AI & Content Creation: Navigating Ethics in a Digital Age

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew, a once a month podcast about PR and marketing.

But this week we're talking about content creation and AI.

The thing that every marketer and everybody on the Internet is talking about, ChatGPT and all the other fun stuff that goes with it.

There's a lot of stuff out there, but with me is Devo and he is a content creator, also a fellow podcaster and I did interview him on a previous podcast called PR360.

It's just good to have him back on my show.

So welcome to show Devo.

I'm glad to be back.

Brett.

Thank you for having me back on.

And under a new.

Under new umbrella.

That's right.

And the first question is, all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

I am a adaptogenic.

I guess that would be more of a tea than a coffee.

I gave up coffee full time.

I've been off of it now for a year and a half.

Nice, actually.

Oh, I think it's marvelous.

I don't know that I would ever go back.

I do, I do miss coffee because I was sort of a coffee connoisseur, snob when and I travel around the world a lot and one of my things was bringing back the local coffees that whenever, wherever and so I do miss that aspect of it.

But what I'm doing now feels has made me much healthier and I feel pretty good about it.

Nice.

I mean, I always say be both, that's my thing.

But whatever works for everybody is always good with me too.

Congratulations on your new gig, getting this thing up, going solo.

Yeah, it's a long time coming.

I also miss interviewing people.

That was another thing I was like, I miss doing this.

Well, welcome to entrepreneurial life.

You can do it your rules your way from here on out.

Now that's true.

But I gave a brief introduction to your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

What do I do?

That's funny because I was just talking to my social media manager last night.

We're going to come up with a new social media strategy.

Because I'm doing so many things and I don't mean that vainly.

I'm just, I'm all over the place.

I own a couple of different businesses podcast, as you referenced, traveling, working on some other new ventures on the side that I'm not going to release too much, but I have a couple of products that I'm getting ready to launch.

So I'm really excited about that.

But Primarily, I own Fusion Photography, which is a traditional photography studio based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And I also launched in 2018 a new brand called Fusion Creative, which focuses exclusively on brand messaging and helping small businesses and entrepreneurs be very clear and succinct on their brand messaging, which is very.

It's like the critical piece of a small business owner of any business really is like, how do you associate a product with a brand?

And it's through their brand messaging.

And so we help them clarify that and then create content around that and then manage all of their digital channels, which is websites, social media advertising, anything that they would use content for branding strategy to help them get their message to a broader audience.

Gotcha.

And then that's what we're going to be kind of diving into is consecration AI.

But how is it going?

How.

What are your thoughts on AI gaining more awareness in this space and your feelings on content creation in AI?

Well, it's a rapidly filled, a rapidly growing field that is evolving by the nanosecond, literally.

I think that it has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives, from healthcare to transportation, to improving efficiencies to increasing our productivities, enhancing decision making capabilities even.

But I do think, as with any emerging technology, there are some risks and some challenges, including some ethical concerns that we probably have to pay attention to around biases and privacy and job displacement.

There are some catastrophic consequences that if this isn't managed properly by the users and by the developers, it could become a widespread issue.

And you know, I mean, we've all seen the movies around, AI, Terminator, et cetera.

I mean that it is an intriguing idea to consider that there is very much, I don't know if you saw recently there was an interview on 60 Minutes with the female AI bot.

Did you see this?

No, I didn't actually see that.

Oh, check it out.

60 Minutes just did a full episode on 60 Minutes of their Sunday night show interviewing an AI female robot.

It's pretty, pretty insane actually, to be honest with you.

It's a little creepy.

Yeah, it was pretty, pretty cool episode.

I have mixed feelings about it.

I've been playing with it for the last six months or so, just really trying to wrap my head around that very question.

How can it be used conscientiously and morally without disrupting, you know, the.

Disrupting too much, the status quo of who we are, of the human element.

And so I do have some opinions about it, but I think I'll wait until the next question.

So how is this going to change?

Because I mean, you've used it.

I've used it a little bit through just doing show notes and helping me just do like time codes and things that I don't rather not do, but I need to actually do them at the same time.

And then also with like, I've seen some AI stuff just chopping up through Premiere, chopping up interviews and chopping them up perfectly where you almost don't have to edit anymore.

