Lensa AI, Computers Replacing Creatives, and New Years Resolutions: I Will Not Lose Podcast - #0009

Transcript

[00:00:05.740] What's up, what's up? Good morning, good evening, good night, good afternoon.
[00:00:10.860] Whatever time you're listening in, wherever you're listening from, shout out to my Spotify listeners,
[00:00:15.600] Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon Music, Samsung, Podchaser, GeoSavant, Deezer, Google Podcasts, Stitcher,
[00:00:23.560] and YouTube if you're watching in. Good to see you. Thanks for giving me a reason to get dressed.
[00:00:29.980] I'm your host, Tony Ortiz.
[00:00:31.860] This is I Will Not Lose Podcast, coming live from my voice to your phone, computer, headphones,
[00:00:37.800] TV, car stereo, smartwatch, Bluetooth speaker.
[00:00:41.280] You could have been anywhere in the world, but you're here right now.
[00:00:44.720] Take a moment and be present.
[00:00:46.980] Recognize that it's right now.
[00:00:49.160] Whether you're right now is running, working, exercising, laying down, cleaning, flying,
[00:00:54.120] driving, be grateful we're alive.
[00:00:57.180] Failure can be frightening.
[00:00:58.380] However, as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to failure
[00:01:03.300] without losing enthusiasm. This is another week of I Will Not Lose podcast. Let's jump right in.
[00:01:10.760] Any announcements? It is December 18th at the time of recording this, so this is going to drop
[00:01:17.020] right before Christmas. This will probably be the last episode before Christmas. YouTube viewers,
[00:01:22.440] I got you a little surprise here. Not sure how I'm going to work a green tree in with the
[00:01:28.680] green screen, but let's see. I hope you guys enjoy the decorations we got set up. So it's a
[00:01:35.220] festive holiday. We're in our Christmas sweaters getting ready for a big Christmas coming next
[00:01:42.740] week. So this week I wanted to talk about, it's funny. So as I come to the end of the year,
[00:01:54.150] I'm looking at where I started the podcast, where it's headed and kind of what direction we want to
[00:01:59.830] keep going in based on what we have. So we're looking at the data. We're looking at things
[00:02:05.810] like retention. We're looking at things like how many people are subscribed. So whether or not I'm
[00:02:10.850] giving you guys a reason to subscribe and come back every week, whether or not you're on YouTube
[00:02:15.850] or if you're listening in from Spotify or Apple Podcasts, whether you're downloading the pod.
[00:02:21.810] So a big shout out, whatever you're doing. However, you are accessing the content. I'm
[00:02:27.330] glad we're making it available for you. So yeah, big shout out there. But part of what I looked at
[00:02:34.030] is do you want to be trendy and do you want to only talk about successes and failures in whatever's
[00:02:42.930] going on? Obviously there's going to be a bit of conversation and it is timely. It's a weekly
[00:02:48.310] podcast. So there's things that are going on. I'm leaning a little more towards pop content and
[00:02:53.670] culture than I thought I would eventually. But it got me thinking of what trends do you not want to
[00:03:00.890] jump on? And one of the things that I saw trending recently is this Lenza app. So Lenza AI is you
[00:03:10.110] upload your pictures and it uses AI to create pieces of art. And they're beautiful. I mean,
[00:03:19.550] it looks like an artist took hours painting you, uh, put you on a backdrop, maybe turn you into
[00:03:25.910] an astronaut. Uh, it's amazing. And you can get 20, 50, a hundred pieces. So if you were to
[00:03:32.790] commission an actual artist, this would be an immense amount of work. So it's like 399 for the
[00:03:40.210] magic avatar app. Everybody's profile picture started becoming it. And this was, uh, a bit
[00:03:47.730] more of a mainstream rendition of the AI. See, I had been following this a few weeks ago. Well,
[00:03:57.710] actually a few months ago at this point, back in September, first week of September,
[00:04:01.610] an artist had submitted a piece of AI artwork to Colorado State Fair and won. And it rose the
[00:04:10.110] question on whether or not it was fair, whether or not they should have. And I'll have this here.
