Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Digitally Curious, the podcast that will help you navigate the future of AI and all things tech with your host, actionable futurist, Andrew Grill.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Today in the show we have Trevor Davis, a renowned industry futurist and former IBM Distinguished Engineer with over 25 years of experience working at the intersection of technology, sustainability and the creative industries. Working at the intersection of technology, sustainability and the creative industries. As a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a pioneer in fields such as big data, artificial intelligence and digital transformation, trevor's helped global brands and creative businesses navigate disruptive change, ethical challenges and new opportunities in the age of AI. Known for his forward-thinking insights and practical guidance on responsible innovation, trevor brings deep expertise and a distinctive perspective to the evolving world of creativity and technology. Welcome, trevor. Andrew. Thanks for having me, not unlike a lot of my guests on the show. We know each other quite well. We spent quite a lot of time at IBM some years ago and both of us moved on from that wonderful organization. But maybe you could tell us about your journey from working at IBM as a distinguished engineer to becoming an independent expert focusing on AI in the creative industries, and maybe what sparked this transition.

Speaker 3: 1:15

Well, let me start with the last one first. I mean, I loved working for IBM. I got a lot out of it, but at the end of the day, it is a large corporation. There's a lot out of it, but at the end of the day, it is a large corporation. There's a lot of administration, there's a lot of jockeying for position, a lot of metrics, that kind of thing, and I think I reached a point in my life where I thought I want to really be free of that, and so being out by myself gives me a great opportunity to pursue my passion projects and also to work with some of my favourite clients.

Speaker 3: 1:48

As to the journey, I don't think a lot of people really understand much about my background. I started off as a material scientist and I worked for many, many years in that area people developing new products, new forms of packaging, certainly looking at the cutting edge of developing materials, using things like machine learning, even back in the 1980s, when we had things like expert systems, if you remember those. So when I came to the end of my time in IBM, I looked at my portfolio of work, and during that time with IBM, I was mostly working with the large consumer products companies you know the Unilevers, the Nestles, the Diageos and mostly working with either their marketing or their research and development people. And I thought to myself, well, you know, the creativity thread, the innovation thread is very strong here. I'm going to stay with that.

Speaker 3: 2:48

And so for me it became a matter of saying, well, what's the best way to do that? And I split my time really between working with large brands, looking at really where they want to go, but also what's the role of technology in getting there and also what does that mean in terms of sustainability. And then the rest of my time is spent researching the creative industries, and the link is, if you're working on, say, a new product or a new marketing campaign for a large brand, then you're going to interact with a lot of people who were making things like advertisements, building websites, creating prototype products and packaging. So the creativity thread is very strong there and I was very lucky that I had a good partner in the University for the Creative Arts who invited me to help them, through their Centre for Sustainable Design, to really explore a lot of these new areas like generative AI and the impact on the creative industries.

Speaker 2: 3:54

We're going to unpack that, because a lot of friends of mine that are creatives are both excited but also a little bit scared about what AI brings to their world and what they might be using it for. So I'm really keen on your take on that. But you coined a term which I love createch to describe where creativity meets technology. So first, how do you define this intersection and what makes these companies that are in the createch industry unique in today's digital landscape?

Speaker 3: 4:20

Well, I wouldn't say I coined that phrase. I think it did exist before I started using it quite heavily, but I think I, alongside Professor Martin Charter at the University of the Creative Arts, I think we popularized it a lot and gave it a lot more substance. So these Createc companies really have technology at the core of their value proposition. So they are a fusion of creative action, creative production, creative output and advanced technology. But the technology is central to that value proposition and important in terms of how they make money, and the vast majority of the businesses that certainly I look at are business-to-business type companies. So if you think of people who are in the visual effects world, people who are making AI-powered avatars for using games, it's those kinds of companies.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Your research. You mentioned the University of Creative Arts, where you did some research. It shows AI is just one of several disruptive industry 4.0 technologies. What would you say are the other key technologies that are reshaping creative industries and how do they work together?

