In short
The episode is about GPT-6 Astra’s “computer use” for building photoreal 3D cities and automating parts of creative pipelines, plus a legal/copyright discussion sparked by Italian “brain rot” AI characters.
Guests
Addy (podcast host; preparing for TIFF; discusses AI in 3D/video workflows) and Joey (co-host; focuses on editing, compositing, and legal implications).
Key claims
Astra can generate detailed Blender/Unreal-ready city models without user references by sourcing maps, diagrams, Wikipedia, and reference images; it can focus on specific “hero” buildings (e.g., Biscayne, American Airlines Arena, museums) and even model historical buildings (1980s Miami Herald news building).
Notable examples
26-hour Codex run for downtown Miami; Astra-built Manhattan in Unreal; LAX modeling with up-to-date terminals; Resolve 21.1 AI assistant integration; Astra connected to Photoshop via MCP; and a Tung Tung Suher lawsuit in California over AI character authorship and merchandising rights.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOBuilding a 3D Model of Downtown Miami
0:00 to 0:25
Learn about the capabilities of Codex in creating detailed 3D models.
“I let Codex rip for like 26 hours straight building a 3D model of downtown Miami.”
GPT-6 Astra and AGI Discussion
0:47 to 2:10
Explore the implications of GPT-6 Astra's capabilities and AGI.
“You could smell the humidity here, which was the first, because the pollution and humidity combined into a smell.”
AI in 3D Modeling: Manhattan vs. Miami
2:10 to 3:42
Comparing traditional and AI-driven methods in 3D modeling for films.
“is the crazy stuff that it can do with Blender and 3D modeling.”
AI's Impact on 3D Model Quality
3:42 to 5:10
Discussing the quality and detail achieved by AI in modeling cities.
“And the big VFX news was like, they built the Manhattan from scratch, right?”
Customizing 3D Models with AI
5:10 to 7:30
Learn how AI can be directed to focus on specific elements in models.
“I remember during the virtual production LED days where, you know, you need to put up a cityscape on the volume, right?”
Historical Modeling: The Old Miami Herald
7:30 to 9:01
Exploring the potential of AI to recreate historical buildings.
“So like it was a software figuring out like, okay, if a road goes there, then the buildings go here, then the cars go here.”
Building LAX with AI
9:01 to 11:10
Discussion on the AI-driven modeling of LAX and its accuracy.
“because I'm just like, I had to use like one credit reset.”
Transit Tips for LAX
11:10 to 13:20
The hosts share tips for navigating LAX for travelers.
“Like, you'll probably still have some amount of work because you are an expert.”
AI in Video Editing
13:20 to 14:00
Exploring the integration of GPT-6 in video editing software.
“You're not in LA and don't care about this.”
Cost-Effective LAX Travel Tips
14:00 to 14:38
Learn about hacks to save money on Uber rides from LAX.
“And like LAX pickups already have like a surcharge added on.”
Show all 22 chapters
Exploring GPT-6 Capabilities in Video Editing
14:38 to 16:06
Discussion on the integration of GPT-6 in video editing tools and its efficacy.
“So somebody connected GPT-6 to DaVinci Resolve, which has a solid MCP server already.”
The New AI Integration in Video Editing Software
16:06 to 17:57
Overview of the new AI features in video editing software like DaVinci Resolve.
“So then I totally fell for the clickbait then.”
Future of AI in Compositing and Visual Effects
17:57 to 20:04
Examining the potential of AI tools in traditional compositing pipelines.
“And so if it can unlock or if they open up Fusion control to AI agents, that would be huge.”
Innovations in Digital Art with AI
20:04 to 22:38
Exploring how AI can be used to create digital art and automate painting processes.
“Like you're literally going in with a brush and you're painting things out.”
Web-Based 3D Rendering and AI
22:38 to 24:17
Discussing the advancements in web-based 3D rendering technologies and their implications.
“but it's still way less effective than if the tool had like an API or an MCP connector directly in it.”
The Challenges of AI Naming Conventions
24:17 to 26:06
Conversation about the confusion caused by similar AI model names.
“I don't even know how he got it this detailed, but any of those web-based 3D things you see, those are 3JS.”
Copyright Issues in AI-Generated Content
26:06 to 28:01
Exploring the evolving legal landscape surrounding copyright and AI-generated characters.
“Also, Topaz's online portal is called Astra.”
The Legal Battle Over AI-Generated Characters
28:01 to 30:18
Explore the complexities of copyright law surrounding AI-generated characters.
“Spider and Speedy, where would they sue first?”
Impact of Popularity on Copyright Claims
30:19 to 31:30
Discuss how the unexpected popularity of AI characters complicates legal claims.
“This is more like a precedent case because it's like whatever happens with this case could then clarify the precedent of how much input do you need to create a character that is protectable.”
