The Future of Creativity with Scott Belsky, Adobe Chief Strategy Officer

26:13didn't we for most of humanity live in tiny towns where we were known by name i was thinking the same thing like maybe monoculture was actually not natural right and that we have always been meant to have small groups of people that understand what we're going through and are going through a similar experience like similar things well for 299 000 years or whatever before the industrial revolution my math is probably a little off but that was what it was like Like we belonged in small towns. We were known. We were called by name. That was kind of, that's biologically maybe what we're craving to some degree.

26:47We just want to know how we're known. And - Wow, yeah, that's a really interesting thought. I also was thinking about how during this like digital explosion, we also have had like the most successful concert tour of all time, you know, of like people showing up to stadiums - In a physical space. In a physical space together, having a collective experience. Even this, I'm amazed. 10 ,000 people yeah yeah adobe max yeah yeah like when you said that number and i looked up in the room and i was like yeah this is crazy the craziest part though is like colin and i always talk about how like the internet offered us opportunities to find people like us right um like our first business was us making videos about lacrosse which we both grew up playing yeah that was like super niche and it was just people like us and it was like people who looked at lacrosse not as trying to go play D1 or Pro, just like - They loved it.

27:35They just liked it. And that was like a subset of that category that we created content for and built a very strong community around. And when I was sitting here and yesterday during one of the demos, Michael, who's unbelievable. Yeah, he's awesome. One of the most engaging demos I've ever seen. But when he's like talking about Photoshop actions and everyone just goes insane and you're like, these are my people. Like, you know, like these people are going nuts for like keyframes and actions. And, uh, yeah, it just felt really cool to be, uh, feel that sense of belonging. Yeah. I'm curious. Like I, I think, um, here at Adobe max, like I am looking at our peers who are here and I'm, I feel like there's a very clear distinction between, um, a creator and a creative.

28:20And what I mean by that is, you know, a creator is someone with a distribution mind. They're thinking about, uh, what do I make that's going to reach the most amount of people? They're an independent media company. Their primary way that they monetize is through advertising, sponsorship, partnerships in that way. And they're trying to solve how they can get their content seen at a large scale on platforms. They typically make repeatable formats. They're making shows. That's like the modern media company, modern TV show. A creative is working on the craft, right? They're working on the skill set and they typically get hired to like direct stuff or support other people in making their thing.

28:58When you look at the future for, you know, that both those groups of people, uh, what do you think matters the most in the future? Or, uh, or what do you think from the creator economy and the creative economy? Like what's the next era that we're entering into?

29:20well yeah i think it's it's something i think about often only because whenever i meet a great creative as you're describing them yeah i always feel this urge for them to get themselves out there you see someone with talent and with ideas i have a bunch of friends whose instagrams are completely empty they never share anything and yet the work that they have the stuff that they could to take pictures of would blow up. And I'm always wondering what's getting in the way. But to your point, I guess the mentality of a creator is all about optimizing for engagement and putting the title and trying to figure out the hook.

29:59And there's a whole playbook, right? A creator is more akin to a programming executive. Yeah. You have to think about what the audience wants to see. Right, right. And a creative is like, let me make something cool. Yeah, for me. Yeah, mostly for me. And those lines are blurred. I don't want to make them such distinct lines. But people listening, you know if you think more like a creator or like a creative. Well, just to get creative for a minute, wouldn't it be really fun as this whole new era of AI agents emerge that essentially are teammates, right? They're intended to compliment us and do certain things for us and what have you.

30:39If we all start to become rounded off a little bit in the edges where we're weak. so for example a creative as you're describing them would get um a push to say you should share this and here's how you should frame that and here's how the copy should be for instagram and whatever else and and and the creator maybe is getting some push in the other direction of um you know almost like a a creative director by their side like helping them execute you know make better decisions or what have you or maybe that's more of the human part that will never be never be augmented. But I think it's a good question of how do you help more creatives be creators?