Speaker 3: 5:27

Well, I think it's important for us to say the creative industries aren't really a unified sector in the way that, say, automotive is. You've got a lot of subsectors. So at the one extreme, you've got craft and you've got the performing arts, but then you've got what I would refer to as digital first businesses like the streamers, the Netflixes of the world, and then you've got a whole load of businesses which are really somewhere in the middle. So it's a very messy if you want to think of it that way sector or a very sort of enjoyable sector in terms of its diversity. So if you look at the different subsectors, you actually see different technologies playing out. So obviously, you know, within fashion, you see a lot of extended reality and virtual reality being used. If you look at architecture, you're starting to see a lot of 3D printing of building materials and buildings themselves.

Speaker 3: 6:22

Digital twins are cropping up left, right and centre. You see them in everything again, from architecture all the way through to film sets In the fashion world, digital twins being used, for instance, for bodies, so you can keep a digital twin of yourself and then decide which garments are going to fit you. Then you've got blockchain, which is exerting quite a big influence, particularly in things like the circular economy in the creative industries. So you've got a lot of emphasis on traceability of equipment and on materials. You've got in the more artistic end of the industry, you've got a lot of non-fungible tokens being used to monetize art or even to keep track of gamers assets within the game world. So virtual reality, extended reality, blockchain, 3d printing these are quite big ones, digital twins, as I say, and then there's a number of kind of niche technologies which, which I won't go into at the moment, which have kind of hyper-specialized for the creative industries.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So I want to look now at AI's impact on the creative process, because I think it will have a massive impact and I'm seeing it already, and you've studied how generative AI has transformed creative work since ChatGPT's release in late 2022. What have been the most significant changes you've observed in how creative professionals approach their work?

Speaker 3: 7:48

I'd like to kind of divide it up, if you don't mind, into kind of two responses. So one response is how are the industry professionals using these tools and how are they reacting to them? And then there are people who are outside of the industry who maybe think that they are kind of creatives in their own right and how they're using it, and I'll deal with that one first. So there's an awful lot of generative AI being used to produce slop, as I'm sure you're aware. So you know people recreating moments from famous films, for instance, and saying, wow, you know, I did this in 10 minutes. Why did it take some famous director? Why did it take them? You know, 12 days of shooting to do this, which kind of misses the whole point about human creativity and the creative process, and I think that creates a lot of alarm within the industry. It also sets a really unrealistic expectation of what these technologies can do, in my view. Now the industry professionals, I think, have a different response.

Speaker 3: 8:50

If you look at an area like animation, there are laborious processes like in-betweening. So if you know how animation is done, you have keyframes and then there's some poor sod who has to kind of sit there and draw all the bits in the middle, and there have always been bits of software that can help with that kind of process. Generative AI definitely has a big impact in that space and it does displace some employment I'm in no doubt of that but it also does give a lot more creative control to the people who know how to use these tools. I think there's an awful lot of stuff that happens in the background of a lot of creative production that people just don't understand. I mean, if you take putting an advertisement together, for instance, there are multiple cycles of creating storyboards and prototypes and kind of sample images and things like that. And generative AI, again in the hands of somebody that has the right artistic ability and creative abilities, is very powerful in terms of being able to help them to cover that space more efficiently.

Speaker 3: 10:00

And then I think that you know, in the bits of the creative industry that rely very heavily on writing, there are a lot of tools which are not about generating text. They're actually about polishing text or refining text or providing you a first pass critique or analysing the text to decide whether you know it's likely to engage an audience. And again, writers have always had access to people who can do that. Now they have access to tools and, for instance, I use one quite often in my creative writing to kind of give me early feedback before I actually give it to a human being. So there's a lot of stuff happening in behind the scenes to take the grunt work out of a lot of creative processes. And then I think there are a number of creative professionals who are really grappling with these technologies and saying, well, let's see how it can produce a better or more efficient output.

