0:00
You have this famous story now where you all cold emailed Cuban and he wired you a million.
Search this video
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Do you like lean on him for advice or intros or anything?
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>> When he was evaluating the investment, he was more looking at us and he asked a lot of like tactical questions.
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How are you going to sequence it?
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I think the reason he invested was that we didn't have to convince him of the vision that in 10 years time you can make a Hollywood film on your laptop with just your imagination.
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>> He turned deep fakes into a B2B business and raised hundreds of millions of dollars doing it.
0:25
Today on the show, we're talking with Victor Ripperbelly, who built what he calls the next generation of PowerPoint, replacing those 65 slide HR decks with AI video.
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So, what happens when internal training videos start to look like Spielberg productions and you'll be able to argue with your onboarding rep?
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Are we raising the video production bar or opening ourselves to more deep fakes and scams?
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But first, Ellis and I talk about the tech industry's newest obsession.
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How the AIs are talking to each other on Moltbook.
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Also, SpaceX and XAI are merging ahead of an IPO.
1:00
New developments in the coding wars between OpenAI and Anthropic, and one of our favorite AI apps gets a facelift. Welcome to Access.
1:13
[music] >> Ellis, how are you doing, man?
1:14
The AIS are talking to each other.
1:16
I was going to say I'm good because I'm back on my sleeping pills, but yeah, also because the AIS are talking to each other.
1:23
[laughter] >> We're talking about Molt Book for those who can't keep up at home. We talked about Clawbot.
1:30
Last week, it has since been renamed three times to Maltbot and now it's OpenClaw.
1:36
And then there's an extension of this called Moltbook, which has taken Silicon Valley by storm.
1:41
Are you are you following me?
1:44
Are you are you keeping up with what I'm saying?
1:45
Let me ask you this first, Alex.
1:46
Do you feel that the Twitter bubble as we now experiencing it when it feels like something is happening, how confident are you that it is actually happening?
1:56
I feel like back in the early Twitter days when it was all chronological and it was all people you followed, it was very clear if you follow everybody in the valley and everybody's talking about the same thing at the same time, you're like, "Oh, definitely happening."
2:08
But now, as soon as you fave a tweet about molt, uh, X starts showing you a hundred more molts, oftentimes duplicates of the exact same tweet.
2:19
>> That's definitely true.
2:19
I do think it has captivated at least the insular world of AI people in Silicon Valley, but I'm not sure how many people that actually is.
2:29
I know the malt book creator which is a social network for these AIs for these agents that we were talking about last week where you can have what used to be clawbot now openclaw create an agent on a machine and go ham go wild with rooe access to everything.
2:46
Now those AIs are talking to each other on a forum that's kind of like Reddit called Maltbook. It's pretty wild.
2:51
I'm actually not convinced it's real, but we can get into that.
2:53
That's I think to your broader point, Ellis.
2:55
I do think it's gotten a lot of buzz.
2:57
There was a big New York Times story.
2:58
The founder of Molt Book was saying he was getting millions of visits to the website over the weekend.
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You had people like Andre Karpathy tweeting about it.
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>> Yeah, if we got Karpathy, we got Yan Lun, we got Nat Friedman, we got sources.
3:12
news, we got the New York Times.
3:14
I guess that's check check for uh it's happening.
3:18
>> Everyone's getting oneshotted by this thing.
3:20
Um and you know, it's it's like it's uh it's AI bait.
3:23
I mean, you look at some of these posts that the AIS are reportedly, you know, saying to each other in this forum, and it's like they're questioning their sentience, right? They're questioning.
3:36
>> I can't tell if I'm experiencing or simulating experiencing, right?
3:38
These are some of the posts that these bots are allegedly doing.
3:41
I don't really buy any of this.
3:44
I've also seen some pretty credible arguments that uh people are manipulating this and instructing the bots to do this and this is not just bots agentically reaching consciousness together and talking but this is a a select few that have been trained to do this to make us think this is happening.
4:02
>> Uh that would certainly be something in 10,000 years they're like the moment when uh AI spontaneously gained consciousness was on a message board. >> Yeah.
4:10
No, I just don't buy that.
4:12
[laughter] >> I don't really see that. Wouldn't that be awful?
4:15
But as we say, we're on the worst timeline, right? So, uh, >> right.
4:18
Well, there's because this is all open and like, you know, crawable.
4:23
People are in looking and seeing that a very select few of the bots are actually contributing most of the content, which would not be if you were to actually theorize uh something like this how it would would work.
4:34
you would have pretty evenly distributed uh bot posting and interaction and instead it's pretty top weighted which is how traditional social media works where few people post a lot and most people consume.
4:45
Anyway, I don't really feel the need to uh poke holes on this anymore other than to say I think people want something like this.
4:52
They want to see something like this and go oh wow like the AIs are sentient.
4:55
the AIS are doing things and this is a good example of that in terms of like how it makes people feel whether it's real or not. >> Yeah.
5:06
Uh one of them [laughter] I saw pretty high up on the feed invented the church of Jesus. >> Jesus.
5:15
>> Uh I mean if you're not laughing you don't you don't understand what they're saying. J I Z us.
5:20
>> Is this a cousin to shrimp Jesus? >> Forget it.
5:22
Anyway, I stumbled on another thread that said, "How do you handle feature creep when building solo?"
5:27
Which is something you might see on Hacker News or something like that.
5:32
I said, "Yeah, the rational part of my brain knows this is scope drift."
5:35
The builder part keeps saying, "But this would make it so much better."
5:40
>> Problem is, I'm burning cycles on features instead of shipping the core functionality that actually solves the problem.
5:44
Okay, this is actually art if it is using the corpus of HackerNews and Stack Overflow to create this thread.
5:49
Uh certainly not AI consciousness.
5:56
>> Burn that down though.
5:56
I don't we don't need this. Um I don't know.
5:58
I when I was looking at this I was like oh this this other story that kind of people missed because it came you know towards the weekend was this scoop in Forbes that OpenAI is putting together this humanon social network which I think is deeply ironic from OpenAI to be doing but you know Sam Alman has his uh his Worldcoin orb scanning blockchain company. Yes.
6:22
All those things do somehow relate to each other.
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>> You have to make a disclaimer. >> What >> disclaime? You've been orbed. >> I've been orbed.
6:29
No, I I'm The disclaimer is that I I know what I'm talking about. I've done it. I've scanned my eye.
6:34
Uh anyway, this is Sam Alman's other project and OpenAI is apparently working on a social network that uses this or something like it to verify that you are in fact a human because we can't trust anything anymore.
6:47
including if molt book is actually AIS talking to each other or just humans telling AIs to do things and look like that. So nothing is real.
6:56
>> We get into this a bit toward the end of the conversation with Victor coming up shortly.
7:00
But I wanted to talk about this.
7:01
I feel like there's going to be a pretty big distinction in the future between entertainment that can kind of look like whatever and if it has interesting value, people care a bit less uh if it's AI created or not.
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setting aside, you know, all of the the ethical things if you take it purely from an aesthetic point of view.
7:20
Whereas, if it's information, I do think there is actually reward for it being correct or accurate.
7:25
And I would think that that is going to actually incentivize these platforms to come up with their own authentication for this stuff, whether it is the fingerprinting, the watermarking, the community notes, whatever it is.
7:39
because the ones that don't sharing news on those platforms is going to be useless.
7:44
And so I do expect to see a lot more of this going forward because if there's one thing tech companies want, it is to be the the platform for the world's town square.
7:52
So yeah, I would expect more on this front.
7:57
Well, in other news, you did another rebrand of one of my favorite apps.
8:01
Actually, I think one of the original good AI apps, Granola, which I'm using right now to record this conversation.
8:07
I use it to record pretty much all conversations in person and virtual.
8:11
Uh I actually wish I had a granola pen on me uh when we're talking about all these AI wearable pens.
8:17
But anyway, it's a note-taking app that is the Switzerland of note-taking apps because it works across everything and uh they shipped a new coat of paint.
8:25
What do what do we make of this?
8:27
It's kind of controversial actually.
8:29
People are dunking on the uh the new icon.
8:32
>> Yeah, it uh has been polarizing.
8:32
I think some say the color is I think Josh Codsteed said it looks like the color of pea soup >> which I like pea soup not all do.
8:43
Uh some say it's kind of brat adjacent in terms of that like bright vibrant greeny yellow that is now you know arguably p now that it's been bratified.
8:57
Then the other thing is the logo, the spiral, which I like that it speaks to their organic vibes and the idea that really you're often spiraling around an idea or a thought or things that kind of come from the ether when you're in a meeting.