31:20Because I do think that there's something very empowering. I mean, you saw in some of the talks today on our main stage, they were creatives who decided to embark on sharing. Totally. And that was just the ultimate success point for them. Yeah. It's interesting because as you were just describing that, that is very much our partnership and where it emerged from. I would say I definitely stepped into the world with very much a distribution mindset. And Colin came in. And as we started working together, he's more of the creative and more of the creator. It's interesting that people who don't have a creative partner to actually have that is interesting.

31:59All the best partnerships are like what you just described, by the way. I remember hearing that folks who've worked at Apple in the Steve Jobs and Johnny Ives era described them as this truly emotive, very soulful pure creative with this very principled organized merchandiser and how this incredible balance and you know the unique blend of these spices together was just an incredible concoction but with any with too much of spice in one direction you know may not have tasted as well right so it's it's a good good point about the partnership you were talking on stage today uh about the difference between prompting and controlling.

32:44Yeah. And it was just a little bit of like vocab and shifting the vocab around that. Could you explain what you were talking about there and like why that's important, the difference between like the word prompt and the word control? Well, the comment was really an observation that a lot of our customers, frankly, feel like this prompt era of creativity that we're in with AI. and what I mean by that is it's a box, you fill it in with words, you click a button, and then you get something. And then you repeat and you do it again and again and again. I think that they are intrigued, but I think they also feel like it in some ways cheapens or marginalizes their process.

33:25Creativity in a box. Right. It's like, great, I got a sunset, you know? Okay. I feel like that's the first era that we're exiting, actually, at the moment. Call it the prodigy or CompuServe era of AI. I think we're going into what I would better define as the controls era. And the reason is, frankly, just what I see in our labs now and what I see us bringing to the surface. We're trying to give our customers the levers, the knobs, the chisels. We're trying to actually expose a lot of these variables for them to start to play with. So instead of, there might still be a prompt box in some instances, but sometimes there isn't.

34:06Sometimes you're referencing a structure or a color or you're bringing three images together and then you're getting the result and then you're using knobs or dials to like increase or reduce certain aspects of the influence of that reference image. These are modern day controls. This is actually not much different than what Photoshop did in the era of going from physical design to digital design. It's just a different type of technology, right? But it's the same idea. And when I see our customers play with these new capabilities that we're coming out with, it's like you suddenly see them roll up their sleeves and lean in.

34:46You're going from this world of prompt-based to control-based AI creativity. And it's just another world of possibility. So I, frankly, am more excited about this new era and what's to come. And I think it's overdue. Of all the announcements over yesterday and today, what is one for you that you were most excited about or found the most interesting in terms of innovation and progression? Let's say there's one product we shared a glimpse of yesterday that is entering private beta now. We call it Project Concept. And the reason I'm excited about it, a few reasons. First is I think it's a new category of application for creators and even marketers.

35:31Because it's made, it's basically mood boarding and concepting in the age of AI. It's made for you to rapidly explore that increased surface area possibility that we were talking about earlier to find better solutions. And it's actually made the way your mind works. you look at this really cool image of a plant and then you also look at this cool i don't know japanese aesthetic landscape and you also look at this room with this sofa and you're like well what would it look like if we took that influence from here and this influence from there and mixed it up but then added this and then added that that was never physically possible not even with a prompt by the way it's just you wouldn't even be able to it would take forever to articulate those three images and somehow in the right way, shape, and form to get what you actually are thinking.

36:19Now it's possible with this product. So I think it actually generates, it creates this new category that I think is exciting for creators and marketers. I also think that it's where creativity should start. If I jump into the future, I think a lot of the time that we used to spend meticulously refining stuff in creative tools like Photoshop will actually be spent in the explorative tools of deciding the paths you want to go down to begin with. Choosing your taste, like spending more time actually dialing in on vision and taste before you execute something. That's right. That's right. And I think that tools like Photoshop will remain very important once you identify which path you do want to go down.

