Revolutionizing Visual Content: Generative AI in Action

Reading Time: 28 minutes

Are you leveraging the full potential of AI in your visual content creation? Have you explored how generative AI can revolutionize the way you produce visually engaging content?

With rapid advancements in AI technology, the visual content landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, making it easier and more innovative than ever for creators and marketers to produce high-quality visuals.

Today, we’re joined by Corbett Drummey, a leading marketing professional from Lightricks, the company behind groundbreaking visual content creation apps like Videoleap and Photoleap. Corbett will share insights into how generative AI is reshaping visual content creation, the advantages it offers, and how you can harness these tools to elevate your marketing efforts.

AI in Marketing: Unpacked host Mike Allton asked Corbett Drummey about:

✨ Leveraging Generative AI: Learn how generative AI capabilities can revolutionize visual content creation and overcome common challenges faced by content creators.

✨ Innovative AI Tools: Discover the groundbreaking features of Lightricks’ apps like Videoleap, Photoleap, and LTX Studio, and how they enhance content creation.

✨ Future Trends in AI and Content Creation: Gain insights into the future advancements in generative AI and how they might further transform the landscape of visual content creation and marketing.

Learn more about Corbett Drummey

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

Revolutionizing Visual Content: Generative AI in Action with Corbett Drummey

[00:00:00] Corbett Drummey: It’s kind of unfair to marketers and creators and everyone in space, because the whole AI revolution is hitting us first. Like it’s not hitting healthcare or something. It’s hitting everywhere, but the epicenter is in content creation. So it’s hard for everyone in this space because we have to constantly change, constantly learn.

And it’s like the ground is shifting beneath our feet all the time. So it’s exciting. It’s stressful though, because you get in the work habit and then you have to relearn it. But I would say lots of people might think like, Oh, it’s just around the corner, just around the corner. But once you start using this kind of stuff, you realize how important it is to stay on top of it because it will, once it starts helping you do your job for day to day, I think that’s a key moment and we started to see that for some brands for, you know, I’d say this is bar none.

Like guys. The best way of quickly communicating a creative idea, visually, like instead of taking time to make a brief, just take a minute and communicate it with a video. Like it’s crazy.

[00:00:58] Mike Allton: Welcome to AI in Marketing: Unpacked, where we simplify AI for impactful marketing. I’m your host, Mike Allton here to guide you through the world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on marketing strategies. Each episode will break down AI concepts into manageable insights and explore practical applications that can supercharge your marketing efforts.

Whether you’re an experienced marketer just starting to explore the potential of AI, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. So tune in and let’s unlock the power of AI together.

Greetings program. Welcome back to AI in Marketing: Unpacked where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into social media, content, advertising, search, and other areas of digital marketing, and you get to learn to subscribe to be shown how to prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead.

Now, are you leveraging the full potential of AI in your visual content creation? Have you explored how generative AI can revolutionize the way you produce visually engaging content with rapid advancements in AI technology? The visual content landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, making it easier and more innovative than ever for creators and marketers to produce high quality visuals.

Today, we’re joined by Corbett Drummey, a leading marketing professional from Lightricks, the company behind groundbreaking visual content creation apps, like Videoleap. Corbett will share insights into how generative AI is reshaping visual content creation, the advantages it offers, and how you can harness these tools to elevate your marketing efforts.

Hey, Corbett, welcome to the show. Hey, Mike. I’m super excited to talk with you today.

So glad to have you here to start. Can you just tell us a bit about your background and how you became involved with light tricks?

[00:02:45] Corbett Drummey: Absolutely. I joined the Lightricks team about two years ago. We actually were running a Chicago based startup called Popular Pays, a creator influencer marketing platform, and Lightricks acquired us two years ago.

So we joined the team and have been working to both continue to improve the Lightricks products especially Popular Pays, but we’ve been involved in helping launch some new ones, which I can talk about today, such as LTX Studio.

[00:03:09] Mike Allton: Terrific. So what inspired Lightricks to actually start to integrate generative AI is not something that’s necessarily obvious or that every single app or brand is doing, although obviously increasingly more are, but what was the inspiration there?[00:03:25] Corbett Drummey: You know Lightricks has had a really long history of using just the best technology possible through all their apps.

