Samir Chaudry on AI and the creator economy: 'ChatGPT is entering Tik Tok territory for daily time spent'

I don't know. She got me now, Samir. Yeah, we got you. How you doing? Let's go. We're just looking at a random image of a plane. Oh, we got the I mean the the the other setup uh we got we'll have you on again very soon to get the the full experience. But great great to see you. Great to see you. How are you guys?

Sorry I'm giving you this uh this nonremium experience, but I mean it's still better. The nature of streaming baby% of our guests. So yeah, this is fantastic. Uh yeah, what's new in your world? What's the latest and greatest?

Give us the little little update and then I want to go into uh just AI, creator economy, Disney, a bunch of stuff. We'll we'll try. Oh, amazing. Uh new in my world. I mean, dude, there's there this has been the craziest year of my life.

I don't know if the viewers know, uh but both mine and Colin's homes burned down in January, which is a crazy experience. And then 12 days later, I had a baby. Yeah. Colin Colin and his wife just had a baby about three weeks ago. So, well, congrats on the baby and sorry about the house.

Very, very tumultuous time for sure. Actually, it was um a conversation with Reed Hoffman. Okay, that was really interesting. He uh on his way out, we were we we were chatting mostly about AI and and the world of creators in AI.

And then on the way out, he turned around and looked at at Colin and I because he knew about what had happened earlier this year. and he just looked at us and he goes, "Never waste a good crisis. " And then walked out and I was like, "Whoa, that is uh that is some amazing advice.

" So trying to uh what's new in my world is trying to understand that statement more and what that means to me. Uh a bit of what that means is I' we've always wanted to do in-person events. We're starting to do in-person events now. We have a big one in New York on September 4th.

So um you know, on one side of the the spectrum is like content, AI, digital. The other side of the spectrum is just like getting back out, being in front of people. Yeah. Um being with the community. I I I know you've done a lot of public speaking. What is a good in-person event look like for you?

Because I can imagine like you could just you have such a dedicated fan base. I remember running into you at uh one of those YouTube VidCons or something and you were getting swarmed. I imagine you could just do Q&A for two hours and everyone would be satisfied.

At the same time, you could define like a very tight, you know, 45 minute presentation with slides. take people through the history of the creator economy, where things are going. You could also just do interviews and interview top tier people the entire time. How do you think you want to play it?

So, uh we actually the first thing you do is like you ask so this is an application only event. Okay. Um and in the application we just asked what what does this what does this event um have to do to be successful in your mind? Like what does it mean to be successful?

Um, also like the two questions that Tim Ferrris gave us, one is what are you here to give? Like what do you feel like you could give at this event? And then what are you here to receive? What what do you what like piece of advice?

So I would say like overwhelmingly right like there's there's 380 confirmed applications for this event represents over 300 million followers. Wow. I would say 90% of people just said that being a creator is lonely and I want to meet other people in in the industry and like other like-minded individuals. Totally.

So I would say most events probably undervalue free time and space and prompted networking or prompted conversation and overvalue what happens on stage. I'll tell you like not one application said, "Man, I can't wait for a panel. " Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of that is window dressing.

It's always window dressing just to like an excuse to get out there and then you're just like hanging out at the cocktail party the entire time. But that's the best stuff. What actually makes it good.

I feel like for me even like when I've been on panels like to to have a to have a mediocre panel is probably the easiest thing in the world. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. And so like to to make it good I think exceptionally challenging to make it worth your time. Um so we're we're working hard to do that.

Uh but mostly like people want to hang out with each other. like people are lonely, people people spend a lot of time at their computer. Um, and like being in a curated group of like-minded individuals is fun. So, I think Do you have a location or or or philosophy around what makes makes for a good spot?

Uh, I think New York City is like the greatest, right? Like I just think coming to New York's really fun. 62% of our attendees are traveling in. Uh, which is really interesting.

Um, and you know, we the venue is at the refinery Domino's sugar factory, which is like this big glass building, uh, that has like a views of the city. So, I think what was important to me was like you walk in and you're already like, "This is cool. I'm I'm excited to be here. " Um, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.

Um, we were debating this earlier. Um there's an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Disney is uh wrestling with the way they use AI. A lot of companies are going through uh disruption. Maybe it's a sustaining innovation. Like Microsoft's doing great, right? And it's not disrupting their business.

They're just printing money all over the place. Everything's growing from Excel all the way to their cloud business to their AI business. Um but for Disney, it's a lot more complicated. and they were giving this anecdote of The Rock and using a deep fake to essentially create a digital twin using his cousin.