Trademark vs. Copyright in AI Content
31:31 to 32:53
Learn the differences between trademark and copyright in the context of AI-generated works.
“Now they might end up dropping the case and just going after a trademark filing of the character, which is different than copyright.”
Authorship in AI Creation: The Monkey Selfie Case
32:54 to 35:09
Examine the implications of authorship in AI creation through the infamous monkey selfie case.
“The example that's been cited a lot too with who is the authorship and with the AI stuff was the, I forgot the specific case name, but the monkey and the camera selfie.”
The Importance of Documenting Creative Processes
35:10 to 37:09
Understand the necessity of documenting the creative process for protecting AI-generated content.
“And it was with like Dolly and some other stuff.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Joey:I let Codex rip for like 26 hours straight building a 3D model of downtown Miami. There we go. This is some of the detail. Dude, look at all the buildings in the back, like the suburbia that follows. But like, I didn't even give it any references. It sourced maps. It sourced diagrams. It went on Wikipedia. It found reference images. Oh, my God. And then...
0:24Joey:All right. Welcome back to Denoised. Addy, how's it going? Happy Labor Day, man. Happy post-Labor Day.
0:31Addy:Yes.
0:31Joey:I'm getting ready to go to TIFF, the Toronto Film Festival. Oh, dope. If anyone's going to be there, let me know. Jealous. Jealous.
0:40Addy:Grab some coffee. I love Toronto.
0:41Joey:Yeah, I'm excited to check it out. Toronto's great.
0:42Addy:Yeah.
0:43Joey:Also, after seeing the forecast this week in L.A., and it's going to be the most tropical week on record, peace out.
0:51Addy:You could smell the humidity here, which was the first, because the pollution and humidity combined into a smell.
0:58Joey:Yeah, there have been so many times the past few weeks, I'm just like, am I back in Florida? All right, so we have to talk to these AI companies. They need to coordinate their release schedule so they don't drop releases right after we stop recording. Right after we stop recording, yeah. Literally after we recorded Thursday, and then I keep seeing GPT-6 Astra all over the place. It was like, the timing was so imperfect. All right. GPT-6 Astra dropped OpenAI's newest model. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. And it's also here. AGI is here, whatever that means. Sure. However you want to define AGI.
1:37Joey:If you want to shift the definition of it, yeah, sure, it's here.
1:42Addy:I think I was watching Joanna Stern on one of the podcasts. I think it was The Verge. And she was like, yeah, the shareholders meeting OpenAI basically said The definition of AGI is up to you because we think it's here. So here you go.
1:57Joey:Yeah, I don't even know how you would define it. I don't know. I mean, the Turing text has long been passed. Right. Whatever. So in this case, yeah, we're going to focus on capabilities especially. I mean, the biggest thing that my entire feed has been flooded is the crazy stuff that it can do with Blender and 3D modeling. That's probably been the overwhelming demo case in the filmmaking space.
2:19Addy:Yeah, immediately after we stopped recording on Thursday, like the first thing that was in my face was the self-modeling of Manhattan by Astra. Yeah.
2:28Joey:Insane. Yes. There you go. Matt Schumer, GPT-6 Astra built this Manhattan world and Unreal Engine over the course of a week, which is kind of long. But yeah, I mean, he built a full. Yeah, with all the buildings and like. 3D model. Jeez. I mean, I think it can do as much detail as you want. I think it's a matter of just how much compute you want to let rip and how powerful your computer is.
2:54Addy:I think this was like a few days, if not a week of GBT6 churning. I would imagine if you just kept going, kept giving it notes, kept asking for more refinement, it would keep going. It would, because I tried that. Yeah, figures you would.
3:14Joey:I let it go. So I gave it a goal because, you know, you could use the goal feature in Codex where you're like, don't stop until you achieve this. And so my goal was build a 3D model of downtown Miami. Oh, my God. Of course. And Codex ran for 26 hours straight. Okay.
3:37Addy:I just want to real quickly talk about the Manhattan Digital Manhattan. Because you remember when Avengers 1 came out, what was it, like 2009, 2010, something like that, right? Sort of, yeah. And the big VFX news was like, they built the Manhattan from scratch, right? It was such a big deal that you had hundreds of artists, I think hundreds of artists, just go at it, just build Manhattan from scratch in order for all the destruction and VFX down the road to occur. Well, here we are today where GPT-6 is doing practically the same thing. Maybe not to the same extent, you know, where you're putting in physics and collisions and, you know, collapsing buildings in there.
4:25Addy:But I think you can if you wanted to, like, you can further evolve this thing.
4:30Joey:You could let it rip and focus on whatever you want. I mean, yeah, I'm thinking back to even just literally last, not even last year, literally a few months ago about a project that happened last year. the video will come out eventually on the channel, but it was like they had to build a backdrop of Vegas. And just to save resources, they modeled three or four of the hotels. And then the other hotels are images and stuff. But it was like, yeah, we had to take a lot of time to just focus on a couple of hero hotels and model them and build them out.