[00:04:16.310] he said that he made i'm sorry he being jason m allen he said that he made clear that his work
[00:04:23.970] which was submitted under the name jason m allen via mid journey was created using ai and that he
[00:04:29.950] hadn't deceived anyone about his origins so i started looking into this mid journey what is
[00:04:35.270] mid journey and you use prompts and it can generate things so following some channels on
[00:04:42.650] Reddit, I saw what prompts people were putting in and what came out. And sometimes it would be
[00:04:48.350] terrible, but a lot of times you'd get something just amazing that it would find it. Now, the idea
[00:04:56.150] is that you can generate a ton of prompts and eventually you get what you want and you can
[00:05:00.990] still use traditional tools like graphic design and Photoshop to piece these pieces together.
[00:05:07.510] What I thought was really interesting about this is people didn't look into his process.
[00:05:14.770] They assumed that he just typed a prompt, a piece of award-winning art came out, and he posted it.
[00:05:21.250] As I looked into it, there were hundreds of prompts.
[00:05:25.650] He had an idea of what he was doing, and without going into any artist's creative process, which shouldn't be questioned.
[00:05:33.630] Well, I want to say it shouldn't be questioned.
[00:05:35.230] It's great to have the conversation, but I tend to think whatever tools of the time you use, the means you use to create, sure, you could have the conversation if Da Vinci had AI or if Da Vinci had Photoshop, but that's not what we're arguing here.
[00:05:52.870] People still use science-based rules of art to create things. So the fact that a machine can
[00:06:01.470] create something that looks visually appealing, well, it's learning based off a whole bunch of
[00:06:07.010] arts and works that were already created. You could argue that humans do the same thing when
[00:06:14.730] they look at works created by other artists that are already created and they put their own kind
[00:06:20.590] of style and you put your feeling into the art, you create something that's of the artist.
[00:06:27.590] So this creates a huge discussion on whether or not we use AI, who owns it, whether or not it
[00:06:34.430] should be banned from state fairs, or when people call it a fine art competition,
[00:06:44.560] understand that this was a state fair, not taking anything away. He was under the rules of the
[00:06:50.740] digital portion, meaning he could use tools like Photoshop and things like that to manipulate his
[00:06:56.860] artwork. And the judges had even come back saying even if they knew it was AI generated,
[00:07:02.440] it still was so stunning that it would have won based on what else was in there. So while people
[00:07:08.640] are having the conversation of whether or not AI is going to replace artists, Lenza comes along,
[00:07:15.440] create something that allows you to upload your content. Um, I immediately started asking,
[00:07:21.660] well, who owns the rights to the content that's produced or the content that's uploaded?
[00:07:27.420] Um, and everybody said, well, you're just too poor to pay the $3.99 to get it. And I'm thinking,
[00:07:34.000] man, you know, it is pretty cool. I know some artists that would charge me way more than $3.99
[00:07:39.420] to put together some works like this.
[00:07:42.260] So if I can get 20 and even pick one or two,
[00:07:45.160] but I want to know, am I allowed to use that
[00:07:48.040] as branded content then?
[00:07:50.060] What are the rules there?
[00:07:51.580] So I go in, I'm not going to quote any Facebook post
[00:07:56.180] or Reddit post.
[00:07:57.340] This is coming directly from Lenza.com,
[00:08:01.200] their terms of service.
[00:08:02.300] I believe it's Lenza.ai.com slash terms
[00:08:06.220] or something like that.
