OpenAI’s AI Filmmaking Research | The Curious Refuge Podcast

Open AI’s AI Filmmaking Research | Episode 03

The Curious Refuge Podcast | OpenAI’s AI Filmmaking Research

Welcome to Episode 03 of The Curious Refuge Podcast. We're thrilled to welcome Chad Nelson our special guest for this episode! As a trailblazer in the creative industry, Chad currently excels as the Chief Creative Director at Top Golf. He is also an avid AI Filmmaker. Chad is celebrated for creating 'Critterz,' the first-ever Dall E short film.

You may recognize him from his captivating talk at Open AI's DevDay 2023. Fun fact about Chad: he worked on the cover of Vogue magazine where they combined AI with Bella Hadid. You are going to want to hear about his experience.

Tune in to gain valuable insights from Chad's nearly 25-year journey in the creative field. Don't forget to explore the show notes below for a glimpse of his impressive work.

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Show Notes:
Watch Critterz
Critterz BTS
Chad Nelson's Presentation at Open AI Dev Day
Link to Dall-E

OpenAI’s AI Filmmaking Research | The Curious Refuge Podcast 03

Below is a from our conversation with Chad Nelson.

OpenAI’s AI Filmmaking Research | The Curious Refuge Podcast 03

Today, we are super excited to have a creative pioneer in the world of A.I. Chad Nelson. Chad has been in the creative industry for over 25 years. His experience ranges from being the founder of a multimedia gaming studio to working as a creative director. He also created the first ever Dolly's short film, and it's called Critters, and you can check it out online.

It's super good. Chad currently lives in San Francisco, where he is the chief creative director for Topgolf Media, a sports entertainment complex that features an inclusive, high tech golf game that everyone can enjoy. It's super fun. I've had many birthdays there. Chad is a researcher with Auburn, helping them to develop the future of creative tools. Chad, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast.

Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

So we want to kick things off with just kind of some general questions about your creative journey. So if you could just briefly tell us about what your career has been like and how that transitioned into the world of A.I. research.

Yeah, Well, it's it's been a fascinating journey. I'll put it this way. I mean, because A.I. has really only come into play in the last 18 months, I would say specifically, most of my career has been as a creative director, has really focused on how do we take new technology and utilize it in entertainment or interactive applications. So, i.e., video games.

I mean, my early career, I was building websites for movie studios and essentially when they didn't know how to build content for for the I think they call it back then the information superhighway. I mean, myself, I mean but but or cyberspace, as I used to say. I mean, it was the early days and the studios who were obviously content experts had no idea what these these websites, what you could actually do on the Internet.

And so worked in the beginning of my career as. Okay, great. How do we take entertainment and bring it to essentially the early web? I started also doing with that experience. I basically came up with a way of bringing real time 3D graphics to the web and then also streaming media onto real time 3D graphics. So in a way, it was in 97, 98, we were building some of the first metaverse, which was kind of funny.

And then that company was sold to onto which then YouTube utilizes their codec and then Google bot. So in a way I feel like I've been at this like bleeding edge of, of each kind of wave of the end of the kind of the Internet and our digital essentially our digital future. And what's interesting is fast forwarding to then about 18 months ago when opening I actually two years ago in Open, I really announced GPT three.

I was very fascinated what would GPT meant for really specifically video game dialog because I was so and in a way bored of video game interact are environments where when you run into an NPC it was like one of seven canned responses every single time. And so thus I think players get used to this notion that oh there's, there's characters and then there's just this dumb fodder that you can drive over, shoot at or whatever.

They basically they're just little automated, you know, like essentially whether NPCs are robots essentially, and, and I felt like, well, that's not how the real world works. The real world is everyone has motivation and emotions. And if you could actually run into someone in a video game environment and they were not going to respond in a way that was expected but now unexpected, that actually might change our and our emotional connection to these simulated worlds.

I mean, greatly. Like if someone panicked or someone actually wanted to engage with you in conversation that might really, truly change the fabric of interactivity. And in so many video games. So I was very interested in that, and that's how I kind of got introduced to open A.I.. However, it wasn't until Dolly when they dropped that in April of 22 or last year, essentially where I had never had any real contact with Open prior, but I basically saw that was a closed release and and they were doing closed beta.

And I wrote them saying, Hey, I would love to play with these tools because in the world of IP development, if I'm a Disney or if I'm Marvel or Star Wars and I want to build a world and build IP, these tools seem to me, again, just from looking at it from the outside in, seem to be something fundamental for how we go out and create content and how we innovate and build IP.