Apparently, they had his cousin go to the shoot and they put a deep fake over his cousin. Obviously, they pay his cousin, they pay Dwayne the Rock Johnson, but there's still some backlash from the fans potentially for using AI at all.

And I've just been noodling on this question of, you know, will Disney be disrupted by AI? Will they just continue on unabated? Will it be really good for them?

How like like So maybe we can just kind of noodle on it for a little bit and just kind of get your initial reactions and then we can kind of take it in a bunch of different directions. Okay.

So I think my my first POV on AI right now is that I think we don't talk about AI and prompting as entertainment enough and and what I mean by that is not like its ability to produce entertainment but the fact that it is entertaining to chat with an LLM.

And I think for me as a content creator um you know all of us are in the business of attention like you guys are in the business too like we're looking to uh create something meaningful enough to capture someone's attention and I think Sam Alman has created something that is meaningful enough to capture a lot of attention and I think a lot of creators think about this as like oh man if if um AI can produce graphics in VFX then you know it's people are out of jobs and um you know that that is totally true like that is happening.

Um but at the same time us as creators we might be out of jobs if AI itself is entertaining. Yeah. So I think on the uh you know no matter what we live in a in a in a landscape in a media environment where like creating stuff is really competitive. It's really hard. Uh it's very it's gotten very expensive.

Like studios are going to use AI to to supplement production. creators are going to use AI to I mean almost every creator probably uses it to supplement production in some way shape or form. Yeah, totally.

But I think if we think about it from the consumer side and what's entertaining about learning a new recipe or figuring something out on chat GPT or writing with chat GPT or asking questions with chat GPT um that that's where I I think about like time spent on the internet and is more time going to be spent over here.

Are are you guys familiar with showrunner? It's it's coined as the Netflix of AI. I have heard of it. I I'm not familiar beyond just seeing like one headline. So, Amazon just backed it and I think it's an interesting one to look at. It's essentially like they give you a show. So, they have a show called Exit Valley.

It's kind of like this their version of Family Guy. Sure. Um but you can uh choose your own adventure within the show and put yourself into the show as well. So, you can kind of prompt what happens next. And I think it's an interesting thing to look at of like making content playable, right?

Making it interactive because if we look at the most culturally relevant stuff from history as well as now, video games are wildly culturally relevant. And those are stories that you can put yourself inside of, right? That you can prompt what happens next inside of that story. And you look at live streamers right now.

Kaisen, I show speed. As the viewer, you actually have impact over what happens in that story. Yep.

So, I've just, you know, rambled quite a bit about this stuff, but I think that we should really evaluate the like consumer and viewer interest in um having a say into what happens next and also having interaction with the internet. Yeah, that interaction thing is so fascinating.

I I I haven't thought about it in that frame, but when I go to chat GBT and I get it to generate an image, it's definitely a little bit like hitting a slot machine. Totally.

Because I prompt it and I'm like, I have something in my mind and it's unblurring like it's in the like it's I'm in the dialup era and it's loading. It's like, is this the right image?

The previous generation is you you you know talk with the designer and you give them an idea and they're like, okay, I'm going to I'll come back to you in a day. You're waiting and you're waiting. You're waiting.

and they send you the files and you're like send you the fake totally dopamine hit but but compressing that down uh that makes like the dopamine. Yeah.

And you can see in the in the charts I think uh chatbt is up at 30 minutes a day for the daily active users and that's getting into Tik Tok numbers and that's getting into reals numbers and and so maybe it's not immediately disruptive but it's certainly taking time from somewhere.

And if you go back to Ted Sarandos at Netflix saying like our competition is Fortnite, well, you know, yeah, your competition is Catchy PT now.

If people are having fun on there, even if they're not watching, you know, movies yet on there, just the interaction, even if it's textbased, it's it's all in the same media, it's all in the same screen time. Yeah.

Casey Neistat came on, I think a week and a half ago, and was saying that he's just like feeling like it's like this title wave that's going to wash over everyone and nothing will be the same.

And it was almost I wouldn't say it was like super bearish or blackpilled, but it was just like get ready, it's coming, it's going to disrupt a lot of different verticals. I'm curious what percentage of creators that you talk to are more excited about the potential of AI than they are scared.

The fear versus greed index. Yeah, exactly. What they say in the public markets. So, so that that's really interesting. I think like the the aspiring creator, the young creator is uh fearful and angry and like we get a lot of anger when we talk about AI. Sure. Um you know I think uh for me I don't I don't feel that way.

