Jeffrey Katzenberg Says Hollywood Needs to Embrace AI

30 Sep 2026 · 43 min · 23 chapters

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In short

The hosts debate Jeffrey Katzenberg’s essay and Hollywood’s need to embrace AI for creativity, arguing AI should be used as an ethical production tool (hybrid workflows) rather than “slop,” while also discussing where AI still can’t do true net-new creativity.

Guest backgrounds

Jeffrey Katzenberg is a DreamWorks Animation executive from the early 2000s; the host says he worked there during the “golden years.” Katzenberg previously helped revive Disney in the 1990s (The Lion King, Aladdin) and later founded DreamWorks and Quibi; he invests via a venture fund and posted an X essay on AI for creativity.

Key claims

AI models are strong at reasoning but not yet at creating net-new ideas; humans remain the creative driver. Studios must integrate AI into production systems, but quality and ethics must improve. Katzenberg predicts AI could replace or do 90% of high-quality animated-film work in ~3 years (not fully reached yet).

Notable examples

Will Smith “eating spaghetti” as a marker of rapid AI progress; animation’s shift from 2D to 3D as an adaptation lesson; Quibi’s vertical-video bet; Blender-based AI background plate matching; mentions Reactor (WonderCo investment) and “Pixar of AI” vs “picks and shovels” tool-building.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

The Rise of AI in Entertainment

0:00 to 0:19

Explore the potential impact of AI on the future of visual effects and film.

“You can't deny the power that we now have with just a couple years of development.”

Reactions to AI in Film

0:26 to 1:04

Hosts discuss audience comments on AI, highlighting skepticism and insights from industry professionals.

“So our last episode was about, well, the thumbnail was about how when I was at TIFF and I talked to people about hybrid AI, as soon as they heard the word AI, they assumed sloppy microdrama kind of stuff.”

The Evolution of AI Technology

1:04 to 1:48

A discussion on how AI technology has rapidly progressed and its implications for creativity.

“Well, yeah, there is, I think, a percentage of folks that'll just say, you know, AI is slop.”

Balancing Skepticism with Curiosity

1:48 to 3:04

The hosts share their journey of skepticism toward AI and how it has turned into curiosity.

“I would not have expected that or expected that.”

The Ethics of AI in Creative Industries

3:04 to 4:22

A conversation about the ethical considerations surrounding AI's role in creativity and the importance of responsible use.

“that's distasteful, I think, in my opinion.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg's Influence

4:22 to 5:48

Discussion on Jeffrey Katzenberg's career, his impact on animation, and reflections from the hosts on their experiences with him.

“And I will correct that person because early animated movies were made with spreadsheets.”

Katzenberg's Ventures and Insights on AI

5:48 to 8:06

Exploring Katzenberg's past ventures and his recent observations on AI's role in creativity.

“Even on some weekends, you would see him.”

The Nature of Creativity vs. AI

8:06 to 10:36

Hosts debate the fundamental differences between human creativity and AI's capabilities.

“Ben, I didn't realize he's been in the Bay Area for like 10 years.”

The Future of AI and Hollywood

10:36 to 12:40

The hosts discuss the challenges of integrating AI in Hollywood and the potential for collaboration between tech and creative fields.

“And this is what we're so good at, right?”

The Current State of AI in Hollywood

14:00 to 14:55

Discussion on the unclear integration of AI in the film industry.

“Like at a union level or at like a mass scale level, AI is still not a thing.”
Show all 23 chapters

Quality vs. Quantity in Content Creation

14:55 to 16:45

Exploration of how video consumption trends affect quality expectations.

“He posted this essay on X, but it didn't really announce anything.”

The Role of AI and Pixar in Future Content

16:45 to 18:19

Talking about the potential of AI-driven tools for creators and its implications.

“We're in guilty of this too because you and I are cinemaphiles, right?”

Jeffrey Katzenberg's Vision for AI in Film

18:19 to 20:41

Discussion on Katzenberg's approaches and visions for utilizing AI in filmmaking.

“That still seems completely separate from, I want to build tools that make 5 billion people create better stuff, and I want to create the Pixar of AI.”

Leadership and Innovation in Animation

20:41 to 22:30

How Katzenberg's leadership style impacts innovation in animation.

“I think Jeffrey's strength, in my opinion, just having worked under him for so long, is that he has the leadership to pull off Shrek, right?”

The Transition from 2D to 3D in Animation

22:30 to 24:20

Reflecting on the historical transition in animation techniques and technologies.

“And we sort of, you know, we're like, yeah, go, Jeffrey, go, you know, be a billionaire.”

Adaptation in Animation Technology

24:20 to 25:52

Discussion about how animators adapted to technological changes over the years.

“Like or not, he's pulling a lot of strings behind the scenes.”

Comparing AI Tools for 3D Work

27:39 to 28:00

Evaluating the effectiveness of Opus 5.5 against other AI tools.

“Opus 5.5 integrates to Blender the same way GPT-6 Astra does, right?”

Analyzing Opus 5.5's Performance

28:00 to 30:05

Learn how Opus 5.5 outperforms Astra in camera focus tasks.

“And Asher did an okay job, but there were some shots where it was, like, definitely the perspective and sizing of, like, between going from, like, wide shot to close up, it wasn't quite getting it correct.”

