He Built an AI Podcast and It Became the #1 Show.

23:51Yeah. People were just searching Epstein, EP, Jeffrey Epstein, probably Trump you know was probably in that mix like any keyword that was tangential to Jeffrey Epstein and the people that kept going viral tangential to Epstein on the timeline yeah

24:10Samir Chaudry:when do you think Spotify or do does Spotify get involved by making originals like this based on the data they have of what people are searching based on the data they have of what people are listening to feels like they would be in a, in a better position to know what's going to hit. Do you think they get involved in, in this type of? Yeah. I think, I think they could create their version of Amazon basics. I think that's a, that's a good analogy. Like Amazon has all of its merchants, you know, they don't want to cannibalize, you know, all the sales, but they'll produce their own product lines based off what, you know, where they can compete on margin and where they can compete on, um, you know, product for what it's worth.

24:51So I think Spotify will have its version of Amazon basics. Sure. Same with Netflix, you know, I mean, it's a different model. Yeah. Like Netflix, like buys IP, you know, at a very, uh, from what I understand at a very aggressive model and kind of screws over the actual producers and directors that bring these stories to life, but that's just because they have the distribution, the power to do so so maybe maybe with the new i think there was like a north of 600 million dollars they just spent on it was a ben affleck's company if i'm not mistaken um to who know it's it's really unclear what his what his product does there isn't much uh documented on what the value prop is but i assume it's a video model of sorts or a process on how to produce films uh using ai um yeah and they're for sure also looking at their inputs and their outputs and identifying bottlenecks in their system and trying to see where they could optimize it.

25:49So yeah, I think there's only a matter of time until all these production houses and streaming sites, they produce their own stuff. Now, I think they're going to need the right teams and the right technology to do so, which makes a great venture outcome for building in this category as well as an entrepreneur. And I think that's a really interesting opportunity. Yeah. So it's only a matter of time to produce this content.

26:17Samir Chaudry:It's interesting because the creator economy disrupted the legacy entertainment industry based on an incredibly lower cost. And the same concept you're saying, we're able to iterate faster. And it feels like we are now getting disrupted in a way by technology and the ability to generate entertainment news content. through AI because we can never compete with that. A team of creative people can never compete with the cost and speed of what you're doing. But the team of creative people could use these tools to then build and compete in any other medium. Sure. You know, it's like, that's the key.

26:57It's like, if you have the ideas and you're creative enough to not be, I guess, like stronghold by these tools where you can still think for yourself and they're not thinking for you, you know you're still the orchestrator behind this entire thing then it just goes back to what i said earlier it's like a 10x is all the areas that you otherwise were previously strong at now you could just do it 10 times better 100 times better um so i still think the creatives they still have the opportunity over here to be at the forefront of this they just need to use their creativity to execute and use these tools to help enhance everything that they do that's just what they're designed to do yeah i may be jaded with my with my perspective on that but I really believe that.

27:37Samir Chaudry:Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I think it's not going to look anything like it looked like before the same way that there was a reduced team going from making a movie to making a YouTube video. There will now be a reduced team or options for an incredibly reduced team. I do think one of the most fun parts of being a creative and part that I personally enjoy is collaboration and working with other people. I think it's very fun to get excited about something with other people. But I am finding that if you look down into the future, there's going to be a lot more single person media companies like yourself.

28:12Samir Chaudry:The foreseeable future for you, this podcast network that you build could be doing 10 million downloads a month, and it could just be you. And that can be by choice, but truly by just necessity, it may not need to be more than you. Totally. So yeah, I think that is going to be something that we're all up against. Like I think overhead is a major challenge in creative companies because it can be at odds with creativity, meaning my financial burden and my necessity to create something can be at odds with my own creativity. So that will be a consideration. But I'm curious if you have any advice for new media creators, for us, for the crop that is, you know, making YouTube videos, making podcasts right now, making stuff on Instagram.

29:03Samir Chaudry:Like what is the advice to us for the future? Sure. When I was publishing 40 to 60 pieces of content a week, it was Twitter, TikTok, Instagram. It was the newsletter, the website, long form audio, short form audio. At some point when you're doing content full time, you build an assembly line around what you're doing. You build a process, an operation, a system. and within every system there you have your inputs and your outputs and you need to understand what part of your system contains the bottlenecks that lags you the most and ai is like the perfect opportunity to optimize those systems i think like that's the meme that you see online with palantir it's like they go into the u.s government they figure out the problems they optimize them using ai i'm obviously saying it very lightly you know like stripping away a lot of the details But that's like the analogy and that's how I think about it.

