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Redefining Storytelling with AI-Driven Innovation
As AI technology rapidly evolves, its implications for business storytelling create exciting opportunities that promise to redefine how companies convey their narratives. With advancements in generative AI, particularly within visual storytelling, enterprises of all sizes are now reexamining their approach to content, marketing, and consumer engagement.
AI's Impact on Business: More Than Just a Language Revolution
Historically, many enterprises have focused heavily on language models to streamline operations, improve customer interactions, and drive data-driven decisions. Now, the narrative is expanding. Visual generative AI is stepping into the limelight, shifting how businesses can operate creatively, even those traditionally not at the cutting edge of innovation. The capabilities of companies to easily produce high-quality content stand to dramatically enhance the storytelling landscape, making it accessible to businesses that previously relied on conventional marketing strategies.
Removing Barriers: Democratizing Professional Quality Content
The barrier to creating high-production-value content is decreasing at an unprecedented rate. With AI tools, businesses no longer require extensive creative teams to produce visually appealing and engaging content. This democratization of high-quality content creation enables businesses to focus more on the substance and creativity of their stories rather than on their production capabilities. As AI tools continue to mature, envision a world where any concept or narrative can be easily crafted into professional-grade videos or visuals, emphasizing storytelling prowess over technical execution.
Current Trends: Augmenting Reality with AI
Recent data shows a trend where businesses are using AI to enhance existing content, not just generate new material. For example, companies are upscaling videos and sharpening images to increase their usability and appeal. These applications enhance the perceived professionalism and marketability of existing assets. The combination of real-world elements with AI-augmented technology results in a powerful blend that improves content quality without starting from scratch.
The Future of Storytelling: Leveling the Playing Field
The expectation is that in the next three to five years, the ability for anyone to render their visions into polished content will be commonplace. This shift will likely transform marketing and advertising, fostering an era where creative storytelling holds the key to differentiation. Companies will need to focus on building compelling narratives to stand out in a saturated content market.
Adapting to a Fast-Paced AI Evolution
For companies looking to stay ahead of the curve, embracing current AI capabilities is essential. Leveraging AI tools for efficient and creative content production can provide a competitive edge in storytelling and consumer engagement. As AI continues to evolve, organizations can prepare by investing in AI-powered tools to streamline content creation processes and exploring AI's potential to enhance existing content assets.
In conclusion, with AI shaping the future of storytelling, businesses have the unprecedented opportunity to refine their narratives and connect with audiences in more dynamic and meaningful ways. As enterprises adapt to these innovations, the emphasis on storytelling quality over pure production value will redefine industry standards and expectations.
Topics Covered in This Episode
1. Role of AI in Business and Storytelling
2. Current Trends and Consumer Expectations
3. Societal Implications of AI-generated Content
4. Future of AI Video and Image Technology
Podcast Transcript
Jordan Wilson [00:00:17]:
Even if you're a big, boring business. Right? Those huge enterprise companies that for decades, you've just been cashing in billions of dollars, slow growth. AI changes all that. Right? And I think now we're at the point where everyone knows the power of large language models and how that can completely transform your business. But there's a whole another category of generative AI that I think has already been making bigger waves in the past couple of weeks, and those are the visual sides of generative AI. From recent announcements from OpenAI and their Sora and Google Vio and, you know, so many different creative platforms, I think are changing how companies can use AI AI and also what consumers want and what they expect. But I'll tell you this, even if you are a big, boring business that you've never been on the cutting edge of cool and marketing and advertising and visuals, I think you might wanna listen up because I think the future of AI powered storytelling is going to completely change, and our guest today can help walk us through it. Alright.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:31]:
What's going on y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson, and welcome to Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter helping us all not just learn AI, but how we can leverage it to grow our companies and careers and to make you the smartest person in AI at your company. If that sounds like you and what you're trying to do, this is your new home. Our website, youreverydayai.com. Go over there. Make sure sign up for the free daily newsletter. We'll be recapping today's conversation, but there's also hundreds of episodes and thousands of hours of other podcasts, videos, written content, everything you need to know to grow. It's there sorted by category no matter if you wanna learn about health care, marketing, HR, or something else.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:15]:
It's all on our website ready for you, so make sure you go check that out. Alright. Technically, we're debuting this show live. It's prerecorded. So if you're looking for the AI news like we do every day, that's still gonna be in the newsletter. But we're gonna get started, and I'm excited, for today's conversation. This is one near and dear to my heart, so we might dork out a little bit. But, everyone, please help me welcome to the show our guest, Eric Yang, the CEO of Topaz Labs Topaz Labs.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:42]:
Eric, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show.
