Content Authenticity In The Age Of AI [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep.24]

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and has not been edited for accuracy

Briana
0:00:00
Alex, since the last time we talked, whoa, so much has happened in the world of AI. I'm excited to dive in. We got a lot to catch up on today.

Alex
0:00:07
I can't wait. Let's get into it.

Alex
0:00:09
Welcome back to the show. This is Endless Customers. My name is Alex Winter, and today we're joined by Brianna Wagenbach, our AI lead, our AI expert and trainer.

Alex
0:00:17
What's up? Welcome back to the show.

Briana
0:00:29
Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to dive in.

Alex
0:00:31
No, I'm excited too. Thanks for being here. We meet with you regularly because not only are you an AI expert, but I feel like I always need what's fresh and what's happening because it's an ever-changing landscape. I feel like there's new tools every day

Alex
0:00:44
and it's like drinking from a fire hose. So you are my central source of truth and I think for our listeners and our audiences, we are so happy to have you back, because we want to know what's going on, what's new with AI, what's kicking, what you're most excited about. So I think a good place to start is,

Alex
0:01:00
what's up with AI? What is something you're really excited about right now? What's new and happening in the world of artificial intelligence?

Briana
0:01:06
Well, that's a big old loaded question. What's new in AI is hard to keep up with. As you mentioned, drinking from a fire hose, it's a great way to describe it. I would say what is most top of mind right now is the whole thought of, is what I'm seeing real on my screen? And I wouldn't say it's necessarily something I'm excited about. If anything, I would say it's on the other side that I am leaning in with a big, big air of caution. For any writers, videographers, content creators, or anyone.

Alex
0:01:45 That's me, hi.

Briana

0:01:46 Yes, right?

Briana
0:01:47
We've all probably gotten pretty annoyed at this point of how many stinking updates Google has done and what we are supposed to do differently or what we're supposed to keep doing the same. It's pretty confusing on the creator side of things. And it leaves creators feeling like, are best practices still best practices? Like, how do I know I'm doing the right stuff?

Alex
0:02:10 Yeah, totally.

Briana
0:02:11
And it's a little bit of a guessing game, which as a strategic lead and as an AI trainer, I don't feel good saying that, that it's a little bit of a guessing game right now. But it is. And so when we think about all the advancements that are happening already and are going to continue to happen in the world of video, what is going to continue to be harder than ever to gain is trust of your readers,

Briana
0:02:37
trust of your viewers, trust of your potential prospects. Even today in my position, I'm not going to lie, when I go online, it's pretty rare that I assume a video is real, that I assume content is not AI generated, which is a little bit of a weird spot to be in, and the question is, well, okay, if that is really kind of how people

Briana
0:03:01
are thinking right now, because I'm not alone in that.

Alex
0:03:03
No, you're not the only one. I feel that way, too. As a video professional, I feel like I'm pretty good at going like, oh, that's green screen, oh, that's whatever, that's this, that's that, and I can identify pretty quickly like this isn't this is a fake video or whatever you want to call It and it's getting increasingly more difficult to do that these days. It really yeah. Yeah

Briana
0:03:23
Yeah, I will say I live in Colorado So like I can see the Rocky Mountains right from my office window and I follow all things Mountain related like just work in Colorado to the max But what I found is I actually saw this video on Instagram, this is last week, and I showed it to my husband because while I live in Colorado, I haven't lived here very long, so anytime I see something cool, I'm like,

Briana
0:03:47
oh sweet, let's plan our next trip. Like, let's go on this hike. It was AI generated, it was not real, and I felt like a little loon, because I was like, here I am, AI strategic lead, instant fooled by this video on Instagram. So where does that leave us in the content creator world of what we're supposed to do? And with video, I really feel strongly that we just need to be as transparent as possible

Briana
0:04:18
with what is real and what is not. And it's not to say that you shouldn't use AI or you should really stick to the core basics without AI, use it. Use it well and be transparent about it because there is a lot that you can do already with video. Just as written content compared to video has historically been, video is behind the curve as it relates to AI if we're comparing written content. So what we're seeing with video right now is just the littlest, littlest bit. As a videographer, you probably can agree that

Briana
0:04:53
there's not a ton of cool stuff that we can do with video right now, but there will be, hopefully, in the future. Yeah, no, there's a lot of potential,

Alex
0:05:00
and we're working through that right now, too, because we're very much focused on leveraging these tools to our advantage, and there are a lot of tools. There's great plugins for Premiere, and for After Effects, and for editing tools that what would normally take two to three hours to edit now takes 15 minutes to half an hour to edit

Alex
0:05:16
because of these tools. So there are some cool advancements, but there's still a human piece that needs to be there and that hasn't fully gone away yet. So we're not, like you said, we're at the tip of the iceberg with where it's at. We're not in full chat GPT content writer mode yet, but it's increasingly becoming more apparent

Alex
0:05:34
that we're getting there. Like in the next couple years, this conversation's gonna be a very different one, for sure.

