Discussing the State and Future of AI Tools

[00:00:01] The Current State of AI Tools for Content Generation

[00:00:01] Jess Bahr: Welcome to another episode of Marketers Talking AI.
[00:00:04] Jess Bahr: Pavel, what are you excited about this week?
[00:00:09] Pavel Konoplenko: So many things.
[00:00:10] Pavel Konoplenko: So many things.
[00:00:14] Pavel Konoplenko: I am excited about the coming consolidation of AI tools.
[00:00:20] Jess Bahr: Are you sick of all the different variations and options out there?
[00:00:23] Pavel Konoplenko: I am a little overwhelmed by all of the tools.
[00:00:28] Pavel Konoplenko: And we're at this stage right now where there's a lot of fake tools, some tools that aren't even AI, tools that are just like templated, machine learning algorithms, other tools that are actually just people in the Philippines doing processes on the back end.
[00:00:48] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's separating that and then also just seeing like I feel like I've been so cynical in the last two weeks.
[00:00:56] Pavel Konoplenko: I've been doing a lot of just research with us developing Fill your content calendar.
[00:01:02] Pavel Konoplenko: I'm curious about what other content generation tools are out there.
[00:01:06] Pavel Konoplenko: What are people doing?
[00:01:07] Pavel Konoplenko: How are people pitching themselves?
[00:01:08] Pavel Konoplenko: And I have just been coming across so many redundant shallow features and benefits.
[00:01:20] Pavel Konoplenko: A lot of it sounds the same, a lot of it looks the same.
[00:01:25] Pavel Konoplenko: I guess I'll get more into that.
[00:01:26] Pavel Konoplenko: But I'm definitely excited know in a year or so when salesforce or HubSpot or like really consolidates this area and there is the go to tool for content generation.
[00:01:38] Jess Bahr: You do know we are contributing to that volume of AI tools because we're developing AI tools.
[00:01:45] Pavel Konoplenko: We are the problem.
[00:01:46] Jess Bahr: We are very much that I will say I was super disappointed.
[00:01:50] Jess Bahr: I won't say who it is, but there is an AI generated ad creative platform that I've been getting retargeted with a ton targeted and then retargeted.
[00:02:00] Jess Bahr: I admit I went to their website, checked it out and it looked super powerful in their Instagram ads.
[00:02:06] Jess Bahr: And when I signed up for it, it was just like a bunch of ugly ass templates that you get in Canva and the AI was that it would auto fit your picture to all of them.
[00:02:16] Jess Bahr: Yeah, like what is is what is that?
[00:02:19] Pavel Konoplenko: You know what AI What I will say to that though, is shout out to traditional marketing.
[00:02:25] Pavel Konoplenko: Like the only reason you went to that site is because someone did their remarketing.
[00:02:30] Pavel Konoplenko: Because I saw them too.
[00:02:32] Pavel Konoplenko: And it comes down to just how much can you get in people's faces with something interesting.
[00:02:38] Pavel Konoplenko: And it worked.
[00:02:39] Pavel Konoplenko: And it worked.
[00:02:40] Pavel Konoplenko: And I signed up for the trial and everything.
[00:02:42] Jess Bahr: Well, if you have someone who also has never used Canva, there used to be a company, Banner Snack, they got bought by another company that's trying to be Canva.
[00:02:53] Jess Bahr: But you could actually build your HTML and dynamic ads in there and it was super similar to Canva.
[00:02:59] Jess Bahr: So if you haven't used other tools like that and then you find this tool for the first time, you're probably like, wow, this is amazing.
[00:03:06] Jess Bahr: But if you've seen all these other tools, you start to see the similarities of some word for word AI that mass produces content with no one looking at the output, but then they'll make claims that it's like the best thing you've ever read.
[00:03:20] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:03:21] Pavel Konoplenko: And maybe that's the danger of being out on the cutting edge is we see the Canva of the world, we see the figmas.
[00:03:29] Pavel Konoplenko: And part of it is we've kind of got desensitized to these interesting, sleek tools that really do solve a lot for a business.
[00:03:40] Pavel Konoplenko: And yeah, a lot of people haven't seen them.
[00:03:43] Pavel Konoplenko: I'm sure Canva is doing a whole bunch of marketing to make sure people see more of them.
[00:03:49] Pavel Konoplenko: But there's more people who have not seen or used Canva than know probability.
[00:03:57] Jess Bahr: I'll say so.