Eric Yang [00:02:45]:
Thanks, Jordan. Looking forward to the conversation. Thanks for having me on.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:48]:
Alright. So I actually used Topaz Labs Labs way back in the day. Can you tell everyone a little bit, about, your platform, your company if they've never heard of it?
Eric Yang [00:02:58]:
Absolutely. So we're software that helps you upgrade the value of your content, and make it look more professional with one click. So for example, if you have seven twenty p p footage, we can upscale it to four k and make it look like it was shot natively at four k. If you have a blurry photo, we can make it sharp and, usable for social media or whatever else you wanna do. Actually, we've been around for about twenty years now. So we started off doing Photoshop plugins for, like, an HDR effect and for turning your photos into art. And we we did that for a little while. Those were probably the products that you might have used back in the day.
Eric Yang [00:03:39]:
And in 2018, we started exploring generative AI models for upscaling images and videos, and those were absolutely phenomenal, especially at the time. And we've been on that ever since.
Jordan Wilson [00:03:55]:
Yeah. Walk walk me through a little bit of what that kind of transition has been like. Right? Because, yeah, it it was you called it out there. Right, Eric? It was the original Photoshop plugins that that I was using. Right? Before I became a a heavy Canva user, I was tinkering around in Photoshop, and that's where I found Topaz. But, you know, now you have the the video AI, six. Right? The photo AI three. I think that's that's the right, numbers and and updates there.
Jordan Wilson [00:04:20]:
But, you know, walk us through kind of your transition into, you you know, providing more of these AI powered tools on the front end because the appetite's there, but I'd love to hear what that's been like for, your company.
Eric Yang [00:04:33]:
Yeah. One of the things that we think about a lot is, we wanna create the best tools for a category that is growing. Right? So in 2018, there were two things that happened. Number one, our experiments with generative AI for upscaling, nobody else was doing it at the time. And in internal testing, it was absolutely amazing. It was jaw dropping. Actually, the first version that we released, it was really buggy, and it was really slow because GPUs at the time weren't that optimized. And, it crashed all the time.
Eric Yang [00:05:08]:
The UI looked like it was, you know, Windows '90 '5, but it worked so well, that it was flying off the shelves. And with that kind of traction, you kind of know on the technology side that you're onto something. And the second thing is the amount of content back then was and and content creators was massively increasing as well. You know, you have all the all these platforms that you can get a lot more visibility, by generating good content and with good stories, and, therefore, the value of upgrading content also started to grow. So with those two things, we sort of decided to make a transition into focusing on this full full.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:47]:
So so let's let's fast forward to the end there. So, you know, I I started off the show on a little ramble rant about how I think, even big boring businesses that maybe haven't always been, you know, on the creative cutting edge. They haven't been, you know, big companies that think that they're should be out there putting visuals. How does today's technology change what businesses can actually do and accomplish without having, you know, a huge creative team?
Eric Yang [00:06:16]:
Yeah. So today is the early days of what I think will be a pretty exciting revolution in content. So if you fast forward, let's say, three to five years, I think we'll be in a world where any story or any concept that you have in your mind that you wanna be able to tell to people will be extremely low friction and easy for you to tell. We'll be in a world that any story you have in your mind, you'll be able to put into a video and just describe it using words, visuals, storyboards, whatever, and not require a creative team in order to create a amazing professional looking true to life video, for you to use in your business.
Jordan Wilson [00:06:59]:
Mhmm.