29:55So I'm a person of systems and operations. So I think about my bottlenecks and how I can improve them. That's number one. Number two, be the very best at these tools. Subscribe to anything and everything. Download the open source models. Get yourself a better computer and better equipment if you can afford it. Download these models locally. Experiment and try to take them to the very edge of what they're capable of doing and compare it to the other models. models. So if you're particularly focused in video, be the very best at all the video models, be the expert in the room to the point where you could host a three hour seminar on all these models, right?

30:33So that you know with the skills that you have now, how that could be shape shifted and applied into what you're doing today. And then challenge yourself to create a new form of art through your content. If you're a great storyteller, try to use these tools to prompt out a 15 second story, a video, an audio, whatever it may be. And just like always stay curious, just like be at the very, very edge. Because if you're able to stay at the very forefront of what you're doing, then I believe you'll never be replaced and you'll always be ahead of the game. And that's what I practice at least. You can only speak from my perspective.

31:10Samir Chaudry:Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I think the the only thing I would add is like the acceptance of the moment that this is happening you know and I think that is hard it's hard it's hard to accept because we are inherently I think our desire is always to preserve as humans like preserve what is now or what is the past um but the train is moving and it's it's moving fast and like I said I think it opens the door for a lot more honest creation, which I love, and a lot more exploration of what this type of technology is capable of. And I did not touch vibe coding for a long time. I didn't really have that much of an interest in it.

31:51Samir Chaudry:And once I started, I recognized that it is satiating a lot of creativity that I didn't know was unsatiated. And so I've really enjoyed my time exploring what's possible. We had a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about a year ago, and he was talking about technology. And he said something that's always stuck with me, that even though we have iPhones, we all still have TVs on our wall, meaning the new doesn't necessarily replace the old always. There's typically actually more room than you think. We always get nervous that this new technology will replace the old technology. But oftentimes what happens is actually it's just in addition to.

32:33Samir Chaudry:When I think about what's happening here, I don't know that we've ever experienced the exponential nature of this type of technology. Would you agree with that? Or do you think this is comparable to previous advancements in technology? No, I think it's completely outperformed anything that we've ever seen. And I think there is a genuine withdrawal feeling that you get from not using Claude or not using ChatGPT because the feeling of productivity is so addicting. and the fact that you can be more productive within your 24 hours a day and achieve more is like playing a video game in a way. I feel like it triggers the same dopamine and, you know, hormones that you would get doing anything other that's relatively addicting on the internet.

33:22At least that's how I personally feel. That's what I've learned about my minor actions. Like it's gotten to the point where this past weekend, I was at a bachelor party in Vegas, we were at the sphere. My mind is racing with ideas. I'm one in a very creative setting and I'm like, shit, I need to be clotting right now. I need to be, I need to be implementing these ideas. So I literally, I got up in the middle and I went to the side and like, was like, you can access your CLI from your phone, whatever. There's all these integrations. And I just need to get these ideas down before they run out. A new idea for a concept for an IP, a tagline, whatever it may be.

33:56And it's never been easier to create that way. And that feeling is so addicting. So for me, I feel like that's going to lead to certain downsides. There's definitely a lot of benefits that come with that. I don't know. I mean, you use these tools. How do you feel using them? What is your reaction to that?

34:12Samir Chaudry:Yeah. I mean, to me, I would say the only thing I can compare it to is the first time I edited a video on Windows Movie Maker where I felt this rush of unparalleled capability. I felt like I was capable. At a young age, that's a very powerful feeling to feel. And I think this is that multiplied by a thousand, if not a million, where I can use human language to describe what I want to get done. You know, recently I, this weekend, I was trying to prioritize my week and I had Gemini take over my Google calendar. And I said, here's what I want to do. Here's when it needs to get done by. Just organize my calendar to give me the tasks, you know, so that I know when to sit down and do these things to get them done when they need to be done.

34:59Samir Chaudry:And my calendar was filled out in a way that made sense to me. And I was like, okay, cool. I got my tasks. And that's a very simple version of it. And I think on the most expansive version, the fact that you can use human language is what's insane to me. That I can just describe something that I want to exist and it can exist. And I think that is, like you just mentioned, like a video game. And I think video games have always informed us about human behavior. Like the addictive nature of a video game actually tells you a lot about who we are and what we want. And even when you look at the rise of the creator economy and the rise of any internet platform, whether it be Twitch or YouTube, they're rooted in the experience of the early adopters were video game users and the early viewers were people who watched video games.