[00:03:58] Jess Bahr: I've used Canva for a long time.
[00:03:59] Jess Bahr: We have someone on our team, Nivi, who is a Canva power user.
[00:04:05] Jess Bahr: And everything I bring up, she's like, yeah, Canva can do that.
[00:04:08] Jess Bahr: I was need to, I need to go go edit this video.
[00:04:10] Jess Bahr: I'll put it in premiere pro.
[00:04:12] Jess Bahr: She's like, no, you can do it in Canva.
[00:04:13] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh, I want to go make this animation.
[00:04:15] Jess Bahr: Yeah, you can do it in Canva.
[00:04:16] Jess Bahr: Like, what the frick can't canva?
[00:04:18] Pavel Konoplenko: Well, that's how I feel about Airtable with me and Airtable where it's like anytime anyone says anything with marketing, yeah, just use Airtable.
[00:04:26] Pavel Konoplenko: And most people are like, oh, I've used it once and it was hard.
[00:04:29] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like, yeah, but when you just use it for a little bit more, you kind of get deeper into it.
[00:04:36] Pavel Konoplenko: And maybe that's the thing with all tools.
[00:04:38] Pavel Konoplenko: Maybe that's really this idea, like, we expect our AI tools to be the end all, be all.
[00:04:44] Pavel Konoplenko: It's going to solve all the problems and I'm just going to click a button because that's what all the ads are telling me.
[00:04:50] Pavel Konoplenko: It's going to ten x my productivity, it's going to ten x my output at the click of a button.
[00:04:54] Pavel Konoplenko: And I clicked all the buttons and I don't have the ten x.
[00:04:56] Jess Bahr: It's going to understand my tone of voice, the tone of when I don't even know what my tone of voice is.
[00:05:03] Jess Bahr: I couldn't tell you what my tone of voice is.
[00:05:05] Jess Bahr: And I think it differs in an article, between sections, and it differs between different pieces of content.
[00:05:11] Jess Bahr: But somehow I expect an AI to understand my tone of voice.
[00:05:16] Pavel Konoplenko: The tone of voice and the writing style is like one of my, I don't know, pet peeves right now.
[00:05:22] Pavel Konoplenko: There's a tool that I was trying out earlier.
[00:05:24] Pavel Konoplenko: I was looking at their pricing, and for the lower pricing tier, you get one tone, and then for slightly higher tier, you get three brand tones.
[00:05:34] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like, what does that actually mean?
[00:05:37] Pavel Konoplenko: What does it mean to have more tones and the tones that you're usually given, it's kind of predictable.
[00:05:44] Pavel Konoplenko: There's like informal, professional, amusing, some tools go with different names.
[00:05:49] Pavel Konoplenko: I have like a plugin for Chat GPT where it's like, you have style and tone, and it gets real deep into what the styles could be.
[00:05:58] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like one could be like, epigrammatic, which we looked up, and it's basically you sound like an epigram.
[00:06:04] Jess Bahr: I thought it meant a tombstone.
[00:06:06] Jess Bahr: I thought it was a thing that you put on a tombstone.
[00:06:09] Pavel Konoplenko: What is it?
[00:06:10] Jess Bahr: Epitaph.
[00:06:11] Pavel Konoplenko: Epitaph?
[00:06:12] Jess Bahr: Epitaph, right.
[00:06:13] Pavel Konoplenko: Wait, no.
[00:06:13] Pavel Konoplenko: Isn't that what you put at the beginning of a book?
[00:06:17] Pavel Konoplenko: That's the thank you.
[00:06:20] Jess Bahr: Welcome to learning.
[00:06:22] Jess Bahr: Oh.
[00:06:23] Jess Bahr: Epitaph is a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.
[00:06:31] Pavel Konoplenko: Okay, epitaph.
[00:06:33] Jess Bahr: Did I spell it right when I googled it?
[00:06:35] Jess Bahr: No.
[00:06:35] Jess Bahr: Did Google know what meant?
[00:06:37] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:06:38] Pavel Konoplenko: Can Chad GPT do that?
[00:06:40] Pavel Konoplenko: Maybe, but yeah, the idea of tone and style, it's like, one of these things for me where so I spent many years working with writers, like human writers and developing them as writers, as, like, a managing editor.
[00:06:57] Jess Bahr: What a world in which we have to specify human writers.
[00:07:02] Jess Bahr: What world are we living in?
