Storytelling in a Small Town

(Upbeat Music)

Trent
Welcome to

Trent, Brian, AJ
Storytelling in a Small Town.

(Upbeat Music)

Trent
Welcome back to Storytelling in a Small Town. Welcome back.

Brian
Welcome back to the episode.

(Both Laughing)

Trent
Welcome back.

Trent
And one of the big things that I just feel like we need to, because it's everywhere in media, it's even in politics right now, everywhere is just AI.

Trent
AI, AI, AI. And I think before we talk about there's- Or

AJ
A1 if you're the director, secretary of education.
(Both Laughing)

Brian
Isn't that a barbecue sauce? I think so. Yeah, yeah. It's a good barbecue sauce. Delicious.

(Both Laughing)

Trent
Either way, whatever you prefer to call it, yes. Some people call it chat GPT, some people call it Lenny, whatever you wanna call it.

Trent
Let's talk about the good and the bad and kind of how it fits into storytelling, right? Like there's ways that it fits in, there's ways that I believe it shouldn't fit in, but let's really talk about how that works, what that works and start with some of the pros and cons, geys and nays of AI. I'm really curious to hear y'all's thoughts on this.

AJ
I was really excited to start this conversation sitting like here across from Brian again, because it's really, it was you that kind of got me off of the like train of thinking that I had been on about how to use AI in the world that we live in, right? And so my experience with it, and this is like outside the realm of like the AI tools of Adobe or any specific platform or whatever like that, we'll call them integrated tools for workflow, right? In the realm of standalone AI products, so I started exploring some chat GPT stuff. I was essentially gifted through like a technical grant through one of the nonprofits are a part of the ability to have chat GPT Pro and some other stuff. And so what I found was that using the,

AJ
like where you're just talking to it, the voice component of it was really, really cool for me because I can talk until like the sun explodes basically. And I can like run my whole way through an entire idea vocally, like from start to finish, including like all the shots and what everything looks like and the setting and what kind of like seating textiles and like the whole deal, you know? And having somebody else to talk to that was keeping track of that and then offering, you know, like just flow of thoughts, things to like bounce off of and like where to go to next or, you know, have you like considered how we might market this or do you wanna talk about it in this context? That stuff was really helpful for me to just like have a record of my own thoughts and then take things to like wherever they led from there, whether it was like, oh, I'm gonna, here's like a whole campaign for how did you queue four of this year and you look work with some political campaigns or whatever and so yeah, I love that about it. It gave me like a partner to talk to that kept track of what I was saying.

Trent
Yes. I second that. Kind of mind and how I've been using it because it's changed a lot recently since we talked and I've talked to some other business owners and groups that are like, yeah, AI is the future. Like you're kind of gonna lose if you don't use AI. But I kind of flipped my switch and it knew exactly what you said, AJ. It kind of gave me that partner. I love the way you said partner because that's what it was for me. It's like I was at a point, I was like, I need a business partner because I just can't handle all these thoughts and everything that's in my head nor can I take care of all of it. But now suddenly I have this, again, this partner that's kind of appeared that I can talk to, I can type messages in and which was really cool with mine. I use a different one and this is something that I want people to talk about and I want people to be aware of. So there's the traditional chats of AI, like chat GPT and a lot of those. And then there's new models coming out called agents, AI agents, which are slightly different. Some of them still use kind of a chat GPT model. Some of them, whatever. I don't know all the details, but basically in agents, they kind of have their own specialty. And I found a company that does one, you can get 12 agents

