Today I'm thrilled to have Jesse Hughes from AI Image Generation platform Leonardo.ai. This was a fascinating discussion about the intersection of generative AI and the creative industry. See, Jesse's the senior creative technologist and artist in residence at Leonardo.ai and brings a decade of experience into the space. She spent a lot of time educating creatives around the world on how to get the best possible output from their model, including product shops, ad creatives, photo shoots, and pretty much any application of images GrowTacker would need. Now, let's get started. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Dable. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Hey everybody, I'm excited to invite Jesse Hughes from Leonardo AI to the podcast today, and we're going to talk about uh something that's been on my mind for a very long time. Jesse, why don't before we get started, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_01For sure. Um hey Chris, my name is Jesse Hughes. I'm the senior creative technologist at Leonardo AI. I'm also very lucky to be an artist in residence there. Um so I have, you know, a 10-year career in the creative industries. I've been working across that space of emerging technology and how that kind of intersects with like the arts and the creative industries for a long time. Um and then last year, I think as we were all aware, generative AI really, really had its moment. Um and it raised a lot of attention. And it was this kind of incredible moment as a creative where I went, oh my gosh, my practice has now just expanded tenfold. And I, you know, and it and I just couldn't stop um exploring how my practice could now just expand in every every vertical that I you know hadn't even considered before. Um, and so that was what kind of drew me to Leonardo
uh in the first place. So for those who don't know, Leonardo AI is an incredible, incredible generative AI creative toolkit for content creation. Um, what I would say the reason I really enjoyed Leo was it was everything all in one place. Um, back when I was you know learning and trying all these different things, you would have to go to one platform to like make an image and another platform to upscale the image and make it like high quality, and then you have to go to another platform to add motion, you have to go to another platform. So it was just my subscriptions, guys. I'm paying for definitely explaining for Spotify, like I can't have all these subscriptions. Um and yeah, so that's kind of where I ended up finding Leonardo. And um the the platform has grown just so much of a community um within such a short time period. So Leo has the third largest Discord community in the world. So that's like that's a massive group of people who are all here to be like trying and learning off each other. Um, and in 18 months, we have grown to have over 15 million users. Like that is what that is incredible, right? That is actually congratulations. Thank you. I think we're currently um Australia's fastest growing SaaS, which is absolutely insane. Um yeah, so so it started at like I think it was like Christmas, Christmas 2022. Um, so it was co-founded um by these creators who used to be that would uh our founders that used to run a game studio. Um, and I think this is really, really important piece of the whole narrative because anyone who works in games knows the process. It's it's it takes a significant amount of time and money to make all of these assets, which a lot of the time, you know, it's it's a it's an additional texture for you know uh a sword or something like that. You know, it's not really the center of the story in the narrative where you need to be spending your time. And so um our co our founder, co-founder JJ, like yeah, he was just saw this opportunity for how we could be um expediting that process in a way that l allows creatives to therefore then focus their time and energy where it where it should be on expanding these worlds and expanding this creative process. Um, so yeah, that that was kind of like the beginning point, and it has just not stopped since then, which is incredibly exciting. But if like everyone's aware, like the the AI space today is incredibly saturated, and yet Leonardo time and time again has you know sat among the those top standout Gen AI um platforms, and I think it's just a real testament to the entire tech team for building a product that is technically excellent, like the actual capabilities are excellent, but the user interface is incredibly user-friendly. Um, so I teach, I teach like AI to everybody. I mean, like from school kids to uni people to like real long old adults. And I had um I had a 67-year-old woman in one of my uh classes the other day who has, you know, she's a traditional artist. She came to the class, tagged me on the you know, a few hours later, and she had trained um she had trained a model all on her body of art work to create more work. And this is a 67-year-old woman, and she um, yeah, but it was just like it just is so easy. And I think that's what's beautiful about like these tools. They um the the term like democratizing creativity comes up a lot when you talk about AI. Um, but I think it is such a beautiful opportunity in this space. People get upset that a 16-year-old can do what took me a three-year design degree to do. But I I don't I don't feel that at all. Um, you know, that competitor of when Canva came along, right? And it was like, I have a three-year design degree and someone can go jump on Canva and make an asset. Like to me, that's not a threat because if somebody wants like a specific, like a like a what you know, a top-tier designer, they're gonna find the designer who has that distinct style or aesthetic. Whereas for a small business, which I know is a lot of our listeners right now, for a small business or a founder, like the fact that you can use these resources
so easily is incredible. And so I think that's where Leo has such a massive opportunity for um, yeah, this space of business owners and creatives. Oh, sorry, well, and creatives, yeah. So you've got this, you know, parallel of you can either have easy access and easy learning of skills for people who are just getting into the space, or you can have people who are experts at that craft, who understand composition and artistry and story and you know, all these absolutely beautiful elements, who can then expand across all these other verticals. So if you are, say, traditionally um a photographer, you can now expand your your storytelling into illustration, 3D graphics, like all of these other spaces. And likewise, if you're an illustrator, you can now have incredible photography and like this expansive. So to me, I I find it so exciting as a creative. I'm like, oh my gosh, what else can I do?