The Landscape of AI Tools

30:05 to 33:19

Explore the comparisons between various AI models and their applications in filmmaking.

“My knowledge of blacksmithing is about free.”

Value Engineering in AI Models

33:20 to 36:23

Understand the concept of value engineering and how it applies to AI models.

“The way things are done with cars, and this is terrible practice.”

Open-Source Image Models

36:23 to 41:46

Discuss the capabilities and limitations of open-source image models like Quinn Image.

“Yeah, this looks like everything here looks on par with Nano Banana 2 quality.”

Adobe's Acquisition of Topaz

41:46 to 42:01

Speculate on Adobe's motivations behind acquiring Topaz and its implications.

“They have their generative upscalers, and sometimes they're great.”

Discussion on NVIDIA and AI's Future in Hollywood

42:01 to 42:58

Explore insights on NVIDIA's future product releases and AI's role in Hollywood.

“I'm hoping Adobe still keeps the dedicated Topaz video app as an option.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Addy:You can't deny the power that we now have with just a couple years of development. I can only imagine 10 years into this the way VFX and traditional computer graphics have had two or three decades. Like if AI gets a good solid decade in, where will we be?

0:19Joey:Welcome back to Denoise. Addy, how's it going? What's up, Joey? Long time no see. I know, in the virtual space. Okay, so since our last episode, there's a little heat in the comments.

0:33Addy:Things got a little heated, didn't it?

0:34Joey:A little heated, yeah. So our last episode was about, well, the thumbnail was about how when I was at TIFF and I talked to people about hybrid AI, as soon as they heard the word AI, they assumed sloppy microdrama kind of stuff. Right. Or just slop in general. The nuance of the episode was, as I explained that we're talking about shooting with real people and using AI to help production, then it was like, oh, okay, that sounds really cool. The comments were the exact knee-jerk reactionary comments of, yeah, AI is slopped.

1:07Addy:Well, yeah, there is, I think, a percentage of folks that'll just say, you know, AI is slop. But then what I was shocked by was a lot of the commenters were M &E people, like, you know, VFX this, Studio that, like some of their screen names. And the comment is like, well, AI will never blank. AI will never, like, I don't understand how you could be so sure that it'll never do certain things. because we're just like year two or year three into this thing.

1:40Joey:Yeah, there are other things where it's like, yeah, I don't think it'll be that good at that. And then a week later, even the past few weeks, the amount of progress, if the things it can do with Blender and computer control has been, I would not have expected that or expected that. Exactly.

1:54Addy:Like it surprises us and we're skeptics, right? And if you follow the podcast journey from like a year ago to now, we have had our doubts on certain things. and now we're surprised ourselves, right? But then again, I think the mindset is that we are on this journey into watching this technology sort of unfold and empower us in making better creative choices, unlocking financial opportunities that may not have existed with traditional VFX. And we're just in for the ride, right? And we're covering it in our own lens. we're not championing for slop. We never have. We hate slop as much as, I mean, I'll laugh at it as a meme, but it's not consumable content to me.

2:41Addy:Yeah, it's not what I want my main entertainment to be. Yeah, and we're constantly sort of keeping an open mind as this thing progresses. Of course, there are some things that happen in the AI space that you and I don't agree with, and we talk about it, especially on the ethics side, right? Like when it comes to like a Tilly Norwood and sort of the drama around that, that's distasteful, I think, in my opinion. But having said that, you can't deny the power that we now have with just a couple years of development. And I can only imagine 10 years into this, the way VFX and traditional computer graphics have had two or three decades.

3:22Addy:Like if AI gets a good solid decade in, where will we be?

3:27Joey:Yeah, and the speed everything's going and where we're at just now, three to five years into when like we had crazy will smith eating spaghetti and we're right now uh and yeah and it's always like this is the worst that we'll ever be yeah so again um look shout out

3:45Addy:to some of our regular listeners who sort of just commented on regular and supportive yeah but or

3:51Joey:no there are a lot of support comments in there from regular listeners so we appreciate that but yeah i found it amusing because it was like oh all the comments literally validated the exact premise of the episode, which was people, your AI. And they immediately have a knee-jerk reaction.

4:03Addy:Right. You're only doing yourself a disservice if you're not curious about it, if you're not willing to test it out. I think if you just sort of face away from the entire thing and just pretend that this is going to go away because it's wrong or whatnot, I don't think it is. I don't think it's going to go away, regardless of how it was built. The question is like, can we build it better, build it more ethically now that it's here and it's kind of proven itself yeah and i actually

4:32Joey:will get into a lot of this i think more when we talk about uh katzenberg's essay uh in a minute there was one comment though that i did find funny what does any of this have to do with creating art quote data spreadsheets outputs do you even hear yourselves i think that's about jev oh okay yeah i think because i thought it's funny though because i was thinking like let me tell you There's not a single film monitor that exists. A spreadsheet was not involved.

4:58Addy:And I will correct that person because early animated movies were made with spreadsheets. Like animation tables, there's still spreadsheets under the hood. So spreadsheets can make art, dude. Or do that. Dieter, Dieter Degler.

5:13Joey:Okay. Katzenberg.