37:00But that initial explorative experience, there's no product that really, currently it's just done through mood boarding and sketching, frankly. But there's no great platform and way to do that that also, of course, connects with the production tools you'll end up using. So on that note, you know, one thing that you guys were, everyone on stage talked about quite a bit was like ownership, you know, credit. Like in that context of I'm remixing this with that. How does attribution happen? And how do you see that playing out in the future? Because it's one thing we've been thinking about. I mean, we've heard AI versions of our podcast and they're like, you know, right now they sound not great.

37:41We, a lot of our friends have AI versions of their voice being used in ads that they did not consent to. Uh, and obviously we look at this, like this, uh, Pandora's box that's opening of like, whoa, this is, uh, this is going to get pretty crazy. Right. So how does, how do you think about like attribution credit? Yeah. If I'm remixing, Hey, I want to take this person's design and this person's design and where maybe I used to go to Behance and go, I'll hire this guy to make me a font. In the future, I'm like, I like this guy's fonts, but I want to mix that with this other font. And now I got my own font.

38:16Yeah. Well, it's something I think about all the time. I can also share a little bit about how project concept is actually a forcing function for us to do it right. Yeah. And how we're leveraging a lot of the work that we've done in the last five years to really prepare us for this moment. but let me just take a quick few minutes and share a little history on something i'm very passionate about which is we call it content credentials but five years ago or so i was in a review of a product called after effects and i was seeing a new ai powered feature at the time called content aware fill where you can basically remove a coffee cup that might be left on the set of game of game of thrones or something like that right and it's really great yeah that's which action.

38:59Remember that? Exactly. It was, that was a time where you would either have to reshoot the scene, which is very expensive, or someone would have to frame by frame go and mask this thing out. And that was just a very, very not a fun thing to do. No one wants to rotoscope. No one wants to do that. Did they ever say how that happened? Were they just like, yeah, we just thought no one would notice. I don't know, but it was a great example. I love using the anecdotes. I'm glad that it did. And we shared this feature that just does it magically. It's unbelievable and people just, you know, it's a very popular feature.

39:32But when I saw that, two things went through my mind. One, wow, this is going to save so much time of mundane, repetitive work so people can get back to the important stuff. Yet also, wow, this is going to be kind of dangerous. You can remove people from scenes in politics. You can remove people from, I mean, you can really start to do things that are maybe potentially disruptive. And so at that time, we started an initiative that we call Content Authenticity. And the idea was actually to create a open source, open protocol that anyone can use to add metadata to an asset that ultimately displays how it was made, how it was edited, and who made it.

40:15And this, over the last five years, it's an open source now consortium of members. So we are, Adobe is just one of many members now of this nonprofit that governs this. But we are implementing content credentials in all of our tools, and so are many camera manufacturers and other tool companies, et cetera. Fast forward to today, when we have a cool product like Project Concept that leverages content from out there, and does it allow you to remix or not? How do we govern all of this? And it's just amazing that the content credentials technology exists now, because what we can do is say, hey, if it is a piece of Adobe stock where we have permission to use it for training purposes and the credentials state that, then the product can allow someone to remix using a stock image.

41:03And we can end up ultimately compensating the artist who made that stock image. If it's content that you come in with and it has your credentials in it from one of our products, then we can also allow you to remix it. If it has credentials from someone else, we can actually block it by default. If it has something from Behance where we put credentials on assets. We can actually constrain the use of these assets to respect the rights of the creator and maybe even build a marketplace where it says, yeah, you can't really remix this one unless you license it from the creator who's allowing you to use it for AI purposes.

41:41And maybe that's an opportunity for creators to make money while they're sleeping, having other people monetize or lease their style with their permission. Does that happen on the blockchain? is that how it would happen like i was like i was hesitant to bring that up but i'm like thinking about it of like that was something that we saw a bit of like for a second in music yeah right where it was like hey you can use my voice and if you make something that i'm connected to the revenue or like the resale of nfts we were starting to see that where it's like hey i make this asset if you want to remix this and use it i'm just always connected to it well let's let's be clear and first of all what i just described is what i hope is not the project concept is still an early concept in itself.