SPEAKER_00Nice. Yeah, we've actually we that's we haven't done a ton of gym image generation prior to our exposure to Leonardo, but honestly, now that we've gotten Leonardo, it is so easy to use. And not that the you know, competitors are out there and that sort of thing. However, um personal experience, Dolly got the job done. It was okay, right? But it was obviously, and and I'm not you know, I'm not here to talk bad about anybody, but um just my personal experience. It was obviously, you know, um uh generative effort. It wasn't, it didn't look like, right? And Mid Journey, cool stuff, but dude, like I I've that's the only Discord server I've ever been in before, and it just compared to other generative AI tools, it was like, wait a minute, everybody else is making it easy. Why are you guys making it so hard? And then Leo comes along, and honestly, it's been the easiest of the tools that we've used. So that was pretty pretty refreshing as well. So you mentioned a couple things. Um the the growth has been phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Why?
SPEAKER_01I think it's just what you said. It's it's easy, like it's easy. Like the accessible the accessibility, sorry, the accessibility is truly there by design. Like we our the team was and we and it's something that we're actually currently working on on making it even easier because we're we were at this kind of like crossword between do you give people like complete creative control, which is our end goal? It's one of our like pillar values um at Leo is creative control. So by that I mean the ability to literally like go in and edit like specific in the same way like you have um you know high-end creative software, like I don't know, whatever, Photoshop or whatever, like like detailed like we have the capabilities of the tools with that within Leo. But then we also want to cater for the people who are coming in for the first time. This is their first time doing image gen. How do we make that like a seamless experience? And so we're currently working on um, yeah, some some really exciting things which are launching quite soon um on how we can be even easier. Um, but I think there is probably that and then the other element of the images are fantastic, and that is the thing. It's just like like you said with your experience with Dali, like we can't Gen AI will not break through to the mainstream if the images are subpar. And I think that is something that's very important, is that um I use the word indiscernible when I uh give my lectures, and it's this idea of like AI w works in a commercial context if the imagery feels indiscernible, as in a as in an audience isn't looking at that and saying, oh, that's a AI. The other thing is like audiences are incredibly savvy. They're also incredibly on edge about trying to like identify these kind of things. So it's a sense of like, well, what instance are you using it in? Like what example is this, like use case is this being used in? Is it appropriate? Like, like where can you um, you know, do multi-layered stuff almost? Like if like what what is the use case and how do you want to um build upon that is what I think is really relevant. Um, you know, like I have a I have a friend who's she's a founder, she's you know building her business, and she wanted this beautiful like stock photography. They were gonna charge $500 per photograph for her,
right?
SPEAKER_02It's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_01How how in the world, like honestly, can a startup or a founder or the general public like that is not an affordable, it's just not affordable. And and beyond that, it's not photography that is the specific stuff that she wants for her for her brand.
SPEAKER_02She had to settle.
SPEAKER_01And it was a sense of like, well, now we have the capability where we can, you know, define define the models, define the scene, define the color tone, define the grade, like the new tools that we're rolling out. Um, we even have the ability for like style. So if she has say a brand guideline of what her photography style is, we can, you know, go in and make sure that all of her images reflect that same style, which is a really, really helpful commercial tool for yeah, for people who are trying to build their own their own stuff, um, which is great. And like I like I'm first and foremost an artist. So it's like I completely respect and love the photography. I love creative processes, like, oh my god, there's nothing that makes me happier on this earth and creative collaboration. But that process is an entire is is expensive and it is um time consuming. And I think there is a difference between a fashion, you know, fashion brand having this incredible photo shoot and you know being cutting edge and the you know beauty of possibility versus a small business owner who needs to have some photography of a of a coffee cup because you know they're rolling out a new thing. So it's just it's just about the use cases.