5:14Addy:Yeah, my old boss's boss's boss's boss. You work directly for Jeffrey Katzenberg? I wish. Actually, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of personal anecdotes of Jeffrey Katzenberg. I worked at DreamWorks Animation during sort of the golden years in the early 2000s when Jeffrey was very involved in running the company. You would drive in, you would see his car already on the driveway as you're driving in. And then as you're driving out of DreamWorks going home, his car is still there. That guy was a workaholic. He was there day in and day out. Even on some weekends, you would see him. he had a team of assistants and um I was in my 20s then and I um I had a couple of like meetings and dinners with him here and there and um as much as people like to bag on his sort of set of choices and like I guess you could say quote-unquote ruthless style of leadership I found his work ethic and sort of his sense of focus really inspiring so he's actually one of my heroes from my early days of my career yeah that's awesome I mean yeah he did a lot of good

6:26Joey:stuff like uh so I mean Jeffrey Katzberg uh part originally in Disney during their 90s revivement of like the golden age of he brought Disney back to life yeah like Disney was going

6:38Addy:through crazy malaise during the 80s. And then in the 90s, Katzenberg was behind The Lion King, Aladdin, all of the hits that you associate the classic Disney era with, with the 2D animated look. That's primarily his brainchild. Side thing, did you listen to the Acquired podcast? No, was he on there?

7:00Joey:No, but they did two-part Disney, History Disney episodes that were excellent.

7:08Addy:I am a big fan of the Acquired podcast, so I have to go back and catch that.

7:12Joey:They're the most recent ones. They were, yeah, in total, it's like eight hours, nine hours. And I still wanted more. Tell me more. But yeah, part two is on the modern age, the post-Walt Disney era. And that's where it gets into more about Katzenberg.

7:26Addy:Yeah, that's like Michael Eisner, Bob Iger. And Frank Wells. Fascinating sort of view of leadership and how a massive organization like that evolved and kept up with its times rather than sort of just dither away and die, kind of like an IBM.

7:42Joey:He was on the verge of dying multiple times. Multiple times, yeah. Okay, Katzberg, Disney, then left Disney, started DreamWorks. Then left, then started Quibi. RIT Quibi.

7:54Addy:He actually started a couple of other startups before Quibi. I had the pleasure of working on a platform called Pitch, P-T-C-H. this was in 20 omit the vowels from the name yeah this was like pre-TikTok pre-vine Pitch was the first image and video social media platform and it was designed really well and Jeffrey was just so he was like 10 years ahead of his time this was like 2011 2012 something like that and as you know TikTok and everything really hit big in the late 2010s right so I think the limitation was really on the network and the phone itself rather than the platform because our phones weren't able to really download video and playback video well and then we were around 3G or 4G then which was not conducive yeah the early iPhones couldn't shoot video yeah I mean this so Pitch actually had iPhone or mobile editing on its platform then Like you could shoot a video and edit it in your phone, which was pretty novel at the time.

9:08Addy:That's cool.

9:08Joey:Other startups, Quibi. Ben, I didn't realize he's been in the Bay Area for like 10 years. And so he's had a venture fund and he's been investing in various startups. And then this week he posted a pretty long essay on X called The World is Changing AI for Creativity. The essay didn't really announce anything, but it was sort of like his observations and where he's seen AI and how it's being used in creativity. Now, three years ago, he did say something to the effect of that he predicted three years ago. In three years, AI would either replace or be able to do 90 % of what it would take to do a high quality animated film.

9:49Joey:We're not quite there yet, but I think we're pretty close to that.

9:52Addy:Just so our haters are aware, we just said we're not quite there yet.

9:57Joey:We're getting close. Well, A, I think we talked about this. Animation is the easiest one that could be -

10:05Addy:It's an easier target for sure.

10:07Joey:Assisted first, yeah. You don't have to be on Candy Valley issue. It works well with styles. We know animation works pretty well with AI assist.

10:15Addy:Animation is almost there.

10:16Joey:So, quote, I asked one of the leading AI models creators a question that had been challenging me for months. What is the difference between reasoning and creating? Its answer changed how I think about almost everything happening in the industry. So he's looking at it like right now, AI models are really good at reasoning, solving things, predicting, not good at creativity, not good at creating.

10:34Addy:Yeah, we talk about creating is the act of creating something net new from your old experiences. And this is what we're so good at, right? Like if you think about Tarantino or whoever, I just saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood very recently. So like I'm thinking I'm in my Tarantino head. like he comes up with those ideas from all of the thousands of movies he's watched he's like a massive cinema fanatic right like so that database is in his head and he is pulling threads from this movie that spaghetti western and that you know sci-fi or whatnot but then the thing that he's creating is net new and this is what ai models just can't do yet is just effectively create net new things.

11:22Addy:But I don't think they have to, because that's why we're here. You know, we can essentially have AI to help us with that.

11:30Joey:Yeah. And that's where you get it. The human, the person is still the creative driver using these tools. Quote, creating is fundamentally generative. It produces something that didn't exist before. And crucially, there's no single right answer waiting to be found.

11:43Addy:Exactly. Like when you are building a movie, you take left turns and right turns and and you turn the script into something it wasn't originally. And that's part of the creative process. I don't think anybody is really expecting AI to do that. I mean, maybe on the social media side. Yeah, on a social media level,

12:03Joey:there are a lot of tools and pushing out of your AI director agent or give it a prompt, give it a script, and it'll do all of the whole creative brief and generate a 30-second thing for you. I think companies are pushing that. So maybe that'll be some social niche genre or something. But yeah, I don't think that's going to be at the highest level.