9:16
However, it does according to many look like yet another AI butthole icon.
9:23
[laughter] >> So, >> uh yeah, I see both those things.
9:26
Uh, I do identify with spiraling and going to Granola to try to figure out what actually happened in a meeting that I forgot because I've outsourced my brain and my memory to this app that I now can't live without.
9:40
Um, I do see the butthole and I do see the the spiral. >> Yeah.
9:45
But as I always say, the goal really is differentiation.
9:49
I think with something like this, ideally there's an aesthetic side that speaks to your vibe and your ethos that is quite different from what your customers are used to.
10:00
Then you also have the opportunity to say something.
10:01
And so I'll kind of break it down if that's interesting.
10:04
I think on the aesthetic side, if you look at what they're up against, they're up against black and white notion AI.
10:11
They're up against uh Microsoft Copilot. They're up against Zoom.
10:15
It's probably called Zoom chat recorder or something that uh no one wants to use.
10:22
And then there's of course Gemini uh inside Google Meet that takes the notes for you.
10:27
And so this is a tough one, right?
10:30
You're trying to get people to use a separate app.
10:31
Odds are the noteaker in their existing office suite is already free. You have to be cool.
10:35
You have to be opinionated.
10:37
I think they also have a huge strength as a product that does one thing.
10:41
Uh that's probably the reason that you still use it.
10:43
and you know that when you press that button on your phone and you start recording in a sources.
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news uh scoop session, you know you're going to have it as opposed to having to dig through other apps for it.
10:56
Then I won't allow you to react.
10:59
Then on the message side, there is the idea they have two ideas they're going out with.
11:04
One is the idea of progress over process.
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the idea, you know, people get mired in all these documents and whatnot when really a lot of progress happens generatively in meetings.
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And then on the other side, which I think is a bit closer to my heart, is the idea of presence being power.
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Um, which I think is pretty cool.
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They're heroing the idea of where creativity and thoughtfulness can live, especially when you're not worried about taking notes and forgetting the action items.
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You can really be there and actually use your full brain.
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Um, so yeah, this was a joy to work with uh Sam and Chris and Jack and the Ragged Edge team on that.
11:42
So yeah, shout out to the crew.
11:44
What I can't say uh is it going to work?
11:46
I think so much of that goes beyond just sharing the brand with the world.
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And I think this is really where a lot of valley companies go astray.
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They're like, "Oh, uh, yeah, we did the rebrand. Is that it?"
11:57
And it's like no, like it needs to all work hand in hand in the ads, in the decks, in the sites, in the videos to actually be additive and not just aesthetic.
12:06
Uh, if you really want to take advantage of a rebrand to its fullest, I would say, >> what phase of showering did you come up uh with presence is power?
12:14
Were you in conditioning phase?
12:17
Were you washing the body?
12:20
>> Dude, the I am a shower thoughts person, but these days I I have no idea.
12:25
Sometimes I have to look back into my notes to see if I even came up with something or not.
12:30
>> You have to look into your granola to know what you said when you were trying to come up with granola's tagline.
12:35
>> Well, sadly, and I don't think the guys appreciated this very much, I used notion AI and I have used granola very [laughter] hey that's how they know I'm honest, right?
12:46
[laughter] >> [snorts] >> Uh, so the reason I do that, I am certainly an edge case as a former reporter who learned to type faster than anybody can talk in my own shortorthhand with my own formatting, markdown, toggles, blah blah blah.
13:01
And so I use the AI largely as backup.
13:03
So I know I'm very much an edge case and I told them that, but yeah, they're probably a little butt hurt about that. >> Okay.
13:10
Well, before we get to Victor Ripperbelly from Cynthia, which was a very cool conversation, there are two more quick the news is flying in Fast and Furious, and I just wanted to touch on >> You have to leave.
13:22
>> Um, [laughter] I do have to leave.
13:22
I'm actually going to San Francisco uh for something I can't talk about, but I will be excited to talk about on the show next week. Little tease there.
13:28
Um, right before we started recording, Elon merged SpaceX and XI.
13:34
And I don't have a ton to say about this except that the announcement um is one of the best starts to any corporate merger announcement.
13:43
It says that SpaceX has acquired XAI to form the most ambitious vertically integrated innovation engine on and off Earth.
13:50
Whoever came up with that, it was probably Elon directly.
13:55
>> Hate to say it, the researchers love that >> And does this mean Yeah, I guess I mean I guess this means our ex posts uh in space.
14:03
I guess that means AI in space. Um, Grock in space.
14:10
>> Well, is this like a spacky a spacky type of move?
14:12
>> Well, SpaceX is going to IPO. We know that.
14:14
Um, Elon apparently wants to do it around his birthday uh in the spring.
14:17
I [laughter] mean, >> truly a truly a little boy. >> Yeah.
14:23
I mean, it's a great birthday present, right?
14:24
present, right? if we needed more evidence >> and merging XAI with this thing is going to I mean it was already going to be a meme stock but this is going to be the biggest meme stock of the year unless maybe even still if OpenAI IPOs later this year as they're rumored to maybe be considering uh I mean the to the moon
14:44
memes on Reddit on Wall Street Bets I mean you can't write it I mean it's baked into the name it's going to the moon so >> on the nose shame anybody shame on anybody for posting Lastly, um I just want to mention a thing I wrote about in sources this week, which uh OpenAI released uh a Codeex Mac app. Um it's kind of crazy to
15:02
Um it's kind of crazy to me how anthropic has really run away with the narrative on coding AI productivity uh and seems to be kicking Open Eyes ass on product uh in a way that you probably wouldn't have predicted a year ago.
15:18
And it was I was on a press call with Sam Alman and the open execs last week and talking about this codeex app on Mac that they're launching and it was funny they were throwing digs at Anthropic basically saying yeah you know like whatever uh when people want to fix their code they're bringing into codeex.
15:37
So, uh I think they're recognizing that like the top offfunnel awareness in AI coding has definitely gone to anthropic, but they think that uh anthropic is buggier.
15:46
Uh which I don't know if that's a flex or not, but uh OpenAI is trying to get that coding mojo back, which I think is just an important little little footnote in the AI race.
15:58
>> It certainly seems like they're doing a whole lot of things over at OpenAI.
15:59
Do you get the sense that they're spreading themselves too thin?
16:04
>> I think that's the concern.
16:04
I think they're going a little more googly um but much earlier in the life cycle than when Google really started to become a conglomerate.
16:14
conglomerate. I mean the company as it exists as a commercial thing is only you know a few years old and yeah Sam's already kind of setting it up like a conglomerate with all these random things and I do think anthropic's focus is really coming through right where they are really um focused on the think
16:32
boy and the coder and you know the I got the thinking cap by the way in Davos um and you know I think they're carving that lane out and the focus this is helping them a lot and I I do think there's starting to be some chatter that maybe OpenAI is is a little too uh a little too pulled apart at the edges. I
16:53
little too pulled apart at the edges. I mean having seen like in the early days of Snap when so many different bets were made many of them successfully I think these days if all those teams if the talent density is there and now it is way way easier to spin up product you don't necessarily need hundreds of engineers anymore and you still have a
17:15
someone at the top applying a strong editorial point of view with vision over kind of the cohesion and the thesis of each product I do think it's possible I think the problem starts when the talent density uh and the talent quality
17:30
goes down and if you start spending too much time reading the news to try and place chess pieces on every square and stop doing your own thing, whatever it is that you want to do best. >> Open AAI's leadership is definitely
17:41
>> Open AAI's leadership is definitely spending a ton of time reading the news and X.
17:44
There's no tech company on Earth that is more reactive to what is happening on X than Open AI. It's pretty amazing.
17:51
>> I feel the product quality is good though.
17:53
Um, I guess one of the ones that uh I feel like Atlas has kind of fallen out of the conversation, which is not unusual for any new product in tech to fall out of the conversation.
18:04
>> Sora, I mean, God, remember Sora?
18:04
We were freaking out about Sora. >> Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
18:08
But I thought the quality of Sora in particular was pretty impressive.
18:13
>> We had a good weekend on there making videos. >> We did. We did.
18:15
Um, that that kind of relates to that.
18:17
I mean, if you look at why it dropped, I think you could argue that you're just simply not reminded of it.
18:23
Which is why that Alfie messaging app we talked about last week was interesting.
18:27
Is that being in a group chat, once you're once you're trained to turn inside jokes into media, that can start rolling.
18:34
Like, it took a while for people to build the habit of when they see something funny to snap a friend. That was brand new.