36:01Samir Chaudry:I think if you keep going down that path and you even explore like what's happening with prediction markets and what's happening with essentially the gamification of everything, everything traces back to the product design of a video game and why we can't stop playing them. So I think what you just said is very accurate. And I think there is no stopping that feeling. And the output being what used to be reserved for the few, like the artists and the creators, I think being an artist is incredibly aspirational. Being a creator has become incredibly aspirational. And the fact that using just a description, if you have the taste or the vision that you can become that is fascinating.

36:48I've been creating content for five years. I started a podcast called Mint. I grew my email list. Yeah, you invited us on that pod. Yeah, yeah.

36:56Samir Chaudry:That was our first interaction was you inviting us. We should have come on. You should have come on. Yeah. I grew my email list to over 100 ,000 subscribers. Like I built the human side of content. There was a point where I was publishing like 40 to 60 pieces of content a week. And I know the grit of publishing. I know the grit of showing up every single day. I also have a background in building product and building software. I have a background in big data as well. So I think the way this world converged is unique, in a sense, to me and my background of being able to create content, build product, understand software and data.

37:36I think that's a really interesting intersection. But more broadly speaking, reflecting on what you just said, I could be in a place where, shit, these AIs are going to replace me in my voice, you know, and they're going to be able to out-execute me. Or let me just try to use these tools to better my stack and better perform. And I think these tools are just another tool in the shed. Just like we use Riverside to record. We use a substack or BI for our newsletters. Like these are tools that were built for us to enhance what we do. And these synthetic tools are no different than that. I think there's always going to be a market for human taste and human creation.

38:19And I think these tools help expand that frontier. I think also if you look at like the traditional arts world, there's so many people who are anti-AI. And even when it comes to the movie industry, they don't even want to use Claude or ChatGPT in the script creation because it defeats the whole purpose of creating art. And I think those people, by default, carve out a market for folks to do things in a more human nature because they'll just value the human presence significantly more than those who maybe find the advantage of consuming synthetic content. I think there's going to be a market for both.

38:56I think I would also like to argue at some point, Samir, I don't know if you guys are already doing this, like you guys will create clones of your voices, you and Colin, and you'll end up creating ad libs of sorts, right? Using your voices because your production team could produce that in a more efficient manner. If you said something or if I said something in an inconsistent way that didn't fit the narrative of the story, maybe there's a better way to introduce it. These tools are going to be at our disposal and they're only going to enhance everything that we do. you know? So I don't know. Are you fearful?

39:28Are you fearful of that? Like, do you?

39:30Samir Chaudry:No, I am. I am actually not fearful. And I'm also not anti-AI. I am a pragmatist. I look at the world and I, with, with an immense amount of curiosity and intrigue. And, um, I think the, the outcome that I've found for myself as a creative person who originally got on the internet because I wanted to be a filmmaker is I have been pushed to think about what I honestly want to say more. Meaning I have been a strategic creator for a long time. I'm running a business. I think what you did, what you made with the Epstein files, as mentioned on the show, that would be the right strategic move at that point.

40:17Samir Chaudry:It's a very smart move. It's a very creative application of technology, and it's a very strategic thing to do. Now, I don't know if there are two humans who are passionate enough to spend every day of their life making that podcast. I don't know. But what I think we are all getting pushed to be as creators is I just want to watch what you honestly want to do because the strategic thing will already exist. right and so i don't know if that makes sense to you of like honesty versus strategy but i can feel it as a creator when i have something that i honestly want to say versus something that i know will strategically do well right and those two things are getting separated in my mind and the strategic thing is getting less interesting because it will just be created no matter what whether i create it or not it will just get made and so it pushes me to go like what who am i as a creative that is impossible.

41:15Samir Chaudry:Like it wouldn't, it could never be an output. And I think that's a really interesting prompt. I think it's going to change how I create. I think it's going to change how a lot of people create. And I hope that it actually over the next five years, what people see out of both Colin and myself is a radically honest version of us. And I think that'll happen across a lot of creators because there's going to be really successful content that emerges that we could never make and we probably don't really want to make but we would have made before because we're running a business so that's that's my honest interpretation and i think it will push people to recognize if they are honest if they honestly like making stuff or if they just want the outcome of making stuff does that make sense it does distinction between like, I enjoy this conversation you and I are having.