Trent
and they have their own focuses. One's business development, one's SEO, one's copyright, one's a virtual assistant, one's all of this stuff. And you can connect things to it and it's called Cintra, S-I-N-T-R-A. And it has been one of the coolest things ever because I can go in there, it's helped me schedule things. It's helped me, it can even create some cool images, which I'm using for some of my marketing. Again, we'll talk about yays or nays on that in a little bit. But it's been so good and it's really, yeah, I know. But it's the biggest help that it's given me is like proposals and a lot of that stuff that would take me so long to write up. It's now just like, I put it in there like, hey, can you give this to me? And I'm like, this is better than anything I ever could have done, and if I spent like 16 hours on it, it's giving me something better than I ever could have myself. I'm like, cool. And what I love too with mine, I know everyone's like, chat GPT is so obvious to tell. This one actually trains itself off of my language and my typing, so it doesn't have a lot of those errors. So it is getting better in those things too, but there's just so much that I've been able to do through it. And what's cool with this one too, is it asks me 10 questions every day. So every day I can answer these 10 questions and kind of help it get smarter and realize things, and then they'll give suggestions of what they can do and what they should do based on what I've given them. So I actually have a list of like over 200 things that I can go back to them and be like, oh yeah, you wanna create a social media account, or you wanna create a plan, or you wanna create copy or SEO optimization for my website, yes, do that. And then it's there and ready for me. I can't actually, there's still a lot of it that I have to do and spend time to like execute and implement myself, which takes time. And it's already there and ready, right? Like that kind of has gotten that stress off of me of like, oh, when I'm ready to do this, it's not like, well, I need to spend a lot of time and block it out. It's like, cool, I can just basically go grab that. Yeah. The other cool thing I love about mine

Trent
is I get different workspaces. So I have a different one for the podcast network from Red trucks.

Trent
So it has two different kind of brains as they call it. And it's keeping track of two different information, uses different language, different stuff between those two, keeps them completely separate, but I get to use that same power in both and I'm not paying like extra for it. That's cool. So.

AJ
We're gonna check that out. Yeah.

Trent
Yeah. Sentra.

AJ
Do you have like a struggles with executive dysfunction? Can you define that for me, please? Like, you know, you need to do something, but it's difficult to just get started doing it. Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, like just trying to take that first step. We're like, okay, I need to just sit down and like write this thing out. Just doing that part is hard, right? Yeah, sometimes, yeah. Maybe no matter how hard you try, there might be a period where you're just like locked out from committing to doing that function. That's like a really common ADHD symptom, but I think that that's one of the coolest things about the AI support is that it, I can talk my way through that stuff. If I can't sit down and like just commit myself to writing it for some reason, I can definitely talk about it. I can definitely talk until I'm at the point of wanting to talk about that thing and getting through like working on it. And that has removed some executive dysfunction issues from my workflow at times. I didn't realize that that's what I was doing until you said that a minute ago.

Trent
Yeah, and I think the other thing that helps with me is I just get overwhelmed. I'm like, I know this is gonna take so much time if I have to like try and do it myself. And I'm just like, I feel like, I just feel so frantic. I feel like there's so much on my plate, but just being able to like, I know I can put in like two sentence and it'll give me something to start with. Even if it's not perfect, I'm like, that's a lot better than anything I, or a lot quicker too than anything I could have done. And then I can just iterate on it from there. So, since it's been really good for me.

AJ
Yeah. That's so cool. I really wanna check that out. That's awesome, man.

Brian
Yeah, and I love the shift towards more agentic workflows because it gives an AI a job to do versus I think sometimes for the general like LLM style, like the chat GPTs or Clods or whatever, it's sort of like, I have all knowledge at your disposal. What do you wanna do with it? And sometimes it can just be so like broad.

AJ
It's like an open world game with no mission.

Trent
Yeah. Yeah. And what's crazier too, I forgot to tell you this part, was one of my favorite things. As I was developing more of the business model for this like family storytelling recording sessions that I'm doing, I worked with the business development person and then I was like, can you give me prompts for all these other people to go do this stuff? So it literally gave me the prompts to go give to like the copyright, the social media, like everything else that I was just able to go, like, yeah. So it's really cool. I'd have to figure out those other prompts that can literally just help you set that up.

AJ
Then push those to the other agents?

Trent
Oddly enough, they can't talk to each other. I still have to push it, but it's literally just a copy paste. So if that's all I'm having to do.