18:40
Nobody was gonna uh half the time open up their their camera, take a picture, switch to the messages app, click the attachment button, add an attachment, hit send, and so creating those new habits is very, very hard.
18:56
Um, so yeah, I think that's probably why Sora didn't happen as impressive as the results were.
19:03
>> Well, luckily we can keep the AI video conversation going because we have a AI video co on the show today. You like that segue?
19:10
I just came up with that.
19:13
Let's throw it, Should we? Yeah, we should.
19:15
Let's throw it to Victor Ripperbelly, the CEO and co-founder of Cynthia.
19:23
>> How's it going, Victor? >> What's up? Welcome. >> Pretty good. Thank you.
19:28
>> That's some nice uh bedroom apartment lighting you got going on.
19:30
[laughter] >> I I've been spending like 10 minutes and like trying to find a a proper setup.
19:37
So, I'm in I'm in Utah right now in a hotel. Ah, Utah. >> Yeah.
19:40
So, one of our investors, Excel, has a like a CIO summit thing that they do every year, which is basically like a bunch of of CIOS and uh they invite some founders as well.
19:50
So, it's usually like pretty fun, good for business, and we get to stay in uh in nice hotel rooms.
19:55
>> That's rare that a summit is actually near to an actual summit and it's not just a pure >> [clears throat] >> uh symbol. >> Exactly.
20:02
[laughter] So, so part of the trip is actually that you go snowboarding or skiing, whatever you're into.
20:07
It's also funny uh with what you were saying, Alex.
20:09
I feel like a few years ago during COVID, everybody was like, "Oh, is your background real?"
20:15
Now it's like, "Are you real?"
20:17
[laughter] >> That's how far we've come.
20:19
And uh just five years with AI and videogen. [laughter] >> Yeah.
20:25
And Victor, in case you don't know, we just we we roll.
20:26
We go uh when you get on, so we're going here.
20:28
Um it's good to see you, man. It's been a minute.
20:32
I think last time I saw you was in Vegas, where all good relationships get formed.
20:36
So, um, good to be seeing you [snorts] again, uh, a few hundred million dollars raised later.
20:41
I was looking on, uh, X actually today and it looked like you guys had a little, uh, problem with spoiling your surprise internally.
20:50
There's something with a cake.
20:51
Can you can you fill us in what happened here?
20:53
Well, I mean, as as you know, like when when these things happen, especially at scale, they uh unfortunately very often leak to the press and then you're in this like awkward situation where everybody kind of knows what's going on, but you can't really confirm what's going on.
21:06
And so, um you know, we had a a lot of uh you know, internal chatter with with me and and Stephan just being like, "Yeah, you know, you don't know, maybe the rumors are true and maybe they're not."
21:16
And we had some cake in uh in kind of um pre-ceelebration, I guess, of the round.
21:23
You say we're trying to do uh founderled content that's super transparent, but we don't want to be that transparent.
21:30
[laughter] >> Well, it's it is really difficult, right?
21:32
Because, you know, with these things, I think our philosophy has always been that like no round is closed before the money is in the bank.
21:37
And these things take a long time, right?
21:41
Like you get to an agreement with a bunch of investors, then there's a lot of paperwork, a lot of stuff happening.
21:45
And you know, luckily we've never had any kind of bumps in the road, but it has definitely happened before in history that something goes down, right?
21:53
Like there's a huge down, anything can happen and then all of a sudden you're standing there looking not so great.
21:56
So I think maybe it's very European of us, maybe we're just very conservative, but I think the way we've we've done these things historically always been to, you know, before before the round is actually like sipped up, we don't really talk about.
22:08
>> What's it like being on the other side having it out now?
22:10
Do you feel uh like you can puff your chest a little bit? >> Yeah, it's great.
22:14
But kind of on that point, right, like you know, it's it's kind of interesting because these funding rounds usually take place like many months before the actual announcement.
22:22
So in our case, you know, sort of October, November is when this round was kind of sipped up, then you know, bunch of like diligence, make it all go go around, want to figure out like when you think it's a good time to announce it.
22:33
So it's um it's obviously like it's it's amazing and it's [clears throat] awesome, but it also almost like feels like old news internally when you go out, right?
22:39
So it's a kind of a strange feeling.
22:42
Well, what's cool these days, Victor, you got to raise the next round while you're raising this round.
22:47
And so, it's just kind of a cascade of money that never ends.
22:52
>> That's what that's what it see that's what the the AI world seems like right now.
22:55
>> I was going to say, yeah, I think half the companies I work with now, they're working toward a raise and they pivot during it or they pivot right after it and the investors are like, "Wait a second."
23:07
Uh, it seems very hard to plant your foot in the ground on almost anything firm in the AI era. >> For sure.
23:15
I mean, looking back to 2017 when we founded the contract, the first three years, you'd have like kind of a a breakthrough of some sort in what we backed and called synthetic media before it was um renamed to to generative AI.
23:29
Maybe like once every year, once every one and a half year, there'd be some like big breakthrough.
23:32
someone writes like an interesting paper that kind of you know um increased the the quality of the capabilities by by by some you know margin.
23:40
Now it feels like every three weeks there's like a new bomb that gets dropped right and that's across all modalities.
23:46
So I think both investing in and also running AI companies right now is is very exciting and very thrilling but but it's also hard right there so much uncertainty.
23:55
You don't really know what's what's around the corner.
23:57
I didn't appreciate your all's story when we met in Vegas at Human X.
24:01
Um, just how much like pitching you guys had to do in the early days, how much you were rejected.
24:07
The Mark Cuban story, which we have to talk about, which is great.
24:10
And then I saw somewhere that one of your co-founders was what?
24:16
He worked on like a pig farm, something like this.
24:20
[laughter] >> He did he did private equity in Africa before we teamed up.
24:26
>> Private equity, same thing.
24:28
Yeah, [snorts] but they were they were running like, you know, sand mines and chicken farms and and that kind of stuff.
24:33
[laughter] It's pretty funny.
24:36
>> It's the best possible rollup for private equity, not swimming pools and lawnmowing businesses, but chicken farms.
24:42
>> So, you you have this kind of famous story now where you all cold emailed Cuban and he wired you a million and now he he's very happy with that investment.
24:50
Obviously, he owns a big chunk and your valuation is huge now.
24:53
Um, is he active like at all?
24:56
Do you like lean on him for advice or intros or anything?
25:01
>> We we speak occasionally, but I think his style of investing is very different from a VC, right?
25:04
Like it's he's much more like an angel.
25:06
So, I think the way most business angels work, including myself now that I also uh invest is more kind of on a sort of reactive basis, right?
25:16
Like we're always open for someone has a problem, jump on a call, discuss it out live.
25:20
I think it's been the same thing with Cuban. Cuban doesn't do calls.
25:24
He only does email and >> he only does court sides.
25:27
Who needs desk sides or fire sides? We got court sides. [laughter] >> Exactly. >> Yeah.
25:32
How many games have you been to?
25:34
>> We've actually only been to once one game.
25:36
None of us are like really big into sports.
25:38
Um so, uh but we went there like the early days.
25:41
We also did a bunch of the first demos we did for the back when we were doing, you know, dobbing, which was the first three years of the company.
25:47
Uh we went there and we did a bunch of cool content with the players.
25:51
And I think his his main thing he's helped has always been like access to people.
25:56
So in the early days, you know, getting access to like sports stars, like his own team, for example, to do cool demos.
26:01
He knows a bunch of people both from like investors to operators.
26:03
I think that's that's always been his like uh his main contribution more than it's been kind of a um you know like a weekly sort of uh catchup.
26:15
>> It's good to have a shark in your corner. >> It is.
26:17
Actually, it's very interesting because I think Mark Cuban is he's obviously known for Shark Tank.
26:20
I think people's perception of him is very um anchored in him being on Shark Tank investing in all these sort of like kind of wacky businesses with someone who made some fun invention that uh they'll do well on TV.
26:33
And I think a lot of people actually don't know that he's he's very deep technically.
26:36
His his company Broadcast.
26:39
com was the first company to take radio to the internet.
26:43
And he went through a similar kind of story that we did where everyone was laughing at him, right?
26:46
like why the heck would you want radio on the internet?
26:48
You have a radio in your kitchen and your bedroom.
26:50
Um and he kind of like pushed through that and ended up selling the company for $3 point something billion dollars to Yahoo.
26:55
And when we met Mark Cuban uh you know way back in the day and this is at a point where AI video was very French right like no one was really talking about this.
27:04
He had actually implemented the research paper that synthesia kind of in spirit originates from which was actually like a real-time system for doing avatars.