12:25Addy:Well, that's not what we're going to talk about on this podcast because we're not interested in that, right?

Read the full transcript

12:32Joey:You're giving nuance to the haters who are never going to get this deep into actually listening to the podcast. Yeah, we've already lost them in the first 10 seconds. So the gist of the essay is a, well, it's sort of the tale of two cities. So he's up in the Bay Area. They're building the tech. They're building these powerful models. They're engineers. LA has the creative talent and has all of the creative people. And he's like looking for a way to like sort of bridge these two worlds together. And also for less of the trying to push and resist the AI in general and more like mess around and figure it out.

13:07Joey:So you could also define the rules and how it comes into play on your terms and like be able to define how this works instead of letting it be defined. for you or for the industry by tech and engineers up north. He's a little, I love Katzenberg.

13:22Addy:Sorry, dude. You're a little late to the party, JK, because we have hybrid setups like that. And I'm looking at organizations like Netflix and Fox Next and Disney. And these teams have well integrated with Bay Area tech and they have the studio perspective on things. and then you also have your hysteria your promise your secret level and like all these ai wonder and ai startups who are combining those two things pretty well so i think the tale of two cities has already been mashed up and maybe this is an opportunity for jeffrey to like bring new

14:01Joey:perspective here yeah i think it's early days of that mashed up and also like well look i mean on a union and there's still like a lot that's unclear and unsorted out yes we know like studios and everything are messing with this, but a lot of it's still like a hush-hush or like in secret, and there's no like established guideline.

14:18Addy:Systemically, it hasn't integrated. Like, yeah, you're right. Like at a union level or at like a mass scale level, AI is still not a thing. And it's not going to be a thing for a long time because we know that the quality is not quite there yet. You're just exchanging one set of problems for another, and that's not really going to help anybody, right? Like if you're going to adopt AI, It has to be inherently easier, better, faster, cheaper, and all that stuff. And we're just not there yet.

14:44Joey:This is a good anecdote. Edison invented the motion picture but made terrible movies. It took Chaplin, Lloyd Keaton, and so many others to make movies emotional.

14:52Addy:There you go. There you go.

14:54Joey:I think that was a good point.

14:54Addy:Yeah. Okay. Now, he looks the same. He's looked the same for 30 years. That's incredible. He's in good shape, man.

15:03Joey:He posted this essay on X, but it didn't really announce anything. But then he was on the town podcast and they asked more questions. I want to jump into a few quotes because there are a few things here, too, that stand out to me. It's like, I don't know if that's the way it'll go. Five billion people a day watch video. It is the single greatest way of information and communication and knowledge and entertainment. Like it touches everything. What if you actually could now develop the tools that all of that can get elevated? All of it can move to a higher quality and a whole set of new things that none of us actually even are imagining today.

15:48That's what got me excited. And that's what I'm trying to figure out.

15:52Joey:Okay. So the thing that stuck out to me there, because he was talking about like, yeah, people, five million people watch a video a day. But he brought up quality again and getting to like the higher quality level. Yeah. And I think that was Quibi's issue.

16:04Addy:It was too focused on quality when it should have been about the moment and the distribution and the virality and all the things that TikTok gets right.

16:15Joey:The thing he was right about Quibi was, right, he was right that, yeah, vertical videos would be a thing and people would be into watching content on their phone. They just, the quality bar does not need to be that high. I mean, this still goes back to Reed Hastings' quote of just like, yeah, the bigger risk is just that people's quality bar of what's acceptable just gets lower and they don't care about premium quality as much.

16:44Addy:Damn. Reed Hastings, smart man. Exactly. We're in guilty of this too because you and I are cinemaphiles, right? We have our eye on quality all the time, almost too much to the point where we miss the opportunity or we don't see how something could be so big when it is. And I think Jeffrey the same way. He epitomizes the studio. He's built studios. And so, of course, he's going to have an eye on quality.

17:12Joey:He's still looking to build the DreamWorks pipeline, but for everyone. But I don't know.

17:18Addy:So I don't think you need the quality for all 5 billion people. I think you do need the quality for like maybe 1 % of that. Tung tung sa hur. Duh. Do you want me to sing it? Shut up.

17:31Joey:Yeah. No. I need to program one of these buttons here to have.

17:36Addy:Tung tung tung sa hur. All right. I did it. Yeah. It's the perfect example. Oh, by the way, the coffee cup character, Ballerina Cappuccino. That's who it was. Yeah. that was different. And they had tools that were different.

17:54Joey:And will you believe that the Pixar of AI is one of these companies that is circulating around the Bay Area right now? No, I think I'm going to have to start it. Oh, you do? Yes. I was going to ask, what is your angle here?

18:06Addy:I think I'm going to have to start it.

18:07Joey:That was the most of what he's looking at, sort of. There's one other soundbite I want to play of what he's looking at to build. But yeah, so he's like, so yeah, we've talked about what is going to be the Pixar of AI. He thinks he's going to have to start that company. That still seems completely separate from, I want to build tools that make 5 billion people create better stuff, and I want to create the Pixar of AI.

18:29Addy:Yeah, I don't think we... We don't really need it right now. I think what we need is more the mashing of tech in Hollywood and figuring out what the new studio environment looks like.