Brian
It's so funny, just this dystopian image I have in my mind of Trent sitting in a board room with all of these computers and you're just talking about your vision for your business and all of them.

AJ
And they're just doing it. The AIs are going out and filming it and everything.

Trent
Hold on, hold on, hold on. We'll get this set up before you guys leave to see because they actually create avatars for all of them. I love this man.

AJ
I'm gonna leave you to create this up.
(Laughing)

Brian
It was an expensive.

Trent
So anyone that is interested in Cintra, it's listed at a really high price, but last time I looked, it was at 60% off. And then if you scroll to the bottom of their homepage, it's like click for an extra percentage off and you just give them your email. Never gotten anything from them. They're probably selling it somewhere, but they're like, we'll give you another one. I've had multiple people try it and they give you 60% off. You're like, oh, it's just the same. No, apply it. It's a 60% off to 60%. So I got it for under $200 for a year.

AJ
Nice, okay.

Trent
That's what I expected. Yeah, so it's not too bad again. 20 bucks a month or something. Their full list price is much higher and I'm kind of seeing the value in it and they're just hugging us right now, I think. Yeah, it's new. For sure.

Brian
If you use code red trucks, you get an additional 60% off.

Trent
Well, I can't put a code in. No, it's, I wish it worked that way. They do give you a code of like refer a friend, but it's only like each member gets an extra free month. And I'm like, oh yeah.

Brian
Hey, hey, drop that affiliate link. Get your free months.

Trent
Yeah, I'll- That's cool, man. I can link it there if you want to and I'll show you guys before you head out.

AJ
60 days to build this. Yeah. To get it off the ground before the description runs out.

Trent
Yeah.

Trent
Yeah, so Brian, how do you use-

Brian
I don't make any decisions on my own anymore. I just let AI robots do everything. No, I'm just kidding.

(Both Laughing)

Brian
I am half robot now. I got the implantation. No, I'm just kidding.

Trent
Honestly, like I think you are a robot sometimes. And I mean that in the best way is just with like managing, having family, spending time with your loving family and doing everything that you do. It's like, if you told me you were part robot, I'm like, that would explain so much to be honest, with just how on top of it and how much you get done. But- I appreciate that.

Brian
It's a lot of sleepless nights and 12 hour days and not taking days off. And so it's not something that I like to celebrate because I'd rather be able to spend more time with my family, but I am trying to build something so that I don't have to do that, which is nice.

Brian
But yeah, I mean, AI has been a super helpful tool

Brian
for me in different ways. I've been using AI to take kind of stream of conscious thinking and put a template around it or put like a system around it. A lot of times, like even just super simple, practical things. Last night I was meeting with a client who I hired a videographer to film their wedding. And I met with them last night to go over their timeline and everything like that. They didn't have anything, they didn't have any sort of like Google doc or anything like that. They just had a piece of paper with a bunch of writing on it for their timeline, for all the vendor information, all that sort of stuff. And I was like, take a picture with your phone, send it to me. So they did. I copied it all because of like the Google lens or whatever like things have copied all the text in the chat GPT. And I was like, hey, can you make a like polished looking timeline with all the vendor contact info and 30 seconds it created that thing. And then I shared the Google doc with them. I'm like, hey, here's the timeline. Here's all the vendor contact information, sent it to my videographer. And they're like, how did you do that? And I'm like, well, I just put it in chat GPT and said, here's a list of things. Can you make it look nice? And it's just like little things like that, save time.

Trent
Yes, no. And I think that's great. Because, and just confirmed since we're all kind of talking about this, you use chat GPT as your main one.

Brian
Typically, yeah, that's what I pay for.

Trent
Okay. Because I think I love that you said that because that's exactly what I'm learning to do with it too is I was filming somebody yesterday, long story.