So how do you, how do you think this will change content creation?

Well, I think that there are, there are a lot of benefits from it from the standpoint of the tedious or complex tasks that just take up a lot of time.

The minutia of our day to day businesses, you know, there is a Pod Squeeze is one of them that I've played around with for my podcast and it generates with about 75 to 85% accuracy and that's an anecdotal number, the show notes, the timestamps, et cetera.

And it generates a bunch of other information for me.

And my relationship with that is to sort of take a look at it and then go through it.

And instead of, it's almost like doing a soft edit, you know, back in the days when we had to write essays in high school and college and stuff, right.

And we'd write the first draft and then we'd give it to somebody to look over.

Right.

I don't know if you had to go through that space, but for me I see it as more of like a soft edit, sort of a preview of what would, what I would ultimately post on my own.

But I still have to go through and do the manual checks and just make sure that things are okay.

It's not disrupting a lot of the data, it's not changing, you know, the scope or the intention of a phrase, etc.

But it's allowed, it's allowed me to really kind of automate some of the tedium that I do in my day to day business and consequently improve some of my efficiency and my productivity.

I wouldn't necessarily my decision making capabilities because I don't really use it in that sort of algorithm, but I do see a benefit from it in terms of being able to streamline a lot of the minutia that goes on on a day to day basis in my office.

So are we going to see like less people knowing how to actually like edit photos, edit videos and edit audios?

Because we have like tools like Descript where you can just look at the words and then cut out the words and Then you don't actually have to go through the manual of looking at like the audio waves and looking at how to like cut different things and make it more, I guess, better video.

We're going to see more of that just because AI is becoming like this, just this, like, hey, you can do everything faster with AI type of a thing.

Well, I suspect it's probably the nature of the beast.

I mean, with any, with any new tool that's brought or any new curriculum or any new insights or any new technology, there's always going to be sort of a manual degradation of some sorts.

Right?

You know, like I was talking to my partner's son last night and we were talking.

Apparently I hold my pen the same way he does because he called it out at the restaurant.

He's like, hey, you hold your pen the same way I do.

And I just thought it was an interesting observation.

And so off the cuff I said, do you know how to do cursive?

Like, you know, he didn't even know what cursive writing was.

So interestingly enough, you know, like, with anything there's going to be a degradation of some sort of skill sets, but there's, with the loss of anything, there's typically the gain on the other side.

So, you know, we might, we are definitely going to lose some of the critical thinking attributes.

But I think that's not, I don't believe that's an umbrella statement across for everyone.

I think just like cursive writing for him, because I know how to do cursive writing, my kids know how to do cursive writing because I made sure that they knew how to do that.

Because there's a whole bunch of different reasons why I won't go into that.

But I would suspect that a large a percentage of the population will suffer by overutilization of AI and the compensation of that is that they'll pick up new skill sets that they hadn't had before, but they're going to lose some, some of the stuff that they've been using up until this point.

So, yeah, I believe there is going to be a loss in some way, shape or form.

It's inevitable.

It's almost unavoidable.

I mean, even going with like the ethical side of it.

I mean, I've seen Photoshop now have generative AI where kind of like completes the photo, but it could be complete the photo where you make somebody look bad.

Or videos that could, I mean, deep fakes have been around a little bit longer and they've gotten a little too good for my liking, where it's like you could make somebody or put someone's face on somebody else and say, like, look, you did something bad.

So how do we, like, balance the ethical side of it where it could be funny, but let's not make it look like we're people that did something, didn't do something illegal, look like they actually did something illegal or anything like that.

Yeah, I'm not sure how you can manage it holistically.

I think that there's going to have to be some discretionary decisions that are made on a personal level at some point.

There probably might have to be some standards put in place like I saw that Hollywood is now mandating by the year 2024 that, you know, certain numbers of all movies have to meet a certain criteria of, of ethical standards of, you know, the types of people that are showing in the movies and inclusive inclusivity around that.

So there, there might have to be some standards put in place around AI if they haven't taken over by then.

But I think more than anything else, that's going to have to become a discretionary decision right now on a, on a user, by user bas.