Speaker 2: 10:59

So you're closer to the industry than I am. What was the reaction a year or so ago when OpenAI's Sora came out and more recently, when Google's VO3 came out? For me, it's amazing technology. Now it can't produce a feature film, yet. It can do short, sharp grabs, and for me, I'm not a graphic designer, so if I wanted to show a concept, I could probably show someone that could design that for me very quickly. But what's been the initial feedback? Are they worried or are they thinking, wow, if I can do this in 2025, imagine how it's going to give us some more creative freedom into the coming years.

Speaker 3: 11:32

I'd say it's quite mixed. Actually, the initial reaction I think of most people in the industry is we're still a very long way away from being able to produce something that is a commercial kind of winner as a film or a piece of art. And you know, it's more than just producing a prompt that then just recycles things that have already been shown. And I think this is probably the most consistent reaction that I get from people is they go oh, it looks a bit like Blade Runner or oh, it looks a bit like you know some random television show from the 1980s. People look at it and go. Well, you know, if that's what you want to produce a lot of, in terms of your content, stuff that's already been seen fine. But if you want to see something that's new and original, particularly an original piece of intellectual property, then creating a film or TV series from scratch using just prompts is not the way to go. Where it does come in what I have seen people react to and go.

Speaker 3: 12:38

Quite often things go wrong when you're shooting things. Wouldn't it be great if what we could do is take the previous 10 minutes that you shot that was perfect and say you know that 30 seconds that didn't quite work, fix that Now, that is really useful. And then I think, the negative response. It depends again on which subsector you look at. Certainly, in film and TV there's a lot of people at the top of the business now who don't really have a passion for these art forms. They're just, you know, they're MBAs, they come from a purely business kind of background, and I think the creatives look at this and go. You know, there's probably an executive out there who thinks they can just cut cinematographer out, cut storyboard artist out, you know, and then they can just sit at their desk and go, oh, I'd like Fast and Furious 29, please, and it will miraculously pop out. So I think there's people who are looking at it and thinking, well, that's not really very good. And then I guess there's kind of a more kind of common concern, which is people look at it and go.

Speaker 3: 13:58

Well, you know, on the one hand it appears to be democratizing this creative process, making it much more accessible to people with lesser ability. On the other hand, you know, that's not really the gate that stops people being successful in most creative worlds. In most creative worlds, you know, there are things like routes to market, just like a retailer, you know there's the idea of distribution. You quite often have to secure funding from people for your idea before you can get very far, and sure you know you can use these technologies to improve your pitch. If they then ask a few difficult questions like so you've just shown me, you know 35 seconds, how are you going to make that? You know two hours and 10 minutes and you haven't got a good answer, which at the moment most people haven't, then it's going to go nowhere.

Speaker 2: 14:40

So I want to talk about sustainability, because we know that this AI uses a lot of energy, even for writing scripts and those sort of things, but, as you know, the more computational power that's required, the more energy is required. So let's look at the elephant in the room. Your research shows that while 72% of Cratec industries say sustainability is core to their strategy, only 5% have actual sustainability policies. So how does AI contribute to environmental challenges in the creative industries and how do you think we can overcome them?