[00:08:07.480] at least if you Google it, you'll pull it up. But Lenza may allow you to upload, edit, create AI
[00:08:15.310] generated store and share content, including your photos and videos, user content. We do not claim
[00:08:21.530] ownership over your user content, including AI generated content you create using Lenza. For the
[00:08:27.190] process of these terms, the terms user content explicitly includes any AI generated content you
[00:08:32.810] create using the application. Sounds good so far. Keep reading. We want you to enjoy the functionality
[00:08:40.040] of Lenza seamlessly. Therefore, we would require a permit called a license and referenced as a
[00:08:45.520] company license explained further to use your content uploaded to, downloaded from, and stored
[00:08:51.140] within the application. We would like to highlight that the company license is limited to the purpose
[00:08:56.140] of our usage of your user content and the parties we might share this user content with. We do not
[00:09:01.660] sell any of your user content with any third parties and use it for ensuring appropriate
[00:09:06.120] functionality of the application only okay so we give them a license they can use it to better
[00:09:13.660] improve the product and we can enjoy the functionality of lenses seamlessly sounds great
[00:09:19.020] keep reading therefore solely for the purpose of operating and improving lensa you must grant us a
[00:09:24.900] time-limited revocable non-exclusive royalty-free worldwide fully paid transferable sub-licensable
[00:09:31.480] license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, create, deviate artworks from your user content
[00:09:37.740] without any compensation to you and always subject to your additional explicit consent
[00:09:42.940] is for such we are required by applicable law and privacy. So essentially, you give them written
[00:09:53.680] permission. They can use your likes, your workness. You're giving them a royalty-free license. So
[00:10:01.730] that means at the time of writing this while they say they're not selling it to any third parties
[00:10:06.750] it gives them the right to be able to use your permission your your um your photo or works
[00:10:14.570] created so they additionally go on to say things like uh and this is a tldr i'm not going to
[00:10:23.150] continue to read their entire terms of service but essentially if you're posting a picture of
[00:10:29.750] you and a friend, they're implying consent from your friend. So your friend is giving up the
[00:10:34.350] rights to be able to use that. So if you go and you say, okay, sure, you can use my permission.
[00:10:39.590] And now they have your picture on a billboard or let's talk down the line. They have you as
[00:10:45.050] an avatar in the metaverse. You know, you're giving the likeness, you're giving your likeness.
[00:10:50.970] This is important for artists. There's all sorts of people and lawyers that go to school
[00:10:55.770] specifically to study intellectual property and understand how copyright works. This is worth a
[00:11:05.710] lot of money. If you take somebody like a model or somebody who understands the value of their
[00:11:10.950] likeness and gets paid from it, you can literally, you can ensure your look. So if something happens
[00:11:18.910] and you get disfigured, you can be compensated for the amount of money that you could have made
[00:11:24.650] had you looked the way that you did. I don't know what law it is or what it is, but yeah,
[00:11:32.450] check it out. There's all sorts of value to the way that you look. So the fact that people will
[00:11:39.490] be so apt to jump on a trend and just give their likeness away in the apps of getting a cool
[00:11:46.810] profile picture, not asking any questions about stuff. Look, I'm not flaming you. If you went and
[00:11:51.850] you use the app and you don't care about any of this stuff. I'm not a catastrophist. It's
[00:11:55.810] not a huge deal. You give it up all sorts of times with things like, you know, a company will say,
[00:12:02.950] hey, come up with a tagline for us. If you win, we'll use your tagline. It's like, dude,
[00:12:07.870] there's companies that charge thousands of dollars to come up with a tagline. You're
[00:12:11.410] giving the rights to your creative and coming up with it. People have given up way more valuable
[00:12:16.890] stuff for less but it's just a matter of what what lengths are people willing to go to jump
[00:12:27.380] on to what trend and at what aspect do i want to be subject to okay um this is what's trending this
[00:12:35.460] is what everybody's talking about so we have to find a way to spin this into the theme of the
[00:12:39.440] podcast and we need to talk about this this week so there goes my rant on ai lensa specifically
[00:12:47.660] and whether or not people should use it. I'll go on on licensing to say that it really hasn't
[00:12:55.020] caught up even in the field of creative professional. You know, there's things that
[00:12:59.920] have entered the market like Envato Elements, where you can essentially purchase other people's
[00:13:05.720] work and license it to finish it and put it together as your own completed work.
[00:13:10.740] and it saves a ton of time. It's like a carpenter buying trees rather than growing his own trees.
[00:13:18.920] So it can save a ton of time in the creative process. But there's all sorts of licenses that
[00:13:24.940] you have to look at and take care of. The laws haven't completely caught up with recreating
[00:13:29.920] other people's work. So they're definitely not going to catch up with AI using the likeness of
[00:13:36.380] another artist and creating something that looks like something that the artist did.