But I mean, let's not be fooled.

Like, inauthentic photography and video has been around for a long time.

I mean, nobody, none of the actors or actresses you see in movies actually look like that.

I don't know if you've ever seen any of them in real person, but they're made up and their faces are made over and their bodies are usually sometimes body doubles.

So this sort of, I don't know if you want to call it fakery, but this sort of inauthentic viewpoint of who we are so that we cosmetically enhanced versions of us has been around for a while now.

So whether you do AI or filters or, you know, changing who you actually look like on social media, and I can tell you, because I speak for this in person, you know, I work with a lot of influencers and the images that people put on their social media are not what they look like in reality.

So they're a derivation of that.

So it's been around for a while.

I do think that at some point it will get out of hand and somebody or something is gonna have to put some sort of a standard in place.

But right now it's gonna have to be on an individual basis because no one's even taking a look at that in any way, shape or form.

I mean, that is true.

I think I had a friend that was doing like professional movies and they would sculpt and do different things.

Take, I think, like a woman was pregnant and they took out, like, the way she looked like.

And so she looked.

Didn't look like she was pregnant anymore type of a thing.

And that was basically like making her not what she was at the moment, but making it look like she was fit and everything and not actually like six, seven months pregnant.

So that is in place around my production process because early on I was getting some sort of ridiculous requests that was bastardizing the actual image.

And what.

It was sort of similar to what you just said.

Cosmetically enhancing me, making me 20 pounds lighter, removing things, changing this.

And I sort of had to put a line in the sand and said, these are not the things that I'm going to do with my images.

It's.

It's morally for me.

It's a.

It's.

I have a moral obligation to sort of create.

Create what I see.

And that doesn't mean that I'll.

I'm not going to make tweaks to it.

You know, if you got pimples, if you got things that need to be removed, I'll clean up some wrinkles.

Like, I'll do.

I'll do small, minor defects.

But I'm never going to manipulate a photo for you.

And I tell this to my clients.

It's in my contract.

There will be no photo or video manipulation.

Like, I'm going to make you look really good, but that's going to be on me on the outset of how I take the photograph and the lighting that I use and the composition that I use and the angles that I use.

But I'm not going to go in after the fact and completely change you from what you look like today.

So you're a completely different person.

So it has been around for a while, and I've gotten some crazy requests to do some absolutely crazy thing.

I had someone call me the other day.

We did a huge group photo for them, and about 20 or so of the hundred people didn't have their arms crossed in a photo.

And she wanted to know if I could make everybody have arms crossed.

And I was like, I'm just not.

Going to do that.

And I'm just not going to go in and do that.

So anyway, yeah, I guess that answered the question in a roundabout way.

That's a lot of hours just trying to get everybody's arms crossed.

Because, I mean, you have to make it look like their arms are crossed.

And that's a pain in the butt.

Just in general, just doing it Manually, because you have to make it look, you have to sell it.

And if it's not sold, then people are like, that's fake.

Well, you're absolutely spot on on that.

But what's crazy to me is the fact that the question was asked because it's become normal to change the images.

It's become normal to add on filters.

It's been normalized to put photos in a situational context so other people can see them that aren't actually real.

They're fabrications of the original context.

And so, you know, those sort of questions are not something I would have gotten 10 years ago.

And now I get them today.

It's like, can you put me here so that I'm sitting on a beach as opposed to sitting right here?

And I was like, is that really what you want me to do?

Like, does that, does that really matter in the scheme of things?

So yeah, yeah.

And so I mean, are we going to see less humans actually doing that stuff and more AI as AI is getting more prevalent?

I mean, I've seen on Twitter AI create commercials that look very weird but still look pretty lifelike to be like that could, once AI figures out how to do, actually do a good commercial, that could eventually happen.

So are we going to start seeing more of that more AI generated and less human generated type of content?

I believe so, yes, I do.

I do believe so.

I think it's already happening in a lot of ways.

I mean, we've already seen some of the video production that AI is putting out.

I think there's still going to have to be a human.

Let me rephrase this.

I think you're going to have to make a moral decision as a producer, as a content creator, whether you're in Hollywood or you're on a small business like I am, at what level are you going to allow this to take over and pervade your life and become the holistic process of everything?