I think it's there's an inevitability to it that's like if you are if you do feel angry if you are a young creative and you're like this thing is making logos and people are using it to to do their branding instead of hiring designers and you feel angry about it.

It's like it's upsetting, but it's there's an inevitability to it. Like, it's not going to stop. It's it's this is the worst it'll ever be. Um, so I think the uh from the the professional creator perspective, this is the best it'll ever be. No, the worst it'll ever be. This is the worst it'll ever be.

It's just getting better. No, you're saying the AI is the best. I was saying it's the best it's ever going to be for you if you're just angry that AI is doing worse. Oh, no. Like the AI right now, what you can do with AI, this is this will seem comical to us in 5 years. Totally. And so it's only getting better.

And I think um every professional creator uses it in some way, shape, or form. I think one of one of the uh maybe the nerdiest things that I ask my friends and that I tell my friends is like if I have a favorite prompt or if I uh ask them what their prompts are.

I ask always if we write something I ask it to challenge based on being a different persona. Sure. So, you know, I've done this as Casey before. Hey, imagine you're Casey Neistat. Give me feedback on this. Sure. Sure. Imagine you're Johnny Harris. Give me feedback on this intro.

So, um that's been a really like that's probably the simplest, most effective way, but all the way up to like we use it to mock up thumbnails now. Yeah. I was going to ask you about the thumbnail because when when uh so so Mr.

Beast had his like AI thumbnail generator and then he got some some push back extreme backlash, but it seemed like it was from a a a bunch of uh bunching on this.

I my my point of view was that he should have said like I understand that this is disruptive to like that a small number of people that that do thumbnail art as a profession but I care more about democratizing access to great thumbnails by making anybody generate them and I'm going to keep this in the product.

point was that putting it out there was procreator anti- thumbnail artist and that was like the tradeoff that he should have taken.

So he in my view he he you know and I'm sure he has a bunch more context but in my view he was siding with the 10,000 people in the world that are that that make a living doing thumbnails instead of the millions instead of the millions of people that want to create I think actually the the core issue with the announcement was the face swap.

So what he did was he showed two thumbnails and he said it's it's it's very simple to put your face on this thumbnail. Now look, that happens on YouTube all the time, right? Like the reality is that when one creator makes something that's like really successful, another creator just goes, "Oh, cool.

That's almost like public domain, that idea, and I'll just take that and like reinterpret it for my own channel. " And sometimes people are so agre egregious to just put their own face on someone else's design.

We made a video about this called the copy and paste culture of YouTube because it is a big culture and I think what a lot of creators were feeling was that Jimmy was making that process very easy. Thumbnail designers as a cottage industry of YouTube are some of like the most powerful people on the platform.

They literally are the gatekeepers between creators and like millions of views attention. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. They are very very talented. Even for us, like what happens for us is we just we're all visual people, so we mock it up with AI.

But I don't think anyone, you know, I think Dude Perfect did one thumbnail that was pure play from an AI generated thumbnail, which was a airplane with a bunch of basketballs coming out of it. That was like an impossible photo to take or an impossible, you know, thing for them to mock up.

And the thing they got from AI, they're like, "This represents the video concept. " People were upset about that. But I think mostly how creators operate is they go here's the concept. How we operate is we go here's the concept.

Okay, here's the here's how it looks visually and now we hire a designer to bring that to life. And we still do that. We I mean I think thumbnail designers are like wildly talented and they operate more as like strategists as well.

But it's it's a fascinating cottage industry that people looking into YouTube probably have no idea exists. Do you think that there's a role in the future for like thumbnail conceptor? Because I've made thumbnails and they like they live and die.

I mean, obviously the last step of the Photoshop work is extremely important, but you have this like 20 minute video where you talk about so many different things and there's so many different visual elements and then you're trying to distill it down into like the three element rule or just like one thing and picking that one thing that like the plain I can imagine what that video is about right now just based on what you say, but that could have been botched so many times on the concept level and it doesn't matter if you had you know the the best photographer in the world working with the best Photoshop artist and you know the entire AI team from all the different foundation model lab companies working on it like the wrong concept is just not going to break through because people are going to be like this is confusing like I don't want to watch this you can't fix you can't fix a bad idea you just can't you can't but I think what makes a good idea is really hard to decipher today um because I I think on the internet we live in a world of two extremes One is if I'm going to click on something, it has to be something I've never seen before on one extreme, right?

So, Mr. Beast, let's take that and go, uh, he just raced an F1 car and a cheetah. I've literally never seen a cheetah race an F1 car. So, fine, Jimmy, I'll click on that because I've never seen it before.