18:44Joey:One more soundbite, and then I want to have this discussion about, yeah, what does that look like? Mine is actually more, I go back to my partner saying AI for creativity. I'd rather build the picks and shovels and provide them to everybody. Like it's not about having them be proprietary only to, to, for, for our use, but actually the biggest opportunity would be if you could actually create a set of applications and tools and workflows that could be. That everybody has to pay you. Well, everybody's working on that, JK.

19:16Addy:Is he trying to build a model? Yeah, that's the thing.

19:19Joey:It's like, okay, if he's going the picks and shovels analogy and he's like, oh, we want to build a tool that lets people create stuff.

19:25Addy:Well, Google's working on that. Runway's working on that. Adobe's working on that.

19:29Joey:Then you've got Magnific, Artlist, Tixfield.

19:33Addy:Everybody's building picks and shovels. So how is he going to build something different here?

19:37Joey:And I don't even know if that's the play. I mean, well, so that, yeah, that's where I wanted to go. So I feel like if you're trying to build the Pixar of AI or you're trying to build a tool for everyone, those are completely separate things. And you were talking about like, oh, I don't want to gatekeep or like, you know, have proprietary tools. Pixar has a lot of proprietary tools that like helps them make. RenderMan. Well, USDs and open source. Presto. Presto is their animation.

20:00Addy:Yeah.

20:00Joey:Animation system proprietary. Yeah, I feel like, okay, there's either going to be the tool set that is web-focused, or you're going to be a studio and you need to have proprietary systems or something that gives you an edge to do what you want to do. Unless he's building a model or something that helps. This was a company that he invested in. Yeah, this was a while back, right? Yeah, a long time ago. May. Real-time AI video startup Reactor. Katzenberg's company, WonderCo, was an investor in it. I was trying to see, okay, what did he invest in? He invested in a bunch of just like Canva and the usual suspects.

20:31Joey:but this was the most AI-focused thing I could find that was public that he invested in. Obviously, real-time AI video would be an original model and would be useful.

20:39Addy:It would be a disruptor, for sure. I think Jeffrey's strength, in my opinion, just having worked under him for so long, is that he has the leadership to pull off Shrek, right? Shrek wasn't necessarily about computer graphics at the time or all of the wonderful innovations that were happening with CG. Shrek was really about disrupting the Disney fairytale format in a way that became a parody of all of the things that he made previously. And it was built for any audience, any part of the world. And it was massive, right? It was the highest grossing, Shrek 2 was the highest grossing animated movie for like decades after he made it.

21:22Addy:I think that's his strength. So it's not necessarily building tech and tools, which quite frankly he's failed at several times, but building incredible movies and a studio system that can generate those movies and build those movies over and over again consistently like a DreamWorks. Or revitalizing Disney animation. Yeah, you can make the argument that no studio is sort of complete without its technology stack, and that's true. Like in the same way military needs a technology stack to be effective, a studio needs tech to be effective. but it's not the main point of a studio. The main point of a studio is to build IP, leverage IP to make money and entertain the masses along the way.

22:05Addy:I think if he applied himself in that way where maybe not so much focused on picks and shovels but really focused on figuring out a feature film with AI that is effective and he certainly knows the creative that could pull it off, he just has to shepherd them in a way that he's done before.

22:24Joey:Yeah, and to be able to make something that is Shrek quality, but not$200 million.

22:30Addy:Yeah, and I'll tell you this one personal Jeffrey story that I think will highlight how his brain works a little bit, which could be fundamentally challenging in this environment that is moving very fast and very rapidly. So there was a big town hall meeting at DreamWorks a long time ago, and Jeffrey had just moved out of his Bel Air home and then had his new custom-built Bel Air home in like a higher part of Bel Air, a more baller home, if you will. And we sort of, you know, we're like, yeah, go, Jeffrey, go, you know, be a billionaire. And he's like, I moved into this new house. I'm paraphrasing here.

23:09Addy:This was a long time ago. He's like, I moved into this new house and I have this incredible view of LA from my infinity pool or whatnot. and I'm just looking out into this view that I've never had before. And then there is a concrete wall where my dog had pissed and the piss stain is like into the concrete wall. And he said he couldn't enjoy the view because he kept looking at that concrete piss stain. So like that's how his mind works. He's a perfectionist. He's going to try to do things to the highest degree and to the best of his ability. But in an environment like what we have with Genitive AI today, that is detrimental.

23:50Addy:You can't fixate on little things. You just have to move past it. But I think that'll hinder him in some capacity.

23:58Joey:Unless he builds the studio and that is where it's like, okay, we're all together as a team to build the film at the highest quality using the best tools available, which includes AI. Versus I'm going to build a platform tool where like anyone can make stuff that looks good. Yes, I agree.

24:14Addy:But hey, I'm just happy that he's championing for AI. I mean, that is a very influential person in Hollywood. Like or not, he's pulling a lot of strings behind the scenes. He seems to know the heads of every studio, all of the actors and all the guilds. This is a very powerful figure in this industry. So if he says accept and embrace AI, then that does mean a lot to a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it helps with the changing of the acceptance of the tools.

24:44Joey:Changing of the guards. I don't want to say changing of the guards, but changing of the tools. Changing of the guards, what I really mean by that is like we're going to effectively. It changes the tools, you adapt or you don't adapt. I mean, he gave examples in his essay too. You could read of like when they stripped it from hand-drawn animation to 3D. That's changing of the guards. A lot of people adapted and some people just didn't adapt and retired.