So Lightricks itself has its roots back in 2013 where the founders were involved in a PhD program, you know, working with the most advanced research at the time for, you know you know, photo editing, et cetera. That’s where they’re really popular app called Facetune was born out of. But over the time over the years, like as new programs and new like technologies developed to make it easier to edit photos and videos and content, we’ve always been integrating those in our apps, but I would say.

Everything seemed to change two years ago when we were getting, you know, first. Early access to things like DALL-E 2, and realizing how much of an impact AI is going to have in this space. So it was kind of a watershed moment where we all realized it’s going to be a sea change. We need to rethink everything.

So we started to both integrate AI into all of our apps, like. Photo leap, video leap, facetune, et cetera. But then we were building some from the ground up, you know. LZX Studio is a AI video platform built from the ground up around AI. So that was really new to us. We, we’ve definitely put in features across everything that AI has made easier.

But we’ve also just tried to rethink. Content creation in general in the world of AI. And so that’s been a, it’s been a really interesting two years.

[00:04:42] Mike Allton: I think that’s fantastic. Cause I feel like you’re avoiding that, that Kodak moment where you almost go into denial about what’s happening with the industry.

Right. And you’re like, okay, well, this sounds fantastic. Let’s figure out how we can bring this in. So if you could talk to us a little bit about what are some of the specific gender of AI features that both video leap and photo leap have and how they actually enhance content creation.

[00:05:02] Corbett Drummey: Yeah, you know, and credit to the Lightricks team as well overall, because there’s a definitely a culture of, you know, there are no sacred cows and we should think from the ground up and first principles about what’s going to be the best experience for users.

And even if that means, like you said the, the, with the Kodak moment, you’re either incurring the pain today of, Disrupting your own business or you eventually get disrupted by someone else. And so I think there’s a good culture here of like, we try to disrupt ourselves. But as an example, you know FaceTune is a wildly popular app and there’s we’ve introduced some like one touch edits that have become some of the most used features within it.

And for other apps like Photo Leap and Video Leap, which are really popular for, you know, static photo editing and video editing, we’ve done some really cool things like on Photo Leap. There’s. Just a dozen or two, you know different AI effects on the homepage. You can do turning, you know, people are most familiar with the early ones, like turning yourself into an avatar, but they’ve gotten really amazing.

Like one of my small favorite ones was using like sketch to AI or like you can kind of use AI to like design a room or design a, you know, from a, take a sketch to a building, like. There’s all kinds of experiences. Now you can, that’s powered by AI in these apps. And even where I come from with popular pays, the brand and creator platform, we’ve used AI to help you write better briefs to creators.

You can put in a blurb and it’ll kick out a brief based on all the historical briefs that are in the platform. So it helps you get to like the end stage faster and other things. Brand safety tools like AI is valuable across all platforms. All these products. But I think, yeah, the different thing is that with LTX studio, it is built up from the, it’s built from the ground up around how can we make, how can we leverage AI to help people make amazing stories as easy as possible and, and really bridge that gap from, you know, imagination to content creation.

And I think it. It is, I think it’s the fastest way in the world to go from concept to content. Honestly,

[00:06:59] Mike Allton: I would totally agree with that. And I love this idea of being able to use it to help create briefs creative briefs for content creators. That’s something that a lot of the folks listening they may be facing that need, they may not realize they need to create a creative brief, but when they’re working for influencers, but you should, you absolutely should.

So that sounds like a great assist for them. And I also love that you mentioned that one touch edit. I know for a lot of folks editing. But it’s images or video. It’s not something that they’re particularly used to doing. So giving them that quick access to that tool overcomes one of their challenges.

What are some of the other challenges that you’re seeing that are facing content creators that your tools are outright helping them? Thanks to AI.

[00:07:37] Corbett Drummey: Yeah, I’ll touch on both like the The creator side and the brand side, you know, I come from a world where we’re kind of representing both with our platform at popular pays we’re connecting brands and creators, but across the electric suite of apps I would say on the brand side I think using tools like LTX studio to, like you said, brief creators or brief an agency on an idea.

It speeds up the process so much. I came from an advertising agency before starting popular pays and we’d always pitch our client on these concepts we’d use text in the script and, you know, some comps up photos to kind of illustrate the idea. But now with like a single blurb, I can put in an idea.

