Are we too easy on AI?

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just, make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.

1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to this episode of the Colin and Samir show. On today's episode, we're answering your questions. The first one is about how video has changed podcasting. We're also going to answer a question about whether we were too kind to AI in our last episode. And we kick off the episode with some quick hits about what's happening in the world of Colin and Samir and around the creator economy.

1:41And if you make it to the end of the episode, you're going to hear a gripe from Colin. And I really need your guys' perspective on this because I don't think this gripe has grounds. We're asking for perspective, not support. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just perspective. Just perspective. Because the gripe has grounds. We just need to know what the ruling on the field is because I think it's a red card. I think it's a touchdown.

2:07All right, man. I feel like we've set a record this year of like flights and hotels. I am so like Delta multi-platinum right now. It's crazy. But you're diamond is what you're saying. That's what I meant to say is that if you double the platinum, you end up with diamond. Got it. I wanted everyone to do the math. Dude, please don't flex your Delta status. I will flex it as often as I get it. Please, please stop. I'm sorry. Actually, I know what? I'm not sorry. Okay, so we are in Miami right now for Adobe Max. And we sat in on the opening keynote this morning of Adobe Max. It's basically, you know, their version of the Apple keynote or, you know, just announcing all their new product features.

2:49And sitting in the keynote today, the one thing I realized was this is the most relevant keynote for people like us. Absolutely. It was so niche. First off, Adobe changed my life. Like coming out of college as an economics major and then getting a version of the Adobe suite, like getting the Adobe suite and learning it changed the whole trajectory of my life. So I was very excited to be here. But yeah, sitting in those seats, it was amazing because on stage we were talking about it all day, but they'd be like, who loves keyframes? And we're were going nuts over like, like at one point they just yelled about Photoshop actions and people went insane, but I get it.

3:32Like, but, but when you think about it, we just zoom out. You're like, what is the life of a creator? Like day to day, it is spending time in that software, right? Whatever your software is, whether it's premier or Photoshop Lightroom, like there's a variety of different creators here. The majority of your day is just spending time in that software. Like that is your digital world. So of course people are excited when there's like new things and the updates are pretty crazy like the just to get like kind of niche here just for a second let's niche down then we'll move on um the object masking premiere to niche okay no let's go there smart masking smart masking but good luck trying to explain this yeah i don't know how to explain this i don't know it's just so uh for creators who are listening you're gonna as you see these roll out you're gonna be like oh wow that's like really substantially gonna speed up the time like Like time, you get time back.

4:24Okay, well, hold on. We have to explain some of our questions. I'll try and do it very quickly. Okay. Imagine you're watching a video and there is text. It's a video of you and I, and we're walking across the frame. And behind us are the words Colin and Samir. And it seems like we're walking seamlessly in front of the text, right? Like the text is behind us, but it's in the environment, in the background. Originally, if you want to do that, you had to what's called mask out you and I and do little keyframes every single frame. You have to mask us out so that you can separate us from the background and have the text behind us.

4:56Now with smart masking, you literally just like click on the object or the people. Yeah. And it does all the masking for you. Yeah. Basically, I will say like the last thing. I can tell I didn't get people excited with that. I knew we shouldn't have gone. Deep, deep down. But the editors get it. I'm thrilled about it. The editors get it. The thing I'll say is that like we have been talking about AI quite a bit. And the most seamless integration of AI is in the Adobe suite. Like we are using it constantly. I would imagine that generative fill and like the Adobe AI, like just updates across everything that I just saw, those are going to be the most used AI tools for creatives.

5:38Yeah, even Adobe podcast to clean up audio. For sure. Yeah, it's just, it's really seamlessly integrated. Okay, a couple more quick hits before we get into questions that you guys submitted. um youtube shorts are now three minutes long what do you think about that ah to me honestly it does not really impact me i know a lot of creators were really excited because uh specifically creators that i spoke to here at max i was talking to omg adrian yeah and he was talking about how like he wasn't uploading to shorts because his reels and his tiktoks are over a minute. Yeah. So for him, this is now a huge opportunity where he can release his entire catalog onto shorts and start growing a YouTube channel.