SPEAKER_00So I I've got an odd question. What and this is based on a quote from a futurist named Buckminster Fuller, and it's stuck with me my whole life since I've heard it. And that quote was you don't win by competing in the existing paradigm, you create a new paradigm that makes the old one obsolete, right? And it sounds like you guys aren't necessarily in the same category as the other generative AI image uh tools that are out there. It sounds like like how do you guys see yourselves in the marketplace? Do you see it as Leonardo is in its own category?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I do, yeah. It's why it's why I worked for them. Yeah. Um, I think the I when I came on board with Leonardo, I genuinely felt it was a step it like to me, it was like I see this being the new kind of Adobe in the sense of like this was content suite. And I think that's what's very, very special and distinct about Leonardo is it is a content suite. We're constantly building out features and and and models and um and the the kind of meetings that we have, like this, it's such a cross-industry uh you know experience. Like one day having meetings with game studios, the other day I'm having advertising, then I'm doing marketing, then I'm over talking to Hollywood and having film meetings, and it's just like the reality is every single industry in the world is looking at this right now. The other thing that I didn't mention earlier was we, Leonardo is operates, well, so we have users from over 189 different countries. We're in every single continent in the world, our user base. And so this is a very distinct difference in the sense that like this is not just something that's happening in the States or Australia or Silicon Valley, you know, it's like this is something like a lot of our users come from like South America and like you just everywhere around the world, and we get these awesome submissions from artists and creatives and just verticals that we also have never even like even thought of. And then users come in and say, hey, we've got this use case, and immediately that goes to our team of being like, Oh my god, we didn't think about this use case. Like, how do we make this you know practical? And so we really are in a phase of taking on as much um like we want to know what people need and want, so that we can, you know, specialize that. And you've got teams who are doing like specialized, like refined models. So for example, um, I saw one today and it's like I don't know, like like graphic novels. So there's a specific model that's like perfectly trained for graphic novels, and there's another one that's perfectly trained for like different types of cameras and even like different lenses were at this point. Like, I one of my favorite um, if anyone's going on having a play, like one of my favorite ones is uh like
unprocessed film. Like we have all these different beautiful things, like their photo reel, we have photo reel, so that's like really high quality stuff, and you can do everything from like cinematic. So if you're trying to like create almost like cinema-worthy scenes or or styles, all the way through to stock stock photography where we have this model where you're able to, you know, if you want that you more less creative, like sticky thing if you're trying to do clothing or something. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00So um, yeah, that's got me excited about about creating images. This is awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, and like I find it so easy to get excited about because I've so I I I have a yeah, yeah, bachelor in fine arts, but I also have a degree in screenwriting, and I find this hilarious because I studied screenwriting so that I could articulate with words what I wanted to like share with the world and what I was seeing and feeling. And now I like literally use words in prompting um to create these these images in these worlds that I can share with people. Um, and I think like even that basic example of pitching, like if you're using the screen screenwriting context, like nobody wants to read a 30-page script, by the way. It sucks. You put your heart and soul into it, nobody's gonna read it unless they get a compelling pitch deck or a treatment. And so being able to like, I can visualize in the correct tone, like who what my story is about. Um, and that's just so much more compelling when you go to the the in the in the context of the real world, you have to convince the producers, you have to convince like I think anybody who understands their niche field understands how many layers are involved with the steps, and having convincing and compelling imagery to support that, it's even something simple, like like uh you know, pitch decks as a founder, like you know, like you're gonna be more compelling if your imagery is we're just visual people. So