And I've made a decision, me personally, that I don't have a problem using it for the minutia, but I do have a problem with it being the final product in every sense of the word.

And so while I use it to create some show notes perhaps, or I might use it to ChatGPT to have a conversation, if you will, on some ideas around what could my strategy look like for my social media next month and being able to use it to come up with ideation and take that from there and then expound upon it, it that that's, that's the decision I've made.

But I definitely, in answer your question, I, I definitely think that there is going to be a large majority of the population because that's just the nature of humanity to try to efficient, make things more efficient, more optimal and to not be involved in the process.

Like we're always looking for the quick fix, like what can we get done right now?

So, you know, that's part of the problem.

This is a much deeper esoteric conversation, but that's part of the problem.

Why we're in the situation that we are is because people don't enjoy the process.

People don't get involved in the process.

They just want to immediate get to the end.

I just immediately want that, that.

I just immediately want that prize on the other side of this.

And nobody wants to get into the middle of the muck and the dirt and the filth and get dirty and grimy and blood and sweat and tears anymore because you know, we can, we can get to the other side very quickly.

So yeah, I definitely agree with that statement.

Yeah, I mean, I'm more in agreement with you.

I will use AI to help me offset things that I may not want to do, but it will help me automate my workflow or if I need to touch up some video, maybe save some videos degraded, I'll use AI to help uplift it because that's an easier process for it to do than for me spending too many hours trying to uplift a video.

But are we going to get to a point where it's just.

We may.

I mean, I've seen a thaws on news thing a couple months ago where one of the Middle Eastern countries was doing an AI news reporter.

So it wasn't even a real human anymore.

It was all AI generated and they were delivering the news.

Are we going to get to that weird spot where even maybe the newscasters aren't actually real anymore and they're just not even paying newscasters or humans to actually do that?

They'll just have automated AI representation of humans and they'll just deliver the news that way so they can control the news that way even more.

Yeah, I don't know, to be honest with you.

I haven't watched the news in 15 years, so I couldn't really tell you.

I suspect there's going to be a segment of the population that does go down that, down that rabbit hole.

I think that there's going to be a dissection of society that.

And I don't know if it's going to necessarily be age based, but I definitely think there's going to be a group, a population that's going to, that AI is going to polarize for and against.

As with anything, you know, I prefer balance.

I think that there is good and bad on both sides of the equation for this.

You know, I work with a hospital, one of my big clients here, and they use AI to help doctors diagnose diseases because, you know, they can, it's much faster.

So, and then develop personalized treatment plans using AI and even predict, you know, because AI can do this in a, in a nanosecond, predict some of the patient outcomes based upon some variables.

So, you know, there are a lot of positive benefits that AI can help.

And again, it's in the name of progress.

You know, humans have always done this just.

Let's just go back, you know, 60 years to automobiles.

You know, look at what we're driving today.

We've got electric cars and we have got cars that can levitate.

And now we have.

I've seen there are cars that can fly that they're testing.

And like, you know, we didn't have those technologies.

And, you know, there were people back then that were probably saying, you know, well, we can't go that way.

There's no way we can do this is going to cause this problem.

It's going to cause that problem we're going to have over traffic, whatever it is.

But for whatever reason, humans are innovative and they always figure out a way to make things work.

We're very efficient people.

Right?

We're very productive people.

So I suspect that there's going to be a polarization of this.

The naysayers who say, stay away from it.

I'm never going to touch it.

And there's going to be people who embrace it wholeheartedly.

And like anything, you know, you can use it for corruption and evil, or you can use it for good.

And you know, like the hospital is for good and productivity and helping people.

So I suspect with, in the case of your newscasters, there is probably going to be an AI only, you know, just like ESPN is just sports only, there might be an AI only news channel that just does AI and you know, if people want to watch it, they want to watch it.

But I still go back to the original statement, as with anything, you know, overuse, overabundance, if you have a, a 100 proclivity to only use one thing, you're going to be out of balance.

And you know, that's gonna, that's gonna be where the damage and the dangers are gonna, gonna start to Creep in.

So it's interesting to talk about the grips, because I'm.