6:26Right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a big deal for him. For you and I, like, I don't know, it just didn't. Yeah. I mean, the one thing I thought about is we could probably release longer podcast clips now. That's interesting. Like, because one of our challenges has always been like contextual. Am I being too harsh on the announcement? I just feel like shorts don't like, they don't get me up in the morning. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I think for short form creators, it has to be ubiquitous across platforms, right? It has to be, of course, it's like if someone can post a 10 minute TikTok or a 10 minute reel, you have to be able to post that on shorts.

7:01A 10 minute YouTube short? I mean, that would be strange, but... Why not just make it a long form video? This is getting confusing. I know. It's getting a little confusing. As a consumer, I'll say like when I'm watching short form content, I'm not really in the mood to watch three minutes of a piece of content or 10 minutes of a piece of content. So I don't know how this plays out. Uh, but it is confusing when like shorts just turn into longer videos. Is this like the bundling and unbundling of cable, but for content? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Okay. The last quick hit, uh, I want to get to is Kai Sinat and McDonald's.

7:35I was looking at this collaboration. So they did this collaboration where Kai has his own meal now. And I'm getting a lot of sponsored posts from McDonald's promoting this. He did a live stream to try their new Big Mac, which is like a chicken sandwich that goes into the meal. The first thing that I just thought, and I took a step back and thought like, you know, we've had a lot of conversations around TikTok driving culture, but I feel like Twitch is not as much a part of that conversation. And thinking about like Kai and speed and just the world of culture right now in 2024 feels like this has been the year of like the Twitch comeback or that Twitch is like the epicenter of where culture was booming this year.

8:21But it would not be if not for short form platforms clipping, right? Fans clipping those moments and sharing them like crazy. I think similar to when we spoke to Ludwig many years ago when we had him the first time that we had him on the show, he was talking about how his streams are essentially just like very long productions that he knows can be clipped and cut down into YouTube videos. And I think streamers like Kai and like Speed are looking at it in a similar type of way where it's like, let me do the work beforehand to make sure that this very long session has interesting moments and highlights that I know will get clipped.

9:00I think most people, I think, who interact with the KaiSnap brand are not doing it in the actual stream. They're doing it via clips. Yeah, that's probably true. But you're right. I think that Twitch feels like it's had a huge year for being the place where arguably the biggest and most well-known creators are. Like from a mainstream perspective. Yeah. Yeah, Kai is like mainstream culture in a different way than other creators. And I think back to the moment in time where Ninja went, or Drake went on Ninja's stream. Do you remember that? Yeah. And played video games. That was a really long time ago, and that was such a big deal.

9:45Today, celebrities showing up on stream is not that big of a deal. And this year, I feel like with Kai's streams, that has become a major destination for celebrities. In last night's stream, John Cena showed up. Yeah. Like the McDonald's stream. And it's like, I don't know. It's just seems like it's becoming like a more regular thing in Twitch specifically. And Twitch as a platform has had like a tough go from a brand perspective. But from a culture perspective, they're producing some of the most relevant creators. So I just wanted to like, I just sat in that last night. I was like, this is really interesting to me.

10:21That live streaming and Twitch is still at the epicenter of culture. Yeah. Is it because we need these moments now, like the zeitgeist move so quickly that we have to have these moments where you had to be there? Yeah, maybe. Or like we have to have moments where we're experiencing something at the same time, or at least some subset of people are experiencing something at the same time, right? Like if you were there when Kevin Hart was on the Chi stream, like there's something special about that. And then the, you know, the second wave is the people who see it as clips, but I don't know. You were there.