5:04Addy:And now it's like, man, you could just tell this thing.
5:08Joey:Build me the strip, and you would get a pretty good model of the strip.
5:11Addy:I remember during the virtual production LED days where, you know, you need to put up a cityscape on the volume, right? Like the easy route was using something called Cesium, which is, I think it's a third party thing, but it plugs into Unreal and it pulls Google Maps data. And Google Maps has an API that has like rough 3D buildings, like way rougher than what we're seeing here. and you get that in there and you like take the wall out of focus so you don't really see any of the fine details and that was like what two three years ago that was state of the art it's like you can take any city any street put it on the back of your volume and then shoot against it well now
5:52Joey:you don't even need ccm anymore you could just build it for real yeah yeah all right so the detail thing um okay so i let codex rip for like 26 hours straight building a 3d model of downtown
6:06Addy:miami where we go there's some of the detail what dude look at all the buildings in the back like the suburbia that follows those are real real uh like little tiny buildings yeah in the back yeah
6:19Joey:it got the extension i mean also included uh south beach in this as well but like i didn't even give it any references it sourced maps it sourced diagrams it went on wikipedia it found reference images and then it was building stuff but then i was also able to say like hey i want like special attention focused on like these specific buildings it models like there's no detail on these buildings
6:44Addy:yet in south beach but it like has the strict grid layout and also the individual buildings themselves yeah it's like ready for another pass at this stage yeah and basically like you're saying
6:55Joey:like you could just tell it what to focus on so like i knew biscayne was going to be a hero area so these buildings are way more detailed uh and oh dude stick that i mean like you've seen these
7:06Addy:buildings in person like the intricate geometry of them does that feel yeah they're spot on these
7:12Joey:are spot on wow this one i could see this this this uh the bottom pillars are a little funky but i could just tell it's a fix it look intercontinental this is like it even has the logo of course of the building and the city logo no the other ones that are even crazier I was like oh focus on the American Airlines or it's not called the American Airlines Arena but it's the American Airlines Arena uh this like is that it modeled the whole building I said build the art museum this is the art museum I said build the science museum this is the science museum like
7:44Addy:it's wow I don't even know what to say because you remember when epic games dropped the matrix city as an asset you can download.
7:53Joey:Yeah.
7:54Addy:And that was mostly procedural. So like it was a software figuring out like, okay, if a road goes there, then the buildings go here, then the cars go here. And now Permutate do the same thing, but slightly different here. So, you know, like it did feel like a real city, but it was kind of automated, if you will. But this is real city one-to-one. There is no like no shortcuts.
8:19Joey:And like the amount of research it does, I don't even know where it finds this stuff. Because also I was, it's related to, it'll make sense in a month when I could talk about this thing. But like there is a, I was looking for like 1980s buildings in Miami. So this was the old Miami Herald news building that was demolished. But I was like, hey, build me a model of that. So you can go back in time because you have images.
8:40Addy:Oh my God.
8:41Joey:Yeah. So I found the images and then I built the model. And like, this is what the Herald building looked like. That is what the building looked like. What a monstrosity, but yeah.
8:52Joey:It was iconic. It was, it was. But yeah, you could just, you could see there's gaps here, but it's literally because I had to stop the goal because I'm just like, I had to use like one credit reset.
9:05Addy:Okay, I have a request for you. Maybe on the next pod you have an update and, you know, you can say no. You know the part of Scarface in South Beach where it's like pastel neon lights, like pink lights and blue lights, like where Tony is basically partying.
9:20Joey:Yeah, probably like Deco Drive, that area.
9:23Addy:I think you could just do that, like those couple of blocks and just light it for nighttime and then have it render back.
Read the full transcript
9:30Joey:This is that area, but it was focusing more on downtown. I definitely do want to get more of the South Beach Art Deco buildings done.
9:37Addy:And also they're done in Blender, right? This is all Blender.
9:41Joey:Yeah, so they're like terribly lit right now because they're not really made for, you know, beauty rendering or anything.
9:46Addy:I just want to see it like golden hour with some lights on and depth of field and all that stuff.
9:53Joey:I also had to start building LAX. Yeah, this is the theme building. And these are all just from text props. I'm just like, yeah, build LAX. But you can kind of see what it researches and the images it pulls. And it was like comparing LiDAR scan to my reference images. And it's like, where did you find a lighter scan of like LAX that you're referencing and comparing to make sure that the roads are accurate?
