My Battle Against AI Slop

With my previously favorite online royalty free music service becoming an AI slop factory I want to expand on some points and address some counter arguments from a recent video where I explain my disdain for generative AI. 

🤖My Video About AI Slop:https://youtu.be/cfhrW7ZKuIU?si=txlBVq8GjIoDC3V3

🎙This week's mic:
Shure SM7B
https://geni.us/tepsm7b (Amazon)

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——————————— CONNECT ———————————
Electronic Mail: tom@enthusiasmproject.com
Main Site: https://himynameistom.com
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——————————— PODCAST GEAR ———————————
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•Rodecaster Duo: https://geni.us/ULKDFkp (Amazon)
•Elgato Prompter: https://geni.us/elgatoprompter (Amazon)
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S14E04 | Series Episode 188
 
Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project, Season 14, Episode 4. And boy, we're in for a journey. I don't know. Uh hello. It has been a minute. So there are I wanted to record this episode because I have a few thoughts going through my mind that I I kind of want to like crystallize a little bit more and develop a little bit more and share. And this seems like the absolute perfect place to do that. And then I also kind of wanted to talk about the podcast a little bit and what I've been thinking. And well, I mean, just sort of yeah, just sort of sharing kind of what I've been thinking because I think those thoughts are helpful since I know a number of people who listen to this show also produce their own shows. And uh that can just sometimes be a helpful thing. So this was a very impromptu episode. I did not wake up today knowing I was going to record an episode, but it just sometimes you get the thoughts in your brain and you need to get them out. So the main thing that I actually want to cover today is this past week I released a video called the uh the slopification of online music that was really a criticism of Artlist, which is was a royalty-free music website that I've been using for nine years, that is now really just an AI mess. And uh it's very, very disappointing to me. Uh and so I I kind of shared some opinions about that, and I want to talk to you about why I decided to make that video because I never make videos like that. And then I kind of the coolest thing about that is um that video generated more discussion than an average video of mine does, even though it didn't, it's not particularly like the most viewed video in the world or anything. And a number of people were kind of on the same page as me, which is nice, it's reassuring to know that I'm not just like saying something crazy, but also, of course, there were people with you know contradicting viewpoints and counterviewpoints. And what was really interesting is interacting with those people made me understand my position more and made me even more firm in my position. You know, sometimes you hear the contradicting viewpoints, you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't think about that. That was a blind spot in my logic, and and not today, or not with this video so much. So I kind of wanted to break that down and maybe go into a little more nuance and a little more detail uh for my own benefit, honestly, because uh fleshing these ideas out, I think, is a helpful thing. But also, um, I I feel like this is such the world of AI AI stuff is weird and complex and you know, multifaceted. And I I think maybe some slightly more nuanced discussion is a good thing, uh, rather than just being someone who's like, oh bro, you gotta get on the AI trade and you're gonna get left behind, or you know, like you need to burn your computer in the dumpster and just go live off the grid. Like there has to be a middle ground of some kind, and that's kind of what I what I want to look at. Um for the podcast, though, obviously it has been a bit. I'm looking at my uh episode list because since moving away from a weekly schedule, obviously things have been pretty sporadic. Um, so yeah, we've did we did a couple videos in September, a video in January, and now it is the end of March 2026. So um very sporadic. I appreciate anyone who likes when an episode randomly pops up, you check it out. Um, I definitely do miss doing the podcast, which is why I wanted to not have it be an obligation on my calendar, because then it becomes an obligation. It becomes, you can even build resentment for that. You can you can create stuff that maybe you're not as excited about, but it's just kind of to check the box of making stuff. And I didn't want this show's very special to me, and I didn't want it to become that. And so kind of stepping away from a regular schedule and then just making episodes whenever it kind of made sense or I wanted to was really nice. The tricky part though, and this is where this is where I kind of want to dive into this, is you might notice there is no video of today's episode. There's not. I am I'm in my my office, but the lights are dim, they're very chill. If a camera was turned on right now, it'd be very hard to even see, see what's happening. Very low light situation, not uh video light settings. I uh I'm wearing some clothes that I was running some errands in this morning. Uh I'm just put this put it this way not camera ready would be would be the way I would describe it. I am using the trusty old Shore SM7B running into the Rodcaster Duo on the SM7B preset. So very, very simple. Uh very I wanted this past week, I also did a video. Um, it's not out yet, but I worked on a video review for the Warm Audio WA87 Jr., which is like a very budget version of the Neumann U87. And I I kind of giggle when I say that because the Warm Audio mic is $300 and the Neumann is $4,000. So like I am realistic when I'm talking about that microphone and comparing it, but the Warm Audio is really, really great. And so I was going to set that up and I really want to do it on a podcast, but I was like, you know, I don't want to. The reason I'm doing an audio-only episode is because I wanted easy. I wanted to just be able to come in here and share my thoughts without having to worry about anything else. And I've been kind of vacillating back and forth on the video thing because I, you know, I've I've kind of established a decent video podcast workflow, and obviously, video podcasts becoming more and more popular and almost more and more expected by audiences. I've talked about that many, many times. I like the video version of the show. It works well. Like the way I have it set up is very effective. Uh, it's not terribly difficult in terms of production. And I like having, not that I can't do segments and audio, but I like having a different segments with different intros. I feel like I did a pretty decent job with that of giving it a reason to be visual. It's not just one static talking headshot. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but if you're adding video to something, it does make things so much more complex. And I just feel like if I'm gonna do that, then I might, there might as well be a better reason for it being visual. And so um, you know, it just it's kind of I like the idea that with the video version, a lot of times, even if you were to not have the audio playing, you could look at the screen and have an idea of what I'm talking about. Because there's bullet points on frame, there's titles, there's images, you know, it it is visual. The downside to that is even in the simplest video podcast workflow, it still takes a lot of work to add video to things. Like, I mean, just what I mentioned a moment ago, like lighting, getting camera ready, being a being aware of camera presence is a different thing, especially for a show like this where a lot of it is sometimes I'll have things outlined or bullet points, but a lot of it is kind of real-time exploration and off-the-cuff things, and sometimes that just looks awkward on camera, you know, to to to try to navigate your thoughts and be aware that people are staring at you while you're doing that is is tricky at times. And then to create the visuals takes time. And I think like I I really felt good about having a video version, but I also felt that that was I don't think there's a coincidence that the season I decided to go to a video version of the podcast was also the season where I decided like I'm gonna take an extended break. Um, I don't think those are two unrelated things. And I'd be lying if I if I didn't say like, well, I also, you know, as somebody who makes a lot of videos about video podcasting gear and podcasting workflows and setups, that's it there's part of me that's like, well, if I'm not doing the video podcast, it feels like um it just feels weird, and I think I just need to come to grips with like that's okay. Um even when I make my videos, a lot of times they are done in what could be a video podcasting workflow. It's it's like the same thing. Like you could use something like Ecamm or OBS to just record your videos, or you could use them to live stream, and a lot of times the only difference is whether you press the go live button or the record button. Like the thing you're making is the same, even though it's either a video or a live stream. So it's kind of similar. A lot of stuff I do is like it could be a video podcast, but I'm just calling it a YouTube video, or you know, in in some cases it's not. And so I think rather than like forcing, or at least where I'm where I'm at right now, and I'd be curious what you think too. I think rather than forcing everything to be a video podcast, I know that I would be more comfortable making episodes more often if I were just doing audio only. And I just kind of feel like the, you know, I don't know, just kind of the back to basics, there's something to that. But there are also lots of times where video really helps because sometimes uh an episode's topic will just be super visual, and so it's nice to be able to show you that, you know, to demonstrate that to like it really does help sometimes. And so I think rather than like proclaiming it is or isn't any specific thing, I think it's almost like it's like having a workflow buffet, right? If you go to a buffet, you have all the options, you don't have to use all the eat all the options every time. Sometimes that's a really bad decision because you will feel very sick afterwards and you won't want to go to the buffet anymore. But if you just, you know, you grab what you're in the mood for, what suits your tastes at that given moment, then it kind of works. And so I think that's kind of the case. Having an audio workflow, having a video workflow, a combo, and using whatever feels right in the moment is probably the best thing to do rather than any proclamations of like this is an audio only show, this is a video only show, this is whatever it needs to be at any given moment. And what's cool is the workflow that is set up, what's actually really nice, when I do a video version, you know, I can take the audio and upload that to BuzzSprout, and that's pretty simple. And then I upload the video to YouTube, but you still have to make a thumbnail. There's a little more of a workflow to do YouTube, but doing the audio only version, I can just upload that to BuzzSprout and YouTube will just pull it straight from the RSS feed. I know there's no video, obviously, on YouTube. And so, in terms of I say this for the people who are interested in podcast marketing and strategy, the discoverability of an audio-only podcast episode is virtually zero. So, like, um, but it's still available on YouTube. And so for the people who just want to listen to it or find the show and they don't care, it's still there. Um, and I think so. I'm actually pretty happy with that workflow that or that uh I guess that's a workflow, pipeline. I don't know what you would call it. So anyway, uh this is an audio only episode. I don't expect to not do any more video episodes, but I I want the video episodes to be done when video makes sense. And even when I do the video episodes, like the video is to me has always been secondary because I want I I mean, I can just look at the numbers and see that most people listen to the audio version. So I don't want people to feel like they're missing out because they're not watching the video version of the show. I want them to be able to have the same great experience even if they're not watching the video, and then the video just supplements it a little bit. So, you know, sometimes there are those topics that are more visual, and it's like if you can watch the video version, do that. But a lot of times it's just, you know, whatever's easiest for you. Do you prefer watching stuff on YouTube? Do you prefer listening to stuff on you know Spotify or whatever? You know, just make your choice at the buffet and do whatever you want to do. So anyway, audio, just I say that so not not only in addition to a sporadic upload episode, sporadic upload schedule, but also sporadic format type. Will it be audio? Will it be video? We don't know. You have to see. Uh, I can definitely say probably leaning toward a lot more towards audio than video, just because uh it's honestly like at the end of the day, a lot more fun typically for me to make an audio episode than it is a video episode. Audio episodes, I get to sit down, explore ideas, kind of just really enjoy the process, and video episodes, you know, they feel like work. I kind of need to like decompress and like oof afterwards, because it it is a lot of work and a lot of effort, whereas this is a little bit more rejuvenating and uh like mentally, I don't know, stimulating, I guess. So with that in mind, I do want to jump into the topic of today's video. If you haven't watched the uh the video that I'm talking about, I'll link to it in the description here. But basically to kind of give you a rundown, uh, when I started my YouTube channel nine years ago now, the very first thing I did after starting my channel was I started an Artlist subscription, which was two or three hundred dollars a year. And Artlist at the time was just a music, royalty-free music library. So if you want to create content and put stuff online and use music, you can't just use any music you want. You have to use royalty-free music, otherwise, you risk getting copyright claims, copyright strikes, uh, videos get taken down, content gets taken down. Uh and so just having royalty-free stuff is good. There are sources for free, royalty-free music, which means it's royalty-free music that doesn't cost anything, but they're a little bit limited, and even their licensing can sometimes be a little bit restrictive, and you're not gonna get, you're gonna get uh much smaller catalogs of music. And a lot of time it's just independent artists that put their stuff up, which is amazing. I'm hugely appreciative of that, but you know, you'll have you know 13 songs to choose from. Whereas you get you sign up for a royalty-free music service, and now you can have thousands of songs to choose from different genres, stuff that's added all the time. And I really like back in 2017, I really liked Artlist a lot because uh it was the first time I had found royalty-free music that sounded like music. It didn't sound like royalty-free music. It was like there's there are good songs, and the same goes with like, you know, like Epidemic Sound, which is the other service I signed up for a while later. Um, there's like legit songs on there that are just enjoyable to listen to. And, you know, the catalogs are varied enough that you can find whatever kind