And and so I was just like, I would love to experiment it with that kind of lens. And luckily they let me in and I started playing with, with Dolly. And I would say that was it was probably one of the most transformative, you know, first days of using a piece of software that I've ever experienced. I mean, outside of maybe Photoshop in the in the nineties when they added layers, when you're like, oh my gosh, later it changed everything.

But this was I just found myself creating faster than I've ever been able to create prior. And as you have, like an idea goes off in your head, the ability just to quickly visualize it, see it, generate it, and then modify it, tweak it. I mean, even day one with Dolly they had in painting. So I mean, mid journey obviously finally released that just recently.

But so from the very outset they were doing some very innovative things with with essentially generative art and I found that yeah, that for me that was just probably one of the most, I don't know, significant days in terms of where I saw, wow, this is there was the everything before and now this is the moment where we're kind of entering a whole new era.

You know, if we had the computer era of the eighties to the nineties, the Internet era of really the mid nineties to the kind of through the 2020s, I think we're now entering this new era and this kind of represents the beginning of that. But yeah, that's how I got started in it. And what was fascinating is I mean I'm sure you all have created and when you play some tools, you experiment and you come up with some, some images or animations, again, depending on the tool.

I made this collage of all these characters because in the beginning. Dolly Ah opened didn't want us to do or have anyone build people or create people because I think they were still doing bias training and I think they were so concerned about deepfakes. And so those concerns. So my background being in animation, I do what most animators do is like, Oh great, I want to express emotion through characters.

And I was very curious to see how the AI could handle expressing emotion because I'd seen like, you know, the avocado chair or like a squirrel on a skateboard in Times Square. I mean, those things are like A plus B equals. See, you know, those were kind of nice things. But to me, this was to see emotion was was the thing that I really wanted to capture.

And so anyway, one of my first prompts was a red, furry, red, furry monster looks in wonder at a burning candle. And and when it came up, I was blown away because it was definitely a red monster. And but what was more important and I was looking at a candle, but more important is you felt the wonder. It is it was one of those like, aha moments where you realize this thing is getting emotion is better than I ever thought.

And if this is the starting point, like if this is the beginning, this is the worst it's ever going to be, I'm like, Wow, we're already like kind of at masterclass levels.

That statement. There is such a good point, and I feel like that's what we're walking around trying to share is just like, No, this is just the beginning. Like when you're watching these films, like we're comparing it to things, right, that are just on the silver screen. But this is the start of seeing the quality we're getting from these.

And it reminds me of Caleb and I. A few months ago, we were in San Francisco at the Walt Disney Family Museum, seeing the very beginning of what he was creating, what their team was creating. And it's it's very interesting to see, you know, that beginning to where they are now, right? Yeah.

You know, I was going to say I love that museum, by the way. And it also reminds me of the story when Steve Jobs brought in investors into Pixar to invest into the studio when they were building Toy Story and they showed the sequence of if you know, if the rumor is correct in the story, could be, you know, half myth at this point.

But but was the the the old plastic soldiers sequence when they were doing like, you know, kind of trying to infiltrate through the house with the little soldiers, toy soldiers and Steve Jobs showed that sequence and said this is the worst thing Pixar will ever create. And because he knew that was the that was obviously the technology was so limited, but yet that scene was still so entertaining and so captivating that, of course, they were able to generate all the funds they needed.

But but it was like that moment where you're like, okay, this is the bottom. If this is really the worst, that's incredible. And obviously we've seen what Pixar has done. So.

No, I totally agree with you. It reminds me of people looking at Pong when Pong first came out and then declaring that there's no future for, you know, video games and storytelling Like this is just the very beginning of this this large revolution that you're talking about. So you brought up so many points. We could have probably a ten hour conversation of just what you've brought up right now.

I want to kind of pick apart what you said kind of piece by piece and kind of work through some things. Let's we'll start at the end. You were talking about working with Open A.I., with Dolly and this kind of new experience where you're you're directing not necessarily this specific visuals in the sense of how you might communicate to a robot at this point.

You know, like we're used to working in mid Journey where, you know, you want to see something specific, you need to like, you know, really dial in your prompt, but you're actually using language that humans use to communicate with robots. Wonder, excitement, optimism, joy. These things that, you know, don't necessarily have a specific visual, but rather kind of larger motifs.