I even see kind of the grips going like the AI enthusiasts, the middle ones, the hybrids, the ones that embrace it but have a skepticism towards it, and then the ones that fully reject it and be like, this is a degradation.

Do human, humankind or whatever, they embrace Terminator 2 and all those like, AI is going to kill us all type of a thing.

So are we going to see that with content creators, like in groups too?

Like the ones that say, I use AI, everything, pay me to use, for me to use AI to do this, or the content creators will do it themselves to do it, and then they don't have to do anything except maybe look good in the camera and even that, maybe not even do that anymore.

Are we going to see like the hybrid content creators?

Like, I'm going to do this, but I'm still going to be part of the process because I feel like learning the process is good.

We're going to have just the manual only.

They may even go back to film if they want to.

I mean, I don't think you can buy too many film cameras anymore, but we're going to see more of that, like the groups kind of dividing themselves in that type of a thing, where it's like different types of content creators want to do different things.

And then we'll kind of see how, I guess, people respond in a way, the audience.

Yeah, it's a great question.

Well, we already have that.

So especially in the photography and cinema world, we already have people who have.

Don't have the skills, don't have the knowledge, have not put in the time to become a professional master photographer.

Let's just use that as an example.

You know, becoming a master photographer requires years of experience.

You have to do an apprenticeship, you have to take a copious amount of tests and different things.

And you need to be, you need to be able to pass specific standards that are put in place by, like, organizations like the ppa, for example.

But that's not a, that's not a law, that's not a protocol that's required.

So anybody can go over to anywhere, Amazon, Best Buy, wherever you want, and buy a really expensive camera and call themselves a photographer.

And they're going out and they're selling that to people right now.

And while they may get some good photos, they're not going to take photos like a master photographer would.

That takes all the variables of photography into consideration, which is, you know, composition and lighting and angles and context and being able to tell the story of an image by just being part of the process.

And so there's always going to be a need for that sort of a person.

I don't know that AI will ever be able to be sentient enough where they can sit with you through a photo session for, you know, and be able to tell your story organically just using AI, synthetic technologies.

There's always going to be a need, in my opinion, for people that are still going to have to go the traditional route, but those polarizations already exist today.

There are people out there today that are selling their photography quote unquote skills to an audience who isn't necessarily as.

Well, I don't know what the correct word to say this without being undiplomatic, but there are some people just don't really give a shit.

I just want a quick photo, let me get it done.

But there are other people like my types of clients who are not looking for the run and gun experience.

They're looking for something else that is curated, that is thoughtful, that has critical elements of decision making in them, that tells a story about their product.

And so there, there already are two camps.

And so I only suspect that those camps will probably continue down that channel of their own, of their own sort of divestitures.

But for people like myself, and I'm putting myself in that camp because I am a master photographer, there's always going to be an audience that wants our services, at least given the current paradigm that we operate in.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that does.

I mean almost my follow up question is like Twitter did with their own badges, should there almost be like a badge for like people like look, I actually don't, or I use very little AI and then bad for people saying I use all AI type of thing because not the normal person's not going to know how much you use AI or not.

I mean I will be, I'll always be upfront, say I use it to a certain extent, but I'm still in the process.

I still do the video editing, I still go through everything and make sure it sounds good and everything.

But there's going to be, some people will be like, look it, I just let it do itself.

I kind of sort of check it, but not really, I just kind of say up, yeah, I did it, so it's done.

So it's almost like there needs to be some type of like I guess certification in a way, I guess is the best way of saying it to say like I'm a content creator that knows how to video Edit instead of.

I'm a content creator that just uses AI to do it for me.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.

It's a good idea.

I don't know that we'll see that anytime soon.

I think the question we should probably reframe that a little bit is will people be able to tell the difference from it?

And if they, if they can't tell the difference of it, does it matter?

So it goes back to, from my perspective, a moral decision.

From the creator's perspective, how much am I willing to share with you that I'm doing and how much am I willing to actually use that service?

And I think from my perspective, because I don't use it for any sort of content creation right now, AI, you know, I don't have a AI camera or anything like that, but I do manually edit all my images.

I do manually edit all of my videograph, all those things.