25:05Addy:Yeah. I was a little too young to see this transition. But when DreamWorks first started with Prince of Egypt and a couple other movies that was still like hand cell shaded, hand drawn like Disney movies. And then both DreamWorks and Disney and Pixar were going through the transition into 3D. And so a lot of the 2D artists had really nice fine art skills that were just not applicable because they had to pick up a new software, mouse, keyboard, GPU, expensive computers. and a lot of them just didn't want it. They're like, 3D is not animation. 3D is not it. We're doing things our way. And this is animation.

25:47Addy:This is the way. And lo and behold, like 25, 26 years later, right, what is animation today? It's 3D mainly.

25:55Joey:All right, next up, Opus 5.5. Claude is back. All right, so if you've fallen Claude or if you're a Claude Opus user. Me. you may have noticed that lately the opus releases have been a little bit weird and funky and like they just the vibe was off for lack of a better word opus 5 really had a lot of online dislike for it oh really why is that personally when i would interact with it i just found its responses were always like really convoluted and kind of just like word vomit and like confusing to understand. I thought 4.8 was really good. People love 4.6. I thought 4.8 was still pretty good. And then Anthropic was saying, oh, well, 5 is sort of a new thing and you should like get rid of all of your previous like skills documents because it like understands stuff.

26:45Joey:But just everyone was just like, it's just not really great. And then in the meantime, Fable came out. Fable is very powerful and good, very expensive. And then Astra started, you know, taking all the buzz for everything it could do with, especially with video editing and 3D modeling. 5.5 comes out, not such a powerful name, but I have found it's like, I mean, for the stuff I'm doing, which is like basic tool building and then also 3D stuff. 5.5 has been like at fable level, fraction of the cost, quality's back, responses are back. Everything about it feels really good. and it's like 3D-wise, on par or better than Astra.

27:27Joey:There you have it, folks.

27:29Addy:Joey endorsed Opus 5.5.

27:31Joey:That's it. Now it's great because now I have both models so when I burn the usage of one, I just jump to the other one until the other one resets.

27:38Addy:So good strategy. Diversifying burn rates. Opus 5.5 integrates to Blender the same way GPT-6 Astra does, right?

27:50Joey:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, we talked about before, like, I mean, you've been able to integrate with Blender. What it can do with it is a different story. But Opus 5.5, all right, like in a specific example, I was trying to, like, match some shots that were shot with, like, a 3D environment that I'm trying to build behind them. And Asher did an okay job, but there were some shots where it was, like, definitely the perspective and sizing of, like, between going from, like, wide shot to close up, it wasn't quite getting it correct. and Opus 5.5 reviewed the same shots and was like, oh, like the Blender lens has been at the same focal length like the entire for every single shot.

28:28Joey:Like all the focal lengths need to change and adjust. And it like was able to correct all of the focal lengths for every shot and export new background plates that were correct. So they caught that that Astra was having trouble with.

28:45Addy:Wow, it's outsmarting Astra.

28:47Joey:So now the other thing is like Ionthropic does not still, you know, there's no native image generation, but people have been doing crazy stuff of having to generate visuals, either with like 3D JS or other tools. Someone at Ryan Sale. Oh, this is amazing. I love that. Yeah. He asked Opus 5.5 to explain camera focus by building an interactive lens lab. and it built this very cool looking interactive website with a 3D display showing focal plane and how focus works with the lens and it looks very beautiful. Magnific did an example where they gave a brief to both Opus 5.5 and GPT-6. GPT-6 sole. So yeah, also GPT-6 came out with sole and terra variations of the 6 model, which they're saying is like for most stuff, probably just as good as Astra and also way cheaper.

29:38Addy:Yeah, I bet Jeffrey's looking at this like, oh, shit, we need to build a studio.

29:44Joey:Yeah, this is also why I don't think the tool route is the best route. I don't think the picks and shovel analogy works in today's age. Anybody can build a pick and shovel. Yeah, everyone has their own foundry to forge whatever you want. Oh, I like that, Joey.

29:57Addy:We're all blacksmiths. There you go.

29:59Joey:There you go. Yeah, we're all blacksmiths. We've all got a smelting. Yeah. Whatever. My knowledge of blacksmithing is about free. We've all got a, we can all smelt and forage whatever tools we want. You're absolutely right.

30:14Addy:Yeah. The shovels are cheap. The axes are cheap. It's really about building the log cabin. Go do that however you can. Right? Yeah.

30:24Joey:This is not the best test for a podcast, but I feel like the Opus 5.5 example of whatever built using CDANCE is -

30:31Addy:Feels more cinematic to me. More shop design, more shop variety. 100%. Yeah, like the shot of the reflection on the sunglasses, I thought that was a really nice touch. Some even may call it a creative touch, but again, that's up to you.

30:48Joey:Yeah, this is a collection of other visuals and stuff that Opus 5.5 built, but using JavaScript or other coding tools, or, I mean, you could always give it access to image and video generation and let it steer it.

30:59Addy:Okay, you've inspired me to go use Opus 5.5. I am now going to go off.