And so I'm curious with creatives and how we interface with these tools going forward, how will this new language and this new way in which we approach these tools be different from the creative tools that we've used up to this point?

I think there's a couple of ways to answer this. But first, I would say in the beginning days we were thinking about prompting as some sort of almost, I'll call it primitive code, the different engines, mid journey. Dolly. They had a certain way of communicating with it. I mean, the joke on mid journey was how many times you used to see like, you know, unreal AK come up like, you know, or hyperreal and you know, have all these little terms that you'd throw in.

I know you even put some in your current tools for like, say, pica, like, oh, you got to put these negative prompts in and like, so there's like always, like this, like nuance of how to work with the code to kind of get the best results or at least some consistency. I think that's the kind of the phase that we're in right now where there's still just a little bit of kind of clunky Scotch tape and and if you will, just like where we're kind of carrying it, I think that's going to slowly start to fade where GPT, for example, is getting so advanced that the ability to just express things in kind of just

broad nuance kind of expressions and then there's system we'll start to underline and put in kind of all those support details. I think that's just going to happen so that we're going to become far more accessible and and every day, if you will, in terms of just like my mom would never think, oh, let me go make some Dali art.

I mean, she can, obviously, but she'll never feel like she could master it right now again to paste or mid journey like ever. But I think down the road we're going to have it far more natural language oriented and you'll just be able to kind of communicate with the tools in a way that would be feel far more human like you would if you were sitting next to an artist and say, No, no, no, I like it.

But I think it should be a little bit more blue or a little bit more textural, whatever that, and then they just kind of do it. I feel like that's where we're going. And thus, because of that, these tools will get far more mainstream and less kind of nuanced and or specific to kind of this art, you know, kind of I don't know.

I mean, we're we're certainly an enthusiast community, but we're also kind of at the tip of the iceberg. But I think in terms of mainstream, these things are going to get far more just knowledge. One broad.

Right. And I'm really curious about how that translates into kind of some of the innovations that Openai specifically has been pushing regarding this more multimodal conversational experience with the tools, you know, whereas, you know, some of the other creative tools, the service specific tasks, can you kind of have to plug in the tool at the specific part of the creative pipeline in which it serves, Whereas it feels like with Openai, a lot of the innovation is almost using it to your point, like a literal creative assistant that is highly skilled and highly capable of doing all sorts of different tasks.

And, and so I'm curious if you could speak to some of the currents innovations and some of the current announcements, like the ones that we've seen with Openai integrating daily with CBT, with data analyzer and how you see that potentially affecting creativity and, you know, experiences for creative books.

I think the biggest difference is every tool that we've had to date is almost like a one off of like a single piece of art. I open Photoshop, I open up a canvas and that is, you know, it's aware of that, that particular space with all the layers and all the details, but it has no awareness of what it is in relation to, say, the five others that you created before it or will create after it.

Same with Mid Journey and most of the other tools. I think what's fascinating about what Open is doing and in releasing Dolly three and combining that with vision so that you can insert an image or upload an image into the GPT or chat GPT and then say, Hey, describe this image or what do you see? And I've done this before where I've uploaded, say, a character and it doesn't matter what tool mid journey pick a tool, but upload a character and say, Hey, describe this and you'll get a kind of I could describe, I'll say is like the court reporter description, like oh, this is a you know, I will do example.

This is a golfing raccoon and this golfing raccoon is wearing this. And I'll tell you about the outfit and the setting and all that. You know, like I said, it's a court reporter description. But then if you say, okay, but tell me the back story of this golfing raccoon, what's its name? You know, where did it come from?

Who are its siblings? And then all of a sudden GPT can start unveiling this, if you will, opening up the onion to now contextual information and character and history. And then you can say, okay, well, where does he live? Show me what his house might look like or what are his other outfits or and then you can all of a sudden start having a dialog with GPT and visualize at the same time.

And it has memory and it has context. And to me that is where like all of a sudden they see like, I mean, don't get me wrong, mid Journey is an amazing visual tool and it can produce brilliant output if you will. But, but it's also again, it's a one the single image. Okay, I want to create this now.

Oh, now I need to create a house. Okay, so let me describe it's housing. Whereas with now we're open as I think going with GPT and these tools and again for me as a creative, I have found it's almost become this creative brainstorming partner and visualizer conceptual art team just as much as it is producing final art. You know that I could then bring to an animator or to a 3D artist and say, Now build this.

So it's to me it's, it's yeah, it's becoming far more of a true collaborator in my own creative process. And I think that is the big difference, again, between how I've used tools in the past and how I think I'm going to be using tools in the future.