[00:07:03] The Role of AI in Marketing: Expectations vs Reality

[00:07:03] Pavel Konoplenko: Anyway, back to your story and getting to the writing style.
[00:07:07] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like the tone first of all, it's never helpful just to have the word.
[00:07:11] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, oh, here is the tone.
[00:07:14] Pavel Konoplenko: You give the writer the tone, and it's like we're a satirical paper or whatever.
[00:07:20] Pavel Konoplenko: So we have a satirical tone that doesn't help as much as we think it does.
[00:07:26] Pavel Konoplenko: And you also can't be, like, satirical all throughout.
[00:07:30] Pavel Konoplenko: You need to have moments of authenticity.
[00:07:32] Pavel Konoplenko: It has to be a blend of tones and styles.
[00:07:35] Pavel Konoplenko: It can't be this one size fits all.
[00:07:37] Pavel Konoplenko: And when these writing tools give you this drop down of, like, oh, just say which tone you want.
[00:07:42] Pavel Konoplenko: It doesn't solve your business problem, either because the reason your landing pages aren't converting or you're not selling isn't because the tone is off.
[00:07:52] Pavel Konoplenko: The tone is not this magical thing that will fix it.
[00:07:55] Pavel Konoplenko: The reason I think we're getting stuck on the tone and style is because humans like to do this with whenever machines come for our work, we're like, oh, yeah, but can it do this thing?
[00:08:05] Pavel Konoplenko: Or what about this random thing?
[00:08:07] Pavel Konoplenko: So I feel like we're at this random thing now where it's like, no, we need to get the style right.
[00:08:12] Pavel Konoplenko: When most companies, when they've worked with human writers, most human writers don't have a consistent tone and style, and it's really not easy to capture the tone and style of a brand from scratch.
[00:08:25] Pavel Konoplenko: Like, it's something that develops over time, and it blends and evolves over time.
[00:08:32] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's also like I don't know, I feel like we have very high expectations of our AI tools.
[00:08:38] Jess Bahr: Well, I think having spent my career building teams, I would say like a third 25% to a third of who you hire is going to be shit.
[00:08:48] Jess Bahr: You're going to find that you have employees that sound really good on paper, and they come in and they're lacking.
[00:08:54] Jess Bahr: They're not the best.
[00:08:56] Jess Bahr: But with AI, it feels like we expect 100% of the output to be exactly perfect, even though oftentimes we can't articulate what we need.
[00:09:05] Jess Bahr: There's a designer I used to work with.
[00:09:07] Jess Bahr: I would send her the most random shit.
[00:09:11] Jess Bahr: I would, like, mock it up in PowerPoint and be like, I want this image, but I want it to feel like home.
[00:09:18] Jess Bahr: I want it to feel warm and cozy, but still professional.
[00:09:21] Jess Bahr: And she would come back with a thing that my mind couldn't have even thought of that was so perfect.
[00:09:29] Jess Bahr: Yeah, that's what we expect from AI.
[00:09:31] Jess Bahr: That it just knows what we want.
[00:09:33] Jess Bahr: It can predict what we want.
[00:09:34] Jess Bahr: It can understand it and deliver us something that's going to be super performant with minimal input, and it's going to do it consistently 100% of the time.
[00:09:41] Jess Bahr: And when you compare that to humans, we would never expect that from a human employee.
[00:09:46] Jess Bahr: We would never expect that.
[00:09:47] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, we would never expect 100% output with no input.
[00:09:52] Pavel Konoplenko: I do believe with shit input, we have different standards.
[00:09:56] Pavel Konoplenko: When it comes to machines, there's a funny tumblr I used to follow.
[00:10:01] Pavel Konoplenko: It was like shit clients say.
[00:10:03] Pavel Konoplenko: And it was like designers basically complaining about all the client would say something, I like this, but make it pop.
[00:10:11] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like, what does that mean?
[00:10:15] Pavel Konoplenko: And that's what the good designers do.
[00:10:16] Pavel Konoplenko: The good designers are able to almost read minds, and they've seen enough creative and feedback that they know this is what is meant by make it pop more.
[00:10:27] Pavel Konoplenko: One of my skills that I intentionally tried to learn early on with designers and with developers is to get really specific, like using screenshots and arrows, like pointing here and there, because it just makes the conversation so much easier when you can reference something.
[00:10:45] Pavel Konoplenko: Because I don't speak the designer language.