It gives me you know, the sound effects, sound effects, video and narration, and I can get to like a rough draft of a project in about like. a minute or two. And then you can also style transfer over something else. You can now adjust the style with like uploading one photo. So you can really go from a concept in your head to a rough draft of video to like present to a client or a partner within a few minutes.

So I think for a brand that’s really revolutionary, you know, they can pitch creators. Creators can pitch ideas to brands and that whole era of like rapid prototyping is how brands can be more agile in their marketing world. I would say like as a caveat, it is best, I think AI tools are best in class for content prototyping.

I don’t think they’re quite there yet for using it. And external assets right out the gate, it’s getting very close. Like if you’ve used the style transfer feature on LTX studio with uploading one photo, you can change the entire project into the style you desire. And it’s. Scary accurate. But the underlying video models continue to improve month over month.

And I would say, I mean, by the end of this year, next year, at least you’ll be at a point where you can be exporting assets from these AI video tools to use externally, like in a social post or something. So that’s going to really change the landscape that we work in.

[00:09:40] Mike Allton: I love the idea of prototyping. We were talking, you know, before we started recording in the green room about the use case I’ve seen where, you know, agencies are using these kinds of tools to create logo concepts with customers where they can go back and forth.

You know, and have hundreds of concepts and do that in a span of minutes, maybe an hour over a quick call, whereas normally they’d have to go back and forth with designers for weeks and they’d have to have stipulations. Well, you only get three revisions because we can’t spend the rest of our lives trying to come up with a logo concept.

And then of course, using AI, they’ve got these local concepts that once they’re finalized, they can take that back to the designer. Cause to your point, it’s really not going to be ready for primetime external. Public facing assets, but it’ll get you to a point where you can create that a lot faster. I’d love it if you could elaborate a little bit more on that style feature that you mentioned.

That sounds fascinating. I come from a web design background. So for me, when you say style, I’m thinking cascading style sheets where I can go into that text file and say, I want to change the font from Helvetica to the Homa and it occurs across the whole website. It sounded like it was something similar.

With that feature, if you could spend a little bit more about what assets it’s actually impacting in that project, what are the capabilities there and then what happens next?

[00:10:57] Corbett Drummey: Sure. So this is one of the, like every once in a while when you use technology it’s kind of like a wow moment. And you know, I mean, maybe it’s like the first time I used mailbox where I snoozed an email.

That’s a small one, but I was like, Oh, that’s really, it’s really nice. This is one of the most recent wow moments I’ve had. It was really cool coming from. You know, a company where I work, where I was using LTX studio to create projects. Like a teammate of mine had made this really cool, like alien invasion in Chicago trailer, and that alone was cool.

Like what it can do with just a blurb, it can kick out like it. A trailer in two minutes of work, granted, getting it perfect, like getting all the tweaks, you know, you can change the camera angle. You can change the length of the clips to match up the narration. That can take an hour or two to really get your vision to life, but getting 80 percent there really does take like two, like a minute.

And, but the, the thing that was so wild to me is that, you know, I’m going to use things that people know because just so that the audience would understand it, but you should really use IP that you have the rights to. But for example. I could upload a single photo and of like a Barbie type of branding.

And it changes the alien invasion in Chicago from like a dark, gritty, you know dystopian thing to a fantastic Barbie invasion where the ship is beautiful, like pink ever, like this guy has blonde hair instead of, you know, dirt and grime on his face. Like it, it is it is remarkably good at interpreting style, scary, good.

And you can even take things like. What I would use it for more, more like is if I’m a creator and I have a certain style, I’d make something in a rough way and then just take a screenshot of something that I’ve made that I like, and it will quickly adapt it. So I can kind of prototype with my own style or as a brand, you can just take a screenshot of your own branding and it will push in that direction.

So you can get like 95 percent there. This is still something where you can export the video files with LTX studio and finish it up in whatever program you use. And you’d still probably want to do that with where the video models are today. But like we talked about, like the amount of rapid prototype you can do, I don’t think people quite realize how far that’s gone today because it’s changing so fast.

But if you even use the style transfer feature once, I think you will, you’ll See what, like kind of the bleeding edge of what’s possible. And, and by the way, like this stuff, it’s free to try. So I’m not like selling something it’s you can try it out the studio and there’s other tools. There’s lots of great video models, but what I really liked about LJX studio is that I’m not a creator by trade and this is kind of entry level where it’s like, imagine a chat GBT for video.