10:17Addy:That's the AGI part. It goes and, you know, I'll leave it at that. The crazy thing here is like I'm looking at the geometry and I'm sure if you go into the individual assets themselves, like the edge loops and the vertices and lines and the faces are probably all so nicely lined up in Blender, which is a new thing, right? like up until I don't know six months a year ago anything that you generate with a mesh the mesh is pretty much garbage it just kind of has the same shape yeah I mean it's it's on point
10:50Joey:there's like some times where it's just like some stuff the geometry doesn't connect or doesn't link but it's really like whatever the hell a 3d artist means now like you're just going and you're like oh hey like yeah it looks a little weird can you fix that and then it's like okay okay it's fixed
11:02Addy:I mean, I just imagine, like, if you're a 3D modeler now, like, is that even a career anymore going forward? Like, you'll probably still have some amount of work because you are an expert. Obviously, you could do better than GPT-6 here. But going forward, do you tell kids in college to be modelers? I don't know.
11:23Joey:Yeah, I've definitely seen a lot of, like, existential posts online where it's like, I never thought AI was going to, like, threaten, you know, me as a 3D modeler artist with the amount of detail that I do. but now it's like well shit like what the hell yeah yeah i mean my thought is like this can get you so far you still obviously need someone who knows blender and unreal to like finish it but it's like are you the only way to be a 3d modeler is to like be a 10x 3d modeler where like you know these tools and you can like as a solo person you could build all of las vegas and like get it done
11:55Addy:yeah for a show you know or like for a paid project you take the gig and then you have gpt6 do it and then you refine it just enough and then you make the money i mean that's like the best
12:06Joey:case scenario i'm sure this project needs to be optimized i'm sure if i tried to like move this around and stuff it's probably not the most optimized i also just realized looking at this it's crazy how up to date it got the data because this is literally terminal five this is terminal four that this is demolished right now because they're rebuilding for the olympics right yeah i
12:29Addy:I was just looking at the Bradley terminal in the back one. Yeah, it has the extension that they recently put in, which is nuts.
12:37Joey:Yeah, and also Terminal 5 is completely gone, and that's accurate in this model. The one fantasy thing is that it has the LAX tram. That's not a fantasy, is it? That's there. It's a fantasy that works, and that thing does still not work. You just don't take it. I'm sure it's fine. No, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's not on yet. It's on. It came online recently. No, it keeps getting delayed. All right. It does not work.
13:02Addy:More than 99th.
13:03Joey:Tentatively scheduled to open on October 6th. It's been delayed for like years.
13:07Addy:Okay, because I saw some influencers do their - Hey, today we're going to LAX on the train. Come with me.
13:15Joey:No, the subway station is open. But then you still have to get on the bus. This like last mile - Got it. Link thing is still not open. All right. Sorry, everyone. You're not in LA and don't care about this. Skip forward. a hot topic for LA.
13:30Addy:More than half of our audience is international, Joey. So we should cut up the LA stuff.
13:35Joey:When you come to LA, well, here, okay, international people, I will give you a tip because I've seen this on Twitter a couple of times. You have to like take the train or take a bus to go to the Uber pickup and everyone hates that and it sucks. It's very annoying. If you dish out a little bit more money to get Uber Black, Uber Black will do gate pickup. So that's like, that's my LA secret to not have to like take the bus and stuff. pay the extra like 20 bucks.
13:58Addy:Yeah, the price difference between Uber and Uber Black is like, I don't know, 30%.
14:03Joey:It's not that much. And like LAX pickups already have like a surcharge added on. So like you're already paying a lot for an Uber. So that's my hack.
14:11Addy:Okay, I'll one up your local tip, my guy. If you take any of the parking shuttle buses out of LAX, let's say the parking spot, whatever, and it takes you to the parking spot, then you get an Uber from there. It's like half the amount. than what you would pay at LAX.
14:28Joey:Mine doesn't involve a bus. Okay. Mine is the faster one.
14:33Addy:Yeah, for sure. Yours is the baller one.
14:35Joey:Then you feel like a baller too, right? Okay, what else we see? We've seen a bunch of video editing stuff. You've seen some stuff.
14:40Addy:Yes. So somebody connected GPT-6 to DaVinci Resolve, which has a solid MCP server already. And it was doing things, obviously, like jump cuts and things like that, but also like blending audio in with each other, like controlling audio volume. So I thought that was pretty interesting. This concerns us, Joey, you and I, because we're going to be eliminated very soon, according to this video. So this guy made an entire podcast episode with him as a synthetic avatar, including B-roll and including sort of the entire script from scratch that GPT-6 made.
15:18Joey:So I dabbled a bit with GPT-6 and video because I've been doing this for a while And I didn't see anything that was like way better. Like GPT-6 and 3D modeling definitely was an obvious like this is even compared to like Soul so much better. The video editing stuff, I had to assemble some timelines and some cuts and like the shot selection, the actual moments and like video analysis. It wasn't any better. Still like kind of mediocre shots and still kind of rough. So there wasn't anything that I've seen that was like, wow, this is so much better at what it could do. Oh, I see. Compared to – It's not like hitting a new level of artistic – Or functionality that you couldn't already do with like Claude or 5.6 from my experience.