[00:10:47] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't speak developer language, but I can show what I'm trying to get at.
[00:10:51] Pavel Konoplenko: And the better that I can do that, I feel like it improves that interaction and the output that I get.
[00:10:59] Pavel Konoplenko: And we've talked about how do we get good chat GPT output?
[00:11:03] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, you have to talk to it.
[00:11:05] Pavel Konoplenko: You have to lead it into a direction, as opposed to doing a one prompt shot, which you're never going to get, like, one prompt, and you get the output you need, and you're done.
[00:11:17] Pavel Konoplenko: You have to keep talking to it.
[00:11:20] Pavel Konoplenko: I forgot who I was listening to.
[00:11:22] Pavel Konoplenko: But is there a similar thing to with cars, like smart cars or self driving cars?
[00:11:32] Pavel Konoplenko: If a self driving car gets into an accident, like one accident, it's like, oh, let's pull the program.
[00:11:39] Pavel Konoplenko: We got to pause on this whole thing.
[00:11:41] Pavel Konoplenko: But how many accidents do humans get into?
[00:11:43] Pavel Konoplenko: We're not like, oh, a human got into an accident.
[00:11:46] Pavel Konoplenko: Pull off all the human drivers off the road until we figure this thing out.
[00:11:50] Pavel Konoplenko: And we have very different expectations of humans and machines.
[00:11:54] Jess Bahr: Totally.
[00:11:54] Pavel Konoplenko: It lives in marketing, too.
[00:11:56] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:11:57] Jess Bahr: There's no margin for them to be wrong.
[00:11:59] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:12:00] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think moving forward, marketers should be okay with that.
[00:12:05] Pavel Konoplenko: We should be okay with not getting the best output because it's up to your judgment as the marketer to figure out, hey, this doesn't exactly fit.
[00:12:16] Pavel Konoplenko: And that's where you can still shine with your expertise and your perspective, because you have to say no to certain things.
[00:12:22] Pavel Konoplenko: Like you can't say yes to everything the AI tells you.
[00:12:26] Pavel Konoplenko: Because also the AI likes to say a bunch of extra random stuff, too.
[00:12:30] Jess Bahr: Well, I think about if you're a designer and you can use Photoshop, cool.
[00:12:37] Jess Bahr: Maybe everyone can use Photoshop, but can you also use After Effects and Illustrator and all these other tools?
[00:12:43] Jess Bahr: As a designer, the better that you can use the tools, the better that you'll be, the more efficient you'll be, it brings more to the table.
[00:12:51] Jess Bahr: And so as a marketer, if you can understand how to leverage these tools to help you, again, do good marketing and do good at your job, if you can use AI to help you do your job better, it gives you an advantage, a competitive edge.
[00:13:07] AI tools for employees in digital businesses and the future of digital photo storage

[00:13:07] Jess Bahr: Also, as an employer, are you giving your employees AI tools?
[00:13:11] Jess Bahr: Are you giving them access?
[00:13:12] Jess Bahr: Are you giving them accounts?
[00:13:14] Pavel Konoplenko: Yes.
[00:13:14] Pavel Konoplenko: I think every company should give their employees the plus chat, GBT, plus membership just so they can use it.
[00:13:22] Pavel Konoplenko: Because part of also knowing what tools to use is also knowing what tools not to use.
[00:13:27] Pavel Konoplenko: Because it's the hammer and nail thing.
[00:13:29] Pavel Konoplenko: You can't just always throw one tool at it expecting that you get the solution.
[00:13:35] Pavel Konoplenko: I do have a great story about using the new Photoshop generative fill.
[00:13:40] Pavel Konoplenko: So the news came out, I think, a month ago, the generative fill, I played around with it when it came out, but I don't do design, so I wasn't in it like that.
[00:13:49] Pavel Konoplenko: But we were launching a newsletter, promotions, for one of our clients, and we needed a four x three image and we had one by ones, and then we had like the 16 x nine or whatever, the slightly thinner thing.
[00:14:07] Pavel Konoplenko: So for me to get to four x three, I'm like, I would have to resize it and mess up the proportions a little bit or things would get cut off.
[00:14:15] Pavel Konoplenko: So instead what I did is I took the one by one and I added the little sides to it, generated the fill, and it kind of filled in the backgrounds on the left and the right.
[00:14:27] Pavel Konoplenko: So it gave me the four x three.