yeah, I get I get pretty excited um by the possibilities of of that, but through to like the literal like commercially viable use cases of I've had meetings with directors who have visualized their entire production before they have gone to set. And like the the when when you're talking about a film production, like that is millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars. So if you can spend, I don't know, a hundred thousand dollars, but you know, like a month or something before a month or two beforehand, like you know, gr stretching it out, that's incredible to me. Um, in terms of like different shifting, it's a shifting workflow. Um, and so that's the other thing that I would say, instead of like, yeah, your your great reference you're saying about changing the paradigm, like for me it's just a shifting and workflows. Like it's it's not doesn't have to necessarily replace stuff, like it, but it can it can change how I go about approaching my creative workflow. Um yeah, so for me for me, I think it's absolutely exciting, and there's so much cool stuff, like every single every single week. I mean, you have an AI podcast, you understand this, but like every single week there's phenomenal stuff happening in the AI world, and like to see it internally as well is just so cool. We're um I think next week, next week we'll launch character consistency to the the rest of the populace. I've been able to play with it um behind the scenes, but this character consistency for me is gen is going to be the game changer because I can now have consistent character and I need perfect, perfect Chris, consistent character I'm ready to cost all of my resources. It's been insane. I was doing like a like a fake uh marketing campaign last week, and just this to me, I just couldn't I it's at a hard moment, like and I'm sure you'll have it if you go in and play with these tours, where you sit there and you're like, this is not real, you know, like how is this happening? And I will sit, you know, go to my parents' place and be like, I made this this week, and they don't know what I'm saying when they say that I made this. They're like, What do you like it it doesn't it it doesn't make sense to them? I'm like, I made this. They're like, what do you mean? Like you didn't do a photo shoot in New York this week. I'm like, well, I did. Well, yeah. Yeah. Um so that's been like quite a fun process of the onboarding and like under like upskilling. That's a big part of my um uh just like a value that I have is bringing others along in the process and making sure like people are excited by these tools, because it is it is exciting. And I think until you until you play with gen tools, I think there can be a bit of um of a misconception that you just like type in, make a picture, and it's that like, oh my god, that's not quite it. Like, you know, I spent hours refining and making sure everything's correct and the practical like it it's a it's just a different process, it's a different creative process. Um, but the outcomes can be spectacular.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You you you made a comment, and I don't think if if you really realize the impact of it, but uh there's in in the world, there's intimidation around the tools if people haven't had that aha moment that you mentioned. Umce you have the aha moment, you realize, oh, like I'm in control here. It's not the machine. Um, but you mentioned that it's it's not really like a paradigm shift. It's nothing to be afraid of, it's just a workflow shift.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that was um I hadn't heard it put that way, but like, guys, there's nothing to worry about. We're just doing things a little differently, right? So that's a very great way of looking at it. So here's my deal. I wouldn't consider myself a creative.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I am left brain like crazy, and like however, it's it's not that I I wouldn't want to leverage creativity in the operation of my business, the portrayal of my messages, my narrative in the marketplace. It just it it hasn't been something that was easy for me. Um, but you know, my experiences using Leonardo have been that it is I'm having the aha moment. Let's put it that way. But as a business owner, you know, be prior to this conversation, honestly, you've you've you've changed my opinion on some things, but prior to this conversation, I was I was like, oh yeah, it's cool, kind of like the music stuff. Yeah, it's cool, but like how is that gonna how is that gonna influence my my prospects? But the way that you put it, like instantly I was like, oh yeah, and all of my pitch decks and all of my presentations and all like every place that I'm using any type of imagery, duh. So it was it wasn't the barrier to introduce creativity into my business wasn't as hard as I thought it was.