42:12Samir Chaudry:If we didn't publish this, I'm totally fine. I think this is a fascinating conversation. So this to me is fun. And for all the people who find the video making or the content creation process fun, I think they will survive. Yeah. I think to your point, before I do anything or I spend my time doing something, I need to be able to hit three C's. I need to feel creative. I need to feel challenged and I need to feel curious. That's how I spend my time. It needs to hit those three things. And the thing that keeps me going with what I'm doing is the sheer curiosity and challenge. And of course, the creativity that comes with producing media with code, treating media as a product and building media with software, I think is a thing that's like scratching the itch across those three C's for me.

43:04And to your point, it's like, you enjoy this conversation. I enjoy the art of building product in the form of media. Like that's so fun for me. So to see how far I could take that across any vertical is a thing that I wake up very fired up to do.

43:20Samir Chaudry:A hundred percent. And even for me, I'm playing around with Gemini has a coding side of it called Gemini Canvas. And I built this really interesting music software with it where i could extract stems from different songs and i grew up loving music and that was something i always wanted to do i used to do it in garage band but it was really hard and take me forever and i haven't done something like that since i was 15 years old and it was so fun and it felt like creativity unlocked in this way of like if you can just think of something you can make it whether it's a video whether it's whatever it is.

43:58Samir Chaudry:If you just think of it, you can make it. And I find myself actually exploring creativity in a non-commercial sense now more than I ever have before. And that is very fun for me. And that is why I'm like, I approach it all with curiosity. How personalized does the internet get moving forward? Meaning like when I think into the future, I know right now you are producing an autonomous podcast or multiple autonomous podcasts that can satiate my desire to be in the know or learn about something on a day-to-day basis that's happening in current events. But with Notebook LM, my original use case of it was just putting, because I'm the same as you, I learn better in audio and in podcast forums.

44:43Samir Chaudry:So I've done things like I'm interested in like a quarterly S1 document from a company. So Spotify is a great example. I saw their S1 dropped. I took the PDF. I put it into Notebook LN and listened to it as a podcast. That is a personalized podcast just for me. As we look to the future, do you imagine a world where I'm just prompting my own podcasts where I'm like, okay, I have a seven-minute drive. So I actually just, I want to know about what happened in the NFL. I want to know about what's going on with global politics. And I also want to know about what's happening in Hollywood. I got seven minutes, just make me a pod that fits that.

45:23Yeah, totally. I think that's definitely an outcome. I think we're maybe three to six months away from that actually being feasible within the existing UIs. I think we recently saw Twitter release this audio feature in all their articles. And every LLM has the voice option to read something. But I still think there's an art in being able to prompt engineer properly and to curate entertainment and content for people who otherwise don't have nor care to do that level of diligence and spend the time doing that for what it's worth. I do think the internet is going to somehow consolidate into a chatbot or at least a lot of the tools that we otherwise were used to using that needed interfaces is no longer need the interface.

46:11I don't think there's an argument for actually most of the products that we use anymore. Even one of the products that I was building that we built an entire front end around it. It was for whatever data analytics, not important, but that's just now a single prompt in ChatGPT or Claude. You know, so a lot of these tools that we would otherwise use are no longer relevant. And I think the internet is going to consolidate into a chat bot and people are going to be building a lot of infrastructure to interact. They're going to be building agent first infrastructure so that the interfaces that do have the attention will be optimized to leverage whatever it is that consumers want to do to interact with other means outside of the chatbot.

46:54Because that's really what it is. A chatbot has its general intelligence and people build connectors, kind of Legos into them to enhance their features. And that's only going to get easier with time. And I think there's already an interesting behavior that you are doing and that I'm doing. We're building our own personal software and solving our own personal problems with a few prompts and that already within itself like the example that you just gave me samir that you were doing that's an app that i pay for 30 bucks a month because i'm a musician i like to separate the tracks and the drums and the vocals and the piano i'm guess what i'm going to do after this i'm going to go try to build that myself you know like what's the point um and um but we still all have 24 hours in a day and we all will spend our time in a particular direction that we think will bring the most value to us.

47:40And I still think there's an opportunity to curate the services or the content or the experience for other people, and people will be willing to pay for it regardless.

47:48Samir Chaudry:Well, thanks, Adam. I appreciate it. And we will definitely see you soon here in the studio because I want to collaborate on something. Let's do it. I'm here for it. Thank you so much.

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