Eric Yang [00:07:00]:
And where the barrier to entry there will be the quality of your storytelling rather than the quality of your, technical, video production skills. Right? And I don't think we're a % of the way there yet, but there are still things right now that you can do, especially on the image side, I would say, that are production ready.
Jordan Wilson [00:07:20]:
So I I do wanna dig into that a little bit more, but first, I wanna attack, attack this from another angle. Right? Topaz has millions of users. You know, what have you seen, your customers leaning into the most recently? Right? Like, that's something I always like to ask. Right? Like, I had the head of AI at Canva, and I'm like, what's the data telling you? What are users building in terms of of creativity? What are you seeing with usage on even your own platforms? Right? Because I think a lot of times, it's, you know, companies like Topaz where it's it's it's the younger, you know, more creative, teams that are using this and really on the cutting edge. Where are you seeing this leading right now at least even within your own platform?
Eric Yang [00:08:05]:
Yeah. I guess this is one counterintuitive thing to bring on up on a AI podcast, actually.
Jordan Wilson [00:08:12]:
It's no AI. Right?
Eric Yang [00:08:14]:
Yeah. So I think one of the biggest use cases of AI right now is to, how do you say, to supplement the real world. Right? It's not actually to create, completely new things from scratch. I think that's where a lot of the focus, guess put because that's the coolest thing that AI can do right now. Given noise or given absolutely nothing, you can generate, something that looks amazing from from scratch. Right? That's, like, super cool. But the most useful use cases that we've seen and the ones that people pay for are they have some content that they like, but maybe it's not professional enough or high quality enough in some way. And that's actually where the dollars are right now
Jordan Wilson [00:09:02]:
Mhmm.
Eric Yang [00:09:02]:
Is being able to, maybe change something about it so that it removes a barrier for them to be able to use in in production or, like, upscale it to four k so that they can charge more for it and things like that. Mhmm. So I would say right now, at least, the biggest business use cases are combining the real world with AI tools.
Jordan Wilson [00:09:24]:
That's a good point. And and this is something, you know, I think I brought up maybe three or four months ago that, I think that we're already seeing whether we know it or not, AI generated photo and video all over the place. Right? Like, I think early iterations, you could obviously tell. Right? Like, nine months ago, you can tell. But today, yeah, I think big creative teams, they're they're uploading, you know, their current video and it's like, oh, we have a gap here. Right? And instead of having to go reshoot something, you know, there's tools now, great AI tools that can extend that video by three seconds or, you know, to grab a still, out of, you know, a a finished shot and to be able to take another angle at it or to create some, you know, a little piece of b roll. Do you see that already happening? Are we already seeing, you know, AI powered, you know, video on actual shows and maybe we all just don't know it?
Eric Yang [00:10:19]:
Currently, at least from what I've seen, we haven't really seen much generated video in production, like, on TV or Netflix or anything like that. I I don't know for for a fact, but there's been no indications in, like, the people that we've talked to anyway. I think one really interesting use case of, Generative AI so far is actually generating ideas. So you don't really need super high fidelity, true to life, high resolution content if you're, creating different ideas or brainstorming for a show or creating, storyboards for a show. So you can use AI, and people do use AI a lot to to do that and and generate ideas for themselves and lower the cost of production for them.
Jordan Wilson [00:11:10]:
Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on Jenna AI. Hey. This is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and NVIDIA have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use GenAI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to youreverydayai.com/partner to get in contact with our team, or you can just click on the partner section of our website. We'll help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on GenAI.
Jordan Wilson [00:12:14]:
Oh, yeah. Cost cost of production, I think that's something that there's no argument. Right? Like, it's already it's already gone down exponentially faster shoots for big creative teams. Right? I, like, I I remember even myself. Right? I'm I'm a former journalist. I used to do a lot of photo and video work, and I know a lot of times it would take dozens of hours of of planning, getting, you know, certain shots, storyboarding things, reshooting, editing, all of those things. You know? So as we look in the future so, Eric, you were saying in three to five years, you kind of see this world where you can just, you know, type something in or upload a, you know, a source image and really get whatever you want. Right? Talk us through how that changes.