SPEAKER_01So thank you for inadvertently bringing me to anyone who runs a business, like you know, story is vital to how audiences engage with you. Story and brand, and whether you want
to, like it's it's you know, which people I think people think it's like the fluffy stuff on top. And I'm like, it's literally how you talk to your users, like or audience. It's it's just it's your entire it's the outfit that you're wearing, like it's vital. Um, and so I think the fact that um these and and the other thing that I would say is previously you wouldn't have invested in that content because it would have been it would have been incredibly expensive and just not it wouldn't be a business need for you, immediate business need. Whereas now I'm sure you could say, yeah, you know what, I am gonna spend two days building out, you know, whatever the what whatever it is that I need. And instantly your business looks sexier, it looks better, it looks like it has more personality, and people are gonna connect with you significantly more. And this can be everything from um, you know, I haven't really gone into all the graphic stuff, but like we can easily make graphic resources for you. So if you were having like, you know. Like like expanding your logo, putting your logo across things, or um, if you had oh god, I I get characters, and like honestly, the it is it is endless with these possibilities, but um, I think in your case, yeah, just being able to make resources that are more compelling with a distinct aesthetic, and that is the difference the the business point that I want to get to because yeah, obviously, if you're gonna go make a suite of images that have no consistency and no cohesion, then it's just gonna be images. Whereas whereas if you have, if you think about it strategically from like a like a brand or a messaging standpoint, it's like what what imagery is actually gonna be commiting and compelling to your audiences, and what is say the the correct style? Like um, I think when you go through that process, like you're just gonna be able to tell stories better to your audience, and therefore they're gonna engage better. And people, and like you you can do like, I mean, bloody Google have done like a million studies. It's like with with um advertising and stuff. It's like if you have the same thing that you're advertising, but across like three different images, but it's the same thing, it's like the same thing shot in a few different ways. People engage more. I don't know why, we just do maybe it feels more realistic, but um, like these little almost like like psychology uh tricks that people use in marketing or whatever, like that. Um it's just the content creation is so much easier now that we can um make it a priority at a really, really, really accessible entry point with um a not steep learning curve because that was the problem before last year, like last year, I think there was a bit of a learning curve. Whereas now you jump on the platform and it's like, okay, what are we making today? Like, let's go. Uh, which I think is quite special. The other thing that I would add, um, which I haven't really got into because we're talking about small businesses, but um we had last last week I announced the launch of Teams. Now, and like this is our enterprise ready production suite for for teams. And by that I mean like in the same way like Figma has collaborative, um, you know, collaborative tooling and like the Google Suite does collaborative stuff. We realized this was a point if we wanted to be this, you know, Gen AI superpower that I think we're we're on the trajectory to be. How do we have an enterprise suite that everybody can use? And so if we say say you and I are in a business, Chris, and um, you know, I might be leading the creative direction on something, all of a sudden you can use the same prompt, the same model that maybe I've gone in and trained myself for for our business, and and I I've got my characters that I've built out. So say my job might be to like you know design the brand or whatever. Then you can go in into Teams, have a folder and be like, oh yeah, I want I want that, but actually I need um I need a water bottle in the shop because I'm selling a water bottle. I don't know, whatever. And you can go and just add it to that in and it's all looking at the same stuff. It's like this collaborative working stuff.
SPEAKER_00So does that look like the the creative team could come in and almost create the the style guide inside the images? And me as a marketer who didn't want to, you know, didn't have the time or whatever to go back and forth with I could go in there, I could use your standards with my prompt and get on-brand images that I need on the fly.
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent. Okay, now the business person that sounds pretty good. Yeah, yeah, because the the that was something that we realized was just like the reality, like people in businesses do not have all the time in the world. And when you're trying to learn new things, that is we realized that was a like a barrier. And so we're like, okay, how do we make this seamless and easy? And it's this sense of like you could dedicate, say, whoever runs your creative in your team or something, like they can be leading more of that, that defining what the aesthetic is and defining all that kind of stuff, and then you could go in and use those like presets or whatever they're talking about, and yeah, you can jump in and make stuff. And so I think very cool, yeah, it is it is really awesome. And I think this like um privately trained model stuff is really cool for enterprise and teams, and it's just it's just we're just trying to make it like how do we make this practical? Like that was everything that we're thinking of. Like, we don't want to this sure, you we we definitely have um like users who love like we like have different um categories for our different users, but say you've got the hobbyists, so people who are AI forward people who are like early adopters and in there, like playing, making cool stuff, like awesome. We love those people, like oh my god, obsessed. But as we grow as a business and scale, we really have to think about the market and think, okay, who like what business cases are we going to be able to solve? And who are these verticals? Like currently, I think we're really looking at the advertising industries, marketing industries, um, film, um, even stuff like architecture and like design and all of these different categories who are really um creative forward as well, is something that we really can like look we we have a thing called um Leonardo's Creator Program, which is I I love it. I'm so excited by it. I'm stoked. Um that's where we like highlight top creators. And so it's this sense of like if you are a top creator.
SPEAKER_00From your platform, yes.
SPEAKER_01And so for people, yeah, so yeah, so we want to we want to be able to find like I know you're friends with Matt Wolf, and so like we want to be able to like um find people who are doing incredible, incredible things with generative AI and be like, look, you got full access to the platform, like go and have tokens galore, like really.