But probably, probably advertising your services and letting people know sort of what level of curation you're taking at this would probably be the better, better way to approach that.

Just so that the end buyer, the consumer sort of knows.

And especially if they're discerning enough that they can tell the difference, this is what I'm paying for.

So they sort of know upfront what they're getting out of, out of their dollar that they're spending.

Does that make, does that make sense?

Yeah, it's almost like, for me, it would be like asking yourself a question, okay, what's.

If I did all AI didn't tell the customer and then they found out that I wasn't even part of the process, would they be actually upset with me?

Would they be like, I want my money back or some type of legal action?

If there is actually ever any loss to do anything but something negative towards you, would they be upset with it?

Yeah, I think, I think I would probably want to understand the implications of that a little bit better.

Is AI recreating something that's already been created through plagiarism?

So for me, that would go back to that moral situation again, that conscientious decision on am I recreating?

Am I, am I creating something using AI that's of my original native work, or am I bastardizing and creating something else that someone already did?

And you know, from, from a standpoint of content creation, it's not like, it's not like everything isn't recreated anyway.

Like, people copy my photos all the time.

I see versions of what I've already and you know, local photographers But I've done the same thing.

Like that's what, you know, I'll find a really cool photograph on Pinterest and I'll say, hey, I'm going to sort of recreate this in my own unique way.

So I guess for me it would just sort of have to be what's the implications of the recreation?

Is it truly is the plagiarism causing a moral and conscious decision by like, you know, if I'm going to write a book, for example, with using AI, am I going to recreate word for word Dostoevsky or you know, Jody Piccolt or any of these books back here and you know, Michael Michalowicz, I'm reading right now, Profit first and you know, how to make more money with your money.

And am I going to write my own book?

And it's basically written by AI and it just literally is a plagiarism of that.

Now that obviously is a moral decision, that there's going to be some problems and some fallout from that.

But from a content creation perspective, you know, creating photos, creating video, I guess I would just need to understand the implications and sort of, you know, how far does it actually go?

Yeah, I mean, we could put it into different groups.

There's inspiration, which what you would do, and there's plagiarism.

Inspiration is like, I like that I want to, to see if I could do something but give it a twist.

But I'm inspired by what someone else is doing to try it myself, where I'm still making it a little different, but it's still some type of inspiration.

And then a complete copy where it's like, well, I can't tell the difference between this one and this one because it's a complete copy.

Absolutely.

Well, it's kind of interesting.

We should probably, you know, we could take this conversation a bunch of different directions.

You know, there's not much original work anymore, period in anything like, you know, you go on Instagram and you have all these gurus talking about spirituality and holistic, and you have dietitians talking about how to do this, and you've got people talking about how to do.

And those, most of these people are just recreating something that they've already learned themselves.

And now they're just putting their own personal spin on it.

So again, it goes back to that moral compass.

What's the implication of my creation?

And I would need to understand that a little bit better.

Am I taking something word for word and writing a book with AI, am I taking an image and Literally recreating the.

Am I saying, hey, I take a look at this photo, skip scan it in, and I want you to recreate this exact same image.

I'm going to give that to my client and then pass it off as my original work.

You know, that's obviously a moral and conscientious issue.

That's immoral.

And so again, I would need to understand the implications of what that recreation looks like, because truthfully speaking, there is not a lot of original work.

Most everyone is just repeating, rephrasing, regurgitating something that they learned from someone else.

Like, it's.

That's just the nature of.

It's just the nature of human and history and of itself.

Right, right.

Everything's in a cycle.

So like media, television, cartoons, like, everything is just a recreation of something.

My daughters are wearing Nike air flights and Air Jordans again that I wore when I was in middle school and high school.

Like, they're literally the exact same shoes.

They just recreated them and added a couple extra hundred dollars to them.

Yeah, I mean, one of the books in Bible, Ecclesiastes basically said there's nothing new under the sun.

And I've always been like, that's basically actually pretty true.

I mean, we think with something new and then you go back history, it's like, it's actually not very new.

So I'm gonna try to do that.

Yeah, dude.

First of all, you're the first person in like five years has dropped some Ecclesiastes on a podcast.

So well done.

I know my Bible to a certain extent.

I knew.