Briana
0:05:40
Yep. And what'll be interesting is already, even while we're just at the beginning of what AI could and will look like for video, fast forward, you know, two years, three years, five years down the line, what is that gonna look like? And if it's already hard to decipher

Briana
0:05:56
the difference between reality and AI, that's gonna be just even more complex, you know, years down the road. So what are we doing now to make it very obvious to our viewers that this is in fact real or this is AI generated and are we being as transparent as we can on the video side of things?

Alex
0:06:14
Yeah, and that so much plays into the ask, you answer and what we've always been practicing and preaching here at IMPACT, which is lead with honesty, lead with being genuine, and if you do those things, good things will follow. So even though AI is this new emerging tool and there's all these tools that go around it, you can still have a culture of being honest

Alex

0:06:32
and having those same principles and using it to your advantage and not using it in a negative way or in a shady way.

Briana
0:06:38
Yeah. And that honestly has been like, I'm not gonna lie, obviously I'm a little biased when it comes to they ask you the answer because I coach and train on it.

Alex
0:06:47 Yeah, me too.

Briana
0:06:47
But the cool thing, yeah, all of us, just a little bit.

Alex
0:06:50
A little bit, yeah.

Briana
0:06:51
The cool thing, honestly, that I keep landing back on any time I sit down to poke into anything AI-related, the one shouting message that I keep landing on is, be honest, tell your customers what they need to know to qualify or disqualify themselves for your products or services, and be conversational. All the things that we talk about in They Ask, You Answer are what is just coming to light for everybody else now.

Briana
0:07:18
So for ourselves and those that are our clients and DIYers in the They Ask, You Answer world, we're in a really good spot because we've been doing this for years and now the rest of the world just keep catching up a little bit. It's cool that really every kind of unknown that I dig into, I come back to the core principles of they ask, you answer.

Briana
0:07:40
And it works, which is great.

Alex
0:07:42
No, it totally does. And I think, too, if I'm being really honest, I was afraid of AI, and I still have some fears and worries and doubts and concerns. I think we all do, but specifically the video and writing, when it comes to content, yes, it's gonna replace some of the jobs or some of the tasks that we do day to day,

Alex
0:07:57
but if you look at it that way as like a replacement, it's really the wrong perspective. And this is something that you've taught me. This is something that Bob, our CEO, Marcus, our leadership team really pushes is that it's gonna change your job. It's not gonna take your job. And if you can shift your perspective,

Alex
0:08:13
it comes back to like written content and video is just a platform for sharing and telling stories and being genuine and having interactions with other human beings. So if you look at it that way, you're still telling a story and you're just using these tools in a new way to continue to do the same thing we've always done.

Alex
0:08:31
So it's not really like this huge paradigm shift that's happening, it's just an adjustment, yeah.

Briana
0:08:37
Well, and we've seen, it's interesting because a lot of new to AI, if I will say, people look at this as like this big upset, this big new thing that's happening. And while AI hasn't been the thing that's new in the marketing world before, there's always been something new and we've always pivoted and changed based on that. Technology is forever emerging.

Briana
0:09:03
I think of myself when I was a brand new teacher, this is gonna age me here. I used to have an overhead projector that I had these clear little sheets, you probably remember this from like your elementary school days. Of course. I would use dry erasers, they weren't dry erase, they were like wet erase markers that you put up on that overhead projector. You had to turn all the lights off. I had to march my

Briana
0:09:23
happy little self to the teacher's lounge and clean the notes after every class. Insane to think if we still did that. Like that sounds like dinosaur age and now I feel... Right. But if there is a teacher today that's still doing it, guaranteed her co-workers are like, lady, what are you doing? Why aren't you using a smart board? Why aren't you using Zoom classroom? Why aren't you using Google classroom?