Speaker 3: 15:09

I think, in a way, the statistics around create tech companies is a bit of a red herring. I mean, the most create tech companies that I look at are startups and scale-ups and you know, micro businesses always have problems with anything that looks like documentation, policies and procedures. So I think there's a bit of me that says when they grow up, they'll probably get those kind of things. Still not a great look if you're kind of out there in the marketplace and you can't really demonstrate your credentials, I think. More generally, I think the way the industry is looking at particularly generative AI is very much as a scope three kind of problem from a sustainability, carbon footprint point of view. In other words, it's out there in their supply chain and value chain and I would say most of the people I talk to are going well, we haven't got a lot of control over that. We want to use these tools, but you know, Google, Microsoft name a provider say that they're aiming for net zero in 2030, 2035 or whatever, and they're doing everything they can. I mean, who are we to question that? Now I would say something completely different, because I then look at how these companies are approaching, for instance, using these tools, and I think you know they don't even understand the basics. You know they're using the biggest model to do the smallest task. So all they have to do is just be a bit smarter in the way they use these tools. I mean, I sat next to people who are basically using ChatGPT instead of Googling something, and we know that that really just burns through energy. And I think you know, again, the industry slowly waking up to the fact that they have a responsibility here, and I think what's one of the things that's really crystallizing it is convergence of technologies around virtual production. So if you look at film and TV I mean I'm sure you know this and people listening to this will know about things like the Mandalorian there's an increasing use of these production volumes, which are big LED paddle lined spaces where you use a gaming engine to create your scenery and then you have some physical props and then the actors kind of work within that. And when you run one of these facilities, you have to grapple with things like media servers, for instance. So people have to start thinking about well, you know, I've got a lot of computing power actually in the space. You know it's not out there in the cloud. It's actually here. It's not out there in the cloud, it's actually here.

Speaker 3: 17:48

And so suddenly people are looking at these production volumes and going, oh, maybe we should pick a green energy supplier or, you know, maybe we should think about energy policies for when we run these things. And then there's the whole issue of electronic waste associated with, you know, the very rapid innovation cycles that you get in that area. So that's made the industry then look a bit wider and go you know, when we choose a cloud provider for our generative AI, maybe we should be asking them a different set of questions about what they're really doing. So, rather than asking them about their net zero kind of targets and things like that, maybe we should be asking them about decarbonisation. You know, what are they actually doing to reduce those things? We should be asking questions about the water footprint for cooling as well, not just the energy side and we should be asking them about how their data centres are constructed, because the concrete that goes into making these things, you know, has a lot of embedded carbon in it, and so there's kind of the industry slowly waking up to this.

Speaker 2: 18:53

I think part of it is realising that there's huge energy demands, even down to the concrete. I get asked all the time, almost in every talk, about energy requirements and, just as an aside, I gave a talk back in the summer at a beach, actually ironically opposite IBM's old building in South Bank. There's a car park there which is now London Beach. They put some sand down there and you and I would have walked past it every morning, and as I was in this marquee, I looked off to my left stage left and there was a huge inflatable elephant in the room, and so during Q&A I was asked about sustainability and energy requirements of AI and I said everyone look to your right and there is the elephant in the room.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Not enough people are realizing that this is an issue, and I hadn't actually thought about the concrete issues. I know about the water issues. So when you build a data center, you have to have, obviously, energy, and we've seen companies like Meta and Microsoft reopen Three Mile Island and then commission new nuclear plants because they need a lot of clean, on-demand energy. But also there's that water. You have to cool these GPUs down to the chip level, and so you need a lot of water. For that, and I think it's almost when you have an RFP, you should be asking, as you say, your supplier how green are you down to? Where are are you getting the the water from, and is it? Is it renewable and sustainable?

Speaker 3: 20:07

creative industries has a fairly unique issue when it comes to managing its suppliers. So you have these anchor institutions like netflix, um or the bbc or you know any name, any other big you know kind of commissioner content or a big advertising agency group or something like that, but they're not the bulk of the sector. The bulk of the sector about 80% of it is made up of freelancers and micro businesses, and those businesses really find it quite difficult to boss their suppliers about. So there is a difficulty. I think that's unusual for the creative industries and particularly the freelancers. You know they often are trying very hard in their personal life and in their professional life to be as sustainable as they can and then they go and work on a project and they see, you know, these abuses in their view, but they can't really do much about it. You know, again, the subsectors are quite different as well.