And it's also one of my favorite books, actually, because it's more philosophical in a way, and it doesn't really give you answers.

It just kind of goes, this is life, this is what happens.

Deal with it.

Now there's a conversation we could have the Bible, because I think it's all just a metaphor.

I'm sort of sounds like what I hear you saying.

And I'm actually very much into the Bible as well.

So it's interesting.

I'm reading the Book of Enoch right now just so I can sort of understand from a different context, because, you know, the Book of Enoch was removed from the canonical Bible that we now have in written print for everyone.

But anyway, we're getting off topic, but that's a great conversation we should have one day.

Yeah.

And then, I mean, back to content creators.

How should we respond to AI?

I mean, we've kind of talked about it.

It seems like for a lot of us, we're going to respond to we're going to use it for a lot of them, I should say, not everyone, because there's always different groups, but for the kind of the people that have already done content creation for a while, it feels like we're going to use it, but we're going to use it wisely or in ways that helps us with our workflow, but not fully trust it or fully use it to us stepping back and not doing anything.

Yeah, yeah.

I think we need.

I think there needs to be a broader discussion on the role of humans in ensuring that the ethical and responsible use of AI is implemented.

And that's on a user by user basis and probably by a group by group basis.

I think there needs to be some human oversight in all of this because as we've discussed throughout the conversation, if there isn't, it's not only going to be training us to not use our own critical processes and our own critical thinking, but if AI were to go, if AI, potentially given the gaps that it's already closed in just the few short years that it's been in the mainstream, if it were to continue in that capacity unfettered, unchecked, who knows where it could go.

So I do think that there needs to be some standards put in place.

Absolutely.

On both a personal and a global level.

And I don't know what those look like.

That's way outside my pay grade.

But I would suspect that we each as individuals need to sort of understand what this game looks like that we're playing, understand the implications of it, and then come up with our own set of morals and parameters on how we're going to use it safely and responsibly.

It almost needs to be almost like a content creation, loosely federation, basically.

Being like, this is how we're going to use AI and like, I mean, there could be different types of groups, but I'm just saying this is how we use AI.

This is how we tell our customers.

Because I feel like if we don't really message or market the right way, the customer is going to be pissed off and be like, I could have just done chat GPT without you and not paid all this money.

Because you did exactly what I could have done myself.

Yeah, but they didn't do it themselves.

So there's always going to be those people like, you know, I don't mow my own yard or clean up my yard every week anyway.

I used to do that.

All my life I've taken care of my yard.

But I'm at a point now where I have Bigger and better things to do from my own personal priority list.

Right.

So there's always going to be people who are going to do themselves.

There's always going to be the DIY world, but there's always going to be the people that have moved beyond that space and are going to want someone to do it for them.

So from an ethical standpoint, you know, however the job gets done, as long as there's no harm being done and there's not being, you know, something being recreated illegally or plagiarized or whatever, you know, I think that people just, again, I feel like a broken record.

I think it's just going to have to be done on a personal, individual basis so that people are able to monitor what they're doing without completely giving away the keys to the kingdom on everything.

So, fun question for you.

What AI would you like to be created to help you with your workflow even more?

That's a good question.

Is there one?

On parenting I have two teenage daughters.

Man, I need some parenting AI right now.

I have two daughters who are completely different from each other.

And one of them just sort of toes the line and does their own thing and, you know, never really gets in trouble.

And the other one pushes the bubble on everything.

And I'm not saying it's a bad thing because, you know, the people who push the bubble are the people who are, you know, the change makers in the world.

So.

But dealing with that as a parent is sometimes I don't know if you have kids, but dealing with change makers as your own children, it can be monumental tasks.

So give me some AI parenting outside of the joke world, I think really the truthfully, the post production of things, I think especially with my podcast, I find there's a lot of tedium, duplicitous things that go on, from creating show notes to timestamping it, to putting all of the different segments together, to creating shorts from it being able to take.

It'd be nice to be able to produce my own content like I do, and then edit that content down like I do manually right now.

But it'd be really cool that once I got the cream, if you will, the cream of the crop of the show, that then I could dump it into a program that's only going to take the cream of the crop and then redistribute it, make the shorts, do the show notes, whatever it is, because then I would know that it's only editing the stuff that I've already created myself.