Briana
0:09:45
That has changed and everybody just hopped right along with it. And while overhead projectors and Google classroom is not the same as AI, the process, the changing over, just like we did when the internet was sprung on us, it's the same damn thing. Things are going to change, so we gotta get on board and learn how to change with them.

Alex
0:10:07
Yeah, the same thing happened with social media too. You just mentioned when the dot-com bubble happened and then same thing with social media and people were freaking out and they were like, we don't need, agencies are gonna die because it's free and people can just promote themselves and that wasn't true. It certainly shifted things, but it's just an evolution as we advance as human beings and as people.

Alex
0:10:27
So it's one of those things that you can either be afraid of it or you can embrace it. And I think the

message or the key takeaway is it may be a little scary, but you've got to embrace it. So speaking of embracing it, I'm curious, and this is my favorite part. This is what I love talking to you about, because you interface with a lot of clients.

Alex
0:10:42
You're into this pretty deep. What's something that's flying under the radar, like maybe a new tool or some cool artificial intelligence piece that most people don't know about, something that you're really

Briana
0:10:51
excited about that you could share with us. Yeah, I would say there are two things that I think are honestly flying under the radar a bit because I'm not seeing a ton in social media talking about it. Chat GPT is always the hot thing people talk about, right? With chat GPT there's always a lot of questions of it, like does it learn from you? What does it store? The data security, that's always a big conversation topic. They recently, it's not on every single chat GPT. I have four, so I have it,

Briana
0:11:26
but it is a memory setting. Have you heard of this yet?

Alex
0:11:29
I don't think so. I do have chat GPT 4, but I don't know if I've been using the memory setting or not.

Briana
0:11:34
So down in the right-hand corner where you've got like your little profile pic if you will, there should be a settings button. If you go into settings, you'll know if you have it because it'll literally say memory settings. Let me pull this up and make sure I got this right. It'll say personalization.

Briana
0:11:53
When you have that turned on, if you're in your chat GPT and you see that in your settings, you see personalization, you will have the option in your chat functionality to say things like, the output that you just gave me was the tone that I always want you to use. It was conversational. It was unbiased. That's how I speak. Please remember this tone. And it does. So the cool thing there is, if I use myself for an example,

Briana
0:12:19
if I don't write stuff down, I kind of forget it sometimes, especially in a busy, busy workday. This is a computer though. This is a robot. It has way bigger memory capacity than we do. So those little things that you notice that it did right, there is that thumbs up, thumbs down button on your chat. Who's those? That actually helps OpenAI learn. And it also helps your chat GPT bot learn. But we want to take it even one step and have each bot, each chat that you open, learn collectively, and that's where that personalization comes in, where it can start to essentially

Briana
0:12:57
build up a personal memory bank for you. And the one air of caution, a big air of caution, is careful on what you put in there. It's great that it's gonna remember it, but when it comes to data security, if you have that thought of, I don't know, should I put that in there? I mean, the answer is probably no,

you shouldn't.

Alex
0:13:15
So, be thoughtful. Right, right, and depending on your industry and sector and security issues, you have to be mindful of those things, for sure, yeah.

Briana
0:13:22
Yep, yep. Yeah, like I was reading an article last week about a teacher who's utilizing ChatGPT for lesson planning.

12 0:13:29 Oh, nice.

Alex 0:13:30 Great.

Briana
0:13:31
Now, as a past teacher, I will say, no one student is the same. So if you have a classroom of 30 students, chances are your lesson plan is going to probably be taught in 10 different ways all within one lesson. Oh, the joys of being a teacher in 2024. But with that, what this individual was going to do was going to put information in about the learning styles of her students.

Briana
0:13:55
Now she paused because some of the data she was going to put in there is not data that can be shared publicly. That's a good air of caution to have. So instead, could she describe the learning styles of her students? Yeah, that's not sensitive data. But if she were to say like put their grades in there, maybe any educational plans they have,

Briana
0:14:15
that starts to get towards that little bit of a gray area that it's like, is that safe? If you don't know, just err on the side of probably not safe.

Alex
0:14:24
Yeah. That's a good recommendation. If you're inputting something into GPT or whatever AI tool you're using and in the back of your mind you're going, I'm not sure about this, or I'm not sure if I should input this, probably should just err on the side of caution and not do that, yeah.