SPEAKER_00Very cool. So, Jesse, I need some advice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We have creative talent that we work with, and we like them, but I don't know that they're using the tools, right? I think that they're like a lot of people, they're they're waiting to see or whatever, they're afraid of the learning curve. What would you tell a business owner like me who had creatives that they didn't want to replace necessarily because those people they understand our brand story and they like they've been with us, right? Um, but we want them to start using or at least exploring right the tools. What advice would you give to somebody like me?
SPEAKER_01I would or to tell them. Yeah, no, I would encourage you to incentivize them to give them the time to learn these tools. Because I
think if you know, in the reality of a busy work day, you're like, oh, I don't have time to learn. The executives need to dedicate time to their whoever they want to execute. So let's say you're a creative team. So like, hey, here's three days. You have three whole days to just go in and like figure out this platform. Because I think the first two days you're gonna get some pretty like whatever, like trying to learn. And by the third day, I think they're gonna have their their minds kind of really captured on the sense of, oh, I get why we are doing this. And that is that is a great, that is the aha moment because if someone doesn't have time to learn, they're not gonna prioritize it ever. No one in whatever context. Agreed. But if you as a if if you as an exe if I was an executive of a company, I would, I would seriously invest in like one week of giving my employees time to really nail in learning how to leverage uh leverage leverage AI. Because the investment in the long term of a one week's pay versus in the long term of having a skilled workforce will be phenomenal. In the sense that instead of you having to like whatever your like whatever your creative team pays. It's great advice. It's but I'm this is unlike unlike this across every single business. Like the fact that we are not so I teach I teach at Uni's, like I mentioned, and I I had a graduate class last year going into industry having never touched AI. I felt sick to my core, Chris. I was sad. I felt sad that these kids were leaving university having not been trained in any capacity on how to leverage, you know, Chat GPT or Leo or like any of these skills, because it is one of the most desired skills today. If you can do these skills. And so, like, I think it's the smartest business move you will ever do is to get is to upskill your team internally. Because and I and I I think it's interesting that you said about this idea of replacing. I'm in no way encouraging replacing people. It's you need to train your people to be able to nail Gen AI because the long-term benefits to your company will be expansive. Um, so yeah, it's it's to me, it's a sense more sense of expanding your business potential as a yeah, it's just it's like a no-brainer to me. And it's not just like these, it's everything. I mean like government, like schools, like it should be um, it should be this next phase of like I I remember in um primary school, we had you know learning how to use a computer and like learning how to use the internet and like learning how to do these things. Like learning how to leverage AI is just a vital, like fourth industrial revolution skill.
SPEAKER_00True. You know, like and I do this podcast, I talk to smart people about generative AI all the time. I'm immersed in it on a daily basis, but I still have aha moments when I'm talking to people. And the way that you put that, um, of that's an obvious no-brainer investment. So next time that I'm working with a client or advising a client, I'm gonna say, look, a week, great, but if you can't do a week, a day, two days, something. But if your people will, if you give them the space to have the aha moment and like, I don't know, uh teach them, guide them, or whatever, that individual, once expanded, the mind doesn't contract to its original state. Yeah, they won't forget that, oh, this tool is here, and it once I figured it out, things got easier, things got faster. So that perspective of train them on Leo, train them on whatever your tools are, but that perspective of taking the time or allowing the time for your team to um actually like saying, hey, this time is just for you to go goof around on the tools, figure it out. Those people will be huge. I mean, the the data all shows that once somebody's upskilled on Gen AI, they're like, they're gone. You can't catch them. They're like unstoppable. So great advice again.