16:08Joey:Right. And the brief time I dabbled with it. Okay.
16:11Addy:So then I totally fell for the clickbait then.
16:14Joey:I was like, oh, wow. You said that it was able to like find and assign B-roll, like relevant B-roll. I would be curious to try that again because I have tried that a few times and it's usually like totally misses the context and like does not do a good job. So I'll try that again. Actually, related to editing, Resolve released 21.1. And the biggest headline is this is now that they have, they call it AI assistant integration. And it's basically they built in native support where you can connect Claude or Codex or ChatTBT directly to Resolve.
16:45Addy:So yeah, that's what I saw was 21.1 connected to Azure. Okay. And basically we have timeline building itself as you're talking to us. Well, you've been able to do that for a while.
16:58Joey:My impression of the Blackmagic thing, it's cool they added this, but if you've already been doing this with Cloud Code or Codex, which could have already connected just via, because we've said before, Resolve just has really good scripting built in, and so that made it very accessible for the AI tools. you've been able to like just do and have the timelines build out and it's been very good controlling Resolve. I think the big update here is it's like more user-friendly where if you're just using regular Cloud or Cowork or ChatGPT and not the coding agents, you can connect to Resolve and it's just more, it's just a user-friendly way.
17:35Joey:I think. I don't know if it really unlocked any new features that you couldn't have done before.
17:41Addy:So the connection is easier, but the capability remains. I think so.
17:46Joey:I guess. That was my impression over this overview video. I haven't installed it yet. And deep in the documentation, it said that they added 20 new API endpoints. And I don't know what those are. Because the one limit is it has a lot of control, but there's some things the API can't do, like in Fusion. And so if it can unlock or if they open up Fusion control to AI agents, that would be huge. Yeah, yeah.
18:08Addy:Fusion, I feel like the Fusion block of Resolve is old school, and they're not really touching it. They're just kind of leaving it alone.
18:16Joey:A bit, yeah. Maybe they're not going to redesign it, but they still keep pushing updates and stuff for it. Like, they have a bunch of new 3D presets. They even just added some new 3D effects and stuff in Fusion, so they keep developing it. Yeah, if the agents can talk to that, and also if they can talk to the color page, those are still the areas where, like, it needs to revert to computer control, and then it's like clicking buttons. But like once it gets to computer control, I feel like it just gets clunky because it's slow. It's not the most efficient way to do these things. If they open up the color page in Fusion to API access.
18:51Addy:To NCP.
18:52Joey:Yeah, then that would be like turbo charge.
18:55Addy:I'm going to tell you something that I think you don't know. If you like using Fusion in Resolve, like doing Power Windows in the color page and things like that, One tool I think you'll love is Boris. Boris FX's Silhouette.
19:10Joey:Have you heard of it? I've heard of Boris FX, but not Silhouette. What's that? Boris FX makes Mocha, which is the tracking plugin
19:16Addy:for After Effects and Premiere and things like that. They also make something called Silhouette, which is a standalone app for painting, rotoscoping, matting, things like that. It's like very VFX heavy tasks. So easy to use, super lightweight, very intuitive.
19:33Joey:Do you know if Clotter Codex can manipulate it?
19:38Addy:Yes, so Silhouette 2026 now has MCP server built in. So that would be worth a shot. Like trying to do something complex with GPT-6 Astro connected to Boris FX's MCP.
19:52Joey:Yeah, I feel like that's the next frontier too, is like being able to automate the traditional compositing pipelines and getting that either like 80 % of the way there or like final mile?
20:03Addy:Yeah, because this is like really hand-painted work, right? Like you're literally going in with a brush and you're painting things out. I wonder if GBTX can even touch on that level of precision.
20:16Joey:Yeah, I don't know. You know, especially once it starts getting to quality checking and stuff like that, just like the visual, like does this actually look good or not? Being able to check that is still kind of weak point area.
20:29Addy:But it's coming along real fast. And, you know, maybe we should take this Culver Theater thing and run it through again in GPD6. I did. I tried that. That's what we're looking at.
20:39Joey:It didn't. Oh. This didn't really do a great job. It, like, kind of messed up the whole top. The ball thing on the top. Yeah, this should be taller. And this is after a second pass. I said, hey, go research more and, like, do it again. Definitely way more detailed than before.
20:55Addy:It just doesn't have enough data, I think, enough imagery online. it's not scraping the internet enough has no one photographed this theater enough
21:04Joey:except for you you're probably right I'll probably need better reference images I'll try it again next time I'll give it some more reference images that's going to be our that's going to be our go-to model
21:13Addy:yeah that's like your 1970s New York City yeah I wonder if you and I can fly a drone around that area we'll just quickly drone photograph the thing but probably get arrested
21:25Joey:I have some stuff from AI on the lot okay we have some drone stuff So we got the goods. The drone was fine there. Drone flying in Amazon Studios. They don't like that.