Does that make sense?

So that would be A nice tool.

For me, it's always the post production that's always the longest part and the most tedium part about everything.

Because you always have to edit the show to a certain extent.

I mean, it depends on the person.

If you wanted to always get rid of the ums and uhs.

I'm more of a if it's okay, if it's not obsessive, let's just say that if it's not saying every other word, ums and us, I leave it in.

But if it's like too much, I'm like, well, I have to take most of this out now.

So I get what you're saying.

Because a lot of it can become tedious.

Yeah, you know, I do a.

We're talking about content creation.

So I just finished a shoot yesterday with one of my clients and there's like 2500, 3500 images in there.

So I know that there are AI tools like Adobe already has one out there where they'll go through and cull all of your images for you.

And I've played with it, but it doesn't do the job that I need done.

There's a lot of error in it, a lot of omission of key images that should have been there.

But it's supposed to sort of look for duplicates and closed eyes and bad lighting and things that just don't really fit.

But that would be a nice tool to be able to have, to be honest with you, because going through a first pass of images for me, getting that 2500 down to, you know, a couple hundred images that I'm actually going to eventually use for something would be a nice tool.

And I don't.

I haven't seen the technology there yet.

And if it exists, I don't know about it, but that would be another usage for me.

I got a really cool book for you if you'd like to read on AI, because I started down this at the timing of your request to be on the show is interesting because.

And the topic.

Because I've been exploring this now for about six months and I've read some really cool books on it.

The one I really liked the most was called the Singularity Is Near.

It's sort of like when humans transcend biology.

And I can't remember the name of the author, but I believe his last name was Kurzweil.

I think Ray Kurzweil was his name.

Name.

A really good book, but it explores the potential implications of exponential growth of this AI technology and the possibility of Technological singularity and where machines become smarter than humans.

It's a really good book if anyone's looking to explore, if you're looking for a good read on the impact of AI, this was a phenomenal read for me and it's really helped me shape some of the, the beliefs that I have around this, which is, you know, like there's a moral compass that has to be employed across the line on this, on an individual level.

Yeah, yeah.

Sounds like an interesting read.

I'll put on my list of very, a very long list of things to read.

You need an AI bot to read it for you.

Yeah, but then I just don't learn it because the AI bot learns it.

And then I'm just like, well, that didn't learn anything.

Yeah, I'm an old school book reader, as you can see behind me.

I don't even listen to audibles.

I just like to read a book.

I don't either.

I do my own book reading too because I know you can get through books a lot faster with it, but I don't feel like you learn it as well as if you actually read it yourself.

Yeah, absolutely.

100% agree.

And I like to make notes in my books and stuff and go back and reference them and research stuff.

So yeah, I can't do that with auto.

Well, I guess you probably could, but it's not the same thing.

Agreed.

And so where can people find you online?

Instagram is probably my biggest area of playing in the digital sandbox.

It's Fusion Photog, short for photography.

I'm also on LinkedIn.

My website is Fusion Creative Branding and Fusion Photography Studio.

Those are the two websites.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

Thanks for having me on the show.

I think AI has the potential to revolutionize the way that we work.

I really do.

But as I think Master Yoda said, as with great power comes great responsibility.

So, you know, it's.

The onus is on us as individuals to live our lives critically and profoundly and to do the things that are responsible.

Responsible and accountable.

To be good humans and AI falls into that bucket.

And if we're going to take a tool and bastardize it and make it, make it a tool for pernicious output, if you will, then you're not, you're not following in the line of good karma.

And so not to get weird and holistic and woo woo on you, but like anything, find a balance and use it for the things that are not going to disrupt the status quo too much or disruption up the moral status quo of things and find and be able to have some moral obligation around how you use it and drawing a line in the sand on things you're not going to do with AI.

And I feel like it could be a really productive tool and really help you out in a lot of different ways.

Agree.

But thanks Stevo for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on content creation and just AI.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me man.

Man.

And thank you for joining.

As always be subscribed to the podcast on all your favorite podcasts.

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All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding how you can use AI to help you work flow, and see you next month.

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