Trent
First I'm doing this kind of starting a business. So it doesn't have a lot of the details together. She came in earlier, kind of did a recording just to get her used to recording and kind of have that conversation so we can get everything down. I took that old transcript from that first video and just dumped it into my chat. She was like, "Hey, can you," or my bots. And I was like, "Hey, can you create this a transcript for five to seven minute video summarizing this?" Perfect, I sent it to the client. She's like, "This is awesome, change like one sentence."

Brian
Yeah. And I'm like- And it's her words. Exactly. And that's the thing about it is like you need to have humans in the loop for AI to work well. You can't fully AIFI everything. There has to be a human element to it.

Trent
This is where, okay, if we're gonna talk about getting into it and where we shouldn't and should not do it.

Trent
Oh God, there's some great examples in podcasting happening right now. A company came out a couple of weeks ago and this has been all the buzz in the podcast world. They said they produce 3,000 podcasts a week using AI and they're capitalizing it and making money off of it. And they've gone on other podcasts and kind of defending it and everyone's questioning them like, "What the, what are you doing? This can't be good." And they're like, "The whole business model doesn't work."

Trent
This is the only way as a production house, people aren't paying enough for it. You will have such a small percentage of the podcasters that get that multi-billion dollars that go into the industry every year from advertising. So they're like, "Why not just produce a bunch of slop and get out there?" And it's like, it gets enough views, especially when you're doing that number and that volume that they can make the money from however they do advertising on the little bit of views.
]
Trent
Everyone's calling it AI slop. I haven't listened to any of those specific ones, but it is interesting to see how, again, when we talk about ways that aren't doing it and everyone's kind of like, "What are you doing?" Another interesting spin on it. Go for it. So my-

Trent
No, no, no. This is it. This is perfect.

AJ
This is what we're here to do. Sorry. So I just want to be clear that using AI to make the pod, so like the actual content of the podcast is AI having the conversation. It's full AI. Agent, agent, agent, and that's the content of the podcast. And what exactly are they discussing?

Trent
I haven't- Whatever they want. Okay. Open to all that.

Brian
They can do a podcast about Game of Thrones. Sorry.

AJ
Or about- And then a very cute story tone. What the fuck are they discussing? No.

AJ
Wow. That's just such a weird concept to me. Like that sounds like, didn't we just have a dystopian conversation on this? Yes. So I find that sort of unsettling because I have not heard any AI talk to me consistently enough, even like through prompts or whatever that would make me think that was like a engaging conversation, which I guess isn't the point though, right? That doesn't really matter.

Trent
Well, there's other things that end up getting in the way with that. Like, what is it? 11- 11 labs. 11 labs. You can do AI voices. You can change and put in your voice and change and stuff. So it's all there. And they're just getting better at the different things. Okay. I don't know all the details again. Oddly enough, there's also someone who does a local thing where he actually turns Wikipedia posts into podcasts and he does it all through AI as well.

Trent
What?

Trent
This is where you start- I know, right? See? But I love your reaction to this. Cause when you're like three, I tell you 3000 AI and all of the publications and a lot of the major folks are calling those 3000 by that other company, just AI slop. But then when I tell you, he's specifically doing it off of Wikipedia pages and you're like, that's brilliant. It's like, right. There's a borderline there between what makes sense and what doesn't. If you're just turning written down content into something you can now listen to in your drive to get smarter or learn about one thing, but if you're just like, "Oh, they're pushing whatever thoughts or-" If

Brian
they're doing it as a medium to sell advertising, that becomes what's the point of it.

Brian
I think everything that uses anything needs a point. What's the point of the thing that you're doing? And if the point adds value, then great, you're providing value for that. But if the point is we're producing the faceless YouTube channels or whatever. It's like, are you just clickbaiting people to get the clicks, to get the views, to get the ad dollars? Let's slop. If you're doing it because you want to educate people on a specific topic, that is valuable.

AJ
So, and you said this was a production house that was doing this?

Trent
Yeah, let me look it up real quick.