42:23The credentials actually are pretty hardened at this point. We have 3 ,700 members, it's ubiquitous, meta, Google, YouTube are all on board for content credentials. What I would say though is that it's a technology that can reward good actors and we may end up in a world where there's kind of like a Napster versus a Spotify and Apple Music model. I'm not saying that people will not still train models on the open web. Of course, people will reference images and use them in various ways. I mean, creativity has always been the world's greatest recycling program. Everyone is influenced by everyone and technology certainly accelerates that.

43:01What I do though think is that there is a lot of commercial creative production that's going to be done that really respects work. And that's happening right now with Firefly. And we train this whole family of models only on licensed content. And I work with customers every day that choose to use Firefly because of how it was trained. They don't want any IP in it that they don't feel comfortable with. I think that's going to become a more popular thing as well. And so whether it's blockchain or there's other, right now it's a centralized sort of system that companies use that use credentials to add them.

43:33And it's cryptographically in the asset. So it travels with the asset. There's actually no service that it's literally just in the asset and the technology exposes that metadata that's attached. But there's no saying that there couldn't be a decentralized approach at some point. What you were saying on stage was that like you could screenshot essentially a photo and if it's got credentials on it, it will show up. Is that just because there's like literally like AI is detecting that this image is that image and here's where it came from? Yeah. So it's basically a cryptographic signature in the asset that you're putting in when you're making it that then is used to expose the information and also can ping a server to expose even more information for companies that do host kind of the information associated with that asset.

44:27So for example, with Adobe, one thing we decided to do was we don't only add credentials to an asset that was made with Firefly. But if you use what's called a reference image, we allow you to do style match with our product. So you can take an image somewhere and use it as a style match to influence your generations. We actually store a thumbnail of that asset on our server. We tell you we're doing this so that the credentials track back to that thumbnail. So it keeps people honest. You're supposed to be using a reference image that you have a license to use. And if you don't, like that thumbnail is still there in the history of your image.

45:08And I just, that's a great example of how we can start to have a lineage or a provenance of how content was made. And in the future, I feel like there will be two types of content. There'll be content that has nothing. And then there'll be content that tells a story of how it was made, who made it, how it was edited, that sort of thing. I think what's going to end up happening is that people are going to trust the content with the story more than the content without the story in the age of AI for obvious reasons. We were talking about this last night, but there will be like, you know, a lot of creators ask us like, is AI just going to replace us?

45:42And what we were talking about last night is like, I think when you flash forward way into the future, there will be an unlimited amount of content without the story, right? Yes. Unlimited. Yep. But there will actually be a set number of content that has the story, making it rare and making it therefore like still desirable amongst a sea of AI content. And tell me what you think of this. But the analogy I use is that anything that becomes commoditized, we ultimately end up seeking something that is more scarce with more meaning and better story. Absolutely. Shoes, cars, you name it, food. We all crave the more scarce, meaningful version of anything that becomes commoditized.

46:26As companies flood the zone with content, and to your point, they will, right? They're starting to do it right now. If I wanted to make 1 ,000 blog posts on one topic and post them all in two hours, I now can. It's amazing, right? But it floods the zone with content. And what that does is it makes you just seek something better or more meaningful. And that's why I actually think that credentials will also include with it an element of the – it will almost serve as an artifact of humanity. because you're going to put your name on those credentials if you want. You can also put a link to your portfolio.

47:01You can put a link to your social feed. And suddenly there's a story behind the art, which, by the way, has always worked in the art world. Like, why wouldn't it work in the digital art world? I want to ask you, this is something that we would normally ask probably earlier in an episode when speaking with an executive at a company like this. It's obviously a huge responsibility to be chief strategy officer. seeing how many people these products impact across the globe. What makes you uniquely qualified to sort of sit in this role? And you kind of have to like, you're almost bragging a bit for yourself, but I'm curious, like, what do you think you are best at that makes you well-suited to be in the role that you're in?