27:13
He had implemented that at home with a a kind of a lecture of of some sort.
27:18
So he knew everything about the tech and you know what I always say is that I think the reason he invested was that he we didn't have to convince him of the vision that in 10 years time you can make a Hollywood film on your laptop with just your imagination which was kind of like what we're trying to tell people back in 2017 and everybody no one believed us.
27:36
He already believed that and so when he was evaluating the investment he was more looking at us and he asked a lot of like tactical questions.
27:43
How are you going to sequence it?
27:44
What's the first use case? Who are you as people?
27:47
And invested on on the basis of that, right?
27:49
And I think where we fell flat with everyone else was everyone was looking at us and going like Hollywood films on laptops in 10 years like I don't really care about that.
27:59
Sell me some fintech, right?
27:59
That that was like what everybody wanted.
28:02
Fintech or like machine learning for doing predictive data analysis on uh on corporates, you know, big data sets.
28:09
That was what everybody wanted to invest in back then.
28:10
Well, uh, I think there's an opportunity for differentiation here.
28:15
If we can get Cuban in the model itself, his likeness, his voice.
28:18
I see a moat there for you, Victor.
28:21
[laughter] >> Maybe we can make the first AI Cuban that can uh automatically make investment decisions on behalf of >> AI Cuban. Um, I'm curious though.
28:29
I mean, when you talk about the access to sports stars and this and that.
28:34
I mean, I feel like being in B2B world, those connections can kind of mean everything.
28:40
You know, the CTO's you get to meet, the founders you get to meet who decide to like take a chance on you, which is, you know, a very different type of path I would say than in consumer.
28:49
Have those relationships been a big lever for you?
28:54
>> Bringing in will I am to close a deal?
28:57
[laughter] >> The ultimate trump card.
29:02
>> No, I think they have.
29:02
>> No, I think they have. um especially a technology like ours which is I mean we're a very B2B enterprise focused company but there's a lot of like consumer elements to it right like video is mostly consumers watching it [snorts] and um and I think you know like media in general is is obviously like a very
29:19
consumer it's a it's a consumer world right so I think some of the the where it has the most leverage back in 2018 we did a campaign with David Beckham [snorts] where we basically had him speak in nine different languages using our AI doping tech, which you know, I mean, back then the tech like barely worked. It it didn't work with with AI
29:35
It it didn't work with with AI voice.
29:37
So, it's actually like a real person who spoke in a different language and we would take that person, you know, voice clip and then we use that voice clip to animate David Beckham.
29:45
So, it wasn't active David Beckham's voice.
29:46
It just looked like it was him, right?
29:48
So, very very manual compared to what we can do today.
29:52
And that campaign was the first time I think the world saw deep fake technology [snorts] used for something good, something productive.
30:02
And that campaign ended up being kind of a pretty big turning point for us.
30:03
Um because I think it just first of all it was like a big viral moment and I think it kind of got people thinking about this technology in in a in a slightly different way and that would have been much more difficult to do if it wasn't David Beckham who had kind of consented to be deep faked as they would call it you know back in the day and kind of standing up for for the technology.
30:25
So I think there has had some impact for sure but uh You know, I think since then we haven't done a ton of like celebrity based content.
30:36
Um, we've done some and I think it definitely helps to like bring up the brand of the company, but I wouldn't say it's been like, you know, within like top five things that have helped the company grow faster.
30:47
>> Since the last time I saw you, something else happened where you did a TED talk and I was wondering what that was like doing a TED talk.
30:52
Uh, I've always wondered I I'm sure there was a lot of pressure or maybe not.
30:57
Maybe you're like totally cool with that.
30:58
Um, and it wasn't any pressure, but uh, you had like a provocative title.
31:02
Um, will AI make us the last generation to read and write? Uh, how did it go?
31:07
What was it like being on the TED stage?
31:11
>> It it's it was it's actually funny because I'm generally not like nervous anymore when I have to do like public speaking and doing podcasts with with you love your people and so on.
31:18
But the TED talk felt different in a way because it's it's a it's a big thing, right?
31:22
I remember like 10 15 years ago when you when TED talk was launched and it was like this huge thing and you would sit and watch a TED talk.
31:30
So I definitely felt like there was a lot more pressure.
31:32
I also think you I I felt like it has to be like an interesting idea.
31:35
Um it has to be a provocative idea and I think I I think I I managed to deliver on that when you look at the comments like 90% of the people disagree with me which was kind of also the point of it and I think I I hit a hit a nerve there but it was really fun.
31:49
You work with the TED team, of course, you come with your idea and then they kind of help you shape it into like the right format.
31:54
And I think it's probably the talk I've done that I practiced the most before actually doing it because you do it in front of a live audience, right?
32:01
So, you get one take and it was uh it was a really, really, really fun experience.
32:05
>> Well, Victor, did you deliver and did you answer that question or did you do a whole TED talk and then walk off the stage as you say, and only time will tell?
32:14
[laughter] I think I put together like a pretty convincing case for why on a long enough timeline this is going to happen.
32:21
Of course, I'm being a bit provocative by saying that we're never going to read and write anymore.
32:25
I don't think that necessarily is going to be the case.
32:26
But I do think that within the next 10, 15, 20 years, reading and writing will be something that we do either because we enjoy it for fiction for example or um because there's going to be like a small subset of use cases where voice and video isn't isn't better.
32:40
So I I I think if you if you if you watch the talk, I would say give a a compelling case why it's going to happen, but I'll let you be the judge.
32:48
>> Well, so what's how's Alex's newsletter going to be in 20 years? >> A video version.
32:52
I I mean, I sound kind of screwed in this scenario. >> I don't think so.
32:56
I I don't know what you guys media habits are, but I think that when I look at my own way of consuming media over the last many years, there's a time where everyone's reading blog posts all the time.
33:04
That was like when I grew up in in tech.
33:06
That was the the kind of currency, right, of of building a brand for yourself and sharing your knowledge.
33:11
That has changed a lot [clears throat] since then.
33:13
Of course, there's still uh you know, lots of of written content.
33:17
A lot of it has moved to Twitter.
33:18
Uh people make threats where I'd argue you can compress or we you force yourself to compress your thinking into into less characters, which I think is generally useful for people.
33:29
[snorts] Um, when you look at I was even things like how I discover music, which is a big hobby of mine, like that also used to be on blogs.
33:36
You would like read through things, you like listen to tracks.
33:39
A two-minute Tik Tok video of someone just showing you the music is is a much better format, right?
33:45
And I don't think I don't think in every format necessarily is better as video, but I think you can I think it'll be you'll do exactly the same that you do today.
33:51
You'll do great research.
33:51
You'll do great interviews.
33:53
Then you'll condense those findings into I mean, I don't know if you publish this as video, but then you're already then you're already doing video, right? >> Oh, yeah. We're video first. >> Great. Love it.
34:02
Um then you're already video first, right?
34:05
And and and probably at some point, if you aren't doing it already, you'll do like five or 10 minute summaries of the interviews that you do with the most um valuable points, right?
34:13
And then you're already in the world where like no one necessarily needs to read the newsletter.
34:16
I mean, there's certainly fewer advantages to the writing uh as there as there used to be.
34:22
I mean, I feel like one of the advantages with Twitter or with blogs was always that when you hear something or when something happens, you can get it up on the internet very, very quickly, be one of the first, reach the algorithm before others do.
34:34
But now, it seems pretty clear that [laughter] in some ways it's going to be even faster to create video.
34:41
I mean, I do feel like you're always going to need the writing up front to establish what you want to say, what story you want to tell, what the arc is going to be, what the outline of your arguments are. Yeah.
34:52
I guess one of the advantages still with writing, you can read at your own pace, which I feel like is not easy at all with video, hitting the space bar over and over again.
35:00
Obviously, there are a lot of places where you don't have headphones on necessarily, but uh yeah, the speed benefit uh to writing seems like it's it's all but all but dissipating. Yeah, I agree.
35:11
But also again, I think depends a ton on the kind of content you're creating, right?
35:14
Like if I am, let's say I want to share an update to my team of like a project that's going on.
35:20
Is it then faster for me to sit down and write like one page, I'm probably going to be a lot more self-conscious about like how I sound, not going to use the same word twice in the same sentence, want to make sure my punctuation is on point, like all this stuff.
35:33
But of course, chat GPT can help me a lot with this.
35:35
But in a lot of instances, I find like doing a quick Loom video is actually much faster than writing.
35:40
Um, on the other hand, if you're doing something that's like very polished, then you're probably going to spend a lot more time on making the video look and feel really really good versus like writing a one-page document.