of suits the tone of the project you're working on. And Artlist, especially, at the time I signed up, it was, I can't remember if it was $200 or $300 a year, something like that. Uh, but you had they had one account. That was it. You just got an art list account, and then you could download as many songs as you wanted in that time. I think you were limited to like 40 songs a day or something, but you could download as many songs as you wanted, and you could use them for anything. So you could use them in a YouTube video, you could use them in a Hollywood Blockbuster movie, you could use them for client projects, it didn't matter. And the the killer part was even if you canceled your subscription, you could still use the songs. Most music services, if you cancel your subscription, anything you created and published while you had that subscription is safe. It's not going to get copyright claimed or anything. But if you use any of those assets afterwards, then it will get copyright claimed. And Artlist was like, nope, you can for the rest of your life in perpetuity, you can use these songs in new um in new projects, which was just like, dang. So in theory, you could sign up for a one-year thing, pay a couple hundred dollars, download the whole catalog, and then cancel your account, and then just have royalty-free music for life. Obviously, that has evolved over the years. If you go to Artlist's website right now, uh finding just their straight up royalty music catalog is going to be tough because you're gonna be bombarded with nothing but AI tools everywhere. And the first thing you're gonna see, at least at the time I'm recording this, is when you go to their website, a big thing's gonna pop up that says AI music is now on Artlist. And that was the final straw for me. So over the years, Artlist has evolved, which I understand. They were growing. Um, you know, having that one account for everything didn't necessarily make sense. So they did a pretty standard thing and had, you know, three or four different types of plans you could do. So that way if you're, you know, if you're an independent content creator who decides music for a YouTube video, you can have a different plan than someone who's doing client projects. And that would be a different plan from you know a company that you know has tons of people that need access to music. So they had, you know, different sorts, which I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's very practical. I think that makes sense. Um and then they started expanding beyond music. So they started getting into stock footage, which I was I've never like a stock footage person, but I know that there's definitely a need and a purpose for stock footage. And they started getting into other things like um like plugins and templates and and whatever, which is fine. I think they even tried to launch an online video editor for a while, but I don't I don't think it worked that well. And uh, and that's that's okay. I still only ever use the music. They also were like the first real sponsor on my YouTube channel, and I've done at this point, I don't know how many sponsored artless videos I've done. I would say at least six, maybe more. And they they have been so wonderful to work with behind the scenes. Like they are super, super nice, super respectful of my process. They initially reached out to me in 2020 to do a sponsored video. And at the time I hadn't, I was just so uncomfortable, I didn't know how to do it, and I told them that. I was like, I I don't want to do a sponsored thing yet because I I'm not comfortable with it. I want to figure out how I want to handle these things, and they were cool with that, and they kept in touch throughout the year. Um, and then in 2021, a year later, I finally was like, okay, I think I'm ready now, and we did a sponsored thing, which was like, I really appreciated that. It was nice because at the time then when I did the sponsored video, I had been using them as a customer for four years and talking to them in a you know professional capacity for a year. And the, you know, of course, then they gave me, we've talked about the ethics statement once or twice on this podcast, and they gave me full, you know, the full creative control, no problem. And it was nice because I had a genuine story. The story I just told you, I started my YouTube channel. Literally, the first money I put into it, the first investment I made was to create an art list account so that I could add music to my channel. And I think that's pretty cool. That's kind of a unique angle that not a lot of people have. And so I did a number of videos similar to that over the years. Um, you know, every six months maybe I would do one. And a couple of times they would ask, like, oh, do you want to do one for, you know, ArtGrid, which was kind of their service that leans more towards stock footage and things. And I would be like, Oh, no, thank you. I want to do um, I want to do more just the music stuff because that's what I use. I don't use the stock footage. And they were cool with that. And then when was this? Two years ago now, they approached me. They had no AI tools and they were introducing their first AI tool called AI Voiceover. And they asked, Hey, do you want to do a sponsored video for AI Voiceover? And I said no. And I was talking to Heather about it, and we were we were kind of going back and forth, and keep in mind where AI was two years ago in 20 early 2024, late 2023 versus now was very, very different. And keep in mind, at that time, ArtList had no AI stuff on their website. So AI voiceover was the only thing. I had been in a situation, I have been in multiple situations in previous my jobs as a teacher where an AI voiceover type tool would have actually been very helpful. One such example, uh, the one that immediately popped to mind was uh this must have been this would have been the end of the 2015 school year. Yeah, the end of the 2015 school year. Um the school district I was working for was putting together a promo piece for like all of the specialized programs at the different high schools. There were four high schools in the district. Each high school kind of specialized. The one I was at was uh we did digital media, that was my program, and then we also had a health academy, and so it was digital media and health, and another one was like culinary stuff and public service, and another one was uh theater and something like every every one of the four high schools kind of specialize in different programs. And so they were putting together a short promo that was like, hey, you know, these programs are here, and this high school offers this, this high high school offers that. They were having my students put together the visuals, and um, and then they had somebody that I don't know if it was someone they hired, I don't really know who it was. They had somebody who was gonna be the voiceover person, and then they were gonna air these in movie theaters like over the summer, so that you know, like as families were going to the movies, and you know, those commercials that play like before the trailers start, they would see these. And if you want to go to a different school or you're moving from middle school to high school, you can kind of make the decision of what school you want to go to. And uh, so that that was kind of the point of it. Pretty simple. My students worked on the stuff. We wrapped up for the school year. So when the school year ends, like I packed. Up my entire classroom for security reasons. So everything like computers were taken down. They also deep clean the classrooms throughout the summer. So you have to like move literally like tables off the floor, chairs off the floor, computers packed away, cameras packed away. Like there's nothing there. I turn in my keys, so