Alex
0:14:39
That's definitely a good tip.

Briana
0:14:41
The other one that I think is flying under the radar, and I think it's flying, this is not based on fact, this is totally just like Breanna's gut check here, but I think it's flying under the radar because I think it's

scaring people, if I'm being honest. So there's a company, 11 Labs, for anybody who's listening, if you have not poked into 11 Labs yet, Google it, press pause, go look it up right now.

Briana
0:15:07
But this is a great platform for many things, but one of the things that it's, you know, given us as marketers the privilege to do is to monetize our voice. There's a lot of great that can come from it, but there's a little bit of, I want to say like a moral check that's needed for some people of, are we starting to get into that like humans becoming robots type of land? There's like that unsaid area of like, is this starting to creep into like a little

Briana
0:15:43
bit of a scary area here? Now, it also, there's a lot to be cautious of because let's say, let's say we had Bob, our CEO, we had his voice, you know, in 11 Labs, and me being the AI strategic lead with all good intentions, you know, I create something that is in his voice that I send off. Now, obviously I wouldn't do that, but let's say I did do that and Bob didn't know about it and that individual reached out to Bob. Messy confusion, also not my place to be sending messages on Bob's behalf.

Briana
0:16:15
But people are already doing things like this.

Alex
0:16:17
Right, but for scammers or for people that aren't using positive intent or doing shady things, it's a very, it could be used in a dangerous way. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I just pulled it up too. Yeah, this is really interesting. Generative voice AI.

Alex
0:16:31
So you're saying that it can basically map the tone of your voice and take your voice and then you can just type stuff in here and it'll sound like you or me or Bob or whichever person you want it to be.

Briana 0:16:44 Wow.

Alex
0:16:44
Wow. You had mentioned too something earlier where you were saying that it was gonna be trademarked. That there was a way to trademark people's voices? Is that right? Did I hear you say that correctly?

Briana
0:16:53
Honetize it. So, I don't know. You know, that's, I bet you that is, I hope anyways, that's something that people are thinking about and talking about behind the scenes because just from a peer, just like company security standpoint and brand messaging standpoint is I wouldn't want anybody to have availability to my voice or anybody else in my organization or anything like that unless I said so. And so I would be curious

Briana

0:17:27
if there is any future where certain things that are created with AI are trademarked or do have because those are very technical, legal-type conversations to get into, and they're big conversations to have that most likely are going to cost you a little chunk of change. So I don't say in fact, but in gut, I think this is being avoided a little bit and not as hyped and talked about because people just don't really know what to do with it and make sure they're not doing it in an unsafe way where later down the line, they get in trouble for it.

Alex
0:18:07
Yeah, totally. This is not a great example, but I just watched Oppenheimer recently, and so it's front of mind for me where it's like, it almost plays into like, the technology is there, where it's like this cool, this cool, I mean, an atom bomb isn't cool, but like this monumental advancement in technology,

Alex
0:18:24
it's really powerful, but it's also like, you have to be cautious with it, because it could be dangerous. So it's trying to navigate those areas of like, it's a great potential tool, great technology piece, but like how do we use it, and what are the safety protocols around it to make sure people aren't misusing it or mistreating it?

Briana 0:18:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Briana
0:18:44
It's a little unsettling is probably the right word. Yeah. Like commercializing your own voice. It's just a little odd. I don't even know the way to describe it, but it just seems a little weird with me.

Alex
0:18:58
Well it's starting to permeate, right, because it started with written content and then we talked about video, but now I have a lot of friends who are voiceover artists and some friends who work on some pretty big shows out in LA and things like that where they could almost have this new tool, map their voice, and then instead of going into the studio to record every day,

Alex
0:19:15
they could just type a script out or the writers could just use it and do it themselves. It almost cuts them out of the equation, which is crazy. And it's the same thing, too, we talked about with Sora earlier, with Sora AI. The videos that they promoted, it's almost indistinguishable. As a video professional, Austin and I were watching it together, and you have to really look to see, oh, the movement of her feet don't quite match up, or there's like very minute things, but like if you're not really a video expert

Alex
0:19:42
and not looking for that stuff, it's hard to tell that it's not real. So again, yeah, those security confines around it.

