Career Boost: Unleashing the Power of AI in Your Professional Journey

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0:42I'm your host, Connor Grennan. And I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer. Each week, we cover breaking AI news, tools, and interview experts giving you actionable tips on applying AI in your career and life. Cool. Hey, Jaden. So today, I really want to talk about something that most of us see like every day, which is Amazon, as you know. But Amazon, you know, a lot of times we've been sort of seeing how they've been doing cloud stuff and other stuff like that today feels super practical to me. They have this new, it's like an AI powered advertising tool. I don't know if you've seen this. It's like, it's just like this beta version, I think, but it's, it's this image generator for the advertising platform, right?

1:25So it uses generative AI, obviously to create these, I mean, they call it like lifestyle themed images that can, and they say it's going to boost click through rates by like 40%. Have you seen this at all? That's wild. Yeah, no, I think this is super cool. So I was looking into this a little bit, you know, my background's in digital marketing. So I'm like super fascinated in this area and anything that makes people's lives easier in there, I'm like all for because yeah, I've definitely done a ton of that. What I think is interesting is like the precedent on this is Google has used generative AI, a similar kind of idea for ads.

2:00And then we've seen the same thing out of a handful of other like kind of ad agency places. So now seeing Amazon do this, it's kind of like a no brainer. What I will say that's interesting here is when you're doing ads and advertising, there's something very common called ad fatigue that you get where essentially like, if I see the same ad every day for a week, I'm like, please, like on Facebook or something, I'm like, please just go away. Like, I don't want to see ad anymore. But at the same time, there's a lot of studies that show you have to see an ad like, like on average, seven times or have seven interactions with a company before you'll actually buy their product.

2:35So like the brain works like that, by the way, but go on. I know. But like for companies, it's like, it's a real problem where it's like, we, they need to get in front of you seven times, but you're going to get sick of what they're doing. And so I think this is super smart with Amazon because they have this ad platform. People are going there, they're being advertised to. And so essentially they're, they're creating this tool where like, as I understand it and kind of looked into it, they, they can change the background on a product. So like if you upload like a product of like a water bottle, um, then it can like put it on a table or it can like put it in like the desert or it can like put it in all these like cool places.

3:05And I think what's really interesting here specifically is like holiday themes. So it's like the water bottle on like a Thanksgiving table or like, I don't know, like in a Christmas stocking or like kind of like that idea. I think it's like, I think it's a great idea. So I'm with you. Also, I think I was in high school. I worked for a short time as an assistant photographer. And we shot, I don't know, like food or jewelry, that kind of stuff. The amount of work that goes into that is unbelievable. And the idea that now you can really put it in. So I think the YouTube video, I don't know if you saw this demo, but it was like a toaster oven or a pot or something.

3:43And it put it into all these different houses, right? So first of all, you know, no more like, you know, renting property and everything like that, getting the light, right. It puts it into the perfect setting. So for the mood, if it's like a high end product, that's really cool. As you said, the theme. So like, I think the theme on the YouTube is like pumpkin spice, which I think is all anybody says like over and over again in the fall is like pumpkin spice. But like, so it had like, you know, you know, whatever you do with pumpkins and a Crock-Pot. But the really cool thing to me is that it just looks so clean.

4:13And so you've seen like the Amazon products on a green screen and it just looks bad. And to your point about how you have to see things over and over again, beauty really matters. And also on Amazon, Amazon's not big players anymore. Amazon's tons of tiny, tiny players. And so all of a sudden it's just like, I hate the word democratizing, but it really is. It's just democratizing something that looks, It's like when I watch old trailers with my kids and I was like, I promise this movie's good. The trailer's terrible. Seeing something beautiful in there, I think really makes a difference. Yeah, no, I think it's great.

4:49Google's tool, I actually also love their generative AI ad tool. You just post the link to your landing page in Google ads and it will create all of your ads for you based off of that. Saves you so much time. All of these really applicable tools I think are important and really speed up time for advertisers and marketers and stuff. And the reason I think it's cool that Amazon is doing this today is because beyond just, you know, obviously awesome tool for advertisers, I think it's kind of the trend where the industry is going, where instead of having to have like, instead of having to go and contact your designers in your design department to be like, hey, create me all these ad assets and creatives.