Speaker 3: 21:08

In TV and film, or high end TV and film in particular, you've got initiatives like BAFTA's Albert, which has brought an enormous focus on energy consumption and is now starting to look at broader issues such as the ones we've been discussing here. That is not necessarily replicated in any other sector. And if you look at things like regulatory pressure to you know, kind of be more sustainable. Actually it's architecture, it's bits of product design, mostly around electronics. To a certain extent it's fashion, but not really, you know, most of the pressure on fashion is really on textiles and textile waste, which isn't really the creative end of it. I think the creative industries are difficult to engage with the companies behind those technologies, because the people that run those companies have a very different value system from people in the creative industries, and so you've got not just this difficulty of engaging with a very rapidly growing kind of sector the AI businesses but you've also now you're dealing with people who just don't think like you. So you have to find some common ground to have a negotiation.

Speaker 2: 22:30

So we've covered sustainability. I want to now look at ethics, because this is so important in the creative industries, and your work highlights some of the concerns about ethical use of AI in creative contexts. So what are the most pressing ethical dilemmas creative professionals face when using AI tools?

Speaker 3: 22:45

If you're a user of the tool. I think the biggest concern you have is am I using a tool that's based on work that has been stolen from other people like me? And the answer to that at the moment is usually yes, you are. There's a tremendous issue, which I think everybody's aware of, of intellectual property theft by. You know people like open AI and others to create these tools. Now they hide behind various arguments, legal and otherwise, and I think people in the industry just don't really buy that. They they just say well, you know you could have paid us, and some companies do. You know there's been a recent announcement by Anthropic that they're going to give some money back to, I think, writers for some of the published work that's that's been used for Claude, but that's kind of the exception and the amount of money that's going back is is a fraction of what's really been extracted. The phrase I hear quite often about particularly the Silicon Valley businesses is that they are robber barons.

Speaker 2: 23:53

I think the legislation and the law around copyright protection and trademarks and IP is a moving feast. You will remember, a few years ago there was a monkey that took a picture. The photographer put the camera down. A monkey that took a picture. The photographer put the camera down, the monkey took the picture and there was a dispute going backwards and forwards about who owned the rights to that picture. So now they're saying well, if it's an AI, who owns the rights to that, and I think that will change. Is this something that's worrying the creative industries? There's no sort of real definitive legislation about who owns my work if I use AI tools.

Speaker 3: 24:27

I think there are laws that cover a lot of areas like copyright.

Speaker 3: 24:31

It's just that many of these companies have ignored that and claim that they are somehow exempt from that. And you know, again, if you think of what I said earlier about the composition of the industry, you know it's made up of maybe 80%, individual artists, freelancers, tiny, tiny little businesses. They can't take on, you know, really without a class action, some of these companies. So you're very dependent on the larger businesses, the large publishers, for instance, or film companies with that archive. You're very dependent on them really going to war in some respect with with some of these companies which they are, and sometimes they're trying to just get money out of them. Sometimes they're using it as a lever to get a better form of collaboration with these companies and in a small number of cases they're looking to change the way that the law operates. So it's a really messy situation and I think that is a great concern, particularly to individual artists who just find it very, very difficult to see how it's going to play out for them.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Based on your research, you're predicting the creative industries in the UK will grow to 300 billion by 2030. So what role will AI play in driving this growth?

Speaker 3: 25:52

My view is it will be absolutely central. If you look at what lies behind that growth and break it down into the individual subsectors, you can see that this area that we referred to earlier as Createc and those businesses that are using Createc as suppliers to them, they're the ones that are generating the growth it's not coming out of, you know, for instance, the craft sector or architecture. It is going to be absolutely central and I think the reason why I say that is that you can already see that acceleration, particularly in film and TV production, where basically the UK has to a large extent, run out of capacity to make any more. So the only way really to, you know, kind of grow the sector is to employ virtual production to a much greater extent.

Speaker 2: 26:45

I've been reading in the industry press that you know, the holding companies of these creative industries are under a lot of pressure and there've been some mergers and there's lots of fallout and what have you. So how do you see AI changing the relationship between brands and creative agencies?