31:05Joey:Yeah, this is the best Opus in a while. Opus is strong, and the usage is pretty good. It's not burning. I've been using it instead of... I still have Fable usage left on my weekly allotment, which normally I would burn through by Tuesday. But Opus 5.5 has been able to do the same stuff at the same quality that Fable was doing for me. I mean, I'm not doing insane, crazy stuff, so I'm sure there's still usage for Fable. makes sense.

31:34Addy:Fable is like the Ari Alexa and Opus 5.5 is like the Blackmagic Ursa where it's like 90 % of that for 10 % of the cost. Yeah, that's a good analogy. Yeah, sure.

31:45Joey:Or Fable is the Ari 65.

31:51Addy:Oh, it's like the king.

31:53Joey:Yeah, it's like big, but it's like, okay, well, but I don't need to shoot

31:57Addy:65 mil for everything. Then And GBT6 Astra is Sony Venice 2. Like, it's also equally crazy. Equally as good, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sure, we'll go with this analogy. So is GBT6 Soul, like, an equivalent of Fable 5.5? What is the difference between Soul and Astra?

32:17Joey:No, Soul, Astra is, like, the top tier. Astra is, I think, I would say Astra is the Fable equivalent that's publicly released. I think they have other more powerful secret models. Like the ones that they're trying to shut down? Publicly available models, Astra and Fable are the frontier top models from OpenAI and Anthropic. And then below that, I would say Sol is the Opus equivalent.

32:48Addy:Opus, yeah. Okay, so Opus, maybe Opus 5, but they don't have a middle-of-the-road product like 5.5.

32:55Joey:Yeah, middle is Terra is the other.

32:58Addy:Terra, that's right. It's Sol, Terra, then Astra.

33:01Joey:So GPT-6 now has a Sol and Terra model variations. I haven't used them. I don't know. They're cheaper. So it's like, can you get away doing what you're doing with Astra with Sol and Terra? Because you're going to save usage.

33:17Addy:I would love to know how they value engineer these models. The way things are done with cars, and this is terrible practice. BMW will make one engine that makes 300 horsepower, and they'll put it on the 5 Series, and then they'll control it with the electric chip to make less horsepower and put it on the 3 Series. But it's the same engine. They're just value engineering it, so it makes sense at that price point. It's just easier to make a bunch of the same engines and just sort of gate it, throttle it. Yeah, gate it, yeah, and throttle it. And so I don't know if these are all fundamentally different models or it's just all running Fable but compromised, cheaper versions of Fable just so it incentivizes more frequent usage.

34:06Addy:So somebody like you and me who are token conscious are going to go for 5.5, whereas the Ballers, the Jeffreys of the world are going to use the Opus, right? Yeah, I don't know.

34:18Joey:know how the models are yeah i don't know how the variations of the models are constructed yeah also and i'm still fuzzy on what effort level makes the most sense for what task that is still

34:29Addy:yeah if if our viewers know this stuff like please educate this again we're just throwing up our hands here but we'd love to know how the different price tiers work out in terms of how the model

34:41Joey:is actually built and inferred yeah and what effort levels you use and if you get good results It's especially related to Blender and Resolve usage because that's the bulk of my use cases for these things. I usually crank it up, and then I'm like, I'm probably going to burp through my usage more, but I want to give it the best. All right, last one. New image model, Quinn Image 2.1, open-wage. Yes. I don't have any generations. Damn it. Didn't do your homework, Eddie. Didn't do my homework. So let me look for some stuff, but yeah. Vibe of this has been here in, like, not a banana quality, but it's open-weight and way cheaper.

35:18Addy:Yeah, and you can run it on Comfy, obviously. Maybe we can look at some examples online. I thought coin image was at three, but yeah.

35:26Joey:I don't know what, two. There might have been another model that's at three. I know they have a new text-to-speech model as well. Yeah, they shouldn't name everything Quen. Quen, or as iMessage, autocorrect, like this, call it, Owen. Owen. Let's see, we got transparent layers, we got text detail.

35:42Addy:Text, yeah. So it's really made for graphics and animatics.

35:46Joey:Image editing ability is this example of a tree in front of the Seattle Space Needle, and then it has removed the, just leave the leaves, and it does it pretty good.

35:55Addy:That's not so hard if you extract a depth map. Okay, man. Yeah. This is hard. This one's hard. So it did this well. Isn't that the cast from Cheers?

36:06Joey:This is Cheers, yeah. So it's a bunch of photos of the Cheers cast, and they put them all into a portrait. Up to 10 reference images. Yeah. I mean, I think the big headline of this is like, yeah, look, Is this going to be better than anything you've seen? No, but this is open-weight. You can run this locally.

36:18Addy:It's free. It's open source. You can run basically Nano Banana on your own.

36:23Joey:Yeah, this looks like everything here looks on par with Nano Banana 2 quality. Yeah.

36:29Addy:Again, do you think Conspiracy Theory, Addy is saying this, do you think they're doing this, Alibaba is doing this, to kind of pull users away from Nano Banana usage? Possibly. or I mean just to have a Chinese company to have a competitive model. Yeah, I mean, why not if you could do it and release it and gain adoption?

36:57Joey:I mean, we're talking about this before. Really the advantage that the Chinese companies have is just putting stuff out open and getting adoption.