[00:14:28] Pavel Konoplenko: And on the other, creative, where we had the extra skinny guy, I added like a little thing on the top and just a little thing at the bottom, and it made one full image.
[00:14:37] Pavel Konoplenko: And in like five minutes, I had the assets that we needed without needing to go to a designer.
[00:14:43] Pavel Konoplenko: And I'm like, being able to resize assets at the click of a button was really cool.
[00:14:51] Jess Bahr: Did it look good?
[00:14:52] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, it looked to me, it looked perfect because it just fills in the rest of the thing so you wouldn't know that it wasn't even supposed to be smaller.
[00:15:01] Pavel Konoplenko: And it was so easy.
[00:15:03] Pavel Konoplenko: And I loved it.
[00:15:05] Pavel Konoplenko: And I did have the thought, like, wow, if I was a like, I would love to explore the other features that Photoshop is pushing, because Photoshop and Adobe, they're like the leaders for so, like, I don't know how to use Illustrator.
[00:15:20] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know how to use the other tools.
[00:15:21] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's have I imagine if I was a designer, I would be like, wow.
[00:15:27] Jess Bahr: Well, the question is, can canva do it?
[00:15:29] Jess Bahr: Because canva can do almost everything.
[00:15:31] Jess Bahr: I remember when Photoshop rolled up the ability to if you take enough photos, it will delete people from your background.
[00:15:38] Jess Bahr: That was a huge thing where you could automatically clean up, because if you go to really popular tourist spots, you're never going to get a photo with no one in the background.
[00:15:47] Jess Bahr: But now you can at least get enough to kind of fake it.
[00:15:50] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, well, that's like the big feature now.
[00:15:52] Pavel Konoplenko: Like all the new iPhone not the new iPhone, the new Android phones, the magic eraser or whatever.
[00:15:58] Pavel Konoplenko: Everyone loves to do this magic eraser.
[00:16:00] Jess Bahr: Thing, and it's erase all your X's out of everything.
[00:16:04] Pavel Konoplenko: It's coming to the people.
[00:16:08] Jess Bahr: There's a whole movement for analog film again, because the idea that with digital, we're looking for things to be perfect and so we so easily will delete Photos where we don't look good to take a better one, that people are now kind of almost losing memories because they just delete it all.
[00:16:24] Jess Bahr: But I think of, like I have like, two and a half terabytes of photos.
[00:16:27] Pavel Konoplenko: I have a lot of yeah, my Google.
[00:16:29] Jess Bahr: What happens when we die?
[00:16:33] Pavel Konoplenko: People have been asking that question for millennia.
[00:16:37] Jess Bahr: Someone just going to delete.
[00:16:38] Jess Bahr: But you have all this stuff you're digitally hoarding when you have everything in physical form, when you pass away, someone has to go through those photos and make a decision to delete or not.
[00:16:52] Jess Bahr: When it's all digital, who even has access to it?
[00:16:57] Jess Bahr: And are they going to go through and save it digitally?
[00:17:00] Jess Bahr: And then you get these generations.
[00:17:02] Jess Bahr: Like, our great grandchildren will have digital photos from the they're somehow dusty.
[00:17:09] Jess Bahr: They're like, digitally degraded because they've been stored for so long.
[00:17:13] Pavel Konoplenko: That'll be interesting.
[00:17:16] Pavel Konoplenko: And I guess we'll need a few more generations to see that.
[00:17:19] Pavel Konoplenko: But yeah.
[00:17:19] Pavel Konoplenko: Who even owns the photos?
[00:17:20] Pavel Konoplenko: Does Google own that photo afterwards?
[00:17:23] Pavel Konoplenko: What's the copyright there?
[00:17:25] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know.
[00:17:26] Jess Bahr: Oh, shit.
[00:17:27] The Evolving Role of AI in Content Creation and Journalism

[00:17:27] Jess Bahr: Anyway, back to AI.
[00:17:30] Jess Bahr: AI.
[00:17:30] Jess Bahr: Is taking over and they'll kill us.
[00:17:31] Jess Bahr: We don't have to worry about it.
[00:17:33] Pavel Konoplenko: But yeah, I've just been very cynical.
[00:17:34] Pavel Konoplenko: I feel like recently with all of the AI tools and the expectations that we put onto what AI can and cannot do without, even the people learning how to use.
[00:17:50] Pavel Konoplenko: So, like, you asked me earlier what GPT stood for.
[00:17:55] Jess Bahr: Pavel, don't be calling me out like.