Briana

0:19:48
Well, and even with Sora, like the realism, I mean, truthfully, if you compare it to any other tools out there, it defies expectations. I think the last I looked, unless it's been changed recently, I think you can make something up to like 60 minutes in length, so it's not short form content, marketing video here, marketing video there, an hour.

Briana
0:20:12
I mean, that's almost a movie, depending. So I would love to be a fly on the wall just in Hollywood conversations right now. I'm sure people are getting real upset. I mean, justified. I'm curious what they're talking about because this is going to shake up the whole movie industry.

Alex 0:20:31 It is.

Briana
0:20:31
And story industry for that matter.

Alex
0:20:33
Yeah, you know, I'm okay with it though. Yeah, that's one of those things for me where it's going to shake everything up, you're right, but I'm okay with it and I'm biased. This is my opinion, but I think Hollywood is out of ideas and is just rinse, washing and repeating and rebooting everything they can. And I'm ready for some change. So maybe this is the fire starter to get that going, because I also think

Alex
0:20:53
that there's gonna be a blend between what happens with video gaming as well. I feel like video games are increasingly getting more realistic, they tell way better stories, they're hiring real actors to come in, they're almost like being immersed in a movie, so I think those lines are gonna blur and cross into maybe some new art form that we haven't

Alex
0:21:09
even thought about yet as a civilization, so it's exciting.

Briana
0:21:13
I think you're on, I think you're like directly on track there. Cause if you think through, what was it, Netflix, I want to say it was Netflix and maybe they haven't been poking around in there for a bit, but they had started putting like different interactive type shows like choose your own adventure type show as well as if you're on Netflix kids, um, you know, cause I'm just an adult kid. I feel confident.

Briana
0:21:35
You and me both.

Alex
0:21:35
They've got some game stuff in there.

Briana
0:21:38
So I think that is definitely something we're gonna start to see more of just as it becomes more interactive. And there's more tools for them to make it a better experience on the receiving end. Have you ever played around with one of those choose your own adventure type shows? Totally.

Briana
0:21:54
We were actually talking about doing something

Alex
0:21:56
way back when I had first started at IMPACT, the idea was like, let's design the website similarly, where we use video and leverage video, and it becomes interactive where people can choose their journey and which videos get served up and how it navigates them through their site so that it really becomes personalized. So yeah, we've talked about it

Alex
0:22:17
and we've thought about it quite a bit. Yeah, I've just never really pulled the trigger on it.

Briana
0:22:21
Yeah, that's interesting, because how long have you been with IMPACT, Alex?

Alex
0:22:25
So June will be six years. Six years. I know, right?

Briana
0:22:28
Oh man. Okay, so six years ago, when you were pondering this idea, all of the technology that is today was not available. No. So fast forward six more years from now, that scenario that you just described, a choose-your-own-adventure via video on a website, oh my God, sign me up. Think about how much time that would save. Like if you're, when you sit down to research any product or service,

Briana
0:22:56
it's a lot of bopping around, right? That's why bounce rates are so high. Cause we take like two seconds on a page to decide like, is this the right spot or not? If you are met with a personalized experience, I would be so curious to see, you know, if that was kind of the normal for just about every website,

Briana
0:23:16
I bet you we'd see bounce rates just drop drastically. Something customized for you, I mean, I'm in. I wanna hear more about how this is for me.

10
0:23:26
Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Alex
0:23:27
It's a whole different level of personalization. And to your point, six years ago, it was possible. It was exponentially harder than it is to do it today with the new tools that are out. And to your point again, in six years from now, I'm sure it's gonna be that much easier to do it. And how is that gonna shift buying experiences, interacting with brands, what type of content comes out,

Alex
0:23:46
if it's movies, if it's video games, if it's this blended thing of both. It's exciting to see where it's going, it really is.

Briana
0:23:52
Well, and to throw one more crazy idea in there. Yeah. Are we gonna be looking at screens in the future? I don't think so.

Briana
0:24:00
Yeah, we're gonna be walking around

Alex
0:24:01
with those Apple Glass Google things, yeah?

Briana
0:24:05
Already, I just watched, now granted, this was someone poking fun at, so it was someone on the New York subway, but they had, I wanna say it was the Apple Vision Pro, I wanna say that's what that was. And they were playing some game, so they're sitting on the subway by themselves, obviously, and dragging and dropping things in the air.

Alex
0:24:23
I saw this, yeah, I saw this, and they're playing in the air, and everyone's looking at them like, what is this person doing?