37:03Addy:Yeah, I mean, the Chinese models are okay, like the image model specifically. specifically they're just trained on Chinese people data, which makes sense. It's a Chinese model. So they don't necessarily do the American diversity very well. You know, like if you put Addy next to Joey and try to generate that, it'll struggle a little bit more than what GPT did.

37:26Joey:I think if you have reference images, yeah. But I think if you're doing text-to-image and you don't give it specifics. I remember this like a long time ago with early Kling and it's just like convenience store. and then it would just be a very Chinese-looking convenience store. Right. Or locale. Like if you don't very clearly specify what you want, it will default to more Chinese-looking environments.

37:49Addy:In my opinion, I think that the king of image models right now is GPT 2.5, Sunburst, and Nano Banana 2. Still really, really good and much faster in inference as I'm sure Google is working on the next image model. and then on the video side we need a new pro update

38:07Joey:because I still feel like Nano Banana Pro is better than 2

38:09Addy:oh you think so?

38:11Joey:yeah I'll still just default to 2 GPT Image 2.5 is very good in using that more but I still think between that and Nano Banana Pro over Nano Banana 2

38:23Addy:yeah I mean I don't really use the QN model too much they do have QN 25.12 which is not image 2.1 like Quinn has multiple image models that was really good when I last tested that about a few months ago I remember that mouthful of a name what was unique about it so 2511 I think was text to image and 2512 was multi reference to image I don't

38:53Joey:know why is this an extension of the same model and I just cleaned up the naming because that's very confusing

38:59Addy:perhaps perhaps you're right yeah I kind of preferred the scientific names. It was easier to remember. It sounds like a film stock. Kodak. 75. When? 2512. Yeah. And then on the video side, I think most people agree that C-Dent 2.5 is currently the king. Although my personal favorite is Wan 3.0. It's been solid for me. Okay. That's cool. Yeah.

39:23Joey:That's cool. Yeah, C-Dent 2.5, good, just pricey. but it seems like they're putting more routes in that is like generate at a cheaper fast mode or a cheaper lower resolution mode and then up res to what you want, but still be able to get the same output and not have like a new spin. So it seems like they've been refining that kind of workflow because it is so expensive to like do cheaper generations, but then still adhere to the vision that you want.

39:56Addy:Yeah, they've got to capture the market that's cost-conscious and still use them. It's the same argument that I made with Fable and Opus. You've got to have the C-Dense Opus version of that model where we can mess around with it. Yeah.

40:12Joey:Both have this whole interface, this whole web mock-up too. This is Quen. Yeah, it looks very Google. Yeah. That's cool. Detailed diagrams and stuff. Yeah, I mean, so everything it does is stuff you have seen before, but you can run this locally.

40:26Addy:The power we have on our local GPUs. I heard something interesting online, and I want to hear a take on it. So Adobe acquired Topaz, and we talked about it before. And one of the posts said that the reason they acquired Topaz, I mean, how could this person know, right? Like they're not part of the deal. But I guess they're just speculating. is really good at running local tasks on GPUs. Like they have a downloadable application. I think it's called Astra, right? Yeah, so past video. I mean, that's what they started on. That was what they were original. So it's like maybe Adobe acquired them for that capability or like sort of the local GPU, like the comfy UI model, if you will.

41:13Addy:What are your thoughts on that?

41:15Joey:I think it's the other way around. I mean, I don't really think who's going to be running local. And also, how does that fit into, no shade to Adobe, but out of all of the companies that love to charge subscription fees? Exactly. Where's the business model if it's local, right? I don't see Adobe offering options to run stuff local.

41:33Addy:I agree. I agree. I just wanted to hear your take on that. A lot of people are still fixated on local.

41:39Joey:I mean, the local stuff's great. And I mean, I use the Tobaz local models as well. And it's been a hybrid. They have their generative upscalers, and sometimes they're great. Sometimes they work really well. And then sometimes they don't, depending on the footage. And sometimes just regular, their GAN models, like Gaia and stuff, just works better for the task at hand. I'm hoping Adobe still keeps the dedicated Topaz video app as an option.

42:07Addy:I hope so, yeah. Or maybe it's just another thing on Creative Cloud, right? Or Creative, right, right. It's included with your subscription. It's part of your subscription, yeah. maybe yeah i heard that nvidia is not really releasing any new consumer gpus next year did

42:21Joey:you hear that i did not hear that uh i heard jensen's interview on the new york times okay

42:26Addy:where he was like shut down the labs no he was like no the opposite he was like it's all he's

42:33Joey:like he's like this is alarmist talk it's not helping anyone like the labs should not release dangerous things but saying it's going to destroy the world is not helping anyone that's true um

42:44Addy:Okay, so maybe that's a more recent Jensen interview where he's now come around that position. Oh, yeah, it just came out this week. I was on with Ezra Klein on The New York Times. Yep. Yeah, it's a good interview. Fun times. All right, wrap it up here. If you've been watching the show or even listening to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube and have not subscribed yet, please do so. That'll be a really big help for us. And if you want to hear some of the things that we have not yet touched on, comment on them and we'll see that. Thanks for everything I talked about at denoisepodcast.com.

43:16Joey:Thanks for watching and we'll catch you in the next episode.

From the publisher

Addy and Joey discuss Jeffrey Katzenberg’s argument for AI in entertainment, questioning whether his focus on studio pipelines misses how fast individual creators are adopting these tools. They also share real-world tests using Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 in ...

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