That's so exciting. And I love that you explain this because I was actually thinking if I were brand new to these tools, when you talk about building IP using them, is that what it looks like for you? You'll just start kind of with an image like, Well, how have you built IP, especially for critters and the different shows you've worked on?

I created Critters before Chat JPT was released and, and I so I wrote that one. And most of that was through my process of improv, done a little bit of acting and theater work. And so I found like, you know, like, say, Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm, you kind of create a scene, but then you just do a lot of improvization and then kind of save the best parts.

And then you put that in together as a final script. That's kind of how I did Critters. But in this case, going forward, it's fascinating because I can upload now the characters of Critters into JPG or into chat and and say, Hey, here are my characters. Now I want to do a new scene and now they're going to start a band.

Oh, what would be funny names for the band or what would be some of their funny songs? Or it knows that, Oh, this character likes coffee or this character's a conspiracy theorist or this character's like, So it's it kind of knows those things inherently already. So in a way, as a storyteller, filmmaker, animator, you you feel like you're working with someone that is collaborating with you as opposed to just kind of constantly directing a tool to hopefully get what it is that's in your head.

I love that. It feels like it unlocks that creative collabs creation environment that is really magnetic whenever you are physically with people. But for a lot of us, you know, it takes coordination to have those those chats, those meetings, or there might be, you know, physical limitations to having that creative assistant. So it feels like it's it's almost creating that collaborative workflow, but using digital tools, which is really fascinating to think about.

What's interesting is some people also give it some criticism because they're like, Well, where does the human at? You know, where's the humanity, if that's what you're doing? Like, where does that? And the reality is I found that again, ultimately I am the decision maker as a creative. I am the one that's guiding the ship or steering the ship, if you will.

And and these the exploration that you can do with it, it's not determining the final outcome. I'm still the one that has to essentially curate what I think is the best of all the creative ideas that it gives me. But what I love is, is that it gives me a lot of ideas very quickly, and it allows me to explore maybe some avenues or areas that I just wouldn't have had either the time or even thought of before.

And to me, that's where it gets exciting. But still, at the end of the day, I feel like, yeah, it's, it's, it's not making the final decisions that's ultimately up to you.

I feel like or a lot of the people who are really hesitant to use these creative tools, most of them have more than likely not hopped in and actually started to try to create a project like Critters that uses A.I. to create the artwork or, you know, to be involved with aspects of the script writing process. Because what they'll find is it's a very labor intensive process that requires curation and taste.

And, you know, yes, it's easier to make it, but it's still very much a process that is work at this point.

It is. You know, it's funny, I had a conversation with an architect recently where we were talking about how they brought an AI into their production process and and we were saying it's still a little bit of a slot machine pull. I mean, it's there's still just like that. Oh, okay, let's see what I get, you know, And they're like, yeah, so you could go through for hours, let's just say, of, of iterating and iterating and iterating and it doesn't guarantee that you're going to actually get something brilliant.

You just might get a lot more mediocre things in that time. Like, you still have to do the work, like you still have to guide it and figure it out. It's just that you might be able to explore instead of 5 to 10 ideas in a given hour. Now you can explore 50 to 100, but doesn't mean those 100 are brilliant.

I mean, you still have to be the one that figures out what's going to take it and make it exceptional.

Yeah, it's so funny. I was prompting for movement last night and I was like, I feel like just hand animation would take less time on some of these because, you know, they just start out as falling apart. And it's just it is it's just so iterative to get what you're looking for. But we're at the beginning, right? So.

Yeah, I'm sure both of you can relate to that feeling of runway or peak where you're just, okay, maybe this is the one, maybe this, maybe this one, and I'll get the whole sequence right. Like, just I just need one.

Well, it's funny, too, because it'll be, like, really bad. Really bad. Really bad. And then you'll get one and you're like, This is brilliant. Like, this is beautiful. And it just and it's the same prompt. It just randomly just happened to give you something amazing.

Like you said, it's the slot machine of Yeah, we're.

Like the visual. I have one glass of champagne. I'm trying to get the champagne flowing into the, the glass, you know, and it's like the stem is wiggling and it's like for some reason, the liquid is down here at the stem. Now, I'm like, I don't know. But it's very entertaining to get those, you know, results.