Jordan Wilson [00:12:55]:
Right? Because I think that changes a lot. That doesn't just change, in in lower the the barrier of entry for people creating the content, but I think that changes the expectations of the consumer as well. Right? Like, no longer can a one size fits all piece of marketing, I think, work in the future. So how do you see that kind of changing on both sides?
Eric Yang [00:13:17]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think one of the most important things of about marketing is, is to stand out from everybody else. Right? And historically or, I guess, within the past, you know, fifty years or something, one of the one of one of the the really good ways to stand out is to have really high production value, to have inspiring aspirational content that other people look at. It's like, wow. That's really that's really great. I think in the next three to five years, that is no longer gonna be a barrier to entry. Everybody, me, you, everybody listening to this is going to be able to produce the most professional and realistic content that anybody can create just based on the stories in your mind.
Eric Yang [00:14:00]:
So then you gotta think about, okay. What is the differentiating factor then? And I think the differentiating factor will be the quality of the stories, the creativity of the content that you're actually putting out, which is, I think, a great thing to happen to the world because that's the value of communication. That's the value of content. So I think that'll probably be the biggest change where, the best stories will eventually win, rather than just the, you know, being able to hire a production team and actors in order to to tell your story.
Jordan Wilson [00:14:32]:
Yeah. So, you you know, it's it's it's obviously no, no secret, how much over the years. So first with, you know, just faster Internet speeds and then social media. Right? But but video dominates. Right? I think some of the most recent studies, I've seen is, you know, more than 92% of Internet users are watching videos every single week. Right? No surprise there. But even for yourself, can you talk about your own experience? I always like learning from the people who are building these companies. How even have your, kind of habits changed or consumption changed, you know, with the rise of a video and all of these creative AI tools? How has it changed for you personally in both what you're consuming and maybe what you're creating?
Eric Yang [00:15:22]:
Yeah. For sure. I think for me personally, I, I'm trying to learn golf right now. Right?
Jordan Wilson [00:15:27]:
Hey. Same. I'm terrible too.
Eric Yang [00:15:29]:
I'm I'm really, really bad. But I, historically, I've always learned using books. And so I actually bought a golf book to try to try to learn from it. It's like a 50 year old book or something. And it was it it it's pretty good. But I think the the biggest impact, of course, has been watching random videos from creators on YouTube that are actually way more useful than this book that, you know, somebody took years to write. And I think that's a pretty big change that, has been brought about by the democratization of content that on YouTube. And that's actually super useful to me and my, my my my my golf.
Eric Yang [00:16:15]:
But I think in the future, that'll be compounded even a thousand times. Right? So as the barrier of entry gets lower and lower, that's just gonna, get more more more stronger.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:26]:
So speaking of the future and that barrier, what should companies be looking at? Right? So, you know, obviously, I see, like, you know, people falling in in three buckets. Like, those that haven't done, creative visual storytelling storytelling well, those that have done and then everyone else in between. So how do all of these new tools, these new features, these new generative AI breakthroughs? Right? How should these companies and decision makers listening to this very, very show, how should they be preparing, right, their their next year's marketing plan, their advertising, their their communications. Right? Because things happen so freaking fast. Right? How can companies, you know, plan ahead and actually take advantage and grow with all these AI advancements?
Eric Yang [00:17:16]:
Yeah. At the end of the day, AI is a better tool. So I think, the way that I see it is any company has growth goals, and a lot of that revolves around, obviously, distribution. Whatever part of your distribution strategy, revolves around content creation and getting your story out, that's where you really need to look at AI to see whether it can make you more efficient or even make things possible that weren't previously possible. I think, actually, the the the storyboarding part and and being able to work with real visuals as you're creating the stories in your mind, has been a big way that we've seen even current technology be able to, to to help substantially and lower the the cost of production. I think in the next couple of years, you'll be able to produce final content or final videos especially very easily as well.