5:30It's like the person actually doing the job, actually looking at the click-through rates, actually looking at like the analytics behind in the ad campaign, they're the ones that are essentially, it's right there and built in. And I think we're going to see the same trend with a lot of AI tools where if there's an AI functionality, instead of having it on a third party platform to kind of create your content or your thing, it's going to be built into the tools as you use them. So I think that'll be a really interesting play. And speaking of that, there is a really interesting, you know, recent story I saw, which I think is kind of along the same lines, which is that Grammarly has recently introduced a new AI tool or a new AI feature essentially that as you use the internet and you have the Grammarly plugin installed, it's tracking like, it's looking at everything you write, everything you say and stuff, and it's creating a profile of your tone and voice.

6:23So when you ask it to generate text for you, it's in your voice, in your tone, which I love this so much. I love this. I mean, but Jaden, this is what we've been talking about forever, right? Which is personalization, right? Every time somebody says, where do you think this is going? I think I've heard you say this too. It's about personalization, right? I mean, like I love ChatGPT. I love all these products. But sometimes, you know, you're wrestling with it. You know what I mean? Like, because you say, I don't know if you've had this. I have a tone of voice that's pretty casual. And so ChatGPT will write me something that's pretty, you know, kind of uptight.

6:59And I'll be like more casual. And you know what I'm going to say, right? It's like, hey, man, do you have to boogie? I'm like, no, man, I don't want to boogie. Like where is the sort of the middle ground between, hey, cool surfer guy and this super uptight thing? So if Grammarly can actually nail that, I think that will actually drag a lot of people. Because Grammarly has competitors, right? I think you could actually drag a lot of people over there, no? Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's like what I was saying before with like the trend where it's like, before this existed, you would go to like Google Docs or Microsoft Word to generate your stuff.

7:34And both of those have generative AI stuff built in. But you also like, let's say you use Grammarly, a lot of people do to help them with their grammar and stuff. Like it's a plugin installed on your browser. So it's like, instead of having to go to Google Docs to generate stuff, it's like, I'm right on my email or I'm right on any website generating any piece of text and Grammarly is built in. So I feel like it's going to be like more of these, these generative AI experiences that follow you around versus you have to go to a specific place. Like I have to go to Photoshop to use generative AI things to build my products.

8:04It's like, no, it's just built right into Amazon. Like you post the photo on Amazon, it's built in. It's like, you're talking on the internet on anything like Grammarly is right there on your Chrome browser, just going to fill it in for you. I think that's great. To be honest, I actually, a few months ago, I had a good friend of mine, And we seriously considered starting a company that is pretty much what Grammarly is doing now, except it was going to be like a plugin to help you with your emails. It was going to read through all your emails you've ever sent and then come up with your tone and respond to emails.

8:33Because exactly the problem you've said, which is, yeah, if you say the word casual to ChatGPT, it will have at least three bros in the following response. It's amazing. Who talks like that? But also, that's the thing, right? So, you know, I consult with companies around how to use these, how to use generative AI tools. And I get asked the question all the time, like, what are the tools? And one of the reasons that you and I wanted to get together on this is how do you actually like apply all this? Because don't you feel like the world has like AI, like AI FOMO? Do you know what I mean? Like where there's so many tools out there.

9:07And so what I always say is, you know, kind of what you're saying, which is use the tools that you're already comfortable using, right? And so what Grammarly does, and I haven't used it, maybe you've used it a little more than I have. A little bit, yeah. But you're writing an email. So the friction there is you just have to spend a lot of mental energy and you have to work. And if you're a good email, you are, or if you're not, whatever. But the point is that I'm sure ChatTPT and other products like this are great for people that don't want to spend the time writing email. But you're really losing something.