Yeah, I actually find I mean, that's one of the complaints that I've heard about, say even Mid Journey or even Dolly three and some of the other ones is like those early just wacky things that the eye would sometimes do. Like as we're getting closer to perfection, some of those things are just going away and, and yeah, we'll kind of go back and look back at that time and be like, Oh, I miss those days, but all, you know, it's.

It reminds me of working with like a creative assistant and like, let's say you're working on a visual effects project and you're like, Hey, can you animate this scene? And usually they're going to give you something that's like pretty good in return, right? But like these tools now, it's either they're going to give you something that just absolutely sucks and it's just the weirdest thing.

Or they give you something that's like far beyond your expectations. It's like the extremes are just really large, it seems like with using these tools. So I want to transition us a bit because I think that a point you hit on earlier, Chad, is really applicable to everyone listening to this podcast. You're talking about how your entire career, essentially you've been on the bleeding edge of technological innovation, and it's called the bleeding edge because it sometimes is a little painful to be there.

But I feel like what has happened, though, with A.I. tools and how accessible companies like Open and Majority and all of the A.I. tools that are being used for artwork, they've made these tools, you know, accessible to everyday people, not high end visual effects artists or software developers. And I feel like there's this prevailing sense in the world that, oh my gosh, I need to catch up.

I need to see what the heck is happening with artificial intelligence. And, you know, what is this going to do to my job or to the way in which I approach my craft? And I think a lot of people might be experiencing some of the things that you might have experienced throughout your entire career, you know, working on a technological project, that there's a good chance that in a couple of years all these new companies may come out and, you know, completely change the way in which you would have approached the tech and things like that.

So as someone who has a ton of experience with the evolving landscape of your creative projects, like have you found any ways in which you can cope with those realities? Any like, I don't whether it's habits or just thought processes that can help people who are kind of new to the world of creative disruption?

Well, I yeah, it's interesting. I joked early in my career I was working on a project and they were funded by Microsoft. And at that point, Microsoft was building, I believe it was the beginning of Windows 90. What was it? Windows Me, I think is the turn of the century one after Windows 95 and I went up and just saw their team and they had basically, you know, thousands of people working on this thing.

And I was realizing I was like, wow, this is a crazy thing that there's so many people working on this. It's actually more human labor than what built the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. But in five years, maybe no one will ever use this piece of software ever again. And that's what's happened. Windows Me? Yeah. Despite the thousands of people and the thousands of hours probably if you collectively add it all up, millions of hours of combined work to build these operating systems and then know in five years this might never be used again, or it's just going to be fading from existence.

To me, that often created this notion of like, wow, a digital career is so temporary. I mean, it's just the temporal nature of it is just if you try to latch on to the, Oh, I got to leave a permanency or leave some sort of legacy in this world, I don't know. You're going to also find yourself a little frustrated.

Now, the only difference is, though, with content or with IP, like if you can tell a story that somehow, somehow is timeless or as you mentioned, pop, although Pong might not be the greatest game of all time in terms of like, Oh wow, you go back. But it is a timeless game. And and certainly someone could go back with nostalgia and play it and say to themselves, Wow, this was the beginning.

There's value in that. And so to me, I feel like whatever you do create, there is experimentation and there is like the sake of just for learning. And there's also the sake of just doing something because, hey, look, it's going to pay the bills. It's going to, you know, hey, it'll get my kid through school or, or, you know, keep me, keep me, you know, keep the house over my head.

Those are the things that. Yeah, that might keep you going. But honestly, a lot of that is just, again, be temporary. And you have to just realize that these things are going to come and go. But if you can find those projects either through yourself or through your own passions or through maybe, and if you're lucky enough through your profession, that can have those moments where they might be able to impact, if you will, the history or the society or or even our kind of our, if you will, our digital landscape to be something that could endure beyond just that moment.

To me, that is the rare kind of that it's like if you can find that, then just go for it. Just run at it, because you probably only get a couple of those moments in life and it's really easy to get a job and to kind of get stuck, if you will, in that day to day, month to month and year to year.

But some of those moments when they do arrive, I feel like take at least a moment in your career and go for it because you might not get very many of those opportunities. So for me, just to go like I knew I had when I when I saw these tools and I thought, Wow, I can make a film, a short film, a dolly, I was like, I think I just need to do this because I think I mean, not only can I do it, but I'm like, It might be the first.

And if that's it, it was the first. That's cool. But more so it's like, I just wanted to do something and show what a moment in time of what these tools can do right now. And if you know what, if it lasts the awesome. But if it if it at least if it's just an example and if it's helping to inspire someone, that's even better.