Jordan Wilson [00:18:18]:
Yeah. And and, you you know, there's, yeah, obviously, those those huge no brainer upsides. Right? Like, Eric, you keep keep, you know, bringing up a storyboarding, which I think is one of the best and easiest use cases. Right? Because in the end, I think there's still this piece of authenticity, that I think we sometimes just glaze over. Right? Because we get so excited about, you know, the AI future of of storytelling and all of these tools. So how can you still balance that that authenticity, that that human in the loop, that, you know, human appealing to other humans? How can companies balance that when it's so freaking easy to just go in there and, you know, go into these AI systems? And I get right now, you know, a good eye can still detect that they're AI generated, but probably not much longer. So how do you balance that authenticity?
Eric Yang [00:19:08]:
Yeah. That's a great question. So this has actually happened before. Right? So back in the day with, with film photography, you can, you know, change the exposure and dodge and burn it a little bit and, but it would still look like the photo. So, basically, photos were very believable Mhmm. Kinds of things. A record of history. Right? After digital photography, a couple of things happened.
Eric Yang [00:19:31]:
Number one, actually, the barrier to entry of photography became way lower, and a lot more photographers started, started coming around. Number two, though, with Photoshop, all of a sudden, you couldn't believe what's on the page anymore. Yeah. Right? You can literally have anything, be depicted in a in in a photo. And I think through some combination of society adjusting and people's expectations adjusting and social norms, we still view photos with a healthy degree of skepticism, but some degree of trust as well. And I think a similar thing will happen with a AI generated content future where it a lot of it depends on the context, and it also depends on the content, the stories themselves. So just like with big technological innovations in the past, people will adapt to the realities of an AI generated content future. And, I'm personally pretty excited to see how it goes.
Jordan Wilson [00:20:33]:
Yeah. And, you know, I'm glad you brought up, the the classic example of, you know, photography going from film to digital and then through the the the Photoshop eras, right, where, you know, Photoshop became a verb and, you you know, people were always like, oh, that's photoshopped or that's not real, that's photoshopped. Right? But I think society had this nice, you know, ten to fifteen year period where they could adjust their expectations. Right? Where it wasn't just like overnight, you know, every single thing everywhere was photoshopped. But sometimes I feel, that this is where we're at with AI. Right? Like, society isn't going to have ten to fifteen years, right, to to adjust to AI images and and AI videos because they're, starting to, you know, really I mean, you have AI companies like Runway, right, signing deals with major, film studios like Lionsgate. Right? So there's it's inevitable that it's already happening and it is happening and it's going to continue. So how do we as a society, right, how do we have to go through that Photoshop moment to see what's real, what's fake, and are there any dangers to to, you know, too much of our future storytelling be driven, being driven by AI?
Eric Yang [00:21:50]:
It's hard to predict. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely risks, I think. I think one of the interesting things that will happen in a future where there's a thousand times more AI generated content, Actually, the value of real content, the ones that you actually go out with a video camera or your iPhone and shoot, it actually disproportionately goes higher, the value, because there's gonna be less of it in relation to everything else. So I think there I I don't personally, I don't necessarily believe in a technological barrier to being able to tell, like, watermarking a real piece of footage or something like that. But I think societally, we will value, content that we trust is actual, actual recording of reality more than AI generated images. I think if if I were to make a prediction, I think society will see AI generated content more as a illustration of a concept as, like, a sort of, like, a art kind of kind of thing, whereas we will still place heavy emphasis on recording reality through actual videos and images similar to how we do right now with images.
Jordan Wilson [00:23:09]:
Yeah. No. That's that's a good point. And it's something that, you know, I think in all the hoopla and hype, we sometimes just, you know, skip over. Right? Like, reality and authenticity and believability. Right? I I think those are important things that we reflect on and and and talk about, because as a society, yeah, things are things are moving very quickly. You know, Eric, you talked earlier that, you know, hey. Maybe in in three to five years, you know, you might be able to tell a story, that looks very, you know, looks very real and can really help, you know, your next product launch, your next, you know, service that that your company comes out with.