10:55Yeah, there's something happening right now in that moment. I guess live content has always been like that, but that just felt significant to dig into. I don't have the answers yet, but I felt like I wanted to dig deeper into that. All right. Wait, can I bring up a quick hitter and then we'll get into questions? Yeah. Or I can save it. We could do a question first. Let's do a question. Okay, do a question. Okay. So this question comes to us from a creator named Anurag. I'm going to play it right now. Hey, Colin and Samir. Conventional YouTube wisdom suggests that you should plan your title and thumbnail prior to filming your video How does this apply to video podcasts?

11:33Oftentimes I've found interesting title-thumbnail combinations only after I have recorded with a guest and I've had a chance to review the footage Are there ways to pre-plan the most optimal title-thumbnail combinations for video podcasts? I'd also love to see an episode about your tips for a video podcast. Thanks, Anu from Just Rocket Science. The first thing that comes to mind for us is that, you know, before we have someone actually come and sit at our set, we do think of what is the most pressing question that we want to ask? Like, what is the real reason? What's this creator's unique advantage or perspective that we want on the show?

12:18can we craft a title and thumbnail around that? Right. And doesn't mean we can have the quote ready to go. That's going to go next to the person's face. Um, but at least we have an idea of why someone might be interested or click on this episode. First and foremost, I wanted to bring up, I wrote here when I heard this, uh, like video killed the podcast star and, you know, thinking about that song, what is it? Video Killed the Radio Star, right? That Video Killed the Radio Star was a really popular song in the 80s. I think it was also the first music video on MTV. Yes, it was. And it was all about video when it came to music.

13:00You used to listen to music in the context of listening to a record or on the radio. Now, all of a sudden, we had video attached to it. Music videos, we had performances. People had to have looks. They had to dress cool. They had to have these big performances to attract audiences. It feels like we're entering this new wave of something similar happening to podcasting. Now, the thing about video and podcasting is that like the base premise of like the audience, how they interact with podcasting is just like ritual-based consumption. That's at least how I used to listen to podcasts, which was like, I know the day it comes out.

13:38yeah, I'm going to click on it on my podcast platforms. That's how I'm going to watch my, or that's how I'm going to listen to my podcast. Podcasting coming to YouTube is now a whole different consideration because you can have algorithmic discovery of your podcast, which is a totally different thing than a base foundation of listenership that is just listening week to week. So that is like a substantial difference. And there's a few different forms of like podcast thumbnails when it comes to YouTube. And now what is required to get people in the door for your podcast on YouTube? We've been talking about this a ton.

14:16You know, you look at like a Theo Vaughn on YouTube. He does like the exact same podcast thumbnail style every single episode. If you looked at it in a vacuum, you'd go, this is not optimized for YouTube. But because it's a Theo Vaughn thumbnail, it is something that people immediately recognize they're familiar with. they click it and he's very good. It's optimized for familiarity. The goal there is that someone who's a fan of Theo and a fan of his show sees it and recognizes it in an absolute instant. Yeah. That that's exactly what I'm looking for. Exactly. So optimizing for familiarity is one version of podcasting on YouTube.

14:54The other version is, you know, basically making like bespoke thumbnails for each episode. That is really stressful and really hard. We're somewhere in the middle where like from when we have a guest on, it's typically the same kind of style. People would probably, you can probably close your eyes and imagine a Colin and some of your thumbnail there. When it's just Colin and I talking, those are much more conceptual and those are very much like title thumbnail beforehand. I mean, the reason this is across all audio platforms and not on YouTube is largely because when we're traveling, when we're on the go, we don't have the time to package an episode properly.

15:34And that matters a lot on YouTube. Mm-hmm. So video and podcasting has like a couple different considerations, but I actually think that's a different set of considerations from podcasting on YouTube. You know what I mean? Yeah. If I could start over again, I would have prioritized a little bit more or leaned a little bit heavier into familiarity. Not that I wouldn't try and optimize for YouTube because it's helpful, right? Especially in the beginning, finding new audience through a really optimized thumbnail. But I think we could have even leaned heavier into a middle ground of making sure to include you're in my face from the very beginning or even like a show logo.