But to me, again, it goes back to if you can find those passionate things that you think can live on. I mean, yeah, just, just take a moment and go for it.

I love that. And it feels like from what you're saying, that that story ultimately is king when it comes to creating these these lasting projects. And I think that for me, whenever I watch critters, it's interesting because to your point, the tech is kind of where it was at this point about a year ago, and yet it's still much more captivating than a lot of the AI projects I see today, which can, you know, be in a sci fi world with almost photo realism with these crazy, over-the-top things.

And I feel like it really speaks to the importance of everyone to really get good at storytelling and communicating information and character development and all of these core things that have been around before computers were even a thing. And so I think that is a really good area for our audience to really focus on. In addition to learning the tools and experimenting and all of that fun stuff.

Yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of these tools is that you don't need, you know, a team of 50 or 500. I mean, you if you have the ability to just take a few hours every night, I mean, again, it's commitment. But if you have that ability to just to go for it and tell that story that's been in your head, you know, or that animated film or whatever it might be, you know, these tools, the barriers are going away.

So it's like, you know, they used to be like, Oh, I only had the time I'd write my great American novel. You're like, Oh, well, you might start having the time soon. So, so like, it's like the excuse can start to drift away. And I think for me in life is it is amazing how fast time does fly by.

So, you know, I feel like my career has been Yeah, I mean, I can still think of the the first days of when I was starting out and building up my first Mac lab and it was just like, yeah, I mean, it goes by in a heartbeat, but, but yeah, those are those projects that, that do kind of transcend and mean a little bit more to you.

Those are the ones that, you know, I look back on with great fondness and I would hope that yeah, that, that people give themselves that opportunity to take that time and do those those passion projects.

Can you share one example of something that you look back on with fondness? Your project?

Well, I mean, it's funny, I, I had this, this in 2005. I was on vacation and in Mexico and I went out and played around the Gulf and I was like, wow, this is really an amazing experience. Like, how could I do this every day? Or how could I capture this, this feeling every day? And that that little statement, as soon as I kind of got back on a plane, I was like, Huh?

I wonder if I could do a way where you are, create a way for you to be able to play virtual golf, like in a photorealistic manner that captured a little bit of what I did in that that moment. And so I started experimenting again back in the days of Flash. I started experimenting with some digital photography because I've been playing with that a bit.

And then I started researching terrain mapping and how you could actually essentially get three dimensional three dimensional topology maps of actual landscape and and started looking at it from the GPS software to laser scanning light hour and photogrammetry. And anyways, I basically found out, wow, there's a way we could actually get this topology data and combine it with a digital photograph and thus you could then play a virtual round of golf on a essentially in a photograph.

And so I built a prototype. And then the day of my second son, my youngest son being born, I decided, I think I'm going to quit my job and just do this. And like it usually says, Hey, on the day of your childbirth. I think that's a moment where I want to start something new in addition to something else.

But but that's what I did. And I just because it was like a moment of like, hey, if I think I have a pathway to do it and I feel like the technology is there, but no one's done it, then like, no one's taking these tools that all exist and put them together in this certain way. I think I might be, you know, maybe able to do something that no one's seen before.

And and again, if you kind of tell yourself, well, now maybe I, you know, I'll do that next year, I'll do it. Well, let my kids get a little older and then maybe I'll take that risk. I was like, I don't know. I just was like, No, I had this idea. I felt like I could do it. And I just went for it.

And then sure enough, ten years later, I sold the company to Topgolf.

And I love that even for the audience listening to this podcast, because I think a lot of that creative inspiration that can come from using AI tools right now can open up more of those opportunities, whether it's in creating a business like, you know, what you did with your golf project or in simply doing a creative project that opens up other opportunities.

It's wild to see. So we do we have this like weekly film news where we kind of have like eight films of the week. And it's crazy because almost every single person that's been featured in that film News of the Week, has gotten back to me to say that they've landed some sort of job or creative opportunity and that simply.

Tim because they're just experimenting and they're putting stuff online and we get messages all the time of people who are unlocking brand new opportunities that did not exist before these tools became available. So it seems like that creative experimentation and just having fun with it is is ultimately like not only like personally fulfilling, but it seems to unlock some really cool opportunities like what you mentioned.

Yeah. I mean, Shelby, to answer another your question another way, I never thought in my life that I would actually ever work on the cover of Vogue magazine. And and so when opening, I came to me and said, Hey, we have this opportunity to do a Vogue cover with Bella Hadid, and they want to use Dolly as the whole, essentially all the background art and maybe even enhance the the fashion and modify the fashion with, with, with the eye.