I don't even have access over the summer to the classroom at that time. And then obviously the students leave. I don't hang out with my students during the summer. Like I don't, we don't communicate until we're back in school in September. And so uh it was literally like the first day of summer break, and I got a call from one of the administrators at our district that was kind of in a panic. And they were like, Tom, can you get in touch with any of your students? I was like, I nope, I absolutely cannot. And they were like, We're finishing up the voiceover on this promo, but the voiceover person dropped out, and we don't we need someone like, could you get one of your students to do it? And I was like, I don't have a way of contacting them. I don't know that they're like capable of doing it the way that you want it. And we also don't have anything set up. And so they're trying to go back and forth. What it ended up with, keep in mind, this is before I had my YouTube channel before, I had like, you know, some camera and audio gear, but nothing to the level I have now where I can come in here and sit down and push a button and record a great sounding podcast. So it ended with me grabbing my Zoom H4N, going into our guest bedroom and recording this promo for the school district about like, you know, trying to do this voiceover thing and then sending that to them. And they were like, oh my god, you know, it was a lot of stress, a lot of chaos, and ended up with me doing the voiceover because I happened to have a decent audio recorder and I was the person willing to put my voice out there. Um, and then that is what played in the movie theaters, not just for that summer, but for the next two years. Like I like literally, even like, oh my god. After I met Heather, we'd walk into the movie theater and I would still hear my voice talking about these CTE career technical programs. I was like, oh my god, this is not like anyone would see, like, I'd walk in and people be like, that's the guy from the thing we're listening to. But I it's just like, geez. Anyway, all that to say, uh, if someone could have just gone to a computer and typed in a thing, like, we're not talking about art here, we're talking about conveyance of information. We're not talking about taking a job away from anyone. I we're talking about like either there is a voiceover or there isn't, or somebody, in this case, luckily I was there and I was like vaguely capable of doing it. But if that hadn't been the case, like you would have had someone, you know, recording to like a phone mic, it would have just been a terrible result and a lot of stress and a lot of frustration for someone. And those types of situations happen all the time. I'm not talking about using AI voiceover things to replace voiceover artists and actors and things. I was thinking of these situations where it's like lots of companies, lots of organizations have media needs, and sometimes that requires some kind of voiceover, but they're not necessarily equipped to handle it. Another good example is like literally um car dealerships will, if you go to their website and you look at like different cars that are in stock, a lot of times they'll have little videos for each actual car, and they'll use an AI voiceover tool to read the description, essentially. Um, which like actually kind of helps in terms of accessibility, and I don't think it's a case, it would either be they would have like some poor person, you know, sitting at the front desk who now also has to record all these things for every different car that comes in, or they just wouldn't do it. And that's probably what it would be. A lot of these cases, it's like, well, it's gonna help or it's gonna be nothing. And I at the end of the day, I decided like, okay, I'll do an AI voiceover promo because I have that angle and I have that experience where like I have seen people shed tears out of stress because of this. And I have myself been put into kind of awkward and uncomfortable situations where if we had this tool, it would have really helped. And so I did two uh sponsored videos for Artlist for AI voiceover when that was their only AI tool available, and that was why. And I I didn't really explain that in those, but I I kind of um where it's I forget what I said exactly, but I said, like, you know, AI voiceover is a good tool when it's not practical or possible for you to be behind the microphone. So I was very clear. I know people could use that to, you know, we would have hired an actor, but instead we're gonna use this. Um, but the results are never gonna be good for that. And even in in my stuff, like to make it, there it wasn't like automated. Like it was very it it was it was a about process to make the videos because I the way I made the sponsor parts was actually pretty fun. I I crafted like scripts where I was having back and forth dialogue with the AI voiceover, and that was actually really hard to do and took a lot of work um and a lot of editing to make that work right. So it wasn't like you know, push a button and you're done kind of situation. But I I saw value in that tool, and that was again the only AI option they offered at the time. Okay. Then they started bringing in other AI things. And now if you go to their website, my goodness, it is nothing but just like AI everything. Uh, I'm gonna go to their homepage right now. See, maybe see they have AI video, AI image, AI voiceover, AI music. Oh my gosh, image to image, text to video. You can do Veo, Sora, Grok, Cling, whatever the hell that is. Nano Banana, uh, C Dance, GPT image, Lyria, 11 abs, 11 labs. So I don't even know what half these things are. Um, and the the homepage currently says create any video you can imagine. Cutting edge, AI image, video, music, voiceovers, and high quality stock in one place. And it shows a guy dressed in white robes, tightrope walking over what looks like the Sahara Desert and also lava. That's that is literally slop. Like, what are we oh you can imagine? I can imagine slop. Uh no. Sorry. This is the problem is the AI voiceover wasn't the only thing. So to be clear, I have not done and I have not done any other Artlist sponsored things in the past two years since those. And I have also been very clear to them, they uh offered a considerable, what would have been the largest amount I've ever taken for a sponsored thing uh late last year, early this year. And I said no specifically because of this. I have no interest in the uh in anything AI related, and I was super clear about that, and I shared all my thoughts with them about that, and I I think other people have done the same. It wasn't until this past week that they then did AI music. They they hadn't touched their music catalog. What they were doing is burying their music catalog. So instead of it used to be if you go to Artlist, literally the only thing they were was a music catalog. And then it's like now you kind of have to get now the main menu items at the top of the website, the only one related to music is AI music. You have to go to a tab called stock catalog, and then you can click on royalty free music, and then you can go to the royalty free music thing, which still has like pop-up things and little like uh menu icons for using the AI tools. Like they're really trying to push you towards the AI side of things if you just even if you just want to go browse the music catalog. And that I had hoped against hope. I knew that probably wasn't probably wasn't feasible. I'd hoped they went do AI music, and then they did. So their existing catalog is still there, but now you can do AI music where you you know you can just say, give me a two-minute, 34-second song that you know is a chill hip hop thing for uh tech review background music or whatever. And then it'll just it'll just quote