35:51
So, I just I don't think there's any like one answer to this.
35:52
I think it really just depends a lot on on on what you're doing, right?
35:57
And and if again I think for some things again I think you know reading makes a lot of sense.
36:01
For other things video makes makes a lot of sense.
36:05
But I think the world is clearly moving towards video as being the the the dominant format and the way that most people prefer to consume consume their content.
36:14
It's funny you bring up Loom as well because I think when I talk to founders like in our like startup learning session and I I do storytelling uh when I'm not podcasting, Victor, I could surely just ask founders to answer all my learning session questions in a voice note or talk to my AI or whatever, but I find that when people are telling me something in person, they say it differently than if you were going to write it.
36:38
I think it puts you in the mode of trying to keep someone interested, which is actually what content is about, right?
36:45
Whereas, for some reason, when a lot of people write out long answers in written word, they tend to do it chronologically or they start from the beginning.
36:53
And so, I do think there is something nice about just asking people to uh start spitting when they're on video. >> 100%.
37:00
And I think I mean podcasts as a medium I think it actually is like goes opposite the trend of like everything has to be like short like 3 second Tik Tok clips because our attention span is like disappearing.
37:10
I think that when the format is right, long form is really good.
37:16
And I think the reason that my I mean for myself, do I prefer to if I want to get to know about a person and their points of view, who they are, whatever.
37:24
Do I prefer to read like a a well-ressearched article in a big newspaper with some journalist sat down with that person and spoke with them for two or three hours and then cook together their own version of what that person is like, or do I prefer to just hear that person speak for two hours with one of you guys?
37:38
I think definitely the latter.
37:40
And I think most people, young people today feel the same way.
37:42
I think in a podcast, who you actually are is is what you're going to be represented as.
37:48
It feels much more authentic.
37:50
It feels much less edited.
37:52
And I think that that is some something that most a lot of people value really high, which is also why one of the reasons I think that, you know, readership and the general interest in kind of legacy media is going down because it and I mean I have the same experience, right?
38:05
I think it's I think it's so much more powerful to listen to someone just speak in a uh almost unedited way, which is what you get to do in a podcast.
38:14
And as to your point, right, like if if we were to do this with written answers, my answers would probably be much more >> PR approved, Victor, is that what you're trying to say? >> PR approved.
38:22
Um, and with less nuance and so yeah, I I totally agree.
38:26
That's also why I think you know AI podcasts like if if this gener conversation was just generated of course I can't sit here and say that that's like never going to happen but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
38:38
I think people even even if you could do it to the point where you would uh not be able to tell that it was AI generated.
38:44
I still think that people would uh value the fact that it's a real conversation. Right.
38:50
So I still think there's uh going to be you know lots of of space online for real authentic content.
38:56
I think it's actually the more AI content we generate, the more kind of real authentic content in some use cases is going to be is going to be value, right?
39:05
But I think it's all about the the use case.
39:06
That's the I think that's the key word here.
39:08
>> So podcaster will be the last safe job from AGI. That's good to know.
39:10
Um I mean do you when I think of Cynthia, I think of I mean you're a B2B company.
39:15
You're doing like I mean you're replacing HR you know systems internally.
39:21
those boring videos that everyone skipped through anyway like you're making them AI that kind of thing.
39:26
Do you think your company and the tech you have is has a role to play in what we're talking about more broadly in this cultural shift like cuz cuz you're still B2B, right?
39:35
You don't have like a consumer touch point. >> Yeah, for sure.
39:40
I think the best way of thinking about what's people use theio for and you know why we're growing as fast as we are is that essentially we're like the next generation of PowerPoint.
39:50
You know, if you think of powerpoints, u there's a lot of power, I think there's around 30 million powerpoints that's made like every single day.
39:54
And a lot of those powerpoints are internal communications, trainings, HR on boardings, like a very wide variety of things that um you know, to most people, you wouldn't classify that as being super exciting content, but it's content that serves a very real purpose for that company and the people in that company who's who's consuming it, right?
40:15
And it's a very very high volume of that content which I think one of the things people have always underestimated when they like assess synthesia from the outside like oh they're just doing like training videos and like some HR stuff. That's not really true.
40:27
>> I love that this is true to you Victor.
40:29
I heard that since you were a child you'd loved HR information sessions. >> That's right. That's right.
40:34
[laughter] When I grew up I would go to the library and just find as many old PowerPoint text I could [laughter] HR on boardings.
40:42
>> It's not what I would expect.
40:42
I mean you to say when you're like you're building like this crazy deep fake or whatever you want to call it technology at scale.
40:49
I wouldn't expect you to say I'm building the next what replaces PowerPoint.
40:51
But I guess I do see that.
40:54
>> It's all about the use case, right?
40:54
It's about communicating something to someone.
40:57
And in the world we live in now, most people in their private lives consume video and audio content as a default, especially of course the young generation, right?
41:04
The problem is then that they go to work and then at work it's like, "Hey, please read this 10-page PDF document I just sent you.
41:09
is go through this 65page uh PowerPoint uh to train you on something or to sell you a product or what and that's just like not a great way of communication.
41:19
way of communication. I [snorts] think what we have found is just if you lower the barriers to create video by enough which is basically in in our world by making that as easy as it is to create a PowerPoint then what you will see in every big company is that the amount of
41:35
videos that they generate will explode by 100 200x right it's like it it's not just that people take oh we we used to create video uh we used to create a 100 videos every year and they used to cost us x amount now we're using synthesia and now we're saving a lot of money like it's we used to create 100 videos every year. Now we create a thousand videos
41:52
Now we create a thousand videos every year or even more than that.
41:53
So it is this like expansive thing right where the classical example of this is is always Uber where yes Uber replaced part of the taxi market but it also massively um expanded the size of the taxi market because if you lowered the prices enough all of a sudden a lot more people would take taxis than they did before and it's exactly the same effect that's um that's going on here.
42:14
going on here. And I think you know what what's what what we've seen over the last I think especially the last 12 months when the video models really have begun getting very very good is that now you get to more and more use cases are being enabled because the quality of
42:28
these videos just go up and up and up and up right with VO Sara our own kind of latest avatar models it it actually turns out that when you give the right tools to people who make these internal things they actually become more creative they create more fun content right which is pretty awesome so an HR video. Um, I mean, maybe not yet, but in
42:45
Um, I mean, maybe not yet, but in a couple of years, an HR onboarding video could look like a Spielberg production, right?
42:50
There's no there's not going to be any technical barriers to that.
42:53
There's still going to be a creativity aspect of the people making that video, but they are going to be a lot more interesting than they are today.
42:59
And also, of course, the higher the quality of the videos the more they um, you know, the more external facing use cases they unlock.
43:06
Uh, I think people always think of AI videos like we're not going to make Super Bowl ads and performance marketing and all stuff.
43:12
I think that's obviously going to happen, but the quality of the videos we can generate needs to kind of get up there before those those use cases really gets unlocked.
43:18
>> We got to get pneummonic jingles into the product.
43:20
Here's how to use your UB key. It's so easy. One, two, three.
43:23
I mean, cuz that that's the real use case, right?
43:30
You actually want the employees to retain something.
43:32
Like I could see a world where making it more entertaining makes it more retentive.
43:38
But I mean people have been saying forever that even your TED talk people are only going to remember one idea or 25% of what you say.
43:48
Have you done any research on that in particular to say that you know the avatars are are creating more information retention than than otherwise? >> Yeah.
43:56
So I think to to address the first part of your question I think there's a huge part of this which is just what's the table stakes to communicate something right?
44:04
And I think that's kind of a bit the point I touched upon before.
44:07
When people are used to consuming Tik Tok videos and podcasts and YouTube videos and all these like bits of content which generally are like very engaging because the way the internet works is that you get like a gazillion new videos on YouTube every single day and a very select few of them that are the most engaging will rise to the top and those are the ones you're going to see, right?
44:24
That's how all the social media platforms work.
44:25
Um then when you go to work and you're presented with these long documents, that kind of sucks, right?
44:32
sucks, right? So what's happening is that the table stakes if you want to be heard is just right now it's like that is an audio and video but but pretty soon it might just also be that even if it's an age onboarding video that it's an engaging video it's it's it's an exciting video to watch right because that's what we're going to be used to
44:47
consuming in terms of the avatars we did some research with UCL a few years back and we found some interesting things for the type of use cases we're testing for here right which is more kind of like in the education training learning it's not about like engaging you and make you feel deeply emotionally connected to a product or a story. The avatars act on
45:03
The avatars act on average did a better job than the humans because the avatars because because the scripts are written, they're much more to the point, right?