[00:13:42.360] So you're saying we're taking money away from somebody who's taken years crafting a specific
[00:13:46.960] style, and now an app comes along and can just do what they did. It's easy for perception to
[00:13:58.240] say that it can just recreate what humans do. There's been all sorts of things, and this has
[00:14:05.300] been a conversation since the 80s with Turing and what people think jobs are going to be all
[00:14:15.480] replaced by robots and things like that. I would just say, be good at whatever it is that you do.
[00:14:23.280] If you're good at what it is you do, there's going to be people and there's going to be a market for
[00:14:29.040] people wanting kind of a concierge service. I've talked to my clients and I've said,
[00:14:34.620] these AI tools are out here. And they said, yeah, but we want you to walk me through. We want you
[00:14:40.640] to be an expert on this sort of stuff. They're not necessarily upset whether or not I would use
[00:14:45.640] the AI tools, but they understand that I would go through the vetting of licensing and following all
[00:14:51.680] the rules. So they still want a consultant. I don't think if you're good at what you do,
[00:14:56.260] your job is necessarily at risk. But in the idea of success learned from failure,
[00:15:03.720] is the battle over? AI is here. AI is not going anywhere. The laws are not catching up.
[00:15:10.480] This is like the digital camera coming along and you're still here with your 32 or 36 shot
[00:15:17.840] film reels that you have to develop inside of a dark room. And sure, you know way more about
[00:15:23.340] photography because you don't have the ability to mess up, have a shot out of focus and just retake
[00:15:29.180] it. But the digital camera isn't going anywhere. And there's people that can take thousands of
[00:15:35.540] shots, go through, use software, edit, and people at the end of the day say, well, this photo is the
[00:15:41.560] end product. So if you can't beat them, join them. What can we learn from the failure of artists to
[00:15:49.460] be able to do what a machine can do in 20 seconds, well, you have the ability to use these tools in
[00:15:56.180] your workflow. There's all sorts of things, chat, GDP, GTP, I believe it is, which we're going to
[00:16:03.320] be hearing tons and tons more about in the next couple of weeks, years. But these AI tools for
[00:16:12.840] writing, there's all sorts of things that's in your workflow. If you're a photographer, you take
[00:16:19.040] pictures on your cell phone. There's AI that's making your photo look edited. It does a lot of
[00:16:24.640] stuff. It's not just the light that's coming in. There's all sorts of AI. Google's been working on
[00:16:31.740] it for a while. So specifically with the Google devices, shout out to the Google Pixel 6 or 7,
[00:16:38.640] I think they're on now. But the Google Pixel is a great brand for smartphone photography.
[00:16:44.220] so you you really have to realize that just because the barrier of entry diminishes
[00:16:51.680] it doesn't mean that your value diminishes people shop at luxury brands and people shop at walmart
[00:16:59.970] they're not competing do you think these luxury brands are sitting here like oh well i don't know
[00:17:04.810] man they might shop at walmart let's worry about what walmart is doing and competing
[00:17:08.750] If you know your market, you're in a completely different lane. So even when, you know, Fiverr, Upwork and things that connect you to different wages, people said, oh, that's going to take everything away and none of the creative is going to be done.
[00:17:25.370] But I think there's still a lot of time. I think there's still some time before that happens. So I suggest find a way to work whatever tools, whatever market and work that in. Know your place in the market. That goes for somebody who's overqualified and is charging dirt cheap because that devalues the market in general.
[00:17:49.050] If you're going and you're providing photography or video services at an extremely, extremely high level and you shoot a wedding for $5 and you're good and you're completely booked, people are going to say, well, for $5, I'll book him out for next year.