47:43Well, I've always subscribed to the notion that you should only ever take jobs where you're not qualified to do them because that's like the stretch. So let's put that out there. There's a lot of learning on the job here. My mandate right now is design across all of our products, our emerging products group, and then strategy, which includes corporate development and the strategy functions. It's a fun role because emerging products is really a lot of the AI-first products, like Project Concept or Project Neo, a lot of these emerge out of my teams. And also working with my colleagues across the company on some of their more innovative efforts and making sure that we're all aligned around what the strategy is.

48:22But design, you know, design has always been the superpower for me in my career. And I can't say I've ever, I would ever have been a great product leader without great partnerships with designers who use a prototype that is worth 100 meetings that push me when I say I want something, coming back with something better and saying, Scott, you were wrong. This is what you're really asking for. those partnerships mean the world to me and so having design being responsible for design at adobe is actually a great way of pushing and executing this strategy because at the end of the day we're responsible for every pixel that we ship right now of course there are engineers that we work with within our organization and outside of our organization within adobe but design is a great forcing function for ultimately like what's what what you're trying to deliver.

49:11I think that, so if I look at the big successes and the shortcomings over my tenure at Adobe, previously as chief product officer and then now focused on emerging products, design and strategy, you know, it's very much, the consistent theme here is empowering designers, making sure that we're all aligned around what we're building at the onset, merchandising the strategy so people buy into it. A lot of it is storytelling and it's, you know, it sounds like a soft skill, but actually I think leadership is all about storytelling. It's helping people understand where we're going and why. It's helping people find the extra ounce of motivation and drive to get from good to great.

49:50You know, it's also telling a story of where we've failed and where we've floundered as a brand before and how to regain our trust with customers in certain areas. I think that's one of the most important skills. So, and it's something I love doing. You know, I've always loved helping, drive alignment around bold things. So this is a question that I have for myself, but I think a lot of creators would be interested in solely because a lot of us get into this because we want to be creative and then all of a sudden we do have teams and we do become managers and leaders. What advice do you have for me in working with my own creative team and like storytelling around where the company is going and being a leader?

50:34Well, the analogy I always use for leadership, especially of any sort of startup or bold project, something that takes a long time to accomplish, is that in some ways as a leader, you're driving a car cross country with the windows blacked out and your entire team sitting in the black seat. So they will go crazy. All right. Jesse's just nodding his head. He's like, that's accurate. Yeah. They will go crazy. Your team will go crazy if you're not constantly telling the story of the progress you are making. When I was in business school, I did a lot of my second year as an independent research under this woman named Teresa Mable, who did this big journaling study in organizations around creativity and motivation.

51:13And her ultimate, if I were to summarize her entire finding from an amazing study, it was that progress begets progress. When people are making, when they feel like they're making progress, they make more progress. Part of that storytelling to your team in the backseat is to help them understand that you are making progress. You are, yeah, we're in a little traffic, but it's clearing up, right? We just crossed the state line. These are the types of things that keep people going. So a lot of leaders I know just think that every team should sort of see that for themselves. And they almost feel fake merchandising and telling the story of what's obvious to them.

51:48But in fact, that's part of their job. So suggestion number one is to take that job seriously and put yourself in the backseat, empathize with those who can't see out the window shield and narrate it for them, number one, and celebrate progress because it's motivation for more. The second point I would make is really around this whole delegation versus what you don't delegate. In my life, I've always had what I call my L1s. These are my level one things that I am willing to roll up my sleeves, have working sessions every week, and also go down the stack of people and make it clear to those leaders that are partners of mine, but oftentimes people that are on my staff, that I'm going to go to designers on the line.