Would you be interested? And I jumped at that chance. And like, I've never I mean, that's that's kind of like outside of my comfort zone but high fashion and like but it was an incredible experience in just saying, okay, no one's really done this before. Let's just try it. I mean, Photoshop hadn't released their generative fill yet, and now obviously I look back at it now and it would have been so easy had we had it still then.

But but it was again, it was just like, let's just try it. Let's just go for it. Let's just see what this might result in, in terms of the visuals, in terms of the experience and working with a whole slew of highly creative, artistic individuals who in a way recognize technology, but that's not their lifeblood. It's not like what kind of we're like experimenting with it every day.

So to me it was a fascinating, just experience in life that I can't believe open or really I open that door to allow me that, you know, that opportunity.

This cover is incredible. If it's the one I'm seeing, it's blue. Yeah. Is this right?

Yeah.

This is so cool. Chad, I'm obsessed. This is like, I'm amazed.

I what? What was crazy about it is, okay, I'll just tell the story real quick. So originally I was just going to be the cover. And then when we showed some examples, then it turned into, okay, let's do a 16 page spread with with some of like 20 images. And I think in the end it turned into 18, I think, and final.

I can't remember exactly, but but, but they didn't increase the time. So we only had two and a half weeks to do a cover and a full 18 page spread of all these images with Bella and it was it was a lot of late nights. It was a lot of I'd finished my basically my day job and then like, I'd eat dinner and then it's like, okay, here we go, because Paris is waking up.

Let's, let's just start and, and we go. But it was yeah, it was an amazing experience.

So a little sidebar on the whole fashion conversation. I was like trying to find some brown boots the other day online and I was just like, I cannot find these boots. I want a very specific cut with the heel, right? And I was just like, You know what? I'm just gonna go prompt exactly what I want. And so it's like.

It's only good having a 3D printed.

Right? But I was like, just in terms of getting inspiration and I was like, This is really cool. And then I kind of went in a weird rabbit hole of prompting for, like, sweaters inspired by animals. That got a little strange, but it was really fun. Like high fashion, like cool sweater with like a sheep head sitting on it.

That was, like, woven together. I don't know. It was very strange, but really entertaining. Well, sidebar that that's over rapid fire questions. So these typically you can answer yes or no. But if you want to expand on any of that, welcome to. All right. So the first one, starting with a soft one, will I hurt or help the creative industry?

I think it's going to help it ultimately, because we're going to see far more people be able to enter this world than currently kind of exists. Now, I mean, one way of answering it is think about editing. In the early days, it used to be reel to reel editing. Only a very few of a number of people could actually even make a living editing today.

And then when we went to digital editing, a lot of the editors were freaking out like, just like, Oh, this is going to destroy editing. The artistry is gone. Like the hand done, nature of it is going to be destroyed. And you think, okay, yeah. So Avid might have been simple in the beginning, but now, I mean, there's far more people editing on their iPhone with whatever tool Adobe or whatever.

You mean a tool, right? And you know, in a day we're probably lapping what the entire editing community used to do in the seventies and eighties. So to me it's like I get maybe the fear response, but the art of editing is not has not vanished. In fact, I think it's only expanded and I think these A.I. tools are going to do that again.

That's such a good point. I don't know if you've seen this Interview. It was like in the nineties when Adobe Photoshop was released and they were on the Today Show and they were like, So if you have this photographer and this other photographer, you're now mixing their images like, who owns the image? Who who has the rights to this image?

And you know, how are we going to be able to distinguish like, right, like whether this is a real image or not. And I was like, this is such a relevant conversation that we're just having again.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can we can dive into a whole discussion about the legalities going forward. But yeah, we'll save that one. That's, that's another day. I've been very I'll just put it this way. I'm in the process of exploring how we can copyright critters, and that is opening up a very interesting Pandora's box of what U.S. copyright law, where the AI currently exists.

Kind of what you have to document it like just there's a lot of layers to it. And again, we could we could dive into that at some point. But that to me is a fascinating case study that I'm kind of working through right now.

Yeah, I would love to hear the progress with that. And maybe as you continue to move forward with that, we can.

Yeah. Yeah, I would. That's great. Yeah. Give me a couple of I don't know. I mean, these things are it's like we're so used to things doing things done in days and weeks, and then you realize the Copyright Office is more of a months, two years.