Briana
0:24:28
But that person is just ahead of the rest of us. Is that what normal is gonna be in the future? Maybe when I have a phone here, am I gonna be looking at my screen or am I gonna have some way to see it in front of me? So the way that we do things technology-wise on a day-to-day right now, is already so advanced from what it was in the past,

Briana
0:24:53
and it's just gonna continue to accelerate. And I'm very interested to see what happens with those VR sets, because that is so funky. It's a funny video to watch, but it's very weird.

Alex
0:25:05
It's, you know, you have to start somewhere, and in my mind, way back when, we were actually on

the beta testing squad for Google Glass when that was a thing, and it's advanced so much further since then. But if you look at where it started, you have to wear these apparatuses because the technology isn't small enough. But I think in a future state when we start talking about like nanotechnology and all the stuff Nvidia is doing and all

Alex
0:25:25
these insane emerging companies that are coming out, it's gonna be like a contact lens that you pop in your eye and then that'll be the new the new thing. And when it gets to that point, then I'll actually be open to wearing them. You know, but right now, I don't personally, maybe it's like a fashion choice, I don't know, but I just think having the goggles on seems a little strange for my personal taste.

11 0:25:44 Yeah.

10
0:25:45
It's a little weird.

Briana 0:25:46 Yeah.

Briana
0:25:47
I think at home, in your own home, sure, yeah.

7 0:25:49 Right.

Briana
0:25:50
I'll put those on, but I'm not walking around my house with that on, I'm not walking out in public with some big old goggles on.

Alex
0:25:55
No, everybody just wants to get to the Tony Stark place where they can have the screen that pops up and their AI assistant in their basement with all their supercars. That's what I want anyways.

8 0:26:03 Yeah.

6
0:26:04
I want a Jarvis.

Briana 0:26:04

I want an Ironman suit. Heck yeah. But the, to your point of like in a contact lens. Yeah, I do think, I do think that's where we're headed right now. They're really big, but think about cell phones. Now again, this is going to date me. Before cell phones, there were car phones. Do you remember car phones?

Briana
0:26:19
Yeah, of course. And the bag phones. And a bag phone, yes. Remember my grandma had one of those giant block cell phones?

Alex
0:26:31
Yeah, with the antenna that you could call Pluto if you wanted to. Yeah, it was insane.

Briana
0:26:36
Yeah. And now look at how the little, or depending on what phone you have, the big screen that you have, everything is just an evolution. And we're continuing on this evolutional cycle. So yeah, it will be very interesting to continue to be a part of this whole chapter of AI. It's definitely fast.

Alex
0:26:56
Yeah, and I know we went down the rabbit hole a little bit, but it's exciting to talk about all this because we only know so much and there's so much potential for it. So it's good to have these conversations. I think it's important for other business owners and people to hear this too. But I also want to bring it back in a little bit here.

Alex
0:27:10
So for people that are learning about AI and for people that may be scared of all these tools or really like not not understanding a lot of what's happening yet, what's the best way for them to start learning is to start understanding are there resources like what would you recommend for people that are trying to

Briana
0:27:24
deepen their understanding? This is going to sound like the most simplistic directive because it is but your average American or average individual around the world we use AI like all day even if we don't realize it, AI is baked into almost all technology today. And so most likely are already heavily relying on it. So my directive would be start. It's as simple as that. Start with what you're comfortable with.

Briana
0:27:55
So like, if I think of my mother, actually, in her 60s. I like to joke that she is like tech illiterate, but she also works for a university system. And she was talking to me about some tasks that are really, really time consuming for her. And she doesn't like using them or like doing it. It's not a task she enjoys carrying out.

Briana
0:28:21
So I showed her what chat GPT is. And now she's playing with that. I showed her what Copilot is, because it relates to the work that she does. So she started with work that she was already doing in

her current role and said, do I actually have to be the person that does this, or does this just need to get done?

Briana
0:28:40
And then from there, she utilized resources that she had, like her daughter, me, to say, is AI really a thing that I should be using? I'm in my 60s, like, do I really need to do this? Yo, if she is 63 and doing this, I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are even younger than her or maybe even older than her, but if she can do it,

Briana
0:29:02
I mean, just start somewhere that you're comfortable. That really is like the best piece of advice I can give you. Now, when I say that, because I've been on the receiving end of that, when I heard that, start where you're comfortable, I was like, what the heck does that even mean?