We just put in a blurb and it’ll kick out a full project for you. If you’re really advanced as a creator, there’s awesome tools out there. For like fine grained editing and I respect a lot of the people in the space, you know, there’s so many good video models out there and more to come. But but that’s something where I’d say, like, if you’re a beginner, it’s a great place to dive in.

And you know, it’s worked for folks like me that didn’t have a background in video editing.

[00:13:54] Mike Allton: Yeah, that’s fascinating. And that’s exactly right. And that’s why I resonate with that particular point. I do not have a background in video editing. I use a Mac, which means I use iMovie. And that’s pretty much the extent of my video editing capability.

And it works for what I needed to do, but I’m not creating Anything to that level of creativity and interest and excitement and entertaining or product or customer facing. So to have a tool like that, like you said, that you can prototype and you can quickly change it depending on the mood or the style that’s, that’s fascinating.

One thing I’d love to do is really just actually stop for a moment and go a little more high level because we didn’t really outline how light tricks is Cause I, I think readers and listeners are getting the sense that, Oh, there’s probably a lot of apps and a lot of different programs in here. It’s kind of like an Adobe where there’s a lot of different tools that you can use in that toolbox.

Could you take a second to just outline for us what’s, what’s in the toolbox?

[00:14:48] Corbett Drummey: Absolutely. I mean, and that’s good to take a step back and we can give context both on, on light tricks and also talk about. The space in general and where that’s going. So Lightricks overall yes, the, their first product out of the gate was Facetune, which of course was a real smash hit.

I mean, it’s has Lightricks overall has tens of millions of creators, like monthly active creators, but so many people across the world use Facetune. And it really was timed well. Like they really, they started in 2013. And it was timed well with the rise of, you know, mobile, social and like subscription apps.

They were one of the first, I think, in the app store to do, to do that. So that’s what really got them, you know, in this kind of you know, rocketed up in this path. But they’ve continued to release tons of new products over the years. Some are, are beloved by a small audience and used like motion leap I thought was like magic when I first used it, for example.

But overall they’ve made lots of photo, video editing apps. The most popular ones, they are photo leap, video leap. But I’d say Lightricks overall is. Constantly, as we mentioned before, they’re constantly thinking about just the output of how can we best give people tools to shrink that gap from imagination to creation.

And I’d say right now, like, FaceTune is still a huge focus considering how big that product is, but I would say right now the focus is on really becoming really focusing on, like, How can we use, leverage AI in tools like LTX studio to push that whole barrier forward in terms of what’s possible with, with content.

So they’re getting, you know, every year closer to the metal around that deep tech of what can we do to give tools that have amazing outputs. So we’re constantly changing the product portfolio based on what’s, what’s out there today. Okay. And but yeah, I’d say one, one recent update is that as of two years ago, when they acquired popular pays, it’s now not just tools for content creators, but we’re also making tools for brands.

The cool thing about LTX studio is it’s really useful for both. Like as a brand, you can see how it’s really valuable to prototype brand assets, but as a creator, it’s really democratizing things. Like you can make pretty much a, you know, feature film type thing as a creator now with that, and you couldn’t, you probably couldn’t have before.

And I think over time, it’ll open up this big space between, you know, Tik Tok and Netflix of like creators making, you know, the next generation of shows and things, I think it’s going to really open up a lot. So it’s been cool to see this evolution of the product portfolio, this realignment to AI. And also that broadening of scope from just creators to both brands and creators.

But yeah, I’m, I’m kind of on the leveraging LTX studio. I focused a bit more on the brand side personally, just cause that’s my background with popular pays. But we’ve seen some really amazing things from creators. One of my favorite ones there is we did this community challenge where we gave LTX studio to a bunch of creators.

I mean, everyone can sign up and We ran a challenge to see who can make the best trailer and then we would help produce that asset. So it’s like a, you can imagine like a new movie studio model there where, you know, it’s like a, it’s like we kickstarted a movie, you said, Hey, everyone make the best trailer you want, and then we’ll give you a budget to make it come to life.

It was really exciting to see what people made.

[00:17:55] Mike Allton: I love that use case. I’ve often seen great fan films based on some of my favorite film and, and movie IP and television show IP. And I’ve always wanted to do that sort of thing, but I’ve never had the time to learn the level of tools that they need to use.