21:36Addy:No bueno.
21:36Joey:Yeah. The camera guy was like, yeah, they told me to take a tap right away.
21:41Addy:Next.
21:42Joey:What else we got?
21:43Addy:Oh, the last Astra thing that I thought was fascinating was somebody had connected Astra to Photoshop's NCP server and just gave Astra a picture of their face. and then Astro started painting it like fine art in Photoshop. I saw that with Microsoft Paint. Oh, okay. Yeah, same thing. I guess, yeah, same thing. The brush that it used was a very unique shape of brush, and I wonder why it picked that. Like, you didn't use, like, a circular brush like what you and I would use.
22:15Joey:Here, this guy. Oh, yeah. Let's look at that.
22:17Addy:Yeah, you see the brush shape is like a cylinder here, like a pill. It's interesting that it picks a brush shape that is unconventional. to do the paint. And then, man, the strokes are so fast. It's incredible.
22:29Joey:Well, I mean, did he speed this up? Probably did, yeah. Might be. I mean, this is a good debate because it's like, yeah, it did this. So, I mean, look, Astro's computer use is really good, but it's still way less effective than if the tool had like an API or an MCP connector directly in it. Like, I think that's also why Blender is working so well because it's just scripting in the background. Yeah, right. And it's just able to do this stuff really fast. I haven't tested a lot with Unreal yet, So I'd be curious to like, and I know 5.8 has. It has an NTP built in. Right. So I got to mess around with that more.
23:03Joey:But it's like the computer use is the fail safe. And when I was doing the stuff with Premiere, it had to use a lot of computer use. And like Adobe really needs to like unlock Premiere and open up these tools to the agents. Because like compared to what the agent could do with Resolve versus Premiere, Premiere is like super walled off. So they can like open that up.
23:22Addy:Yeah, Resolve has always been pushing a little bit ahead with AI adoption, I think, than Premiere.
23:28Joey:Accidentally, because it was more just because they had this scripting Python backend tool and API tool access forever to build it into whatever pipeline you wanted. And then it turns out that's really helpful for AI agents to be able to control stuff.
23:43Addy:Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, who knows? The next six months could completely flip that as things are changing so fast.
23:51Joey:Let me just make sure this is actually Astra-related and not just some dude messing around with it.
23:55Addy:Cinematic depth of field with proper bokeh in 3.js.
23:59Joey:With 3.js, which is like a web language. So this is like web-renderable 3D. Wow. And he's building a camera replication with it.
24:09Addy:Oh, look at that. He's pulling focus, dude.
24:12Joey:Yeah, and I think he built this with Astra.
24:15Addy:So you drop in your CG model into like a browser?
24:19Joey:I don't even know how he got it this detailed, but any of those web-based 3D things you see, those are 3JS. But this is on another level of detail.
24:29Addy:Yeah, that looks like Unreal Engine level rendering.
24:32Joey:Yeah.
24:33Addy:Yeah. Wow, that's impressive.
24:34Joey:A little bit flickering in the light, but this is cool. And this is where we're at now. Just imagine the crazy stuff.
24:39Addy:So Astrid's figuring out basically a render engine that's built on top of web GPU with 3JS. I mean, these are things I'm not 100 % sure of how it's actually done, but it feels like a very lightweight, very restrictive of size and GPU usage.
24:58Joey:Yeah, I think it's like representing the shapes as code. Oh, wow. So I could be totally wrong here.
25:05Addy:Okay.
25:06Joey:Web developers, you can correct us, but I think it's like 3.js is sort of like using code to represent the shapes, and so it's like if you could just add a bunch of code, a lot of it, to make this really detailed. Yeah. I also don't know if this kills your performance on the computer, if half the computer has to process so much more. If this happens on the server end or the computer end.
25:24Addy:Yeah, this guy's way in too deep. Can we look at his other stuff? Aaron Lemke, Fable 5 to add fur to a new voice to my RL creature. Okay, yeah, this guy is on another level, Joey.
25:38Joey:This is what happens when you have a good combo. Here we go. Creative technologist, deep in machine learning.
25:44Addy:Yeah.
25:44Joey:Yeah, this is cool. This is cool stuff.
25:46Addy:All right. Are we good with Astra?
25:48Joey:I think so. Also, I have a request if the AI companies can stop naming stuff A, because we had talked about Atlas all day on Thursday, and then Astra came down, and my brain kept mixing up Astra and Atlas. So no more five-letter model names with the letter A, please, for now. It reminded me of that Brad Pitt movie, Ad Astra, which was pretty solid. Yeah, good movie. Also, Topaz's online portal is called Astra. That's right. All right. Astra is can we retire that name we need like the hurricane list you got the names they cycle through they're retired
26:22Addy:quick shout out to our viewers if you see an interesting use case drop it in the comments we're going to pick it up on the next episode alright
26:29Joey:you want to talk about Italian brain rot I love wow you know the whole thing
26:37Addy:yes of course I am a big consumer of this brain rot
26:42Joey:okay Okay, so why are we talking about brain rot on a high-quality cinematic podcast? Yes, why, Joey? Because this brain rot may determine the future of copyright and AI. Oh, interesting.