7
0:29:19
Like, what am I supposed to do?

Alex
0:29:21
What if I'm not comfortable? What if I don't want to start? Like, what if I'm afraid? Then what, right? It's definitely a very open-ended question where if you're not openly choosing to do this thing, you're not necessarily going to. So how do you force yourself to start to learn about it

Alex
0:29:35
so that you're not behind the eight ball basically and catching up with everyone else.

6
0:29:41 Yeah, yeah.

Briana
0:29:42
So, really coming back to that word comfort, if you are truthfully like, man, this is way over my head, I just really don't know what to do, start on a personal level. Leave your job out of it for a second. What ingredients do you have in your fridge?

5
0:29:58
Pop that into chat, GPT.

Briana
0:29:59
What recipe can you make that doesn't require you to run to the store and get more ingredients start there? That's interesting have a Child who it takes forever to get ready in the morning and maybe they're very particular about a certain style Look up ways to speed up morning routines Look up what you can do and what you can say before bedtime to make sure that individual or that child is ready to go in the morning. There's all these little things in our personal world that are big time suckers mentally,

Briana
0:30:31
and if we can use AI to start to weave that into our personal life, that's how we start where we're comfortable, because it's less risky. Me saying, hey chat, GPT, I have X, Y, Z ingredients in my fridge, there's nothing really scary about that.

Alex
0:30:45
And I don't know what to make, yeah, I don't know what to do with it, give me something. Yeah, that's a really great point, and I think that's something that people can really take away and start using and I'm gonna do that too where like, there are things that we all do. It's different for each person but like,

Alex
0:30:58
the tedious tasks, the mundane, the monotonous things that like, you have to do them but you maybe don't want to and how can AI and what tools are out there that can help speed those things up so you can get back to doing what you love doing and you can get back to doing what you're passionate about doing, that's a huge piece, yeah.

Briana
0:31:13
And I would say something that I've noticed is like a easy transition, if you will, going from utilizing AI in my personal world, okay, I'm a little warmed up, maybe I'm ready to start to peek at what that might look like in work life. Start with presentations, like a slide deck. Guess what?

Briana
0:31:29
If you use AI to create a slide deck and that slide deck is garbage, then don't use it. Like that's, oh no, it didn't turn out how you wanted, but that's you starting and that's you trying. So remove the hard stuff of your job and start with the easy stuff in your personal life and then start to kind of wean that over to your professional life.

Briana
0:31:53
But a lot of people can't do slide decks which is just an easy thing to start poking with.

Alex
0:31:58
Yeah, slide decks is a great one. For me as a video professional, I struggle with scripting because I'm not a writer per se. I can write, but I'm not a writer. I'm more of a, I love to take what's on the written page and turn it into something, right? That's what I'm a specialist in. But I've learned that if you use ChatGPT and if you use some of these tools, it may not

Alex
0:32:16
be like a copy and paste. But if I'm looking at a blank page and I don't know where to start, it's a great way to like input something and get something back quickly and it sparks, it sparks the thought process. It starts to get me going, and it gets me going faster than if I'm just sitting there going like, I don't even know where to start this, I don't know where to begin. So even just using it in that way,

Alex 0:32:37

it can really help your creative process and help get you where you need to go faster.

Briana 0:32:41 Yeah.

Briana
0:32:42
Well, and two, I was having a conversation with Bob, our CEO, a couple weeks ago, and what we were talking about is, you know, when you hear AI, we think of like these big advancements, like big deal things, really impressive things. But when I asked Bob, CEO, what's the most annoying thing you do?

Briana
0:33:02
Guess what he said. He said, starting e-mails as a CEO is one of the most annoying things I do. If you think about it, if you're a business owner, you want to come across very professional, but you want to come across friendly, conversational. There's all these things that you place these expectations on yourself just within one simple e-mail.

Briana
0:33:25
So for Bob, having tools like HyperWrite or Jasper Everywhere that can be right within your e-mail to help you draft that e-mail, instead of sitting down, and this sounds silly, but I know everyone has had this experience where you have someone to email and you're nervous, you don't want to email them. For some reason, you're just really in your head, and it's like 10 minutes go by and you haven't even like started the email and you're just like thinking. Overanalyzing. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Totally. That, I mean, that right there, that was an easy

Briana
0:33:56
way for him to start because with an email, well, if you don't like what it looks like, then don't press send, right? So, low risk.