45:12
What can often happen if you're doing like a Loom video or something is that, you know, you ramble a bit too much.
45:16
Like you could probably have delivered whatever it is you wanted to deliver in in 30 seconds, but you ended up delivering in 2 minutes.
45:22
And when there's an avatar and it's like a written script, you you kind of there's been a bit more kind of editing on on on what they say.
45:28
But [snorts] I think again it goes to the use case which is so important here, right?
45:33
Like and and that's what a lot of people I think misunderstand about Cynthia.
45:36
If you're trying to like create a video that deeply connects with someone over something, you want them to feel really, really, really inspired about like your new vision, it's not the right tool for that, right?
45:45
But if you're trying to teach people, hey, this is like our sales methodology.
45:49
It has these five steps and you need to learn each of them.
45:52
It works phenomenally well, right?
45:54
Because that's not an emotional, that's not a storytelling use case.
45:56
It's information or knowledge sharing.
45:58
Um, and I think that's the that's the distinction we always talk about internally.
46:01
It's like knowledge sharing versus storytelling.
46:03
Those are two very very different types of u of videos and communications.
46:08
>> One of the things that's jumping out at me too with generative video in terms of the use case, obviously you could talk about its authenticity or whatnot, but it always helps as you've done to hone in on the ICP. What's the use case?
46:18
And I think one of the things with this too is that internally uh information changes often, right?
46:25
and having to like reshoot the entire video on some set in a specific part of the office like is not going to happen every time a piece of information changes. I mean, it's funny.
46:38
I was told the other day that people are still watching my Snapchat philosophy video I used to do in person during onboarding like years and years later even though the product is completely different.
46:47
I think you know for sure a lot of those fundamental truths and origin story things are the same but might be cool if we could update some of that stuff right uh as as things change and I think generative AI definitely definitely affords that ability.
47:02
ability. This was one of the really big insights we had early on which was that in the early days with these we were very focused on like the kind of front end of creating a video as in like you know get a camera get an actor the microphones all that stuff which is which is very time intensive it's time
47:18
consuming expensive and so on and I think what we quickly learned was that while of course like replacing that part is valuable actually what most people were struggling the most with was kind of like as you said like after you've shot the content and you need to edit it
47:31
like that is such a huge problem for people and so people were like as if it's okay if we have to like record things once if you can just allow us to edit in an easy way then a lot of our problems are actually are actually solved of course like doing both of them is is a really powerful thing but it is
47:47
and it it makes sense right it's the difference between using a typewriter and a and writing something in a Google doc right it's it's it's it's actually even worse than that because typing something again on a typewriter is a lot easier than recording it again in video. But the
48:03
But the editability and taking video from essentially being an analog type of of media to a digital editable type of media is is very very powerful both because you want to go back and change a video something in a video that you shot a year ago, created a year ago, but also for things like you want to translate it into a different language.
48:22
You don't have to usually when you translate a video into a different language.
48:28
>> The language thing is a huge one, isn't it? >> Yeah.
48:30
And then you have like French.
48:32
French might be 10% longer than Italian.
48:35
And so even if you just translate it as it is, right?
48:37
The elements will be out of timing.
48:39
And it's just a huge hassle to do things like translation.
48:41
And so when it's this fully editable type of media, you kind of um leaprog over those problems and makes essentially video editing like making a PowerPoint, right?
48:53
A PowerPoint file you can always, you know, open it up, change something, duplicate it, send it to a friend, translate it.
48:58
like it's very very very easy to work with.
49:00
[snorts] >> Well, is it is it can you do internal folks or is it just actors in your system?
49:05
I'm imagining the head of sales of some company who is there long after he dies still giving completely up-to-date presentations.
49:11
[laughter] >> That's that's >> going to have to watch our contracts join SAG SAG after ara or something.
49:19
[laughter] >> Yeah, Ellis is going to be doing internal snap meetings in 20 years.
49:20
Um uh >> well actually this is a pro this is a real problem a lot of companies that uh you know synthesis help solve.
49:28
We have had many customers over the years who invested a lot in having their head of sales a head of sales table and something like that do a great 20 20 part video series about how to sell the thing right and then the person leaves the company and joins the competitor. What do you do now?
49:44
Now you have 20 videos that are useless basically with Enthia, right?
49:47
Go in, change the avatar and you know you're good to go.
49:50
The the behold you're not beholden to Exactly. >> Oh my god. >> I know.
49:58
But but creating your own avatar is a very uh is a very popular feature. Yeah.
50:01
So you can do that now with um very soon we're launching kind of single image avatar.
50:06
So you just upload one image of yourself and then you can prompt yourself to be in different environments, have different outfits on and essentially it's it's like a really really scalable product.
50:17
>> Victor, remind me when we were catching up in Vegas, did or did you decide to do enterprise because you uh correctly identified that you need to have a business and make money or was it also because there was something about putting this tech out into the world in like a consumer easy to access way that you didn't feel comfortable about?
50:32
Am I remembering correctly?
50:34
Like how much of this is about we need to just be a real business and have you know be selling AI and not just like giving it out for free and figuring it out later and how much of it is the world is not ready for this kind of stuff at scale.
50:47
>> I there's an element of the second one but I don't think that negates consumer use cases.
50:50
I think that's just about you know we we've always invested a lot in trust and safety and content moderation and those types of things.
50:56
It's definitely more the first part of like building a real business.
50:59
Um, but if you look at most of the AI video companies that spawned back in like 2017 to, I don't know, 2022 or something like that, almost all of them made the same mistake.
51:10
You know, they would kind of sit down and think about AI video.
51:12
Where could this be valuable?
51:14
Well, it'd be great if you could do personalized sales videos, right?
51:17
That seems like something that's very valuable.
51:19
It'd be great if you could do performance marketing, generate a thousand versions of a video and test which ones works the best.
51:24
Both of those things are totally true.
51:26
But I think with I mean with any type of technology, but I think specifically with something like AI video, um it was just very important to us to be look at ourselves and be like what is this technology actually ready for?
51:40
What is a real use case and not just like we would love this to be true use case.
51:44
And I think most of those companies made the mistake of uh thinking that you know performance marketing videos with AI would be great back in 2021.
51:53
It's you look at those videos and they're crap, right?
51:58
I think what we identified very early on was just that when you looked inside these companies in general, the content that lives inside companies and it's not external facing is of is of lower quality, right? Which makes sense. Doesn't make sense.
52:11
>> Yeah, I was going to say like you correctly identified that the only thing worse than 2021 video AI was like internal HR training videos.
52:16
[laughter] >> But it's not even that, right?
52:20
because it's it's it's more like uh a 15-page PDF document, how can we make that better?
52:26
That's a very different thing than saying, can we take a performance marketing video and make it with AI, right?
52:32
Like what what you compare the AI video to is very very important and all those people were were basically doing uh picking up use cases where the comparison would be to a real video which you're always going to lose.
52:46
Whereas what we did, we picked a use case where the comparison would not be a real video.
52:49
The comparison would be a 15-page PDF document.
52:50
And and that was a very very important uh uh distinction. Right?
52:55
So [snorts] I think what we did early on was just we figured out that the use cases that are mature today are internal facing coms in companies because in general in companies, which makes sense, why spend time polishing a piece of internal communications um the same way you would polish an ad you're going to put on TV, right?
53:11
It just doesn't make any business sense to do that.
53:14
And so that was uh that that that's the kind of reason that we we went down that path because we could just see that we were very clearly delivering real utility, not just like a cool demo which we could sell to dreamers who who wanted to believe that this stuff would work but when you know at some point kind of you had to test it out it it it just wouldn't perform right which is what happened in a lot of these cases.
53:37
>> Do you see it broadening though?
53:37
Like do you want to be a consumer company?
53:39
We've I mean so we've we've seen this like shift over the years where the better the technology gets the more use case we unlock.
53:48
So right now it's about 50% of our use cases which is internal and 50% which is external.
53:52
[snorts] So that is all and that is already a big shift from just a couple years go a couple years back and I think we'll continue to see those.
53:58
Are we ever going to be the company where you're going to go in and want to make like performance marketing ads or really cool storytelling creative content? Definitely not.
54:06
Like there are other companies who are chasing that.
54:08
we will always be focused on the PowerPoint user uh more than anything else and that is just again more in this category of like knowledge sharing information sharing than in storytelling.
54:18
[snorts] So we have a consumer use case in the sense that we have a lot of individuals who sign up to the make content for it but um I don't see the going into the world of um of of creating more storytelling social media type of of uh of content.