unquote make that for you, but it's not actually making anything. And this is yeah, well, actually, I'm gonna get into that when we talk about the response to my video. So anyway, they announced this. I actually saw a lot of uh discussion online of people being upset about it, which made me happy. And I I I just kind of had the impulse to to share my thoughts about it because this is a service that I like. Their decision and the direction they're going does speak to a larger trend and larger issues. Um, because this is also it's funny, this is also like a week or two after Sora, the video image generator app or whatever, announced that it was shutting down. So it's like it's fascinating that I was being offered more money than I'd ever been offered before to promote tools that within two months were discontinued. Like, this is clearly not a stable industry or a stable field uh to go into. But I had seen people having these discussions. I definitely felt my way. I typically, you know, I don't make a lot of videos on my channel really ever that are just like, here's an opinion about a thing. Because I kind of like to share stuff I'm excited about. I don't like to go negative, and I like to when even when I share stuff, like I do a mic review for the most part, I am very light with the amount of my own opinions that I sprinkle into things. I kind of say, like, this is what this sounds like, this is what that sounds like. And then people can make their own decisions. Sometimes I will share opinions when I feel like it's important. For example, the recent Rodcaster Video Core. I did a video on that and I talked about the pricing of it because originally it was intended to be at a lower price, like a probably a $349-ish price, and then it was because AI jacked up the price for everything, Rode had to raise their prices, and the Rodecaster Video Core was then released for $599 for $600. And it's a super cool product, it's a super cool tool, and I absolutely do not think it's worth $600. And so it was important to me in my video for that thing to be clear about that. Like the way Rode intended this thing to exist, I think is fantastic and would have been probably the most popular option by far. The way that it is currently at that price point, no, like don't I don't I don't think it's worth it. And I it was important for me to, you know, that was almost like I don't know what's called public service because that's too grand, but that that's there there was a a reason to share the opinion. And this kind of feels the same. I um it was I heard someone online months ago talking about AI stuff, and they had said, like, it's very important now that you draw the line where you stand, because looking back, this is all a huge mess. And it's going to be important to look back and see what you stand for, who supported you, what you supported, and what you didn't. And that kind of just stuck with me of like, okay, I and I and so I've been more open about my distaste of generative AI, not AI in general, because the thing the thing about AI, which I tried to explain in my video, which my video is just I explained exactly what I told you about Artlist. They did this music thing, I think that sucks. I canceled my Artlist account, no more sponsored videos with Artlist, obviously. And um, and then I ended up well, and I explained why, and then I talked about a different service that I found because I still need royalty-free music, and so I've connected with uh someone who started a service called Sound Market, which is real music by real people, most of them who have uh careers doing music for movies, TV shows, video games, commercials, like in the industry, as they say. And uh they they pay the real humans, ongoing royalties. It is a very, very cool service. You can watch the video to learn more about it, but it's a good option for music made by people, like high-quality music made by people, and they have you know fair prices, and they literally one of their main points is that they are not AI and they they are not going to become an AI service. Um, so I thought it was important, especially as someone who has used this service, promoted this service, done sponsored videos with this service, to kind of share my opinion and be super clear about where I stand on it, but also discuss what I think are the differences between uh what I call AI tools and generative AI. And there's also keeping in mind that a lot of stuff, like a lot of stuff now is called AI, where you know, eight to ten years ago it would have been called smart. So, you know, like 10 years ago you would have bought a smart washing machine. Now you will buy a washing machine with AI in it. What does that mean? I don't know. It has a sensor that tells when your clothes are wet or dry. Like it's there's zero artificial intelligence in there, but it's it's a selling point, right? You put those two words in it, and then investors give you money currently. And so obviously a lot of stuff just has AI thrown at it that makes zero sense. But in terms of AI tools, what I consider those things are I would even consider chatbot an AI tool. Um, and obviously, you know, the way you use a tool, tools can be used for good, tools can be used for bad. Uh, and then there's other stuff, you know, like Adobe Enhanced Speech is a good one that I use pretty regularly. That is, you know, it will remove background noise, it will clean up audio a little bit. It won't really do anything that you couldn't do in any audio editing app, but it will do it way quicker. You know, uh same thing in Photoshop. Like instead of me manually masking out an image and removing the background, I can just click a button and it'll remove it. Instead of me, you know, clone stamping something away and smudging it and blending it, I can just use their generative fill and it will it will get rid of the you know the power cord that's stuck in the background and distracting in the YouTube thumbnail or whatever. Though that stuff is completely fine with me, those types of tools um are really cool, like and they can be incredibly helpful. So uh recently I've always had a sweet tooth, and I've noticed, which I just kind of attributed to getting older, was um I've noticed that sometimes when I eat sweets, especially things that have like frosting, like certain cakes, even stuff I used to really, really love, I just feel really sick afterwards. And I like and so I don't want to eat those things anymore, but I still kind of like sweets, and I couldn't figure it out. And so Trader Joe's sells these little mini sheet cakes. Heather and I've discovered these over the holidays last year. They have like a mini chocolate sheet cake, and we were looking at one in the aisle, and this lady just like lost her mind about how good it was. Um, and so we were like, okay, we have to try it, and it was amazing. And they have different varieties. They have chocolate sheet cake, they have a cookies and cream one, a carrot cake, a vanilla one, or like a yellow cake. And so we've been trying all the different flavors. The chocolate one, delicious. The carrot cake one, no problem. The cookies and cream one was delicious, but then I started feeling nauseous. I was like, why? Like, what is the difference? And so we were trying to look at the ingredients between the two and figure out what the difference was. And it was like, we couldn't really see anything. So literally, Heather took a photo that just had both the ingredients, put it into Chat GPT, and said, Hey, Tom feels nauseous when he eats this cake. He doesn't feel nauseous when he eats that cake. Are there any ingredients that would explain that? And it pointed out that the cookies and cream one had something called invert sugar in it, which is often found in icings. And basically, I could literally then narrow