But they need to use an eye tool. Something.

Yeah, I know. No kidding.

Do you think all creatives need to learn to utilize A.I. tools?

I think it would be wise to do so. However, I raise that with the caveat that I do not want to see society or artists become too reliant on AI they need to figure out, discover, and if you will hone their own creative. I what what is their artistic, unique, you know, vision that they're bringing to this world?

And that only happens by going out and either, you know, creating through traditional mediums, for example, or just going to a different country, going into seeing museums walking through ancient, you know, Roman temples or, you know, like those things, those experiences are what actually allow you to have that richness to say, well, what is it that I want to create utilizing A.I. But without that, if you don't have that wealth of at least some experience, wherever it is you are in the world, if you can't, yeah, home that you're just going to then be a product of what the AI is able to deliver.

And don't get me wrong, maybe someone could be very innovative and you could find that gem in the rough, if you will. But I just find that I say I believe that people still have to go out and figure out their own creative voice. And that can't just be just done through just relying on kind of just generic prompt responses.

Okay. Are you any good at golf?

No. I mean, okay, I'm okay. I would never go I would never say I'm going to go out and win a tournament, but I can hold, man.

I love that. I have left many holes in the ground while golfing. What is one piece of advice you could give to help somebody excel in their I work.

One piece of advice to help someone excel. Can I give it to. Sure. No. I mean, the first is the problem with A.I. is we can just constantly tweak forever. So I feel like you still have to create a sandbox for yourself. Give yourself some some sort of definition of of be it time or, you know, like, what are the guardrails?

I think I can't spend forever on this, so put some sort of limitation on it. So it kind of forces you to make some quick decisions. Otherwise you can kind of just end up in this creative fog forever. And I find that we don't necessarily have writer's block like we used to with these tools. You know, we're just like that staring at the blank page.

And I'm like, Shoot, I don't know what to create more. So now it's like I can create anything. So wait, how do I actually kind of it's like, how do I find my own ground or my own footing in this in this sea of infinity or infinite possibilities like. And I find that time boxing is a big help for me personally, because it's just like, okay, I'm going to like, let's say if it's a personal project, I'm going to give myself three nights to work on this.

And after that I have to be done I can't I cannot keep working on this forever. And so because of that, it forces me to be disciplined about my decision making process to at least drive to some sort of completion. And that's where I find, I don't know, it's very helpful in life. Otherwise you can just end up working on these things forever and, and look, life balance to me is as pretty.

I try to say we can, we can be creatives, but if we're Lilly, that's all we're doing is sitting at a laptop or, you know, your desktop and just constantly doing this and nothing else. That means you're also not living. And the way we get experiences is by living, not by sitting in front of a computer. 24 seven So that helps me a lot.

That's so good. Caleb and I have been talking a lot lately about specifically putting on our calendars creative sandbox time, so I love that you even called it that just to play an experiment and explore these tools. Yeah, definitely more of it.

The other thing I was going to say is I also like because of I it allows for this but take a risk like go down some unexpected path that you would have never have done before. Like try the opposite. You know, it's like you never know where creatively you might, you know, kind of go with it. It could literally just be a total dead end and just a waste of time.

But to me, again, it's not really a waste of time because you explored something and you probably I would find in life you prob you're going to get something out of it that you didn't expect before. And so to me that is a just a good practice that in that sandbox of time take, take a little bit of a creative journey, if you will, and push yourself in a way that you weren't like.

Your gut isn't constantly just pushing, you would like direction a try the direction be, you know, once or twice.

Chad How can people see more of your work?

I am not an influencer. I'm not trying to be an influencer. I'm not trying to build. I mean, as much as I admire what all doing, I'm I do this for fun and if some people find it, then great. But my Instagram is daily. Daily and daily obviously is spelled Dallas dot E So and then on for critters.

If you want to watch critters, that's just critters with a Z dot TV and tastic.

Well, Chad, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast. The insight was very helpful. I'm really curious to see all of the new innovations from Openai AI, and we may have to have you back on to talk through some of these new things.

I love it. Thanks so much. Great to chat with you all. And let's do it again.

Absolutely. And let's maybe next time at a top golf.

Yeah, I mean, there is one in Los Angeles.

Why have we not gone? Caleb, we need to do this also video.

Right? It's right by LAX. So when you come back from your next trip, just go right right to the top off there.

Perfect, right?

No doubt. Love that.

All right. Thank you so much.