9:40It's almost like mental latency or something. I don't even know what to call it. But there's this new friction. So one friction goes away, right? And when we talk about like AI applied, we're talking about like, how do you actually use it? So one friction goes away, which is, hey, this email used to take me this much time, this much brain energy. Now it takes basically zero, but it's created a little more friction around, well, now how do I get it to sound like me? And it sounds like this may be reducing that, which is feels like the mother load, right? Oh yeah, big time. I think, yeah, like talking about using AI tools for what you do at work and in your career and life, like this Grammarly one's a no brainer.

10:14Um, everyone should, everyone should definitely be using that. Now here's the, here's an interesting thought for you though, on all of this, on the one hand, I'm like, Oh, super cool. Uh, you know, Grammarly can do this, dude. Uh, can't, uh, um, open AI and chat GPT could make a killer competitor to this. Um, and all they would have to do is like, in order to get your tone, because I know people are like, yeah, well, Grammarly has got this, like this excellent data source where they're already following you around, looking at everything you write. So now they know your exact tone. But actually, I think Chat Chibuti can make a great competitor to this because they know everything you write, too, because you write your prompts.

10:50They could literally train your tone off of your prompts that you give it. And then you just have a little they should just honestly have a toggle at the top that's like, say this like I would say it pretty much. Yeah. And that feels like you're absolutely right. It just feels like a loss. I mean, I'm sure they will get there. They're probably they probably created it like last May. Do you know what I mean? Like, and they're just waiting to roll it out. But it does remind me that, you know, when we think about, you know, like applying all this stuff, it's like, what do you already need and what do you already use?

11:20So it's funny that you bring up ChatGPT, right? Because now, as, you know, as sort of still nascent as ChatGPT is, a lot of us are now super well-versed on ChatGPT. That's almost becoming, not to a lot of the world. We live in a little bit of a bubble, you know, you and me and probably a lot of our listeners here. But still, that's becoming almost like the norm. And that's why when you want to stretch people a little bit, that's where, and this is the other news story I kind of wanted to sort of talk about a little bit, which is this perplexity story. I don't know if you sort of saw this, that they got this massive new investment in cash.

11:56It's like, hold on, it's like a 500, yeah, it's like a half a billion dollars from IVP. But when you're talking about like, hey, OpenAI could do this, ChachapD could do this, like perplexity, by the way, this, you know, the multiple, I think they had like 3 million in revenue. So to kind of get much isn't now, apparently it's in line with other generative AI sort of type tools. But the funny thing I saw on this, when I was reading this article was that it only has like 15 ,000 users. And I'm one of the, I mean, sorry, paid users. And I'm one of those. I'm like, wow, I'm one of 15. So that made me feel sort of special.

12:34But the point is that perplexity in our flow of work, like you're talking about with ChatGPT, it totally like vibes in your flow of work. It feels like ChatGPT, except it's like it's the closest thing to Google. Right. So like, I don't know, sort of when you saw that number half a billion into perplexity, if you thought that was high or if you thought, well, I guess they're making their case here. So, yeah, I think right now what we're seeing in the fundraising environment is that you're going to see all of the biggest companies that have already been around for a while are going to be getting the most money.

13:03So, you know, perplexity getting 500 million, like I think they're one of the bigger players in AI. So it's not that shocking. Some of the newer companies that might've just come out this, you know, earlier this year, they're not going to quite get as much of that. And I think VCs and other people in particular are definitely strapped for cash as well. And so I think they want to make like safer bets and safer plays. I think that's the reason why you see Anthropic is just like raising round after round after round this year. they've raised some like something very similar. Maybe I think it might be close to 800 million or something.

13:36But in any case, yeah, no, I think that's, that's great to be a hundred percent transparent. I have not used perplexity AI a lot. So actually something I would love to ask you about is like what you're a pain user. So like, what do you use perplexity AI for? What do you love about it? And like, what made it worth pain for you? Yeah. So it's, it's sort of something that I sort of stumbled upon. Like in the early days, I was just chat GPT, but of course it had that cutoff. Went over to Bing a little better, but Bing has a personality to it. I don't know. I haven't used it in a little while. BARD, I mean, look, Google's going to be fine, but BARD, the product just wasn't that great.