26:56Addy:Okay, all right, go on.
26:58Joey:All right, so I've seen bits of this, and then I dug in a little bit more with some deep research. All right, so Tuntuk Sahur is one of the Italian brain rot AI memes, which is the genre of just crazy, over-the-top AI-created characters. it was created by an Indonesian TikTok creator Noxa posted last year February 2025 the Roblox game Steal a Brain Rot made by Spider Games and Speedy Simulator Gaming used these characters and then on their own content and then they blew up and also the Tung Tung Suher character blew up itself yeah that's like a meme yeah that was a meme that blew up Steal a Brain Rot this Roblox game also used the character on their own stuff Their stuff also blew up.
27:41Joey:So then a French agency, Mementum Lab, which represents Noxa, the guy that created Tuktuk Suher, sent a cease and desist letter claiming that they had IP rights on the character and that the character be taken down. And then they did take it down, or then they entered licensing talks, but the talks collapsed, and then they put the character back up. So then in November 2025, Spider and Speedy, where would they sue first? They sued first in California. So basically now we're getting into a legal fight of you have this character that was generated using AI tools. They're saying like, as we said, as the copyright law sort of said right now, currently, like if something is created with AI without human involvement or without human.
28:26Joey:Correct.
28:27Addy:It's not copyrightable.
28:29Joey:It's not copyrightable. The level of human interaction that is needed is still debatable. and not really settled yet.
28:38Addy:Although there have been some AI-generated imagery that has already been copywritten, but with, of course, human input in it.
28:47Joey:So the Tung Tung Suher thing, basically there is a lawsuit from this Roblox game company, not Roblox itself, but the games company that used the likeness without permission. The company that represents Tung Tung Suher is saying it's RIP. I'm paraphrasing, I'll probably get a little things fuzzy. They're saying, well, according to US copyright, law AI generated characters are not protected because they're AI generated. And Tung Tung Sahara said, no, like this was a person who like went through multiple iterations and prompts and like there was human authorship behind this to create this character.
29:23Joey:It wasn't just a prompt that created the character. And so now this is in the California legal system.
29:30Addy:How did it end up in California? Who's based in California? I don't know.
29:34Joey:The Italian company does all the videos of Brain Rot, right? That's one of the characters. I don't even know if there really isn't. I think it's just the name. I don't know if there is an Italian.
29:43Addy:There's like an Indonesian thing in there too. Like the guy that I think originally generated the thing is from Indonesia,
29:49Joey:if I'm not mistaken. The guy that made it from Indonesia. Okay, yeah. Spider Games is a Louisiana limited liability company. Okay. And Speedy Simulator is a Wyoming LLC. Momentum that represents Tung Tung is a French company.
30:03Addy:So what's the problem? Like, are they stealing it to make content when they shouldn't be?
30:08Joey:I think the issue was, like, could they have used it? Could they have used that character without permission? Or was it fair use because no one owes the copyright to the character because the character's AI generated?
30:17Addy:That's really interesting.
30:19Joey:This is more like a precedent case because it's like whatever happens with this case could then clarify the precedent of how much input do you need to create a character that is protectable.
30:30Addy:I think at the end of the day, nobody expected Tung Tung to be so popular, like period. Right.
30:36Joey:I mean, this is a hilarious example of how this is going to be the first case to determine the copyright law for a new IP character. For sure.
30:45Addy:This is also popular with kids under like 10. So it's like an age group that if something goes viral in that age group, it blows up. It's like Bluey or Danny Go. And it could be the most random thing that you have no idea would have happened. You're playing in that age group, right? And also the other interesting thing about that age group is you can make a ton of money putting that character on stickers, on toys. And like there's so much merchandising opportunity. So like who has rights to that money, right? I think two things happened here. Nobody expected this thing to be so popular. And as it happens to be, it's everywhere around the world.
31:23Addy:And two, now there's some real money involved with the content and the merchandise and everything else in between.
31:30Joey:Yeah. Now they might end up dropping the case and just going after a trademark filing of the character, which is different than copyright. I don't know what the current trademark office, what their deal is on AI generated or assisted generated elements.
31:49Addy:Yeah, didn't that happen to Steamboat Willie after the copyright expired? Disney went into a trademark or was going to go into a trademark, I believe.
32:01Joey:Possibly. I mean, I'm sure they will go through whatever route possible to keep protecting.
32:06Addy:To just kind of hold on to it, yeah. So I don't know the definition of how protected a trademark can be over a copywritten material, but it feels like it's less protected.