On the other side of this attention spectrum, I think it's show me something that impacts my day-to-day life um either with my friends and family or like is interactive.

So your guys show is a great example of something I think lives on that side which is like I get to turn this on and it impacts my life because I get to be a part of a water cooler conversation. Yeah. I can turn to my friends and I have more things to talk about with my friends.

Love Island is massively culturally relevant. I think that is something that you know even around my social circles people talk about and it they get to connect with it with their wife or with their girlfriend or with their buddies like so I think we live in in those two extremes. Anything in the middle is really hard.

Yeah, right. Like educational stuff very hard right now. Um I think viewership is going to go down in the middle. It doesn't mean it's less impactful. It's still impactful. But I I think it is interesting that the the educational content is it used to be if you wanted to quickly understand a complicated topic.

finding a short YouTube video on it was super effective because you're like, I don't have to Google and I don't have to find this summary and I don't have to piece together this Reddit thread and that blog post and this news article and I'm just going to watch this like three minute video and have a good understanding.

Now you can just prompt the model and say how does this work? And then you can ask follow-up questions and you can ask follow-up questions and you can click in to see the source. And I feel like that that that middle is just getting hollowed out.

And we're not that far from OpenAI just being like, do you want to generate a 10, you know, 10-minute video explaining this? I'll turn this report into a video. Right. And that's that kind of like I mean, you can already do it with podcasting. Mustafa Solomon from Microsoft, uh, the the CEO of Microsoft AI. Yeah.

On our show prompted a podcast that was really compelling using Copilot. And I I think though, have you guys ever used the like kind of FaceTime feature with Chat GPT? Uh the it's the voice mode, right? Yeah, it's voice mode video too. Oh, video now. Oh, that so I I did that in the kitchen.

Um like three nights ago I uh made, you know, I saw some like everything on Instagram on my Instagram feed is like cottage cheese, right? It's just like put cottage cheese in something. So it was like these like cottage cheese protein brownies. Awesome. And I was like, "All right, I'll make these.

" And I uh in the middle of it, I like had a question. And so I opened that up and I had like the video up and I was like, "All right, wait. I only have one banana. Like what do I do next? " Oh, interesting. And it was just live prompting me.

And I think the obvious thing you recognize is that that won't be our phone soon, right? Like maybe it'll be glasses, maybe it'll be contact lenses, maybe it'll be like contact lenses and an earpiece, but there will be like an omniresent nature. And that's very dystopian.

But I think this all connects to that question of education. Like educational content will be real time personalized in my ear and in my eyes. At least I think. What did you think about the launch of Waves, the new uh uh glasses built initially for live streamers.

It felt like uh the most polarizing launch where if you were a live streamer that does IRL stuff, you were thinking, "This is amazing. I I need I want to get this as fast as possible.

And if you were a uh a member of the public that values your privacy, you were, you know, saying like, please, you know, stop this before it launches. Yeah, I think it's uh Okay, I think on the live streamer side, I mean, my perspective is POV is not that interesting.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think what's interesting is like a filmer filming speed doing something. Uh, you know, not necessarily POV. The only guy who nails it is, you know, that guy in New York who like plays the uh the keys and like someone raps with him. Yep. Yep. That's like the dopest kind of solo dude.

I assume he's solo. Maybe there's a cameraman with him. But yeah, I mean it seems like it's just like one of many niches and there will be creators that are shoot wide angle, shoot drone footage of themselves doing things, shoot, you know, like like cinematic stuff.

It's just like one of the tools in the tool chest, but I mean people really like humans and they really like seeing speed or ka and they like that relationship. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

You like feeling like like you don't feel like you're somewhere like you don't it you you don't like for example like the idea of an NBA player like wearing glasses like that might be cool for a second where they're dribbling down like shooting pulling up but then you probably want to just go back to like feeling like you're actually there in the stadium seeing it.

I would get bored quickly with that. I think on the privacy side, like you know, you guys are in LA, right? Like you see Whimos all the time. I think I think there's a lot of concern about that too of like, okay, now we have more cars on the street that just have like tons of cameras on them.

Y and I think just generally there's, you know, there's a lot of concern about that, but it is like a natural evolution to us just unloading our lives and data on the internet. Like people are concerned about that, but are they concerned about their chatbt search history or question prompt history?

Like um I think Scott Galloway said it like if you want real anarchy in the world just release everyone's Google search history. Like that would end civilization.