Speaker 3: 26:58

At a very simplistic level. Most of the creative agencies I deal with now are finding that they're unable to get clients to pay for that very upfront piece of concept development, because the client's saying well, you know, we'd still rather you did the work, but you know, if you try and charge us for it, we'll just go and use ChatGPT or Midjourney or something like that and we'll work up some concepts ourselves. We'll pick a favorite and then we'll come to you and say we want that. So I think it's changing the nature of how creative agencies can charge for their work, for a start. I think the second thing is it's if you look at it more from the agency side. As I mentioned earlier, it allows an individual creative to produce many more variations around a particular theme than they probably could have done before, and I know from having worked with a lot of people in that kind of area they're often quite frustrated at deadlines. You know I need like five concepts by next Friday and actually you know what they'd rather do is either work up one really good one or or come up with 20.

Speaker 3: 28:14

And I think AI tools give you the ability to help with both of those possible outcomes. So I think I think for a creative agency, it's it's changing that front end piece in particular. I think there will certainly within that 2030 timeframe, I think you will see considerably more kind of short content production being produced out of tools like Sora. That, to me, is where those tools really are going to land. So not feature films, not episodic television, but a 30 second spot or a 15 second spot or a two minute spot, you know, on YouTube or through TikTok. I think that is where you're going to see an awful lot of the production going down the AI route. So I think that end of the industry is going to come under a lot of employment pressure.

Speaker 2: 29:12

So one of the jobs of a futurist is to look at trend forecasting. So how is AI changing trend forecasting and market research in the creative fields?

Speaker 3: 29:20

I think generally a lot of the first steps in generating some kind of forecast or foresight probably is a better word is starting with prompts on a keyboard at the moment. So I get clients who come to me and they go, I type this into ChatGPT and it's given me these five trends to ChatGPT. And it's given me these five trends. Are they real or you know what? Do you think they really mean for my business?

Speaker 3: 29:52

I've got the generic out of ChatGPT but I really want to know what it means to my stakeholders within my organisation, to my people. And I think that actually part of my work has grown because of the arrival of tools like ChatGPT. Because I think if I looked at my portfolio before ChatGPT, people used to come along to me and say I'd like you to do some desk research and then I'd like you to come up with some trends, come and do some workshops. Now what they come along and go and says I have a bunch of trends, I'd like you to work out with my people which ones make sense for us to do something about, and then I'd like you to try and turn that into some kind of project and that I think is a smart use of the technology, and I think it's also quite mature in recognising that there are problems with the way these tools are trained.

Speaker 2: 30:43

So we keep mentioning this figure of 2030. Let's look beyond that. It's only five years away. What do you think beyond 2030, the creative industries will look like?

Speaker 3: 30:51

Well, I'd like to think they'll still be there for a start. What I do detect is an undercurrent of a return to what I would call more authentic forms of production. I'll just give you a very, very simple example. Recall more authentic forms of production. I'll just give you a very, very simple example.

Speaker 3: 31:13

In the last couple of years, a film format like proper film, called VistaVision, that has not been used since the 1960s, suddenly has become one of the go-to formats in filmmaking.

Speaker 3: 31:20

And I think what's happening is you look at almost any aspect of the creative industries and you can definitely see there are people who are going.

Speaker 3: 31:27

Well, you know you can have this thing over here which was produced in a factory or came out of chat, gpt or you know I can do this kind of bespoke thing and it's going to cost you a bit more, but you know we can have a dialogue around it and I think that's kind of how the industry is probably going to segment itself.

Speaker 3: 31:46

There's going to be an awful lot. You know, 2040, 2050, you know there's going to be an awful lot of stuff that's literally just flowing straight off a keyboard, regardless of who's behind that keyboard, and then there's going to be a kernel of stuff which is going to be extraordinary in the way that great pieces of commercial art can be, and I think that's definitely going to be there and probably going to be stronger than most people think it is, because I think if you look at the younger generations that are coming through, they seem to have this thirst for things which are much more experiential and that's not something you can really automatically supply just by typing a prompt and getting something out through your screen on your computer.