it down to the stuff that made me feel sick had whatever the heck invert sugar is in it. And and one of the if you're sensitive to that, one of the things or the symptoms is that you feel nauseous and sick after eating it. It's just like, wow. So now there's like I in two seconds we kind of solved the mystery that had been going on for like, you know, a year or more at this point. And now I know, like, hey, just watch out for anything that has that. So that's like, I probably could have done that myself. We could have sat there and really, you know, Sherlock Holmes these very tiny print ingredient labels, but it also just figured it out for us in two seconds and did a really good job of doing that. Um, you know, I I definitely used it to help with taxes this year because um I got very tired of paying a lot of money to have our taxes done and being kind of questioning about like, could we just be doing this ourselves? Because I used to do my taxes myself when I was employed. Self-employed, I just figured like, oh, it's so complicated, and you gotta do yourself. And it's like, turns out it's not that complicated. And especially when you have these kind of tools, I can literally like use TurboTax and it pops up a question, and I can just screenshot that question, put it into chat, and it will just go, yes, use this form, put this line, it will just tell me exactly what that means, what I need to put there. You know, yeah, it took me, I don't know, six or seven hours to uh to do taxes, but then they were done in like February. And and I think the total cost was a hundred and thirty dollars instead of you know barely like scraping by the edge of our teeth in April, and then it costs like three thousand dollars. So tons of great value in a lot of these tools for things like that. Um but then there's generative AI, and generative AI can just well, I won't use the words that I think it should do here, but it should do those things. Because generative AI is a scourge on the earth. Like it it destroys, you know. If you watch The Office and you saw um there was like the episode with Pam's painting, and you heard our Oscar like talk about like this is the opposite of art, this destroys art. Just take that and put that towards uh generative AI. Because like one, you're not actually creating anything. This is the point I was getting to earlier. You you feel like you're creating something. Hey, make a song that sounds like this, make an image that looks like this, and then oh wow, look, it made an image based on my thing. But what it actually did was it just smooshed a whole bunch of pre-existing things together and spewed out of a different version of all that crap smooshed together. It's like play-doh, like you know those play-doh things, you smush it in, you push the lever down, and then it comes out like a star shape. You didn't make anything new, you just took the existing play-doh and squished it into a new shape. That is all generative AI is doing. It's not creating new Play-Doh, it's just like it's all over here, and now it looks like spaghetti or a star or something. And a good example, actually, on my video, somebody left an explanation where they were like a calculator is programmed to know that two plus two equals four. Generative AI just sees tons of examples where people have found out that two plus two equals four, and so it just sort of seems to kind of take this evidence that two plus two equals four, but it doesn't really know why two plus two equals four or how two plus two equals four, but it's just gonna tell you two plus two equals four. But that's also why sometimes it could tell you two plus two equals five, versus a calculator which is just running, you know, very specific programming to do its specific thing correctly. And so the thing with generative AI is, and especially with something like Artlist, and my my kind of feeling was there are people and services that are way more talented to create this stuff than making the AI do it. And I genuinely hate that thing where it's like, oh, we have all these cool machines that can automate stuff and make our lives easier. So we have them doing all the creative work while we do all the terrible like grunt work. Shouldn't it be flipped a little bit? Like, shouldn't they be doing all the like the work no one wants to do? And then humans can make art and build creativity and stuff. Um I I feel like I explained my point better in the video. But what I really liked and and where this discussion kind of comes in is the comments to that video. Um, a couple things kept popping up, which was one of them was the idea that um, oh my gosh, I totally lost my train of thought because I'm not an AI and I can't keep my train of thought going. Um one of them was the idea, of course, of being left behind. And that that's sort of a common thing, especially these people who are all in on AI, is like, you're just getting left behind, bro. Which is like one, if I'm being left behind because I'm not embracing generative AI, maybe I actually don't want to go where you're going, bro. So, first off, there's that. And then the other thing is like the the most common counter-argument to my point that popped up is this is the same discussion that that popped up when you know digital photography came out versus film photography, when Photoshop versus traditional photo editing and adjustment and stuff. And I, on its surface, can see how those arguments make sense, but those arguments also do not hold up. And I was trying to think about why. And I think a big way to look at it when it comes to generative AI and what these tools offer is what would happen if they disappeared. So if you've only ever used a Digital camera and the digital cameras disappeared, you could use a film camera. You're gonna have to like learn a little bit. You're gonna adjust your workflow, but all the basics are still there. All your all your stuff about lenses and framing and composition, that still applies. All you know, your exposure triangle, ISO shutter speed, aperture, that still applies. It's gonna be a little bit different because you're working with film instead of a digital image sensor, and then you can't see your stuff instantly, of course. You have to get it developed and see it. But you can adapt and still do your thing because you have built up skills. If you, you know, if Photoshop, right? I talked about using Photoshop's AI AI stuff to, you know, remove backgrounds and clone stamp things out or whatever. If those AI tools disappeared, I could still get literally the exact same results. It's just gonna take me more time because I would go back to doing it by hand, which is the way that I've done it for many, many years because I, you know, started learning bootleg Photoshop in 2002 or whatever. And to me, that that means I have the skills, I have the understanding, and I'm just using this tool to get that done. But the thing I'm working with, like I can still I'm I'm the one taking the image that's being edited. It's not a generated image. It's a thing I put my camera together, put the lens on, turned the camera on, made the settings, set up the scene, set up the lighting, took the photo, framed it, adjusted the colors, did all the things, and now I just need the little smudge to disappear, or you know, whatever the support holding something up to be painted out so that it looks like it's floating instead of just sticking up on a stick or whatever. You know, like very simple stuff that again I can do on my own, but it's gonna take me 15, 20 minutes versus just the click a button and it's done in two seconds. That is completely fine to me. And I can still do everything if the thing disappears. Whereas if you're someone, you know, who's like, oh yeah, I I make AI music, but you've never taken the time to learn an