[00:17:57] Pavel Konoplenko: Well, I mean, I didn't know either.
[00:18:03] Jess Bahr: It's something I thought we should know.
[00:18:05] Pavel Konoplenko: And I guess I knew the G was generative, but then I'm like, I don't know what the PT could be.
[00:18:14] Pavel Konoplenko: I think it goes back to how easily we normalize the technology that we use.
[00:18:24] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't imagine in a year that prompt engineering is going to have to be a thing and you have to know how to structure it because it's going to be kind of built in into your browser, into your iPhone, I think, people.
[00:18:37] Jess Bahr: So we got access recently to this insane data set of jobs data.
[00:18:42] Jess Bahr: And I was looking through and seeing who's hiring for AI content type roles.
[00:18:46] Jess Bahr: And I saw a few that was I saw one that was like, director of AI generated content.
[00:18:53] Jess Bahr: And the job description was really understanding how to leverage all the modern generative AI tools to generate content.
[00:19:00] Jess Bahr: So I think three months ago, that would have been a prompt engineer role.
[00:19:05] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Jess Bahr: But now they're making it a content role with a focus on AI.
[00:19:09] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Pavel Konoplenko: And being able to use the different tools and the models that are available.
[00:19:13] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's getting a little bit more sophisticated.
[00:19:16] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:19:20] Pavel Konoplenko: I think the reason that I'm cynical is I want to believe all the hype.
[00:19:24] Pavel Konoplenko: I want to believe all of the hype, but it's just like any other tool.
[00:19:28] Pavel Konoplenko: There is not going to be a tool that solves your marketing.
[00:19:31] Pavel Konoplenko: Because even just from if you're just thinking about it, if there's a tool that exists for perfect market, your competitors are going to be using.
[00:19:39] Jess Bahr: Pablo, you're also making the sausage, right?
[00:19:42] Jess Bahr: Like, you're building AI tools.
[00:19:43] Jess Bahr: And so I think I would assume that when you see some of this marketing that you're hearing where people are know content as good as human written content, and you're like, well, first off, like, what the fuck does that mean?
[00:19:54] Jess Bahr: Number two, I've managed people that were writers that were absolute shit and had no tone of voice and had no personality.
[00:20:00] Jess Bahr: And so I don't want it to be as good as human writers.
[00:20:02] Jess Bahr: I want to be better.
[00:20:03] Jess Bahr: But you're seeing it, but you're also building it, so you're knowing what goes into like, every time I see Chris Walker say anything, I just cringe it's.
[00:20:12] Jess Bahr: Like, no, that's not how marketing works.
[00:20:14] Jess Bahr: Stop saying dumb shit.
[00:20:16] Jess Bahr: And so I imagine it feels very similar.
[00:20:19] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, I'm going to be an AI vegan, but I am excited by what the industries are doing.
[00:20:31] Pavel Konoplenko: Like, even journalism.
[00:20:32] Pavel Konoplenko: I think journalism has always been the punching bag of technology.
[00:20:37] Jess Bahr: I feel like they're always living in fear.
[00:20:39] Jess Bahr: There's always like, oh, my God, something coming.
[00:20:41] Pavel Konoplenko: Newspapers are going to die.
[00:20:43] Jess Bahr: Yeah, well, do you remember when Facebook used to have its automatic news articles that were curated on the side, and then there was outcry that it was biased.
[00:20:53] Jess Bahr: And so in order to reduce bias in whatever was coming up with it, they made it human generated, so they shared both sides, but there was still bias in it, and so they got rid of it completely.
[00:21:04] Jess Bahr: But I saw Google is testing ways to use AI to write articles to replace journalists.
[00:21:14] Jess Bahr: Essentially, this is why one of the reasons that the Screenwriters Guild and the actors are striking is how AI so they went on strike.
[00:21:25] Jess Bahr: The writers did.
[00:21:26] Jess Bahr: People thought AI could replace them.
[00:21:28] Jess Bahr: It's not that easy.
[00:21:29] Jess Bahr: So now the actors and directors and everyone else is striking, too.
[00:21:33] Union Strikes and Influencer Guilds in the Creative Industry

[00:21:33] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know if the directors are the actors are actors, but the actors and one of the things so it was also interesting, it was hard to find the demands.
[00:21:42] Pavel Konoplenko: For some reason.
[00:21:43] Pavel Konoplenko: Every news article talked about general broad demands, but very few articles actually went.