16:20I think show logo, episode number, those are like classic conventions on YouTube for thumbnails. But really interesting, there's this report that Edison Research did around podcast listeners. So here's some of the stats from that report. 32 % of podcast listeners prefer video podcast to audio only. Wow. Something really interesting is on Spotify where, you know, we, we post our video podcasts, 52 % of our audience watches with the video on. So you're seeing that like people are watching and obviously our largest audience is YouTube, which is where video is on. 54 % of Gen Z in this study said they prefer video with podcasts than audio only.

17:09And 43 % of that report said that YouTube is their primary podcast platform. Wow. It just makes, I immediately think of like the BFFs pod. Yeah. Which is with like a, any, any data metric about like Gen Z watching a video pod. I'm just thinking about Josh Richards. Yeah. Yeah. But the, the interesting thing that's happening is there's also a lot of like legacy podcasts now having to add video. We've talked about this before, but like Dax Shepard's show. We're also seeing smart lists getting posted to YouTube, but that's just like, there's no video attached to it. But I imagine some of those mega deals or call her daddy now clips are back on YouTube.

17:46It's like YouTube is a major part of podcast consideration. Like when it comes to building an audience for a podcast, YouTube is a major part because you can find audience. It has not yet been considered in like charting. It's not yet considered when it comes to like, are you the number one podcast in the world that doesn't take into account your YouTube viewership? That has to be a shift, I think, in podcasting. Absolutely. How do you not include it? Yeah, that feels crazy, right? To go like... If anything, with video, it's just a different type of engagement. I don't want to say it's necessarily better or worse.

18:22I think it depends on the type of podcast because there are some podcasts that are really good for just audio only. But yeah, how do you not count those? Where do you lie on this list? Like, do you prefer video podcast to audio podcast? I strictly consume my podcast in audio only. Yeah, same. Which probably means, yeah. I mean, mostly because I'm listening in my car. My car is the primary place or while I'm doing something else. I might have the video up on my phone, but I'm not really looking at it unless they're queuing something super visual. So that's like, you know, the few things I wrote down here is like, number one, video for podcasting is great.

18:59It changes the dynamic. like when we had Tim Ferriss on, he, he said it about like the cons of video. He was like, I'm, I'm thinking about how I look. I'm thinking about if the lights are reflecting off my head, like you are just thinking about like, is this room weird? I don't know. Like we've had being weird. We've this weird. We've had a, our hot ones episode. We actually recorded that first at like a hotel conference room and it was weird and we didn't like the way it looked. So now like we have a good episode that we like, but we don't like the way it looks. So that means we're going to can it and then re-record it in a setting that we like where it looks.

19:32So video complicates podcasting, but it like supercharges it in a way that's just, you, it's just, you can't deny it. The, the, the other thing is just like the logistics of video podcasting are very different doing like a zoom or Riverside recording versus like in person, you know, in a audio only podcast, you can't really tell in a video podcast. You need to figure out how that feels engaging over long periods of time. Obviously shows have done it. Look at All In, right? All In's a massive show. They have a ton of different guys on there on Zoom and it just works. So the short answer to this is you should definitely, no matter what, always think of your title and thumbnail beforehand.

20:14And hopefully that just generally helps when it comes to podcasting because you should have a concept beforehand. But also as you're looking in the really long term when it comes to titles and thumbnails, if we could start over, we would optimize for familiarity. which means show logo, episode numbers, and it might not perform immediately. But if you look 300 episodes down the line, the audience that's there for you is going to immediately recognize your show when it's uploaded. And that's like the most important piece of podcasting. Yeah. Brand overviews. Yeah. Important for the long term. The other like dramatic difference between, uh, or like that, that podcasting has, uh, experienced through this video wave and this YouTube wave is public performance.