52:30They have to allow me to disrespect hierarchy and really get to the source of things because these are my L1s. These are the things that I hold myself most accountable for. But I only have a few of them. Everything else is either an L2, which means that it really decisions made by someone that reports to me or an L3, which means it's further down in the organization. And it's the only way I've found to be able to scale, you know, in this role. I often oscillate between thinking of us as a company and thinking of us as a band. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I, I, there's been times where I think of us, I'm like, we're, we're a media company.

53:13We produce the show. We sell advertising. We have partnerships. We have divisions we have uh you know things that need to happen on a daily basis but then we also just need to get in a room and like write a new song me and colin yeah and that is that does not fit into a schedule that's very like we just kind of need to come up with new stuff and you know sometimes reinvent and there's increased competition now and so like everything those two things can be at odds, right? Like there's, it's, I do think of creators, uh, more similar to like musical acts and musicians than I do to companies. And I think during the big creator economy boom, there was a moment in time where we were almost seen as like tech founders, you know, like we looked and felt really scalable and people wanted to invest and people wanted us to build CPG products next to our, our names.

54:04And, uh, some people are doing that and some people are fit for that. But I actually think when you look at this world of, of creators and creatives, we are oftentimes like we're compensated for when we do the work, you know? And so we need, and then also it's our identity. Like when you put out a piece of work, it feels so close to us as humans. Like it's not a, another company name. It's like, it's our company is called Colin and Samir. It's just us. Like, so anyway, I think a lot of like, I love that advice, but I oscillate between trying to understand our organization as a organization versus as like a musical act i mean in some ways as you were speaking i was thinking about the analogy of ram but for our heads we only have 100 of ram yeah right now when you're starting out and any band is starting out or any creative starting out almost all of their ram is in their work so 100 of their ram is dedicated to like the cycles of discovery and you guys being in a room and jamming together and everything else And maybe that's why there are so many one-hit wonders in the world who capitalize on that moment and come up with something amazing.

55:13But what happens then? The record company wants to meet with them a lot. They have to hire a PR person and a marketing person and a this and a that. And before you know, you have a schedule and then you have a team and you're spending 30 % of your RAM on people's careers and management and everything else. And maybe they only end up with 30 % of RAM left to do what you just described. and what is the formula for being able to do both that you just described? And by the way, this is the ultimate kind of creator's question is how do you preserve your RAM for creating as your success steals your RAM from creating?

55:47Yeah. What's the answer? I don't know if you guys figure that out. Is that for next time or? Yeah, that's really helpful though. I think honestly what you just described is really helpful. I think the challenge is sometimes we feel like we're in the backseat with the windows blacked out too. We all do. But, you know, sometimes you have to force quit, I guess, or minimize the RAM allocated to an application running in your head. So, like, here we are. We're sitting, you know, in this weird big room in Miami. But, you know, there's probably a lot of stuff that all of us have running. We've just, like, minimized the RAM to, like, the lowest possible where the application is still running but is not stealing any resources.

56:27and compartmentalization and practice is probably how we do that, I guess. I don't know. I love that. I struggle with that as well. We need to get Scott out of here. We do. All right. Busy man. This was so much fun. This was really great. I could have talked to you for another two hours. I'm just asking questions for you. I love what you guys have built and your story as well and the fact that you were so always willing to share it and share other stories. And I'm just honored to be one of them. Thank you. Appreciate it, Scott. Appreciate that. Thanks so much for coming on. Of course. All right.

56:56So where do we start with Scott Belsky? You want to start in the beginning of what we started talking about or more towards the tail end? I mean, I think this entire conversation was like very stimulating for me. I'm enjoying having these future facing conversations. But towards the end, that was very in the present when he started talking about creative leadership. The conversation around your team feeling like they're in a car with the windows blacked out. I will like that visual is in my head forever. I will never forget that one. And all I can think about when I walk into our studio is that.