And obviously this would be just something for fun. I mean, this is just something that they post on YouTube or tick tock. That’s Hey, this is our tribute to star Wars or whatever the case might be. So I love that idea, folks. We’re talking with Corbett Drummey about the incredible impact that AI is having on the video in image creation industry.

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No fuss, no gain. No hassle, just results. Ready to simplify your AI journey. Visit Magai today to learn how their solutions can revolutionize the way you engage with your audience. Don’t just market, market smarter with Magai. Tap the link in the show notes. So Corbett, let’s talk a little bit more about LTEc Studio.

What are some of the. Key features specifically that it offers and how else is it transforming the filmmaking industry?

[00:19:47] Corbett Drummey: Sure. Yeah, and it’s a good segue from talking about how Lightricks is organized as a company talking about their newest product Ltx studio and how that product is organized. There’s a few key features I’d say the quickest way to get a sense of it is yeah, imagine like interface where you can put in a blurb and the output is a full movie project, like a full project involving of course, video in scenes sounds narration.

But I think the unique thing about LTX studio is this really unprecedented level of control over the video. So it can both generate the whole project with just a prompt, but you can also go in and change individual shots in the scene. So if I, you know am generating a person walking down the street, I can add cars.

I could say make it rain, rainy. You can change the individual things and keep iterating really quickly until you’re getting the scene you want. And what’s wild is that feedback loop is so tight. When you change the description of a scene it will give you a preview, like a static preview within a few seconds.

And you can also generate the movie and see what the movie will look like for that shot within 10 seconds. And so it is this crazy thing where you can both. With one prompt, generate a whole project, but then dive into the details and tweak it as much as you want. There’s a few really innovative things that we’ve added that people might not have guessed, but have really given it its power.

I would say one of them is this character consistency, where it’s really hard to generate consistent characters with AI, but it’s one of the innovations we’ve put in there under the hood. So I can make a character like at Mike or at Ben or something, And it will know who that character is. And if I tag them in a new scene, they’ll pop up in that scene, which is awesome.

I would say like, you know, four to five times when you generate something, you, you get what you’re looking for. There are some things that are, you know, when you go into details, you can even remove objects in the scene or add objects and change the scene angle. And it, you can get so precise that. I’ve found, although I can generate a rough project in about one or two minutes, I’ve before spent like two hours trying to get exactly what I wanted out of a short story that I wanted to put a video to.

And so, yeah, I think it’s this really unique product where you, it’s like breadth, not depth at first. You can get a full project in a minute or two, but you can really dive deep and keep tweaking it until. It’s exactly like the vision you had in your mind. And the last part is like as the underlying video models improve, the results will only get better.

So it’s, it’s quite remarkable now, especially after the style transfer thing released. But it’s also, once you use it, you immediately see, Wow, this is just going to keep getting better and better.

[00:22:27] Mike Allton: I would totally agree. Those abilities to edit and then add consistency in terms of characters and elements across projects and scenes, that is truly a differentiator.

I mean, folks, you’ve been listening for a while, you know I use Magai, you may know that I use Magai to create images for my blog, and each one is a bear, he’s wearing a fedora hat like I often do, in a Star Wars setting. It’s fairly simple. I can’t edit those once I create them using the DALI 3 model. If I don’t like what came out, I simply have to try again.

And the bears themselves, and all this is fine for my use, but if you wanted to go further, you couldn’t because the bears themselves are different. In every single image that it’s created, it’s always a bear in a fedora, but the bear might be brown or gray or bigger or smaller. I mean, they’re all different.

[00:23:13] Corbett Drummey: Mhm.[00:23:14] Mike Allton: Whereas with your tool, you know, if we were talking about a video, I could have that consistent avatar for my business, the bear in the fedora that looks the same in every single piece and shot.[00:23:26] Corbett Drummey: Yeah, what’s wild is like so with l tech studio, you have these like individual precise settings within the shot, like you have a shot editor.

Then you can change settings in a scene. So I can change an entire scene to be, you know, go from sunny to raining, but then you have global settings. Like I can change the style from anime to cinematic in one click, or like you mentioned, I could add a character like this bear and not only add, you know, the character’s clothes and their.

Kind of personalities so that when like their appearance, personality, et cetera, so that when I tag them in a shot, like this all bleeds through in the shot, that style transfer thing, we’ll get it from being like 80 percent approximate to what you want to like. 97 percent and I guess it’s so close. And so we’re getting to a point where we are testing with a few brands, like brands that have mascots, we’re testing making video assets with this, with just style transfer and no other fine tuning because it’s gotten that close and that good.