instrument or learn anything about music or practice or make bad music, as soon as those AI tools disappear, you can't do anything. And in my video, one of the things I said was, you know, part of creating new stuff, AI cannot create new things. It can just smush existing stuff together. But as a human, you can look at things and create new stuff and do it differently. And sometimes the way that you do that is by making mistakes because you're learning something, you're not good at it, you don't fully understand it. And sometimes the mistakes and and whatever that you make along the way are the things that actually lead to something really cool. Did you know that chocolate chip cookies were an accident? Like, but those are that's a pretty good mistake, right? AI wouldn't have made chocolate chip cookies, it would have continued continued to make just chocolate cookies. I'm really glad that we have chocolate chip cookies. It's also making those mistakes and doing things, you know, a little bit jinkly and a little bit incorrect along the way that can also help you develop your own personal style because that's that's where you start doing things in only your own way. Somebody, I mentioned that point in the video, and somebody responded to that saying um that that's a very like romantic notion and a very charming notion, but it's not very practical because people aren't going to pay for music that's bad, people aren't going to listen to something that sounds bad. And so using these AI tools means that you create something that's professional and polished. And to me, that's where I was like, no, no, no. If you don't have any understanding or experience with music, you do not deserve to be selling music. Like, there should be a barrier to entry. It's not like blocked. You can put in the time, energy, and effort to learn those things and get to that point. But no, you do not have just the right as someone who's like, I've listened to music a little bit. I should be able to produce songs that people will pay for. So I'm going to use this AI tool, which by the way, the stuff you create in AI you don't actually own, and then try to sell this or license it or whatever. No, you don't have the right to do that. And the fact that if it disappears, you would not be able to do anything or even understand how you made any of the stuff that you made kind of proves that you didn't actually make anything. You just hit some buttons on a computer and it squirted something out. There should there should be a barrier to entry. You should have to spend time being bad at something. You should have to build up skill set and build up a basic understanding of these things. And that's like that the other thing that that popped up, I guess, and I I get I want to be clear that I'm not I don't I don't want to sound defensive on this. The reason I'm bringing up these arguments is because I had my statement, and then having people, you know, have these kind of counterpoints made me reevaluate my statement more. And the idea that like if you look at these AI tools and you think about what would happen if they disappeared, to me, that's like actually one of the most helpful ways to look at it, whether something has value or whether it's just generative AI slop. And another thing that that uh keeps popping up is um several people left comments that were a variation of the idea that like most people just don't really care. And you know, they'll just use whatever. And somebody said something where they they explained it like we care about what's closest to us. So if you are a photographer, you're not going to like AI image generation, but you probably won't care about AI music. And if you're a musician, you're not gonna want AI music, but you're not gonna care if you know, use AI to generate a flyer for your show or something. And I think that there's truth to that. I think a lot of people just don't think about it, it's just whatever. But I also think that that's not the driving force behind these industries, keeping in mind also that like AI as an industry makes zero sense because it does nothing but burn through resources and money and generates no profit. So ultimately, at the end of the day, when when uh greedy, dumb CEOs at the top realize they're losing money or stop getting investor money in this, then it will go away because it's just you know, people will follow the money wherever it is or isn't going. And ultimately that's gonna, and AI is just a money pit. So that is going to be the end result because these things aren't getting more efficient or anything. So, you know, the AI bubble will burst, and then the useful tools, which I think are things like, you know, versions of chatbots, um, you know, stuff like Adobe, enhanced speech, things that just kind of enhance automate existing stuff. I think those are gonna stick around to find their place. And then the weird crap where it's you know the guy in robes, tightrobe walking over the desert lava. Well, I don't think we nobody needs that. And so there are a lot of people using that. The casual user, to me though, it's like I equate it with those old things from back in the day where it's like you'd go on Facebook and there'd be a quiz. It's like, which Harry Potter house are you? Which friend are you? Are you a Chandler? Are you a Joey? And it's like, okay, you you answer the questions, it gives you an answer, you chuckle at it, you show your friend, and then you forget it ever happened. I think a lot of people do that. They they're like, look, this is what I would look like as a Muppet. Here's a an anime version of my dog, and it's funny for a second, and they giggle at it and they forget that it exists. Yes, they're using it, but again, if it disappeared, they wouldn't really care. You know, the the person, if there's a musician who makes their songs, but then they use generative AI to generate a show flyer, if that tool disappeared, they would just go back to using like whatever you know, Canva template or something they used, or having their friend make the flyer for them. Like there are casual users using these things, and they probably don't care about the ramifications or the greater arguments for human creativity and all that stuff. But it also they're not the ones that are like nobody's clamoring for this, right? Like they're the ones that are um they'll just use a different tool if it disappeared. And I just feel like if these tools disappeared, what would happen? And in so many cases, it it that reveals the truth because it's either nothing would happen, people just use something else, or the people who like, oh man, look at me, I'm big-time music producer, whatever now are suddenly completely incapable. And that's where a lot of the responses I got that were the people saying you're just gonna be left behind, all this kind of stuff, to me, it just reeked of insecurity. And I can admit too that from my point of view, there's probably a bit of insecurity because I don't want the things that I value to be taken over by AI. I don't want the fact that I have spent time learning these skills and understanding the stuff. Now, yeah, you just push a button and it takes versions of what I and other people have created and makes something new for you that you think now you have created, even though you don't fully understand. Yes, there's probably some insecurity there with how I feel. And then at the same time, I think those people, though, are super insecure because it's the thing with the music, right? Like someone who has no background, no experience now feels like, look at this. I've made 15 albums this week. I make a new album every day for my commute to work. And then I put that on Spotify, and then I hire my bots to listen to it, and these other bots get those bots, and wow, somehow I'm so awesome