32:18Joey:I think the argument was like trademark would also help them in more of an international setting, whereas the copyright issue was like U.S. specific. But this is an international character and international. Right. So that like the copyright ruling would just apply to the U.S.
32:32Addy:I'm surprised EU is not involved in any of this because EU is generally faster to respond to AI related stuff than America is. A lot of the privacy laws, data mining laws were passed in Europe first before it was passed here.
32:49Joey:Yeah.
32:50Addy:I don't know. Maybe they don't care about Tung Tung so much.
32:52Joey:It's just Tung Tung Saur, man. Just forget it. Next one. The example that's been cited a lot too with who is the authorship and with the AI stuff was the, I forgot the specific case name, but the monkey and the camera selfie. Remember that story? So the monkey took this camera selfie because he took the camera from the photographer. And there was sort of a battle. It was like, does the photographer own the copyright to that clip, to that image? Or was it the monkey because the monkey pushed the button?
33:19Addy:Yeah, there was no human in the loop. There's a monkey.
33:21Joey:It was determined that it was like, no, there's just no authorship of it because the monkey pressed the button. Right. And so it was like sort of taking that and it's like, well, the machine made the thing. So there was no authorship. The machine pressed the button. But, I mean, in this case, I mean, we're the monkeys. We're the monkeys pressing the button.
33:43Addy:We absolutely are the monkeys here. Like, generating shooting to sour is something a monkey would do. This is brain rot.
33:53Joey:So, yeah, do you not get protection if you're the monkey pressing the button? We're the human monkeys.
33:59Addy:It's just a big contrast between, yeah, I guess like Tung Tung Sahur is basically, I'm guessing here, is text to image. You prompted for something, you got an image out, which doesn't really qualify for human in the loop, I guess. On the other hand, a single piece of American cheese, which is the first AI copywritten artwork owned by Kant.
34:24Joey:Was this just a single output from stable diffusion or is this like? Inpainting. Composite, right.
34:31Addy:So creation method. The image was produced using AI technique called inpainting where fragments were selectively modified, coordinated, arranged through human authorship. So yeah, it's like an iteration. It's like you generate something, then you inpaint certain things out, you put certain things in, and that's no different than like removing paint from a canvas, putting in more paint and so on.
34:54Joey:yeah and I mean that's sort of been the understanding or my interpretation where it's like yeah if you put a text prompt in you get an image out and you use that that's not good enough you take the thing you combine a couple other elements there's more human in the loop process there isn't a full release of like what Noxa's process was but the rough outline and this is take a grain of salt a Claude summary of the complaint but that it was like a combo of the cultural grounding from Indonesia life, a combination of the name that he created, the backstory, the voiceover design, the visual depiction that he created.
35:32Joey:And it was with like Dolly and some other stuff. Apparently the full, he said it was like a combination of like seven prompts and iterations and a bunch of other things. That isn't released. That's like in the trademark filing that isn't public. But he's basically saying like, it wasn't just like a text output. It was like a process that went to developing this character. therefore there is human loop and it should be protected.
35:55Addy:I mean, have you seen it? Like, have you seen some Tung Tung Seller stuff? It's very random. It doesn't feel very... What are you talking about? Exactly. It's like, good luck defending that. That is in the AI slop territory. I hate to say it, but like, this is not going to be... I don't think these guys have a chance here to defend this as...
36:18Joey:I think that's why they might just drop it and then just go after a trademark thing. I wish it would go to the end at least to get more. I mean, this is a ridiculous example, but this is not going to be the first time we're going to have some sort of issue of, in the future, someone makes a movie with a character and then someone else decides to sell merch or take that character and put it in other stuff. And then it's like, hey, why are you taking the character? And it's like, hey, you said it was AI generated. You don't own it. It's fair game.
36:43Addy:It's good. It's good. We need cases like that because you know what I think will happen is it'll incentivize creators to really be in the loop and not just generate slop.
36:55Joey:Yeah. Also, this is also why it's important to you. You have to show kind of the, not chain of custody, but the proof of the chain of...
37:04Addy:Content authority, content authentication.
37:07Joey:The chain of authorship. I know there's a better, I know there's an actual term for this and I'm blanking on, but to show proof of like, yes, every step of the process and what happened, and what went into everything to show the human authorship and have the receipts.
37:22Addy:Sorry, Tung Tung. We love you, buddy. But I feel like you're for everybody, not just me. Was it? Meementum Labs. All right. Good place to wrap it up. Yeah, I'll say.
37:35Joey:Links for everything we talked about at denoistepodcast.com.
37:38Addy:If you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, give us a like, give us a comment. It'll really help the show. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Catch you in the next episode.
From the publisher
Addy and Joey explore GPT-6 Astra’s ability to generate complex, accurate 3D cityscapes in Blender from simple prompt goals. They also review DaVinci Resolve 21.1's new AI agent integration and discuss why an Indonesian TikTok meme character might forc...