Jordan Wilson [00:23:44]:
But maybe aside from that, aside from being able to, you know, essentially create a new, story from scratch with with a text prompt as an example in the next three to five years, what other area of AI generated storytelling, are you really paying attention to? Right? Like, as a leader of a company, that's competing in this space, you know, what's maybe that, more incremental steps, maybe not in the next three to five years that you're looking at and you're like, this is a big area. This is something I'm excited about and brands need to pay attention.
Eric Yang [00:24:14]:
Yeah. I think getting a little bit more into the steps required to achieve that. One of the biggest issues right now is, I I guess we can say call it believability or it's very easy to tell whether a piece of content is AI generated to the naked eye or realistic. And there's some pretty, challenging technical problems associated with this. But one of them is that the texture and the resolution and the sharpness of the videos right now isn't good enough. And that's the piece that we're spending all of our time trying to solve right now, basically making the video quality and texture look believable enough to where you couldn't be able to you you wouldn't be able to tell versus a real video.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:09]:
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. It's I I think we're getting there, though. Right? Like, I I mean, what do you see for that? Is is that another couple couple months, couple quarters, couple years still. Right? Like, I'm a like, I follow this maybe way too closely. So I think sometimes I'm too deep in the rabbit hole, but how long do you say until something like that happens?
Eric Yang [00:25:29]:
Probably in three years. Okay.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:31]:
There there we go. Right right at that three to five year, three to five year timeline. Nice.
Eric Yang [00:25:36]:
We we have something in the very early stages right now that can, for example, take one of your old thirty year old video clips that, you can barely see any detail in there and restore it to, HD that is obviously, it still has some issues. You can't it's not like you shot it with your iPhone today, but it's believable enough to where you would absolutely wanna use it and send it to your grandma or something like that. Yeah.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:06]:
That's that's weird. That's so cool.
Eric Yang [00:26:08]:
In three years, it's gonna it's gonna be way better than it is right
Jordan Wilson [00:26:11]:
now. Yeah. That's so cool. And I think that's, another one of those overlooked areas. Right? Everyone just wants to, you know, make a thousand new videos for whatever. But, yeah, what about our our memories that we've already created, but maybe don't look very good or, you know, don't are missing those details, the smile on grandma's face or whatever. That's that that that's an interesting, another use case for, you know, AI powered storytelling.
Eric Yang [00:26:35]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, it's all about humans. Right? AI isn't gonna consume content. So it's at the end of the day, it's all about people creating content for other people to consume. And the key part of that is the stories.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:51]:
So, Eric, we covered a lot in today's conversation, you know, from what y'all are working at at at on on top at Topaz to, you know, where the the trends are going in the industry, kind of the pros, the cons, the scary things, the exciting things. But, what would you say as we wrap up? What's the one most important thing for our audience to know when we are talking about the future of AI powered storytelling?
Eric Yang [00:27:15]:
Yeah. I guess I would say just try try things out because it's about to be really, really exciting. I personally can't wait to live in the future where you can imagine anything and create professional, great looking content from it. I would be able to use that. I would use that every single day, and, I'm I'm really excited for what's coming next.
Jordan Wilson [00:27:38]:
Alright. Well, what's coming next? We're always gonna keep you in the loop. So thank you so much, Eric, for joining the Everyday AI Show. We appreciate your time and your insights.
Eric Yang [00:27:48]:
Likewise. Thanks, Jordan.
Jordan Wilson [00:27:50]:
Alright. Hey. As a reminder, y'all, we covered a lot and there's a lot more. So we're gonna be recapping today's conversation. Maybe you heard something that Topaz is working on. You're like, yo, I wanna see that. Don't worry. It's all gonna be in the newsletter.
Jordan Wilson [00:28:01]:
So make sure if you haven't already, please go to youreverydayAI.com. If If you find this helpful, please share this with your friend. If you're listening on the podcast, please subscribe to the channel. Leave us a rating. We'd appreciate that. And more than anything, please join us tomorrow and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all.