Alex
0:34:05
Low risk, high reward. Great ways to get started with it. What other resources are out there? So, I know we have IMPACT+, and can people reach out to you? What else would you recommend if people are trying to learn more about AI?

Briana
0:34:19
Truthfully, I would say if you, well, if they're listening to this, they're probably podcast listeners. So, another podcast I would recommend is the Marketing AI Institute with Mike Caput who you had on that show. Yeah, he was on the show recently

Alex
0:34:32
Yeah, and Paul their CEO

Briana
0:34:34
They have a lot of good conversations similar to this conversation but it's something I personally like

rely on to say in the know because It's so crowded online. There's so much fluff to get through. To our first point in this conversation is, I don't always know what is fact and what is opinion when you hop online. Having trusted resources like the Marketing AI Institute or like Endless Customers, where you can hear experts having conversations and you

Briana
0:35:05
know that they're pulling that information from somewhere of expertise, because they actually do that in their day-to-day. So like Paul and Mike at the Marketing AI Institute, they live and breathe AI all day. So I am much more keen to hop on their podcast and listen for a quick half an hour, 45 minutes, than to sit down and let my fingertips go to work on a search engine trying to figure out whatever I learn at that time. So yeah, the Marketing AI Institute podcast, that's, while we know them,

Briana
0:35:43
so maybe I'm a little biased, I will say that's been the one podcast that I actually find to be consistently accurate. I actually have a couple that I want to talk about that are worth my time to listen to. Not my time, Brianna, as the AI lady, but my time as just any individual who's standing to learn something.

Alex
0:36:03
Well, it goes back to being a trusted resource, like you were saying, Rihanna. And too, like I said this to Mike, I remember going to Macon before COVID and them talking about how important AI was and how it was gonna shift the landscape of everything that we do. And I even said to Mike,

Alex
0:36:16
like, I don't know if I was fully bought in back then. I was listening, I was definitely open to it, but I wasn't fully bought in. I was like, eh, maybe, we'll see how it goes. So when you think back that far, they've been preaching this for a while. They are fully bought into it. They're a trusted resource.

Alex
0:36:30
And like anything, people that are that are pillars in a community become that trusted voice. And those are people you need to listen to and really try to use this as that guide to help you make better and more informed decisions for

Briana
0:36:41
sure. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up COVID because when before COVID happened, if you remember the company Skype. Remember that?

Alex
0:36:52
Yeah, I was almost going to try to do the little call notification thing, that is what I'm not going to do.

Briana
0:36:57
Yeah, I remember Skype. But Skype had a real big opportunity when that pandemic happened to lean in, and they didn't. Zoom stole that marketplace, and they did it in a really, really easy way, because we all needed ways to communicate, and Skype wasn't going to be it. While that is a

different scenario than AI right now, again, it's not different in the actual evolution of it.

Briana
0:37:23
So you're going to be like Skype and just wait and see what happens? Or are you going to be like Zoom and are you going to be proactive and start learning and making your products and service accessible and easy for people to get? Are you going to use AI to make that possible, or are you gonna stick to the basics and maybe be a company like Skype that no one really talks about anymore?

Alex
0:37:43
Yeah, yeah, don't be like Skype people, don't be afraid. Get out there, get your hands dirty, try things out, experiment. It actually isn't as scary as you may think, it's a lot of fun, and the more that I play with it, the more excited I get about the potentials of what could be, yeah.

Alex 0:37:58 Yep, yep.

Alex
0:37:59
Brianna, I love talking with you about all this stuff. This is a really great conversation. Thanks for being on the show. Before we go, can you just let people know how they can get in touch with you if they have any questions or if they want to follow up and talk about all things artificial intelligence?

Briana
0:38:10
Absolutely, of course I am on LinkedIn, Brianna Wagenbach, otherwise you can find our homepage of IMPACTplus.com and our AI Services page, you're gonna see this space all over it. There's a Talk to a Coach button and that will connect you directly to me.

Alex
0:38:25
Awesome, thank you so much again. You're welcome on the show anytime. And for all of our listeners and viewers, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next episode. We'll see you on the next episode.

Alex 0:38:32

Transcribed with Cockatoo