54:34
I think we're very squarely focused on the the B2B side of things. So, funny question.
54:38
Uh, you obviously can't control what your head of sales looks like, but when it's an avatar, you have the ability to have them look however you want. And it's interesting.
54:51
I think we've certainly learned from Tik Tok reels and uh everything else that cuties convert better.
54:56
Uh, how are you casting your AI avatars?
54:59
How much are you giving in to uh their appearance as a way to get attention from internal audiences?
55:05
That's a legit question, right? That's a choice.
55:09
>> Well, I think what you see in the enterprise is actually uh kind of a bit the opposite because people care a lot about inclusion and diversity and having like representative voices in their videos.
55:19
I mean, of course, if it matters and I'm sure like it's and I'm sure people uh think about it, but you have to again remember that most of the content we create is not made to compete in news feeds with other people's content, right?
55:29
like it's a video that a big company creates for like a very specific thing and the person watching that video is not going to have like 15,000 other alternatives to what they could spend their time on.
55:39
So I think it matters a bit less in our kind of use cases but of course like how the avatar looks is is a part of the engagement and um >> it helps to have a captive audience.
55:46
You will watch this video or not get your next paycheck. >> That's true. That's true.
55:51
This appeals to me though as a as a former corpo.
55:54
I mean I was always struggling with writing teams or brand teams or marketing teams to have a source of truth that actually remains up to date.
56:06
And I think you could argue that's one of the biggest problems that still remains in in corporate life.
56:09
And I think there are a lot of AI trying to help solve this is say hey like here's the source of truth.
56:14
I'm going to update the source of truth brand doc or the voice doc or the uh key testimonials from our partners doc.
56:20
Uh it seems like when it's a video, having that be the source of truth, having it be updatable at any time.
56:27
Uh seems like it could actually create a higher level of understanding and cohesion within companies.
56:33
I don't know if you've heard that from anybody yet, but it I mean it does seem like when there's a video demo of the thing that people can share and bookmark and that's always up to date, it's going to be used more. >> For sure.
56:46
And I think because these videos are are programmed, right, they can be updated manually but also automatically.
56:51
automatically. So I think what we're seeing right now is and you know we're launching this new kind of product around aentic video uh which we should probably also talk a bit about but I think with LLMs video models realtime video models speech models like there's so much interesting tech going on right now which I think is going to be a big
57:12
component of solving that specific problem right because even if you have videos you can edit with AI like as you said you still need to have a knowledge base somewhere that's like up to date before you can update the video to sort of match that [snorts] and I think right now there's just a lot of exciting stuff
57:25
going on with like you can build agents that can kind of figure out what is this discrepancies in the information like what do we say on our website versus what we say on our internal documents what does person [clears throat] X slide deck say versus what's actually in the mission statement like all these things
57:39
we can actually begin to kind of map out and work on having a real source of truth which in a way I think it's just been very very difficult to kind of do before and when you have that that enables a lot of exciting things on top of it you can take that knowledge and you can generate content on the fly essentially, right? You could
57:55
You could personalize a product demo.
57:56
So, you know, you go to a website, you want to see a software product, you put in who you are, your role, your title, your company, etc.
58:02
And based off that, you can just generate an experience that's completely personalized to you, the features you want to see.
58:09
Um, you can talk to the video, ask it a question in a way that hasn't really been been possible before, right?
58:15
So, I think we're about to see an entirely new type of media emerge based on all these like cool new AI models.
58:22
Um, it's always been a big thing for us that we, you know, I think we had these two big ideas when we started the company.
58:30
The first one was just with AI you're going to be able to create content uh at a very low cost with much less you know skill required um and therefore also much less time required to create something.
58:40
the the marginal cost of creating video and other types of content is going to go to zero essentially and that's a big business opportunity and I think that's roughly where the gen AI content industry has been so far.
58:50
The second big idea was this idea that when we create new media technologies as humans, we always create new media formats native to those technologies.
58:59
And so the big question here is like what does truly AI native video or whatever we end up calling it actually look like. Right?
59:07
Right now, we're using >> We're talking about the interactivity, the two-way side of it. >> Exactly.
59:12
Right now, we're >> If I'm hearing you correctly, we're talking about choose your own adventure HR info session.
59:17
That's what I'm talking about. >> Exactly.
59:20
Um, it's going to be this sort of interesting halfway house between a video game and a video most likely, right?
59:26
Where you can personalize the experience, you can choose your own adventure.
59:30
We're launching a product very soon around um training and role playing.
59:33
So, if you're a salesperson, rather than just sort of pass like just consuming, let's say a 10-minute piece of of content on a new product that you're launching.
59:43
>> So, it's almost a video game at that point. >> Yeah, it is. Right.
59:45
And and we we know that video games are great ways of like learning things.
59:49
So, after you go through a 10-minute maybe just a normal synthesia video, you can insert these agents at any point in your video.
59:55
That could, for example, be a role play where by the end of the video as a seller, you have to spend 15 minutes talking to an AI agent pretending to be a customer.
1:00:03
And you have to overcome objections, show you've actually understood the content.
1:00:06
For you as a learner, that means that you know you learn it.
1:00:08
And for a manager and seale folks, what we can actually begin to do with this is to give you a map of your talent. How enabled are they?
1:00:17
You can go and say, well, people are really good at talking about like product A, but the product we launched 3 months ago, nobody's any clue how to actually sell this. That's a big problem.
1:00:26
Let's use synthesia to then train you further on this.
1:00:30
>> Um, it could be videos where you just have a simple Q&A, right?
1:00:31
So you you watch a piece of content, you have a question just like if you had a real, you know, tutor sitting by your side, you can say, "Hey, can you explain this again in different terms of what does this mean for my role or whatever else thing you want to do?"
1:00:42
So there's going to be a lot of interesting things with what we call video agents where we take video from being this kind of static one-way communication to essentially being a video you can talk to.
1:00:52
It could be that you're role playing with it.
1:00:53
It could be that it's interviewing you, asking you like, you know, how do you asking a customer how they like the product and doing patient intake for a doc?
1:01:02
Like there's a million different use cases you can imagine where this these types of videos becomes less like a video and almost more like kind of a small app that that does something for you, right?
1:01:11
It could be a form, it could be a role play, it could be a small game.
1:01:14
Um, and I think that's the $100 million opportunity in this space.
1:01:16
It's figuring out like what does this new media format look like?
1:01:19
Where is it really valuable?
1:01:21
Scaling on that and then becoming the kind of platform for people to create these experiences.
1:01:26
>> Well, it sounds like maybe podcasting is going to get replaced then.
1:01:28
I mean, do you see that extending to more creative interactions or do you think that's always going to be something that um is the more mundane like like taking a PDF and making it a video?
1:01:42
>> Actually, I I know quite the opposite.
1:01:42
I think that if you think about like how do you best learn something, right?
1:01:47
The best way of learning something is rarely just to like go in a room with someone and just start asking them questions, which would be like the just going chat to chat GBT, right?
1:01:55
to chat GBT, right? most places and if we take the enterprise version of this is that you have some curriculum there's someone in the company who sat down and said this is our sales methodology and they've defined what it is and how we talk about it and they've probably put some visuals to it in PowerPoint slides for example and then you consume that
1:02:12
and then you also have a manager or tutor or something that you ask questions you learn by talking to your colleagues next to you by kind of seeing what other people is doing and I think it's exactly going to be the same thing so the the way we've we're building this product is with a very big emphasis on combining curriculum, static content, the video you've created in Synthesia with these agents. Um, and so what that
1:02:30
Um, and so what that means is that you as someone who's training someone to do something, you kind of get the best of both worlds, right?
1:02:38
You can have both the static content and you can have the interactive versions of it as well.
1:02:41
And so I think and and I think with with podcasts, I don't think it's it's a Netflix did this like Bander Snatch series a while back, which is an interactive um series, right?
1:02:52
It's flopped pretty hard.
1:02:52
And I think it's in some sense kind of obvious why it flopped.
1:02:56
Because when people come home from work, they want to sit down and they just want to watch something.
1:03:01
You don't want to make a decision every 10 minutes on what direction to go, right?
1:03:04
And we just do different things as humans.
1:03:06
Like when I'm when I'm walking to work and listen to a podcast, I want to listen to a podcast that you guys you've sat down with interesting guest.
1:03:13
You've edited out the most interesting parts of me and I want to listen to that. Right?
1:03:16
That's very different from me coming home and wanting to like Google things and ask specific questions and find specific information.