SPEAKER_01I think you'll also find that you'll have front runners in your business. So people who like are they like they get in and they just get it, and they just get it. And if those people can then be the ones who are leading your teams, in what I was saying earlier about like setting up those early stage team stuff, it's then easier for everybody. So it's like the yeah, I it's just it's just exciting. And and um the other long-term like money that you will save in the sense like I don't know what your business is, but say whatever like that you're spending on um licensing, you know, stock footage, or um the other things you're not settling because when you use stock, a lot of the time you're trying to be like, oh, this is kind of close to, or your alternative is to get like a photo shoot, which is probably gonna cost about $20,000 as an entry point. And so like these little these things, like the long term they add up. And it's what I like about like Leo is this creative control element of like I can get specifically exactly what it is that I'm wanting. Like that is like I was doing a I was doing a photo shoot yesterday um across like a mountain, and it was like to do a photo shoot, like on a mountain to you know advertise a jacket. It's just I would love to, but again, it's who is Ticket to Patagonia or Expeditions. Oh my god, please. Um there's a difference, like obviously if I'm like the marketing director of Pac-Ming Doo or something like that, like yeah, probably it's it's beautiful to go and do those experiences. But I think it's for me, it's always thinking about what is the what's the actual use case and who is the person, like if it's a small marketing team, because uh like uh you probably hire a 3D team to create assets anyway, and like 3D is incredibly hard, it's incredibly expensive. Whereas now we can do like currently where we're at, we can do like 2D, 3D. So like it's it looks 3D, it's actually like a like a flat image currently, but the um for if you're doing a poster, you know, like if you're using doing a flat Instagram post or something like that, you know, it you don't need those elements. So I think it's a lot to do with what is your use case, what are you trying to achieve? Like, how do we kind of work around that? Um, like Leo, one of our most popular tools with Leo is the upscaler. It's I think probably
best in industry, and it's um this ability to kind of upscale imagery to a really, really high quality. And so, say you spend you know your day working on a whole suite of different images, and they you get your final output that is a you know just a fine image. We then take it into the upscaler, and all of a sudden you have this incredibly high resolution, nice either photograph or illustration or um, you know, whatever it is to the point that that indiscernable like that indiscernible sense, like that's what I'm getting to. Like, oh, I like I can't believe that every day I can have a heart moment. Yesterday I had that heart moment where I was putting most character consistency, it was this character that I was working on last week, and I put her in this photoship on this mountain, and I was like, the wind's blowing in her hair, and she's you know, looking this, it's expression, and I was like, how is this what is happening? Like it was.
SPEAKER_02And sitting still at a desk.
SPEAKER_01I know, right? And like as a kid, I as a creative kid, you had this imagination of like if only people could see my dreams, if only people could see what's in my mind, and now I sit here and take what's out of my mind and put it, give it to people and print it and ta-da, it's on a wall. Like the workflow to me is the is is the is the comparative, sorry, comparative to when photography came about, I think. Like it's that sense of oh my god, the game has changed. And what photography did was expanded an entire new industry in the sense of like social media. God, social media doesn't work doing oil paintings, I don't think. So, like, you know, it's just a shift. Um, and the the opportunities are gonna be we we can't even imagine. Like, I do a lot of um like futurist uh envisioning, like a lot of future planning, and it's just like you get so far, and then it's kind of like, well, I don't know if we can see beyond that, to be honest, like at that point, and um yeah, I I I I would I would just encourage it really to give it a play because that's the only way that you're really gonna learn um and see see the business opportunities as well. Like um, we even just like like little things, like we have um uh like a little like so we also do an API. Um, and what I mean by that is um if you have a small business, you can actually like plug into Leonardo's functionality to then bring down AI. Oh, are you? Oh my god, cool. Oh my god, awesome. Um yeah, and so we have like API clients who do so many different things. Like there is um someone that does like e-learning and being able to like visualize stuff for e-learning is really, really, really helpful because a lot of people are visual learners. Yes. And then we have um like people who are filmmakers and it they use it for VFX, so being able to add like VFX stuff, which typically have been really quite hard, but using Leo, we're able to create you know that asset that you then combine with your existing, you know, video production workflow, but you've got this additional asset which makes it so much easier. Um, and I mean honestly, I could go on and on. We've got like interactive storytelling API clients,
so like people who tell stories and being able to generate, you know, the next scene as it kind of unfolds, which is just such a beautiful way of um leaning into the capabilities of generative tooling. And yeah, I can go on for literally hours about all of the amazing use cases, but it's just this thing of um, I would say like think about your business and where are you um like what are you like are you buying things? Like where like where are you putting it? Like and how can you be doing it? And beyond that, it's like where are you trying to tell people's stories? Like, where are you trying to connect with your audience? And a lot of the time, social media is massive for businesses, it's like email marketing headers, you know, pamphlets, um banners and stuff, like things that aren't particularly overwhelmingly exciting, but are very, very, very important for um having high quality. High application. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll tell you. So we've been for the past probably, I mean, man, actually since January, my team has been working on a content creation and distribution process that uses the podcast as kind of like the seed of that context for all of the other Gen AI tools that come in. And how we're using Leonardo is they are creating blog posts based on the content. And I think they're shooting me a video walkthrough of everything right now, actually. I think what they're doing is they're now running that through a prompt that's specifically for the image generation, and they're sending that through, and then they're pulling, so we are telling a story. The images that are coming back, they're not just like, oh, cool image. It's an image that was because of a prompt that we use extracted the appropriate language from a blog post. So now we've got like killer images unique, yeah, on brand, yeah, from a blog post. Pretty cool, and we're using the API for that, so it's pretty cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01Hell yeah. Oh, awesome. That's so good to kill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we do a lot of tinker.