[00:18:07.570] and it's going to diminish the value of the thousands of dollars that go into a photo
[00:18:14.110] shoot. I'm sorry, not a photo shoot, a wedding day where it's essentially a photo shoot all day,
[00:18:19.610] multiple locations, traveling, you know, this stuff goes into it. When you're freelancing,
[00:18:25.430] it's like running a business. Well, it is, it's running a business and you can be very good at
[00:18:30.310] what you do, but not be good at the business part. So if I can't have anybody gain anything from
[00:18:36.590] the idea of we're in a recession, I can't get any work, I don't have the tools or everybody
[00:18:42.770] has the tools. Look, if your client thinks that somebody can just go and buy a $300 camera and
[00:18:51.350] suddenly they're qualified to charge $5,000 for a wedding shoot, they're not the client you want
[00:18:57.470] to be working with in general. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. And that goes for
[00:19:06.170] myself as well, figuring out where I am in the market, figuring out what I can outsource.
[00:19:12.130] As we come into the close of the year, I'm looking at the first couple of episodes as we have things
[00:19:19.610] lined up, the guest recorded episodes. We've had guests over at the podcast, haven't put out
[00:19:25.050] another guest episode besides Gil Thompson, which kept off the podcast. And part of the reason for
[00:19:32.290] that was a couple of reasons. We had some people who said, well, I need to, I need to be somebody
[00:19:40.690] before I can be on your podcast. And I'm just completely humbled because we created this as
[00:19:46.900] an outlet for people to have one more way to talk about things in my network. And we put it together
[00:19:54.120] and suddenly people are saying, well, you know, I don't have a noteworthy story. So the fact that
[00:19:59.340] they will put value in something that I'm still building an audience that isn't on everybody's
[00:20:04.900] front page now, that lets me know that there's definitely a value seen in what we're doing.
[00:20:11.960] So if you go back and listen to the first episode, episode zero, the goal is to fail.
[00:20:18.600] You know, the idea was, let's just get into it. Let's just do it. Let's stop asking any of the
[00:20:23.400] questions. If you look back, I was sick. I was coughing during the first episode, my smoke
[00:20:29.220] alarms going off, and we still created an amazing piece of content. I went through starting to edit
[00:20:36.700] out the smoke alarms. And a couple hours later, I just said, I cannot get through all hour and
[00:20:42.580] 20 minutes of this. Went back and looked at the retention of that episode versus the retention
[00:20:48.060] of the snippets. And one of the things that comes into question is the length of episodes.
[00:20:55.940] Now, obviously, when you have guests, they're going to be a little bit longer. With these,
[00:20:59.820] we shoot for around 20 to 30 minutes. So as we build the audience, podcasts I listen to go on
[00:21:07.060] for an hour and a half. I will listen to a podcast for three hours, four hours, even if it's not
[00:21:13.260] guest oriented, but that's when you get comfortable with the speaker. That's when you can relate with
[00:21:18.840] things and open things up. So one thing I don't try to be is a news source. I try to take the
[00:21:25.340] value of media and the power of words and take that as a respect for what I do. But at the end
[00:21:33.260] of the day, we're still, we're here to have fun. We're here to joke around. We're here to shift
[00:21:39.220] our mentality and really build something better. And practice makes perfect. So just even walking
[00:21:47.200] around and carrying a notepad with me and thinking of things to talk about and thinking of how we can
[00:21:53.220] switch our mind state with this, it creates a personal development in myself. So something
[00:22:02.480] that we're going to continue to do. It will be around Christmas of the recording of the next
[00:22:08.460] episodes. It'll be one more episode before new year's. That'll probably be a short one that
[00:22:13.640] we're just going to go over, um, what to expect from season two. So you're able to break these
[00:22:23.380] podcasts into seasons. We're going to do some updates to the studio. We're going to do some
[00:22:27.580] updates to the production. You're going to see some more things coming. So I want to pile those
[00:22:32.560] all together at once and upload them as season two. But other than that, jump on a few more
[00:22:39.710] platforms, continue to grow. Let's roll out here. It says, I will not lose podcast stories of
[00:22:46.870] success learned from failure. To support the show, visit shows.acast.com slash I will not lose
[00:22:53.090] and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. Leave a comment, share the episode link. Whatever
[00:22:58.670] you do, your contribution is appreciated. Thank you for listening.
[00:23:02.630] Thank you.