Over time you can do even more fine tuning, but. It’s wild what you can do with one, just one photo now. Pretty crazy. I would tell everyone that they should at least try it. I think it’s also important because like as mark, it’s, it’s kind of unfair to marketers and creators and everyone in space because the whole AI revolution is hitting us first, like it’s not hitting healthcare or something it’s hitting everywhere, but the epicenter is in content creation.

So it’s hard for everyone in this space because we have to constantly change, constantly learn. And it’s like the ground is shifting beneath our feet all the time. So it’s exciting. It’s stressful though, because you get into work habit and then you have to relearn it. But I would say lots of people might think like, Oh, it’s just around the corner, just around the corner.

But once you start using this kind of stuff You realize how important it is to stay on top of it because it will, once it starts helping you do your job or day to day, I think that’s a key moment. And we’ve started to see that for some brands for, you know, I’d say this is bar none, like AI is the best way of quickly communicating a creative idea.

Visually, like instead of taking time to make a brief, just take a minute and communicate it with a video. Like it’s crazy. So I think it’s really, it’s really tough for our industry because we have to constantly change. And I feel, I feel for creators and brands that have to navigate this sea change, but we also feel that even though we’re some of the ones developing it, I mean, there’s constantly new technologies we can use for the underlying part of the platform.

But at least we live in a really exciting time and exciting industry. I, even though it’s stressful, I guess I’d rather have this than have everything be very static.

[00:25:56] Mike Allton: Absolutely. And everything you just said is exactly why we have this podcast to people like you and help everyone listening. You’re all marketers, agency owners, or solopreneurs, or, you know, you’re doing marketing for in house for a brand and you’re trying to keep up.

You’re trying to figure out how to apply these. Concepts and these tools and these trends to your own job so that you’ve got job security and you continue to be productive and enjoy what you’re doing. And that’s what we’re talking about. That’s what we’re here for. So we’ve talked through some of the tactics and the techniques within the tools.

I’m wondering how you feel. How generative AI contributes to storytelling and how that impacts from that visual content creation perspective.

[00:26:39] Corbett Drummey: That’s a really good question. I would say. Well, storytelling is, is just fundamental to good content. I do think that this technology will democratize storytelling.

But one of the things we’ve talked about is that LTX studio is a storytelling platform because we we’re not just letting people generate individual videos, but rather. A full output, you know, like a full project to communicate an idea. You can put it in this blurb and it will help you build out a story.

It will, you can put in a blurb and it’ll flush out like scenes, characters, et cetera, but you can also drop in a script and it’ll just produce that as faithfully as possible to your script. So I do, I, you know, we’ve been to a few like film festivals with this and have seen like a really remarkable interest from filmmakers, directors, et cetera.

Because it can help them, you know, bring something to life. And one thing I’ve thought was kind of special is that a lot of people, a lot of creatives I’ve met, almost all of them had something like some pet project, their old idea that they’ve never brought to life, but they’ve always really wanted to, and, and just putting that in and showing it to them was pretty special seeing their reaction.

Like, wow, that’s kind of exactly what I imagined. I would say I’d caution people in the sense that when you first start using these tools. It’s really too easy to get something that looks like everything else. And there are ways to get around that. The simplest way now, I think personally is taking your style or something you have the rights to and style transferring that to immediately move it over to something that looks average to something that looks like you or use inspiration if you have You know, there’s, there’s open source images that, that allow people to use them for things like this.

So you can use a style that inspires you. Obviously it’s not you with the terms of this product or just in general, you can’t use someone else’s IP that you don’t have the rights to, but these tools kind of generally push you in the same direction at first in terms of what the outputs look like, because they’re all using the same models, but now there are ways, not just through advanced prompting, but through these tools like style transfer to quickly really push it into unique territory.

There’s still the, the underlying models to contend with, but it’s just like before everyone’s using Photoshop, for example, or, you know the editing apps on their phone, et cetera. So I think that don’t get discouraged if you start making something and it’s. And it’s not looking like you want, cause there are now ways to get around that.