20:59That's a really different metric. Obviously, again, charting is one thing when it comes to podcasting, but public performance of your episodes, episode to episode, typically we don't really know how many people listened to the last Joe Rogan episodes. I don't know, but I think a lot. But when it comes to YouTube, you know it down to the exact number. So that has changed the dynamic of podcasting as well. Overall, I'm like fascinated by it. I think it's super interesting that video has come to this medium. I feel like the term might change soon because podcasting was about like stuff you could find on your iPod.

21:35Yeah. Right. How would it change though? Like talk shows? Chat shows. Okay. Podcasting is the best word for that. Yeah. Podcasting. Okay. All right. We have another topic, but did you want to hit? No, no, no. Hit your topic. Hit your topic. Okay. This one's a along. This comes from Patrick Buckley, and it's a reaction to our last episode about AI. Now, fair warning, I did edit this. I condensed it. It's still a bit long. Question. Did you condense it using AI? I did. Oh my gosh. So we know your perspective here. How did you condense it? I did a couple of things. Okay. Number one. Are you being so weird about it?

22:16Because it's weird. I uploaded the transcript to ChatGPT and I asked, how could I condense this but still keep the question? It feels like more work. How long could the question be? Well, I was curious. There I was curious. You were on a journey. Yeah, I was on a journey. Then it gave me exact lines that I could cut. But then it gave me VO that would need to be put in to shorten this. And I was like, okay, I can't do VO. Can you just give me some lines that I could cut? And it gave me a few lines. Did you ask it if this question was a short film? What would the visuals that would be? And then did you put that into Mid Journey?

22:50And then is that if Wes Anderson wrote this question? Yeah. All right. Here's the question. Hey, guys. Saw the video about the future of YouTube that dropped this week. The end state of AI seems to be that you'll be able to create an incredibly high quality thumbnail, title, movie script, B-roll, and even generate a fictitious character that looks indistinguishable from a real human. And you can tell the AI to train it or to produce the thumbnail and title and script in the same style as Johnny Harris or Mr. Beast or Cleo Abram or Colin and Samir, right? And all of a sudden, there's a lot of general channels where I feel like the barrier to entry is about to plummet.

23:34And it's going to be so competitive and no one's going to be able to really tell if it's a real human or if it's AI. And the quality is just going to be very, very similar. So also, who's to say YouTube won't just generate all their own videos because they're probably going to be able to do it with AI as well. And they'll know, you know, they have the advantage of knowing the audience and exactly what each viewer really wants to see next. So, you know, it would kind of just be the same way, you know, grocery stores private label their own products and kick existing brands off the shelf. And Amazon's been doing that with their own brands on, you know, the Amazon website.

24:08So who's to say YouTube doesn't just start competing with creators. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, right, they have no incentive to not do that unless the audience, right, viewers don't like it and leave the platform en masse. Do you think the audience cares? You know, are they going to care if they're watching a Johnny Harris video or watching someone else? And, you know, maybe the existing creators who have built a platform have that reputation and can keep competing. But as a newer creator, it's, you know, is it worth even starting to build unless you have some super niche focus that is defensible?

24:47Yeah, appreciate any thoughts and just, you know, audience dynamics. And do we think people will care if they're watching AI or watching real humans in the future? Thanks. Yeah, a lot to unpack there. A lot to unpack. Yeah. First of all, Patrick, appreciate the question. Would appreciate it even more if it was 30 seconds. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Just for anyone who's because I love getting voice note questions. That man likes to podcast. I can tell. Yeah, it's great. Honestly, he's a true podcaster. It's a good question, Patrick. But for anyone submitting creator support voice notes in the future.

25:21Wow. 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds. If not, we use AI. Okay. So first, let's let's go into, you know, obviously, our last episode was deeply about how AI is going to impact the future of the creator economy and made a lot of, you know, painted a vision for the future that was, you know, pretty far. Like we pushed that pretty far to 25 years down the line. We had to. We saw some pretty crazy things. We saw some crazy stuff. At Meta and at YouTube. Yeah, we saw crazy stuff. So we're pushing that 25 years into the line, down the road. So I think that's a really important frame. The first question is, do we think audiences will care?