now because of that. Those people know that if these tools disappeared, they're completely incapable again because they have not ever spent a moment trying to do anything original or creative or constructive. They have never taken the time to be bad at something and then to try to be a little bit less bad at it and eventually kind of mediocre at it, maybe good at it, and maybe one or two things in life great at. Maybe they've not gone on that journey, and they know that, and they know if these tools disappear, they're just gonna be incapable losers again because they they just grasp on to whatever, you know, they just cling to whatever goes around instead of like actually doing anything on their own. And uh I don't know. To me, that's it's to me, it is inevitable that these generative AI tools will disappear. And so it's it's fascinating going back to something like Artlist, where you started you provided a genuinely useful service that people need. People need music that they can use in their content, it's foundational. Uh, and Artlist was great at that. And now you've morphed into this weird AI thing, which obviously at this point they must be doing that because they're making money. Artlist has a lot of money, a lot of money. Um, I I know I know for a fact that there were certain things, certain sponsored things, where I would get paid five thousand dollars to do a video, and somebody else with much larger channels uh in in a relatively similar niche, you know, the plus one million subscriber channels would also then do the same type of 60 second, 60 to 90 second artless integration, and they'd get $100,000 for the same thing. Um that is and that is before all the AI stuff. So obviously there's been a huge injection of funding for this, and the fact that it seems like they're licensing stuff, I I don't know. My point is they must be generating money right now because that's why they're doing it, and they are a business. But it's so clearly not sustainable for so many different reasons, and I don't know what they're gonna do when it disappears because you know, like for example, Sora. Like they were gonna pay me more money than I've ever been paid for anything in my life to make a video on Sora, and now it doesn't even exist. So, like, what? Um This is going to keep happening. I have not seen anybody who is happy about this from the customer point of view. Everyone I've talked to, everyone I've seen, and I know I, you know, it's that is uh what's the term um anecdotal because and it's also very uh qualitative, not quantitative, because I'm just in my sphere. So I I'm talking to people who probably feel similar to me on a lot of things, but everyone I know either is disappointed with this or has canceled their accounts or has definitely not decided to sign up for an account because of all the AI stuff. So it feels like this is all gonna fall apart. Then they're gonna be left with nothing but burn goodwill from former customers who you can't get that back, especially once they move on to other tools. It's you know, we saw that with Final Cut Pro over a decade ago. There was Final Cut 7, which was very professional, very, very popular. And then Apple completely switched that up with Final Cut Pro 10, which not only changed things a lot, but eliminated a lot of features. People were very frustrated. They left. A lot of people went to Premiere and then Resolve, you know, came on the scene a few years later. And even though Final Cut eventually got to a point where it was very capable, very professional, very like excellent software again, people weren't about to the people who left weren't going to come back and like they'd already found other tools, they'd already built new workflows, built new processes and and and all that kind of stuff. So I it's interesting to watch a company seemingly destroy itself in real time. And it's sad because again, like I mentioned, they were very kind, very supportive to me for a very long time. And I I don't know, it is a huge bummer that also speaks to a larger trend and the number of you know, the number of people, especially in the world of online content creation, who just kind of chase trends and the number of good people, like I there are there are douchebags out there who will, you know, that's not surprising, but there are people who I know try really hard and they really do care and they see these new tools pop up, and then they feel like, oh, that's what I gotta do. And then people tell them exactly what they told me. You're gonna get left behind. Oh, you're just like you're standing on a someone said you're standing on a beach that's already being washed away or something. And and these people are told that, and then so they feel like they have to jump in and go all in, and they don't even fully understand like why they're doing it, and they don't understand that it it's potentially hurting them because the thing that they're putting up, yes, now you can create 50 podcasts a week and you can outline and produce 10 YouTube videos a day, and you can do all this stuff, but like it is all slop, it is all garbage that no one actually wants to consume. So that's not gonna help you like grow or be more creative. And then if you come around to the point where you're like, okay, I don't want to do that anymore, I'm gonna do things on my own. Where do you begin? Because you've already now established yourself as like a slop factory. So why would like, how are you gonna get people to give you a second look, give you a second chance? And and those are the people I feel really bad about, which is why I feel like being a little more open with my opinions on the stuff is important for me to better understand my position, but also, you know, in a world where these tools, whatever they are, are being hyped up so much to just kind of offer like, well, here's here's a different way of thinking about it. If you feel this way, if you kind of connect with some of these ideas, maybe you should explore that on your own. And and what I said in my video, and what I'll say again here, is I think it's very, very important for everybody to think about this stuff on their own and figure out where you stand. Because everything I've shared is just my opinion, my point of view, my perspective, which does not have to be yours, but I think it's important to figure out where where and why you you stand on these things. And you know take my input as just part of the thing that helps you form that opinion, and take everything else you see and experience and think and whatever, and then form your own thoughts and your own opinions and then go from there.

unknown 1:00:21

Whew.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

Oh, see, I feel better. So that's what I miss about the audio only ones, is they really, really do feel like I feel energized and like I got I got stuff like out of my brain in a really satisfying way. So hopefully that made sense. Hopefully that was coherent. Um, if you want to share anything, of course, same same stuff as always, you can go to HiManame is Tom.com, leave a message for the for the show, um, which I can include in a future episode. You can always email Tom at Enthusiasm Project.com, of course, and uh appreciate you. Appreciate you hanging out, listening to random sporadic episodes. Um, curious to know what you think or feel about the things I talked about today, and then also about, you know, the the audio versus video podcast workflow and the formats, and if you have any preferences of how you, you know, prefer to have this show exist. Uh, I'd be curious to know that as well. All that being said, I hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your day. Let's see if I can remember how to do this outro if my if my sound cue is still loaded, and I'll see you next time.