But yeah, I’d say for storytelling, I really hope this will usher in like a new era of democratizing stories. I think there’ll be a longer tail, but with algorithmic feeds, it will surface the diamonds in the rough better than ever before. There’ll be too much content, good and bad. For humans to sort through, but with algorithmic feeds, I think some really great diamonds will rise to the top.

And I would encourage creators. Cause I think there’s going to be a lot of space between the reels and Tik TOK short form videos and the Netflix, like huge budget videos. I think there’s a lot of stories to be produced in that area.

[00:29:32] Mike Allton: I love your point about taking the time to do the pre work that will allow the A i to understand your vision and give you the kind of output that is truly unique to you, your brand, your audience, that sort of thing. Because we’ve talked about this concept before on this show, whether it’s written audio video, it doesn’t really matter. The A. I. Is going to give you the most generic response.

The average of all responses. That’s how it’s trained to do unless you tell it otherwise. So using in your case that style import feature. That’s fantastic. Are there other considerations that content creators should keep in mind when they’re integrating A. I. Tools into their workflow?

[00:30:11] Corbett Drummey: You know, you touched on this.

You knew this really intuitively, but I would say it. Perhaps the biggest misconception right now is that creators will use AI and expect it to give them outputs immediately. But I think as you’ve, you’ve talked about as, as, as we talked about together, AI is really now a tool for just like this agile content creation process.

It’s a really a tool for prototyping. And so I would use AI to give yourself that fast leg up on rapid prototyping, and then use just craftsmanship tools to get that final output to the highest degree you can. But so I’d say if there’s any misconception right now with creators and just storytelling or, or using AI and content, the misconception is that I’m using AI to make an output or like, that’s what it’s good at today.

That’s, that’s not what it’s good at. I, even when I use things like LLMs and I use ChatGPT and things like Claude a lot, I use it to make sure I don’t miss something like, Hey, I’m making an outline for X, Y, and Z. And it will suggest a top, like a a subsection I didn’t think of, like I’m making a marketing plan.

What should I do? And it will say, Oh, did you think about not just social and email marketing, but this other thing like affiliate or whatever, it’s really good for covering your bases. It’s good for scaffolding. It’s good for prototyping. It’s not, no one’s going to take like a, a tweet that, or, you know, joke that AI wrote and ship that without editing or, you know, and, There are some pretty cool image generators out there now, but for the most part, like I would use it to prototype and inspire and riff off of it with, but don’t, don’t, don’t think you need to be using it straight to generate outputs.

Cause that will be frustrating probably. Cause it’s not going to get. As good as you’d be used to for like human quality output right out the gate.

[00:31:57] Mike Allton: I couldn’t agree more. And the other side of that coin is almost a cautionary tale for the lazy marketers who do want to just take the output and copy and paste it into whatever channel, whether that’s social media, blog posts or whatever, it’s, it’s not going to be what you expect.

And it’s not going to get you the results that you hoped for without your intervention, you’re editing your, the human touch. So. I’ve got just one more question for you, Cor, but I’m wondering if you could take out your crystal ball and as challenging as it is in this industry of AI, where things are literally changing every day, what do you see happening in the future, particularly when it comes to visual content creation?

[00:32:35] Corbett Drummey: And also I want to I want to touch on one more point to you because you you might need something from your last comment. You were talking about the lazy marketer, just putting stuff out. I totally agree with that comment, but it sparks something else. And I wanted to chat with with you about too, which is when using outputs in AI, one more piece of advice I’d give is to lean into the glitchiness, if that makes sense.

So the only time I would use outputs directly from AI, don’t use in that lazy way. I totally agree with what you’re saying. You can use it in kind of a funny way sometimes, like there’s this bot I follow on Twitter that is just completely AI like straight output from AI, but it’s not for the purposes of like, you know, bland marketing advice or something.

I follow it because it’s funny and quirky and glitchy. And so marketers who’ve used AI successfully have leaned into the artifacts and not tried to erase them. So there’s this like beautiful Coca Cola ad. We didn’t make it. But they, they use that kind of glitchy feel that, that comes from AI and lean into it as like a style choice.

And I think that is the direction you want to go where you either lean into the faults, you use AI because of not in spite of the, the faults and the glitches, et cetera, you lean into that style format, or you can do some really fun, quirky things. It’s kind of the same type of humor of like. We gave our intern the keys to the social media account and look what they did.