[00:21:52] Jess Bahr: One of the big issues royalties when it comes to streaming.
[00:21:55] Pavel Konoplenko: Because the big thing that jumped out at me was the studios wanted to be able to bring in actors, background actors, like the actors you see in the background, scan them and then use their image in perpetuity with no royalty for any other future like background.
[00:22:16] Jess Bahr: Which they came out and said wasn't the actual demand that it was just for that job?
[00:22:21] Jess Bahr: Because they came out and said, we didn't actually ask for that, because that's what I had seen one of the points.
[00:22:27] Jess Bahr: And they said, we didn't actually ask for that.
[00:22:29] Jess Bahr: We asked for it to be scanned, and it would just be for that production.
[00:22:32] Jess Bahr: But I could see people being like, well, the production is ten seasons, because yeah, then you have someone's I mean, honestly, I feel like we all give up rights to our, likeliness, every time, likeliness, likeness likeness every time we upload photos to Facebook.
[00:22:50] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:22:50] Jess Bahr: So, like, nice of them to make it a contract.
[00:22:54] Jess Bahr: I feel like they'd already be stealing it anyways.
[00:22:57] Jess Bahr: Black Mirror fucked us with this.
[00:22:59] Jess Bahr: Black mirror.
[00:23:00] Jess Bahr: New season.
[00:23:01] Jess Bahr: Joan is horrible.
[00:23:04] Jess Bahr: Showed what the future could be.
[00:23:06] Jess Bahr: And I think that really also scared people to see it in such a real way, where it's like an actor giving their right to digitally be recreated, then all of a sudden, that actor is, like, taking a shit in the middle of the street and saying racist stuff and burning down churches.
[00:23:21] Jess Bahr: And they're like, oh, shit, I lost control because I contractually agreed to all of this being okay.
[00:23:28] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, I think the writers strike and the actor strike is very interesting for the overall creative industry moving forward.
[00:23:37] Pavel Konoplenko: I do feel like they set the bar on some level.
[00:23:40] Pavel Konoplenko: I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years.
[00:23:42] Pavel Konoplenko: We'll have, like an influencer guild, like a union for influencers, because people are.
[00:23:48] Jess Bahr: Saying to influencers, hey, if there's a product that would have been promoted by a celebrity or during a show, like product placement, and as an influencer, you fill that gap and you're promoting it, you're a scab.
[00:24:03] Jess Bahr: And so people are actually pushing influencers to not work with specific brands or promoting movies or any television shows.
[00:24:10] Jess Bahr: Interesting, because I could see how you could say that.
[00:24:14] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, because where's the line between a writer, actor and an influencer, which in some level they are also many celebrities.
[00:24:22] Jess Bahr: I agree, though.
[00:24:23] Jess Bahr: I think that there will be a union for influencers because I think there's also a quality issue when it comes to influencers.
[00:24:28] Jess Bahr: Like, you've worked with influencers before.
[00:24:30] Jess Bahr: It can be horrible.
[00:24:32] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, there's no standardization.
[00:24:34] Pavel Konoplenko: But I think the biggest reason why there should be a union is because the power dynamics are just so different.
[00:24:44] Pavel Konoplenko: There's no collective power that influencers have.
[00:24:47] Pavel Konoplenko: The best that they can do is just repost.
[00:24:51] Pavel Konoplenko: When one of the algorithms, one of the platforms changes their algorithm or something, they can all have an outrage thing together, but there's no way that they can show up and represent themselves.
[00:25:03] Jess Bahr: Well, there's massive wage disparity.
[00:25:07] Pavel Konoplenko: It's and when there's wage disparity, there's always, like, discrimination at play.
[00:25:12] Pavel Konoplenko: It's definitely there's no one checking how Instagram works with influencers and YouTube and all that, and how the brands then work with the influencers through that.
[00:25:25] Jess Bahr: Agree.
[00:25:25] Closing Episode Remarks by Jess Bahr and Pavel Konoplenko

[00:25:25] Jess Bahr: Well, on that note, we are actually at time for today's episode.
[00:25:29] Jess Bahr: But thank you everyone for joining us.
[00:25:32] Pavel Konoplenko: We'll see you next week, like, and subscribe and tell all your friends about it.
[00:25:37] Jess Bahr: Bell for notifications.
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[00:25:44] Jess Bahr: We're real people.
[00:25:46] Pavel Konoplenko: Bye.