AJ
So the thing that strikes me about that is this, this is not a new model. This is a regurgitated version of the,

AJ
trying to think out, it's like algorithm abuse that exists in the advertising world in digital ads. So you're talking about banner ads, OTT, CTV, un-attributable systems, where you don't do any tracking or anything like that.

AJ
Have a tendency to have a enormous amount of fraud in the ad buy, so.

Brian
I feel like this space might be a similar evolution of the blog phenomenon of the mid 2000s. Everyone had a blog. It's like, look at my blog. And then blogs became infested with ads. You see this anytime you look up a recipe on, which I never, now I use chat TPT for all of my recipes because I'm like, hey, I need a recipe for this thing. Zero ads, really easy to read,

Brian
very well laid out. And if I say, I don't have this ingredient, it says, great, you can substitute this, or hey, I want to make it a little bit more like this. Great, you can add this.

AJ
But does it not tell you the whole life story of the woman who moved us?

Brian
It also doesn't have the jump to recipe button.

AJ
The person who made the recipe. It does not. No, because I really like hearing about how their kids in the soccer game and how they were super late getting to work.

Brian
It's just you have to scroll past so many more ads to get to the actual recipe, but.

Trent
Yeah, and I think I want to talk about podcasts as a whole different episode too.

AJ
That's going to be my new podcast. I'm going to have chat TPT read the content from the top of the recipes, but not the recipe itself.

AJ
I mean, yeah.

Trent
I also, there's another podcast in the area where they did something more creative, where they actually asked chat TPT what Henry VIII have said, and actually did an interview with Henry VIII, and by using 11 labs to like recreate his voice and having that conversation. So it's another one of those things of like they used AI and very similar ways to create an own independent one, but they actually did something that would have been creative to like add a conversation. So it's like that borderline, like you said, I think you define it so well. Is there a point to it? Is there something that adds value? Or is it just something because I can make money off of this? Yeah. And the question about who is this company? It's from a company called Inception Point AI. Okay. Yeah, it's from a former, yeah, anyway, but yeah, it's just. From a former. Former Wondery COO. So Wondery is another big podcast production house. And she's a former CEO, and she's kind of heading this company about Inception Point AI. Inception Point AI. But yeah, it's one of those things that, it's been blowing up here recently when the news, when they admitted that they're doing that. Weird part is I need to look at the data, but there's research coming back that a lot of people don't care. There's a large portion of people that are like, if they were asked if AI is being included in this, does it make you less likely to listen, more likely to listen, or do you not care?

Trent
And it's kind of split, right? A third in each, almost, I think.

Trent
Don't hold me to that. But it's just interesting to see how that's happening. And I really like the way you defined it, Brian. I think that kind of sums up everything we've been talking about in a great way to summarize it, right? What is the purpose of it? How are you using it? If you're just trying to use it as a get rich quick scam,

Trent
it might work, but you're gonna probably have a lot of enemies and people coming after you with it. If you're using it to do something that you couldn't do otherwise, like I've been creating some really cool graphics for my storytelling stuff that I'm like, I wouldn't be able to create this after, otherwise, where I would, I mean, there's a whole other thing too, right? Should I be paying an artist and getting someone, an artist like that to be able to create these things? Potentially, yeah. Because even AI and video, they're getting really close.

Brian
There's such a big conversation that needs to happen at like a global level about ethical use of AI.

AJ
Did you feel my brain, like pondering this question?

Brian
Yeah, probably. I just think that like, if AI is going to replace,

Brian
I think one of the things that humans value most, and maybe this is a separate episode that we talk about, but I think the thing that humans have valued most throughout history has been knowledge in some form or another, like whoever's the wisest person is usually theoretically the most powerful person.

Brian
Historically.

Trent
Historically.

Brian
Let's just go with historically. Maybe we won't talk politically.

Trent
Right, right.

Brian
Well, actually, this actually kind of makes sense now that AI is doing what it's doing. It feels like because there is so much knowledge in AI, it has taken so much knowledge from the internet or from publications or from books or whatever, humans might start valuing knowledge less because AI holds knowledge.