57:32It just made me empathize with our team. Yeah. But also realize that like, I don't always even know where we're going. Right. Yeah. Like it's almost, almost like we, I don't know, like we don't, I don't go far enough every day to see what's around the bend. Sure. You know, does that make sense? Uh-huh. Yeah. But you kind of have to, that you have to zoom out and create a map for everyone. He was really good at talking about that. I like how he said you have to storytell. If you consider yourself a storyteller as a creative, you also need to storytell around where your company is going for your creatives.

58:04Use your skill as a storyteller to communicate with your own employees. Now, at the same time, I think with how fast and different the creative landscape is... Now, I also think about how much the creative landscape is evolving right now. Like there's a level of flexibility you have to have to run a creative company right now. I was even thinking about how much our workflow has changed since we moved into this studio, which is only two years. Like think about how much our workflow has changed. Even from transcribing episodes, like taking a three-hour audio file and having Adobe be able to transcribe it and create subtitles.

58:42I thought about there was a time where we used to create subtitles by listening to what the person was saying and typing in the word. I'm making a new one every time. And that's like three years ago, four years ago. That's not that long ago. So the pace at which stuff is changing is really dramatic. And obviously some of the stuff that's annoying is so great that we don't have to do that. That's an example, right? Transcribing audio is an example. But the one question that as I listened back to this episode that I wish we got into was collaboration. Because the one thing I think about when I hear Adobe's updates and I think about the future is what's really great is it's a more self-reliant version of creativity.

59:18Everything that I want to do as an individual creative, I can probably do now. Yeah, as he says, the bell curve of how-to is flattening. Yeah. That is pretty profound if you think about it. That is a major shift to think like, okay, maybe you have someone that you want to collaborate with and you would hire to make an animation or a logo or something. Yeah. Right? As long as you know what style you like, are we looking at a future where it's like, I can just do it myself because how to do this is not a problem? Yeah, right. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think you will always, like we talked about, you always need tastemakers who are like, yes, that's the right logo.

1:00:02But if you believe in your own judgment and you believe in your own taste and it works, then yeah, you're a more self-reliant version of a creative. I primarily think about this in the context of myself because I have a lot of ideas. I think I can produce a lot of things, but I actually struggle to make things. Like I can't design in Photoshop, right? Like that's just not something I can do. I know what I want a logo to feel like, but I'm not a designer. That's been our relationship where like you designed the logo. Yeah. Right. And I think that's what got me thinking about this. You're basically saying you could replace it.

1:00:36Well, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if I can actually generate a logo that, you know, I like, but I imagine in the future I can, you know, it might not be exact today, but I imagine the future I can. You remember like when we were first making shows on YouTube, we had this thing called the machine, right? It was like you and one of our editors, Matt, one of our editors, Brad, and like everybody contributed to make these graphics and animations come to life. Yeah. I would design what they look like. Matt would animate them. Brad would add sound effects. And like, there was a lot of people adding their own flavor to a thing.

1:01:13From what we saw at Adobe Max between like being able to create sound effects from text, right? Which is not something that's out yet, but there's something they showed us as a sneak, you know, being able to animate text, being able to design a logo, like all of that, you know, in the foreseeable future probably can be done by one person. And I can't, I don't know if that's like a, you know, it removes a lot of friction, which is positive, but it just changes the dynamic of what collaboration means. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, like he says in that instance, right? Like people will want content with the story to it with more of the human touch that like if tools are democratized and anyone can actually make anything, people will still want the story behind the creation.

1:02:01Right? So hopefully in the future that will have value. Right? That even if people can make things like that, the story to putting it together will need to be substantial. Yeah, that was an interesting part of the conversation that if everyone can do everything, then the ones that will continue to rise to the top are going to be the ones, like creative work with story behind it. Because otherwise creative work is not going to be as whoa. You know, like we won't step back and be like, whoa, that's an amazing piece of design. But there will always be a group of people who like these things and want to spend more time doing it and pushing the bounds of where it goes, right?