Speaker 2: 32:38

So we've talked about generative AI. The flavor of the year is agentic AI, and we're going to see more and more of this. Now let me cast your mind back to 2018. I was on stage and I started talking about the day that we'll have our own AI agent, and I think I was actually in front of a bunch of creative or ad people and I think they almost did throw their stress toys at me because I said one day in the future, we won't be looking at ads because I'll have a digital agent we now call it a Gentagai that will actually look to buy from another digital agent of a product that I need or want, and humans won't be looking at ads. I said that back in 2018. I actually found a video of me saying it in 2019. And on stage at CES this year, shelley Palmer basically said we're going to have to write ads for robots. We're not there yet, but talk me through how that changes everything when I'm no longer needing to look at ads for consumables.

Speaker 3: 33:34

I think it comes down to market segmentation, isn't it really? I mean, if you're talking about your next weekly shop, I'm sure that is not very far away. Your next weekly shop, I'm sure that is not very far away. I think if you're about to go, and you know, shop for your wedding dress, that's probably not going to be the case, so I think you have to kind of segment the market that way. I think what it does do, though, is it says something about the nature of things like advertising and promotion budgets, for instance.

Speaker 3: 34:08

You know why would you spend an awful lot of money on the creative side if all you're doing is producing something that a large language model is going to pick between? I think it will shift the way that the AMP spend goes. And again, I think what we'll be looking at in some ways is a very old thing, which is, people will suddenly rediscover the power of brand equity, and they'll start thinking, hmm, if we are going to produce some ads for humans, then they have got to enhance the value of the brand. They haven't necessarily got to persuade people to shop, and that's where we are at the moment, is that we have mostly a lot of advertisements that are really just persuading people to spend money through a retail channel of some sort. So I think we're going to see this massive swing back to brand development, brand building, all of those kind of good things. Development, brand building, all of those kind of good things.

Speaker 3: 35:04

And I think within that world, I think where these AI tools and the agentic AI tools work to a large extent is about automation of research processes, for instance, for consumer market insight. I mean, you and I have both done this. You know, you commission like 20 different reports on different market segments, and then you think, oh my God, I've got to read these things and make sense of it. And I can see a situation where an agent could, you know, handle the commissioning process. It could handle the initial feedback process. It could then provide concise summaries for different departments, it could solicit stakeholder feedback and then it could produce some kind of action plan out of the end of it. So all of that kind of thing there is, I think, quite close actually.

Speaker 2: 35:53

So final question before we go to the quickfire round If I'm a creative listening to this podcast, should I worry about AI and should I be upskilling to stay ahead and leverage the power of AI?

Speaker 3: 36:03

Yes, you should worry about it, because if you don't, somebody else in your job role is going to be worrying about it and thinking, hmm, how do I use this to my advantage? I think, in terms of upskilling, definitely. I mean, I think it is a real issue right across creative industries is that there are a lot of people who are quite nervous of the terminology around these things, or they think that engaging with some of these tools is going to be vastly complex and interestingly. I mean I. So I.

Speaker 3: 36:35

I have a, a client who um uses a tool called blender, and blender is used for know kind of creating beautiful visual effects or part of the visual effects process. It's very, very complicated indeed and he's terrified of using AI tools. So I think, well, hang on a second, you can cope with Blender, which freaks me out completely, and but AI is too much. So I think this is there's a lack of a lingua franca between the creatives and the technologists. That kind of gets in the way. So I think, definitely upskill, don't be so afraid you won't try so we're almost out of time.

Speaker 2: 37:15

We're up to my favorite part of the show, the quickfire round, when we learn more about our guests. Window or aisle, always the aisle. I wish that ai could do all of my laundry. You arery. You are the, I think, 12th guest to say that the first thing I asked ChatGPT was Is this email spam and what did it tell you?