Brian
Just the natural like evolution of how I see AI integrating into the world. And so it's going to force humans to what do we actually value? Like do we value human connection? Do we just value money? Do we value greed? Do we value empathy? Do we value life? Like what is that thing that we value? And we're gonna have to have a conversation about what that is in the future.

AJ
I think the thing that bothers me the most about, what are you talking about, like the ethical use is just like not just the amount of noise that's generated by poor usage, but then like the larger implications of it. Like what it's adding, what the nonsense is adding to the larger sum of like everything that we are, the meta human, right? And if we,

AJ
one thing I see like a ton of right now, right? Is the like BS, like Facebook posts, like there were like 90,000 versions of the same Facebook page reporting that two or three or four or five or seven different NFL teams didn't do the moment of silence for Charlie Kirk. There's a hundred of these pages with the exact same story, but just the number of NFL teams have changed. Every story has got 30,000 some odd comments and likes and shares and stuff. And not a one of these pages is a legitimate new source, but it's not a one of them was factually reporting information had nothing to do with real life. They 100% rage beta took advantage of people's emotions in the moment and just said, how can we make as much money off of meta as possible?

AJ
And the more we do that, the more we, this is my question, right? The more that we do that stuff, the more that we just allow for things like that to go on unfettered and unchecked or whatever, the more we have hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes that is absolutely, absolutely nothing. How far do we dilute the larger sum of who we are with this BS that means nothing? And what does that say about us? What is the future larger version of us going to look back at this and be like, why was nobody stopping this? Why did nobody delineate between these two things? It looks, it's really easy to even now look forward and be like, we're gonna look back on this field. This is a period of infancy

AJ
that we've not very commonly seen in technology.

Brian
Well, it's like all the decisions we made with the internet.

AJ
Yeah, exactly. I was gonna compare it to the dot com actually.

Trent
Yeah, you're, yeah, spot on. There's all the dead internet theory too of just all of the internet is actually

AJ
just AI bots. I feel like that's becoming increasingly problematic. I have a friend who is,

AJ
man, they have recently attained not viral status, but their page went from like a few hundred followers to several thousand followers over the course of one reshared TikTok that just went insane. And they have bots fighting with each other in the comment section now. Like, there are, I'm like, what are the odds that these two locked accounts, which you can't do in the United States, are that are arguing about US politics and have really, really strong opinions about very, very specific stuff to the area that they live in, which is not a global thing at all. I don't know why anybody from Africa would be super interested in the machinations in Eastern Washington, but we, for whatever reason, we have like bots fighting it out in the comment section that are very clearly not real humans.

Trent
Well, and I feel like this is gonna be another kind of

Trent
theme that goes through our whole podcast this year. So I don't think this is gonna be the end of this discussion, but remember right now, folks, if you are going to go, there are so many good things you can use. We've talked about how we used it as creators, and you can do a lot of the same things with your business, like helping you write scripts, helping you simplify things. And there are so many great uses there. Obviously, check which bots work for you, check, make sure they're not gonna steal your data, do your research, but once you start using them, there are benefits, but don't let it replace that human connection, that human story, people that can do those human parts. And I know we will have more of this discussion.

AJ
What were the ones that we liked using? So we've all used to a DPT, Cintra, which was the one that Trent was using. You mentioned Claude earlier, I think, right?

Brian
Yeah, Claude's a really good conversational model.

Trent
Any others that- And then what's the, yeah, let's stick with those. I was gonna say, there's a lot,

AJ
but I think- Well, I mean, like that any of us are specifically using. Those are all the ones I need to advocate for.

Trent
Cool. Well, I think that's it for today.

Trent
We'll just call this the introduction to AI, because I feel there's so much more to go, so much more to talk about of how businesses can use it for their creation and what they've got going on. So until next time, any last words of wisdom? Be human. Yeah. Be human. Yeah, a lot of it. Be human. See you next time.

(Upbeat Music)