And I think do you think it actually would or do you think everyone would just be like okay we're all equally weird like or it would be this like cool moment of just like the veils lifted like we all just search history. How much creatine can I take for losing my life? Um I don't know how this stuff's going to play out.

I just think that um yeah, you know, I I did Colin and I did get the opportunity to spend some time with with Sam Alman.

Uh and I think um you know, I I I I my curiosity with having a lot of the like like Mustafa on the show or Reed Hoffman on the show is to understand the incentives and the curiosity of the creators uh of of these programs and even with someone like Sam like it's actually hard for me to fully tap into.

I understand the desire to create and to innovate and to be number one and to um to push things into a place you could never uh imagine, but I think the implications of this are pretty different than anything else.

And I think the implications of advances in in in AI are going to change human society in a way that u like I think Casey's right like it's going to change things in in ways we can't imagine. Yeah.

One one thing that's interesting when I think about creators that that I've watched uh over the last decade, you think about uh in music like Anthony Anthony Fantano like there will be an AI creator that just instantly reviews a new Drake album and it just compare, you know, and it and it and it can come up with some analysis of the song and it'll tell you what this lyric meant and it'll say, you know, this sounds similar to a song or a unreleased track from this period and it'll give you this like context, but people will still want to hear what Anthony Fantino thinks about the album.

I think we look at it in the terms of like efficiency and inefficiency. There's certain times where we want efficient media. So like let's say I'm going into a meeting and I'm like, wait, I didn't prep for this. I need something really efficient. Like when I was in high school, that was Spark Notes.

Do you remember SparkNotes? You guys are too young for Spark Notes. No, no, I use Spark Notes, of course. Spark notes was like if I didn't do the required reading of class, which I rarely did, I would just not. Yeah, exactly. I would go like, "All right, I got the Spark Notes. " So, I think there's like efficient media.

But then if you look at there's also people who just loved reading a book. So, there's going to be both ends of the spectrum. I wish I I wish I in college if you could generate a podcast on any topic.

I mean, that is be like, I'm going to go to the gym and when I finish this, I'm going to know like 90% of what I need to know about this book. I'm gonna go on to the test. I'm gonna write the essay. I used to get the audio books for every book.

I'd buy the book for this for the co course and then I'd also buy the audio book because I was an auditory learner. But we can't assume that just what humans want is efficiency all the time, right? Because I don't want efficiency all the time.

Like you think about going to a concert, going to a concert is the least efficient way to hear the music from that artist. You go, you have to park, especially in LA, it sucks. You go, you have to figure out parking. There's traffic on the way in. You go in and like, why are you there?

You're there for a collective human experience. You're there for the messiness of how John Mayer is gonna play. I'm speaking about a John Mayer concert. So you're you want to hear him play the guitar differently than he would.

If I just want to hear the song Daughters, I'm just going to go on Spotify and hear the song Daughters. So I think I I think you just play with those two worlds of like we will always kind of crave efficiency and inefficiency. There might be areas where we want it more.

So like brainstorming is a really interesting example. Hey, I want 100 variations of this idea. Presently, an LLM can do that better than five people in a room and faster than five people in a room.

If you want to see every variation of an idea, um, but you know, you want to just uh uh watch a movie and see if you can come up with ideas based on that movie. Like it'd be hard for an LLM to match your taste in that way or Yeah.

I just think there's like efficiency and inefficiency and they're both going to play together. We really got to book an hour for this. We could just keep going forever. This is fantastic. We do have another guest join. No, let's do it in person next time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're in LA. Just come by, dude.

I would love to come see it. Also, I mean, I totally botched my uh my good-looking setup. So, uh it's high stakes with the live stuff, but we saw we we we saw the potential. We saw a glimpse of the potential. It was a human It was a humanizing moment for your a, you know. But yeah, you should you should come in.

You should come one day and close out the show with us and then we can pick your brain about stuff and and you can help us get an idea. John just said, "Pick your brain. " Well, I mean, I just asking Samir, I'm sure she gets that message a thousand times a day. I'd love to pick your brain, Samir.

Tim Ferris Tim Ferrris gave me a hard and fast rule. He said, "If anyone says pick your brain, don't go to the meeting. " Yeah, don't go to the meeting. So, that's my hard and fast rule. I will not be there. Um, if you have another suggestion, then I'll come in for that. We'll hang out. We'll hang out. We'll have lunch.

We'll have to go. Awesome. All right, guys. Great to see you. Thanks for having me on. See you guys. Cheers. Talk to you later. Bye. Up next, we have Flo coming into the studio to the TVPN Ultra Dome Legend.