia has raised $155 million. Others like Coach Fox I think essentially they're not publicly disclosing disclosing but I think they're basically bootstrapping. So you see everything in between and you were able to get their head count which I found very interesting. I had no idea that Synthesia had that many people working on it and I didn't know synthesis only had 4. I thought they were a much smaller company. So a lot of great information there and we appreciate it. I'm TJ Walker. This has been the digital Doppelganger section or aspect of the TJ Walker Success show today. Appreciate all of you joining us. You can always watch this on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you name it. We are everywhere, live and on demand. Special thanks to Jose and economy. We'll see you next time.