And it, it’s yet another way to break through that the typical things you’d see. So yeah, I would say like either use it for prototyping and to inspire you or lean into the glitchiness and use AI in spite of, you know, to lean into that little artifacts that might be generated in the assets or to kind of you know, lean into that randomness.

I know that can be scary as a brand but. You know, no risk, no reward. Right. You can look, you can always, you don’t have to have it come straight from the API to Twitter. You can always, you know, double check it before posting, for example. But I would still, I would still lean into it more than you think.

And then the last thing, when you asked about like trends I’d, I’d really also like to hear your, your perspective on this too. But I would say in the next year, I think the underlying models will get so good. That we can jump that chasm between only using it for prototyping. And wow, you can export now, it’s really getting there.

And there’s a lot of new video models set to be released later this year. Of course, everyone’s waiting for things like Sora. But there’s a lot of things in development. And I, I really think that we might even see a new. Like content channel, like usually when things change, like with the iPhone, you know, you had things like Instagram pop up with the iPhone camera and on platform editing, like on mobile editing, we might even see a new channel because there’s gonna be such an explosion of content once it can jump straight from AI to external use.

And with algorithmic feeds, there’ll be some really cool things that pop up. So I think we’ll get some cool new shows and things like that out of this Revolution, and I’m excited and nervous at the same time.

[00:35:38] Mike Allton: Yeah, right now. I was Very much in agreement with your earlier comment about using AI in certain ways in quirky ways.

I have a LinkedIn newsletter that essentially lets my LinkedIn audience know, Hey, this is the new newest podcast episode. And this is what it’s about. And it’s written by my AI assistant. CLU, which is a Tron reference and I’m very transparent about the CLU. Wrote this CLU is putting this out. It’s CLUs perspective on, on the episode.

And I do that just for fun. But you’re right. Brands can, can use AI in those fun, quirky ways and a lot of different ways. And I definitely love. The comment about how this is just the beginning in terms of the model capability and the tool capability. You know, Sam Altman is famous now for saying multiple times, this is the worst chat GPT, this is the worst open AI.

This is the worst generative AI that you’ll ever have to use because tomorrow’s models are going to be so much more powerful. And I love how. This is opening a world of marketing specifically for small businesses and small business owners and solopreneurs and boutique agency owners that they would have never been able to do.

They could not have had the time or the bandwidth of the resources to create any kind of, you know, feature film level material for themselves or for their clients. And now they will be. So it’s not that it’s taking away their jobs. It’s enhancing their capability. Now they can truly tell gorgeous stories on Instagram reels and YouTube shorts in those brief amounts of time that they never would have been able to do before.

Yeah. So I love that. Thank you for sharing that Corbett. This has been absolutely amazing for folks who want to know more about you. Maybe they want to contact you with questions. Where can they go to reach out?

[00:37:21] Corbett Drummey: Yeah. So I would say at LTX LTX dot studio, like the URL LTX dot studio, you can sign up to try the products I’ve been talking about the AI video product.

And we post some really amazing things on our LTX studio Twitter account, X account. So I would start there. That’s where so much of the innovation is happening. And that’s why I’d push people. Of course, if you want to look good in a photo and check out FaceTune, I think a lot of people might’ve already downloaded at least once.

And we have some, a suite of apps, like I said, for video editing, video leap, photo editing, photo leap. But if you want to see the latest and greatest in AI From the ground up, I would play around with the LTX studio product a little bit, just to get familiar with it. And you can always tweet at me if you want to chat through how to get the most use out of it, just at Corbett Drummey on, on X on Twitter, but yeah, this was honestly really fun to talk through and it is a really exciting space.

I bet if we talked again in a year, it’d all be completely different.

[00:38:15] Mike Allton: Right. A lot of my guests are going to be coming back in 6, 12, 18 months. The previous episode with Mitch Jackson, all about IP law. Mitch is definitely going to come back in six months. Cause everything is changing, but thank you so much, Corbett.

Thank you everyone for listening. This has been a fantastic conversation. I will have the links to all the tools and everything that we talked about today in the show notes as usual. Don’t AI and. Marketing unpacked podcast and leave us a review. We’d love to know what you think until next time. Welcome to the grid.

Thanks for joining us on AI in Marketing: Unpacked. I hope today’s episode has inspired you and given you actionable insights to integrate AI into your marketing strategies. You enjoyed the show, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and consider leaving a review. We’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions.

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