1:02:38Like even if tools are so democratized, you probably don't want to sit and make logos all day. But there will be people who like want to make it their life's work to continue pushing the bounds of like what a logo looks like or an animation. Even if they're using tools that make it easy, they probably have a specific expertise that is so far advanced that can push it even further, that will hopefully keep them in that position of having their jobs truly and being at the leading edge of a creative field. Yeah. But these are all unknowns, right? You just sit, you realize AI is coming in a major way, and we all have to sit and experience and see what happens.

1:03:15I mean, to date, it's been phenomenal for us. It's increased our pace of creation. It's made things that used to be really annoying not as annoying. So like overall, if we just go based on the data from our own experience, it's like, this has been a net positive. Yeah. You know, I really appreciate the way Scott thinks and the way he articulates things. And one thing I will say is I really appreciate Adobe's effort into content authenticity and ownership. And, and just, that's a big problem to solve. And we didn't touch on this, but the fact that he said like YouTube is on board and some of these major platforms are on board.

1:03:54Yeah. And really where that's going to start is Adobe. Of course, it's like we're all making the content in Adobe products. Well, it starts with Adobe and it starts with the camera companies who are also on board. Like the vision of the future of really understanding where art and creative originated is making sure that right when it comes out of the camera, or eventually when it comes out of your phone, it's tagged with metadata that sticks with it. And he said sticks with it, even if you like screenshot it. Right. Right. So it starts when it comes out of the camera or it starts when you design it in Photoshop.

1:04:23And of course, there will always be the content without the story, as he calls it, like the AI content. But yeah, that is, at least I give them credit for many years ago, starting to solve this problem of content ownership and identification. And of course, it would be a guy like him who created Behance, right? Like a portfolio for artists' work. You can imagine as he talks about, and I call it like Napster moment, the moment he learns about AI training off of all of his artists' work, he's probably like, oh, crap. It's over. The same way the music industry was like, oh, it's over. But they have come up with and are implementing a plan.

1:04:59Yeah. I think the last thing I'll say is that this truly feels like the industrial revolution for creativity. And AI tools are the farming tools that were given or the steam engine that that came out during the industrial revolution where you're like, oh, that's a dramatically different way to operate. So I feel like staying ahead of the pack here and just trying to learn as much as possible for us as well as for all creatives that are out there is super important. And it's natural to be preservationist and be like, I just want to preserve how things work today. How the world works today in creativity is how I want it to always work.

1:05:39It's just not the case. It's just not what's happening. These companies are pushing forward, you know, AI and integrating into software and making things just different. Things are more seamless. Things are starting to change. I think it's important to things that you didn't think were possible are possible. Yes. Sitting in Adobe Max and seeing some of their features that are coming out and the whole crowd just almost like gasping at, again, things that took hours and hours and hours that you thought took like specific creative thought, just boom, done. I mean, yeah. Even like, I think about my first gig at my dad's company, which is a clothing company, was just key framing on Photoshop.

1:06:15What's that called? Where you like magic wand out products, right? I would like, there'd be photos of a product and I had to just removing a product from the background. I had to just remove it from the background and put it into a new environment and adjust the lighting. Like I could do maximum 10 products a day. And now with a click, you can do it on video. You could click on a person and the person on a video from the background. Yeah, with a click. So then you go, okay, what else? Yeah, like what can I get to now that that's easier? Yeah. You know, that's really - What do I want to use that for?

1:06:44Yeah, exactly. I would recommend you guys check out Scott Belsky. His writing is awesome. If you check out Implications, that's his newsletter. Just try and be flexible and open-minded towards everything that is coming out in the context of AI. Get your hands on some of these tools. If you use the Adobe Suite, then you're already going to start naturally integrating these tools into your workflow. And let us know what you thought about this conversation. I'm really curious to hear how you guys are thinking about AI when it comes to your workflow. All right. We will see you next week here on the Colin and Samir Show.