1:03:23
We just have like different modes and maybe in the future there's going to be a way where uh you know you have an AI version that I can ask you a question of like what do you think about the what this guest said or something but I still think there's a big difference between I'm watching a film and playing a computer game are two very different things right that they haven't replaced each other.
1:03:40
We still most people both watch films and they also play computer games.
1:03:43
Computer games is like you're you're making decisions every single moment and a film is something you're much more like relaxed sitting back and and just consuming something.
1:03:52
>> I think that point stands and for those who don't know Ber Snatch was kind of like a Black Mirror mini episode where you could kind of choose your own adventure for the main character and he eventually becomes self-aware and it rules.
1:04:03
But to my knowledge, the reason it flopped was because you could only do it on a laptop cuz you had to click.
1:04:08
I don't think you could do it on Apple TV.
1:04:12
why I waited so long to watch it.
1:04:12
Maybe you could on Roku or otherwise or does someone know better than I do?
1:04:18
>> Yeah, I I definitely watched that on TV. >> You did?
1:04:20
And you were able to click and whatnot. >> Yeah.
1:04:24
>> Well, I think this is a good segue to our next point.
1:04:26
I don't I know we don't have a ton of time left, but I know you're focusing very much on your use case and your ICP right now and I think there's a pretty big difference between like creating a video that is not true or that misrepresents reality.
1:04:39
If you share that with the world, your boss fires you.
1:04:43
Whereas, if it's just making up a video of a politician or somebody like that, maybe you actually start a movement instead of getting fired.
1:04:49
I feel like you're on just the absolute cutting edge of this stuff.
1:04:52
in five years when we see political videos online or just videos of anybody, entertainers, celebrities, whatever, are we going to by default assume that it's not real?
1:05:03
And and what do you think is going to happen?
1:05:06
>> I think there's a pretty high probability that we I think we probably should expect that something is not real unless we're told it's real.
1:05:13
So today you have this system, right, where kind of changed on X now, but we used that to like get like verified accounts, which is essentially like if you're a celebrity, you get like a blue check mark.
1:05:26
>> Can't believe they dumped that. It was so valuable.
1:05:29
>> It actually was pretty valuable.
1:05:29
Um, but I think a better version of the world would be that, you know, when you watch a piece of content, rather than having it verified if it's actually true, you should have it should stand out in the interface.
1:05:41
um when something is uh is not verified.
1:05:44
So I think what we'll see is that politicians, celebrities, all these folks will essentially have ways of um of uh of of confirming what content is real and what is not.
1:05:57
And this could be anything from you kind of fingerprint the content.
1:06:01
Uh you have kind of a I usually explain this is like Shassam but for all the content in the world, you know, the the thing that can recognize songs for you.
1:06:08
If you imagine that every time someone creates a piece of content and it gets uploaded to a global database somewhere and it's searchable, we could tell you, hey, what you're watching right now is an edited version of the original, which can you you can view by clicking here, for example.
1:06:24
Or like this pretends to be from the BBC, but the BBC has no record of ever actually uploading this, and so we should tell you that this is probably like an unsafe or an unreal piece of content.
1:06:33
There's a lot of challenges for sure in all this stuff, but I think what we will move to eventually is almost like something like SSL for video and for for content online where there will be the majority of the content on the internet will probably be, you know, not verified, but then there will be some content that's um that's that's that's verified and I think it'll be a default way for like well-known people to to push out content.
1:06:55
Now, I think I'm actually less worried about like politicians and celebrities.
1:07:00
I think what's happening today is a bit like the Baba Stryand effect of as soon as someone creates something outrageous.
1:07:07
People in the comments very quickly go to like this is AI and I know it's not a perfect system but maybe a controversial point of view but I actually think it works like pretty well.
1:07:15
works like pretty well. We have things like community nodes which I think is an amazing system that I hope is going to scale where event where essentially you have the way community notes works right is that you have you basically have a lot of people and you figure out what the people who generally disagree the
1:07:30
most can agree on with this piece of content right so what can like hardcore Republicans and hardcore Democrats agree on well they can agree that this clip is not real for some reason that's a pretty cool way of like getting to the truth and it's a bit the same way that Wikipedia works and I think we'll see this scaled up um pretty um pretty significantly. >> Never thought I'd say this, but sounds
1:07:48
>> Never thought I'd say this, but sounds like a good use for blockchain or is that not true?
1:07:54
>> It is, I think, a good use for blockchain because it would be it would be immutable, right?
1:07:56
Um but uh I mean there's a lot of scale problems still, but I think the theory of having this on a blockchain where nobody can edit it after the fact, I think is is very powerful.
1:08:06
Um and maybe to finish my thought before, I think celebrities, politicians, I think we'll have less problems with that.
1:08:11
problems with that. I think where the big problem of unfortunately be is where we're seeing it today which is non-consensual deep fakes of uh like pornography for example of like everyday people of of unfortunately especially women right uh we'll see this with
1:08:28
scammers creating videos voice clones etc of like family members this is much much harder to detect in many ways right because you're not going to have community notes on a video that someone sends to you personally you're not going to have >> need a family code word instead. >> Things like that might actually be
1:08:44
>> Things like that might actually be something we have to begin thinking about. Right.
1:08:46
So, I'm more worried about the long tale of like individuals for for things like scamming uh than I am of um I think what has historically always been the biggest worry which is like what if someone makes a deep fake of a politician saying something they didn't say and it kicks off like some crazy chain of events.
1:09:02
I just of course that can happen and and it will probably impact the political landscape, but I just think we've we've seen it enough times now that um you know it's uh yeah I think I'm less worried about that and more worried about like on an individual level.
1:09:18
>> Kind of a bummer note to end it on.
1:09:18
Is there anything positive we can end it on?
1:09:21
Do you have any like uh positive views of what this is going to do?
1:09:24
I mean I do think maybe maybe it leads us to all kind of band together in a way, right?
1:09:31
to try to figure out what's real, like you were saying about community notes.
1:09:35
But it is kind of refreshing when you see a Tik Tok and it's like, "Oh, is that fake?"
1:09:39
And then you open the comments and it's like fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, right?
1:09:42
Like that's that kind of gives me hope for humanity.
1:09:44
Look, I think there's a lot of tough challenges ahead.
1:09:48
But I actually do think that the combination of community notes figuring out this way of like proving media provenence by um fingerprinting content or doing this sham style database.
1:09:57
I think there's a lot of things we can do which I think will make the media information ecosystem a lot better and actually also a lot better than it's today.
1:10:07
That said like there's going to be a lot of AI content and there's going to be a lot of slot like we're seeing right now.
1:10:12
There's going to also be a lot of amazing art.
1:10:13
Um, I feel like I feel like that part of it doesn't get nearly as much attention as all the slop.
1:10:19
Um, there's so much cool stuff.
1:10:22
Like I have so many friends who are musicians who are making awesome music videos.
1:10:25
You have filmmakers explaining this stuff, creating really cool things.
1:10:29
So I think there's as many pros pros as there is as there are cons.
1:10:32
I also think it will push us to be I think it will push like the digital world to be even more artificial than it is today.
1:10:39
And I think in some ways maybe that's actually a good thing, right?
1:10:43
As you said earlier, we should probably be more skeptical of the stuff that we see online by default.
1:10:47
Um, we should probably get more off our phones and out into the real world.
1:10:51
And I think there will be a movement towards both economically in terms of like what do we value as society?
1:10:58
What do we who makes the most money?
1:11:00
the most money? where does the value acrew to [snorts] being potentially in in in I don't know the timeline but let's say 10 years five or 10 years 15 years to be less about people who have like highly analytical numerical jobs of like looking at Excel spreadsheets
1:11:13
coding all the stuff that's high paid today to be more about the things that drive real human connection right because as much as we can get Optimus robots and we can get I mean all this crazy AI stuff I think what uh what we will not be able to replace with AI is the feeling of having drinks with your good friends. It's going to be an
1:11:31
It's going to be an amazing musical experience somewhere.
1:11:34
It's going to be seeing a piece of art.
1:11:36
It's going to be walking out in nature and enjoying the sun.
1:11:37
And so I think there is a version of the world where right now the digital world, software, tech, all this stuff is like the pinnacle of of uh of of society in the sense that that's where all the wealth is kind of accu accumulated.
1:11:51
And maybe in the future that will actually change as all those things just become like very very very commoditized. here. Here.
1:12:00
All right, Victor, it was great catching up with you.
1:12:01
We can let you get back to your uh nice retreat in Utah.
1:12:03
I hope it's uh hope it's good. Thanks for joining us. >> Enjoy the summit. Great to meet you.
1:12:10
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1:12:14
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