111: 🙅🏼♂️ Professor Deepfake isn't welcome?
[After] Two unscientific polls and healthy skepticism about Sam Altman
AI may not be as popular as I thought.
Yesterday I gave a brief introduction of the Entrepreneurship and Advertising minors at MCAD to current sophomores (ages 19-20). In the midst of my babbling away I mentioned the AI for Artists and Entrepreneurs class. And I asked how many of the disembodied voices (cameras always off!) were currently using AI for…anything.
I don’t think I heard a single positive reaction among 30-40 students. Maybe one? I did glimpse a handful of “never will,” “it’s stealing,” and “it’s cheating” in the comments. Let’s remember these are fine art schools majors. I can’t blame their line of thinking.
It seems Professor Deepfake is not welcome
This isn’t me.
It’s “me,” another deepfake of myself. The video above is a quick excerpt of a two minute talking head video—my talking head—I generated inside HeyGen for an education project. The process (described previously):
I recorded a three minute reference of myself using a Logitech webcam into Quicktime. Literally just me making up a script and reading the news to camera. The words don’t really matter. Mannerisms do. I uploaded the reference to HeyGen. That becomes HeyGen’s reference for “me.”
I record audio for any new script into my iPhone.Then I clean the file up using Adobe’s free Podcast Enhancer tool (which is now baked into Premiere).
I upload the audio to HeyGen, select my reference avatar and click “Submit.” A few minutes later, I have a 1920x1080 mp4 ready to download. It’s “me” “performing” the uploaded audio.
If you didn’t know the above, and weren’t paying too close attention, would you notice? Now imagine adding in b-roll cutaways or headlines. Add some music. You can see why people are both concerned and excited. And this is, as we say here often, the worst this technology will ever be. (My current thesis: I’m going to record 3-4 different reference avatars all wearing the same outfit in the same setting. Each will be a different level of “performance.” Then I can record one script, render 3-4 versions of “me,” toss them all into an editing timeline and select the best takes.)
I think there are all kinds of useful, salient applications here. What if I’m ill, or traveling, and need/want to share a video of me? What if I can’t gain access to a consistent filming location? What if I’m terrified to perform on camera? I talked about a much of these issues before. This technology unlocks an intriguing range of solutions—especially for those who aren’t able to access video production capabilities.
Anyway, I’m part of a wonderful AI-focused listserv for college and university educators. The topic of deepfaking yourself came up last week. I shared the outline above and I discovered I might be the only one who is enamored with the possibilities. There’s a lot of fear, not unjustifiably, about rights, ownership, and representation. There’s a lot of concern about originality and authenticity. A number of academics referenced their own kids and students saying a deepfake professor would be a turn off. I don’t disagree with any of this per se. But we also resisted computers in their time, and the Internet, and online teaching, and social media. I have a sense this approach to conveying certain forms of information will become ordinary and even accepted at some point.
Meanwhile, some of my current students are diving deep, using various AI tools in and out of school to build and refine their businesses and portfolios. There’s so much left to learn.
AI+Creativity Update
🪦 R.I.P. Vernor Vinge. He once proclaimed, “We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” When? 1993. But it sure seems a salient quote for this day and age. The mathematician, science fiction author and creator of the technological idea of The Singularity passed this week at age 79. Noah Smith offers a moving tribute.
🙄 Oh, Sam. So there’s a book being written and serialized by Adam Brotman (a marketer) and Andy Sack (a technologist) about AI. Cool idea! In the most recent chapter, Brotman and Sack interview Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. This is the question that fueled the money quote below: “…what do you think Artificial General Intelligence will mean for us, and for consumer brand marketers trying to create ad campaigns and the like to build their companies?” Altman replies:
“Oh, for that? It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI — and the AI will likely be able to test the creative against real or synthetic customer focus groups for predicting results and optimizing. Again, all free, instant, and nearly perfect. Images, videos, campaign ideas? No problem.”
No problem! And why not 97%?
Honestly, I can’t wait. Please, Sam, please come and take all the meetings about meetings, the subjectivity, the operationalizing of taste—the AI can have it all. As my friend Drew McLellan put it, “Sam Altman doesn’t understand what good agencies do.” More broadly, one could say Altman doesn’t understand what any professional services firm actually does. The operational word above being “what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for.” Let’s make a leap to the last page of the story: Marketers don’t use professional services for the types of work Altman assumes they do.
The AI is going to listen to the marketers fears and concerns and help them feel more confident?
The AI is going to play golf? Buy dinner?
The AI is going to translate an incoherent business strategy into an actionable behavioral insight? (It might actually have a shot here.)
Who knows, maybe Jensen Huang’s robots will play the golf and provide the chit chat.
My two favorite least words in business are “only” and “just.” They create an amusing hierarchy— “it’s only a [difficult task presented inaccurately]” or “it’s just [something I can’t be bothered to comprehend, but you have a computer].” How hard can the work you do actually be—says someone selling the veneer of profound capability. I’m reminded of the era when first the talent agents then the consulting firms were going to take over advertising. How hard could it actually be?
There’s a lot of skepticism out there.
Rightfully so.