14:09And then perplexity comes along, right? And perplexity, the engine behind it, at least for a paid user, I think you can use ChatGPT4 like five times a day if you're not a paid user. So it speeds it up. It gives it a little bit of a better quality. You can also toggle back and forth. It's really interesting between GPT-4 and Claude, Anthropics Claude, which is cool if you want to try it. But the really cool thing about perplexity is that, you know, I used to say to like, when I was, when I'm consulting with people like, listen, chat GPT does not replace Google. You know what I mean? Like it's more of a reasoning tool than a knowledge tool.

14:42Perplexity kind of replaces Google for me. Like if you say it'll, you know, you'll ask it a question like, Hey, how's Walmart stock doing today? Or how's Walmart doing? And the first thing it often does is, okay, Connor, are you asking more like this or more like this? So right away, it's like, where are you going with it? And then I'm like, well, I guess I'm asking more because I'm looking at making an investment in Walmart or something. And then it just pops up just 10 articles about, you know, in the last couple of weeks or whatever, about like Walmart and investment and economics, you know, sort of macroeconomics around Walmart.

15:17But it's all, you know, the links are right there. It's really easy to sort of see the links come before your answer so you see it right away. It'll give you YouTube videos, everything. And that's the amazing thing to me is that it gives you that. Now, the thing I have a little bit of problem, and other people are maybe better at perplexity than me, but then I try to kind of stay in the flow. I'm like, hey, could you rewrite this as if I was writing a LinkedIn post? I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I actually do write my own stuff on LinkedIn, but I like to see what it would say because it helps structure my thinking.

15:46But the amazing thing, it sort of tends to get a little stuck there sometimes. People might argue, like, let me know if you have a different experience. But really, it's just phenomenal at getting absolutely accurate advice to the point where I'm not even sure I go to Google anymore. That's amazing. Okay. So something interesting you said about that is when you ask it a question, it kind of asks like a follow-up question. And I recently was talking to someone else that said that they believe this is the way it goes. For me, when I hear that, I'm like, oh, that's annoying. I just want to ask a question and just to know what I'm talking about and just like, give me the answer.

16:18Do you feel like the quality of the output is so much better from that like kind of screening question, a follow-up question it gives you? Like, is that annoying or is that like useful? Yeah. So this is a great question because they do have a skip button and I'm like half the time, I'm like, just whatever you think. But really, it's actually really smart, right? Because when you ask a question, I think a lot of people, when they're using large language models, right? They get an answer that just is an awful answer. It's not answering what they think. And a lot of people just give up. I run into that all the time.

16:49People are like, I tried to answer, but the answer was so dumb. I'm like, well, because you said like, you know, how do I start a telecom company? You know, it's so broad that as do you need marketing? Do you need demographics? Like, what do you need? And this is sort of just trying to get it. Hey, I'm giving you one extra step in case you want to use it. Do you mean more like Walmart, the company? Do you mean like what, you know, the stock is doing? Do you mean more like the macroeconomics around big box stores? Like, why are you asking this question? And I think that just as sort of like a rubric for education, the question around, tell me why you're answering it.

17:21Because I think what we've seen in chat GPT, right, is like, hey, explain to me like how the cell works. That's a much different answer than if you say, hey, I'm trying to make a really creative seventh grade story around, you know, I'm trying to teach in a really seven, you know, a fun way for seventh graders or whatever. It's going to give you a very different answer. But you have all the information in your head. And this is just like, hey, give me a little more of that, you know. That's cool. Okay. One other question and sorry for harassing you so much about perplexity. I just haven't used it.

17:48So it's like, this is interesting. And for other people listening that haven't used it, this is probably interesting too. Do, if you get perplexity premium, are you getting GPT four and like clods pro or whatever, like both of them on the same thing? Good question about clod. I don't, I mean, it's clod two. So what you get, I think it's pretty specific and I, I mean, I hope I don't get this. How much is it? So like, should I just cancel my chat GPT subscription and get this is what I'm trying to say. No, I wouldn't. And I mean, and cause you know what Chachapita gives you, right? I mean, the pro account gives you Dali now, it gives you vision, it gives you voice, it gives you, uh, not code, what is it called?