Speaker 3: 37:30

It said it was and was it? It was the app you use most on your phone Things. It builds itself really as a kind of more like a structure my thinking structure, my day structure, my year capture notes, the best advice you've ever received To go for Distinguished Engineer at IBM, which was not something I'd even remotely thought of, but actually opened up a great world for me.

Speaker 2: 38:01

And, as you and I know, it's a big deal at IBM because they revere Distinguished Engineers so highly. Congratulations, that's a huge award, thank you. What are you reading at the moment?

Speaker 3: 38:11

Well, apart from your book Digitally Curious, I'm reading Sarah Hall's latest novel, which is called Helm, which is about the only wind in the UK that has a name. Who should I invite next onto the podcast? How about Joe Keerans? Joe works at the moment for one of the creative agencies and also he runs something called the Global Footwear Coalition and they're doing some really, really interesting stuff with people who make shoes. How do you want to be remembered? I think I'd like to be remembered as somebody that helped others to develop their abilities.

Speaker 2: 38:50

Now, I'm all about being actionable. It's in my brand and my title. So what three actionable things should our audience do today to understand how creatives can use AI for good?

Speaker 3: 39:01

If they haven't got a full paid account with ChatGPT or one of the others, then I would suggest they do that, because that will allow them to more fully explore the capabilities of these tools.

Speaker 3: 39:15

I think the second thing that they should do is to look in online magazines like the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, and look at the more specialist kind of online journals, like American Cinematographer, and try and get a sense of how both the business and the kind of more technical sides of at least the film industry are really grappling with these, these tools, because I think actually it's much more visible there.

Speaker 3: 39:50

I'm not saying that's the only part of the creative industries that's really doing this on a on a large scale, um, but if you try and, for instance, explore the games world, it's much more difficult to look inside it, and if you look in publishing, you will struggle to find anything, but so I would encourage people to do that. I think that's my second one, kind of read broadly, and then I think the third one is I'd encourage people to try and build their own agent using any of the tools that are out there, because it's not particularly difficult, and even if it's just something as simple as a bit of diary scheduling or manipulating some spreadsheets. It's, it's a great learning experience and it will do two things it will take some of the fear out of it and it will make you realize just how, far from taking over the world, terminator style, these technologies are.

Speaker 2: 40:39

Quick aside, in terms of building agents, I use 11 labs to create a voice agent and I just said to the organizers can you send me the PDF of your menu for the day? I uploaded the PDF. I then interrogated live in front of an audience booking a seat, asking what was on the menu, explaining there were people with food intolerance, what would the replacements be, and without any training other than a PDF, it was able to do that. It blew the minds of the audience. It blew my mind. Other than a PDF. It was able to do that. It blew the minds of the audience. It blew my mind and I could do that in 15 seconds. So you're right.

Speaker 3: 41:08

You need to play with these things to understand what they can do. Fun fact about 11 Labs is that 11 Labs was one of the founders, is the brother of somebody that you and I used to work with at IBM, and I'll leave you to Google him and find out who it is 11 Labs is one of my favorite tools that I use, and there's the andrew grill voice clone, trevor.

Speaker 2: 41:25

This has been a fantastic discussion. How can we find out more about you and your work?

Speaker 3: 41:30

I have a website, wwwcuriousdemoncom, or people can just look me up on linkedin, where you'll see me posting quite regularly I'm going to ask a follow-up question.

Speaker 2: 41:42

If I was looking to craft an AI prompt to find your website, what would I ask?

Speaker 3: 41:47

it. That's a good one. I would probably say look for somebody who used to work at IBM that spends all their time watching films and working on sustainability, and that would probably find me.

Speaker 2: 42:01

Trevor, it's always a delight to talk to you. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the show and stay curious.

Speaker 3: 42:06

I will do my very best, Andrew. Thank you again.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Thank you for listening to Digitally Curious. You can find out more about Andrew his keynote speeches and brand partnerships at actionablefuturistcom. You can order the compendium book to this podcast at curiousclick slash order. Until next time, stay curious.