18:23Data, advanced data, whatever analytics that gives you all that. And here's the other, I'll just say one other thing on this, which is with the free version, you can get five questions, but think about how much, how much would you pay for Google? Let's say Google is like, Hey, there's going to be a price point on this. Think about what you would pay, right? It's probably a lot. So for me personally, I know 20 bucks a month is not nothing. But for me, if I'm using that all the time, then that is really worth 20 bucks a month for me. It also gives you, I think 600 queries with chat GPT four, and you can switch over to Claude.

18:51But then what a lot of times I'll do, and this is the really amazing part, instead of going into chat GPT and using the Bing plugin for that and getting kind of like one answer, which is very good. I'll take the amalgamation of responses because that's what it does. It's like, again, I'm asking about Walmart. It'll amalgamate like from like, you know, I don't know, maybe six or seven different articles and websites and give me three paragraphs on that, which is kind of, and it'll show you links. So if you see like this sentence is really what I'm going for, click on that link. I'll grab that. And then what I do is I throw it into chat GBT and say, Hey, now write me a white paper for my boss about what we should be doing or if I was in financial services, which I'm not, but going into that.

19:28So it's funny when we think about like applied and what people actually use. If I could only have two tools, it would be chat GBT and perplexity. Wow. That's crazy. I can't believe I haven't tried this yet. And it's been, uh, it's, it's the greatest secret you've ever, you've ever, just me and 15 ,000 other people. Yeah. So happy you're, happy you're sharing it. Um, this is a really interesting news story I wanted to bring up next. And that is something that Google's doing. So essentially they have announced they're, they're creating a bunch of new tools to help users fact check images. This is something I think like a few months ago, they announced that they were going to be working on this, but this is the first time I've actually seen this kind of rolling out and they made a big announcement on this.

20:06I'm excited. I think this is absolutely necessary. Like with Dolly coming into chat GPT and like mid journey being as good as it is like deep fakes, fake photos. It's going to be like the plague of the internet. Actually, to be honest, like I swear when I'm on X now, I get click baited so much where it's like a photo of something. And it's not even like AI generated photos. It's real photos. It's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This thing happened. And then I'm like, oh my gosh. And then there's like the community notes underneath. And it's like, nah, this is a photo from like seven years ago.

20:35And I'm like, thank you, community notes. I probably would have just been fed so much like random propaganda from people. You'd have been like prepping, you'd have been in your basement, like grabbing like tinder beans. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. So anyways, I think obviously that's Twitter's way of solving the problem. But Google is the biggest image search engine in the world. So they definitely need to tackle that problem. And so it's really cool. I don't know. Have you seen this new feature at all yet? I have seen the article on it. I haven't used it. And it really does feel like it should be pretty straightforward, right?

21:07Like it feels like these tools should really be able to tell whether something's AI generated or not. Because I don't know if you saw it sort of like links in to this whole poison pill thing. And I don't have an article open. So I'm just kind of off the top of my head where like pixels can like tell the generator or something like that pixel is actually something else. and they do this thing where it's like, you know, it's actually, it looks like a picture of banana, but like it tells like the person trying to copy it, that's like a raccoon or something like that. I have that wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:35But you don't know, you saw this thing? Yeah, no, so that's interesting. That I think is like a software that artists are using to essentially like put it on top so that AI scrapers get messed up and just spit out garbage if you train on their data. So it's like their revenge or whatever. This is an interesting new thing that Google's building in. So as I understand it, if you essentially go to Google and you make a search on Google images, it's going to have like a couple of dots that you can click on, on top of an image. And it has like an, about this image section. So when you click on that, it's going to pop up a thing below and say, this image is at least 10 years old.

22:11Here's like seven instances of this image being used in the past and like links to like the articles and the places. I think that's really cool because with AI generated stuff, obviously it's super new. And then in addition, another thing they did was you can upload your image to it. And it has an example. It doesn't say it's from Twitter, but it's like a, it was like a viral video. If you ever saw it or photo of like a shark. Oh, the shark. Yeah. That's the example I saw. Yeah. Yeah. So you upload that and then it will tell you, yeah, it just has links to like a bunch of websites that essentially like debunked that this image was real or whatever.