SPEAKER_01We're I love see tinkerers, I love it. Tinkerers hackers, like what else can we figure out? But it's funny that you say that because we even we even use AI in our internal teams. Like I saw a post today, we had like one of our designers had a series of images, and we weren't sure which was gonna be like the header. And she got ChatGPT to be like, hey, here is the series of images, according to you and click like click results or whatever, like which is the best image out of this suite? And the like Jen was able to be like, yo, this one's gonna be the highest click rate because of these reasons. And so we're like, awesome, thanks for that. And you know, picked that one out of a suite of images. Like, yeah, that like the strategy and like the strategist in me is just like holy moly, like the yeah, the it's it's it's phenomenal because we have the capabilities to do um like so many options. Like years ago, I mean like university days, I don't know, 20, say 2012 or something like that. I remember seeing um a car company show me that how they use gen AI or that like they would use like very early days gen to generate a series of like car designs of how like which had the best, like you know, um with with the physics of wind and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, low drive.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, it was like an engineering thing of like using the software. And I sat there and was like, oh my god, imagine having this exponential
capability with your process. And that was to me, I think it must have been like, I don't know, Lexus or Honduran, whatever, like a car company, someone who has a lot of money to be able to invest in their engineering teams. Yeah, um, and I was very jealous of that capability, and now you know, a decade later, and it's just sitting, like sitting on my computer, and I just you know play around with it and all of a sudden I have an entire suite. Um, like I yeah, it's it's just it's just never-ending with the possibilities and the use cases, and um we even like if somebody wants like a fun, a very fun intro to to the tool, like we have a thing called um live or real-time canvas, and it's pretty much like if you imagine a kid with an iPad, you can you can be the kid if you want. It can be you, it can be any of us, um, sitting there with an iPhone and just doodling, like even like we used to doodle in in in paint back in the day, and the AI can like interpret your doodles and instantly real-time render into imagery that is like that is picture perfect. And so I was doing like a silly little tutorial last week, and you know, I was I think I was doodling a koala or whatever. Um, but there and then depending on which model I put onto it, so if I wanted it to be anime or if I wanted it to be photography or a painting or a ray trace or a 3D render or like a vibrant sketch or a cinematic, like whichever thing I wanted it to be, um, and it was instantly um rendering like these exit like standout things. And then what's even cooler, okay, so I can do that and then I can save that, upscale it, you know, get it to a nice quality image, and then and then use that into my image gen. So I can be like, okay, thanks. I've got my particular koala, which is now like the mascot for my I don't know, Vegemite business, who knows? This is very Australian, sorry. Um, and then be able to take that and and build an entire series of images and photography and branded content and t-shirts and whatever whatever it is that I want that day, um, built off that. So the workflow is like usually as a as a designer, I would sit there at my desk, at my table, you know, sketch on paper and then take it into, I don't know, probably like Illustrator or whatever the tools which require a lot of learning. You know, but now I can doodle directly in platform and use directly in platform into my suite of content.
SPEAKER_00Um we're we're underutilizing the functionalities, I can tell you that. This this call has really, you know, I just it was one of those categories you can't you can't do it all. And like music, uh it was interesting. I played with it, I made my kids a couple songs, and it's fun. But I'm not gonna be in there regularly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I thought the same thing with the image stuff. I've had a Mid Journey account forever. I Dolly was free, you know, I was included in in GPT plus. And I just didn't use it. I mean, I'm still paying, I don't know, 10, 20 bucks a month, whatever from a journey. And I just, I just don't use it because I just didn't see the application. But unintentionally or intentionally, you have so like like I'm interested to go in there. Certainly, it'll be cool to see what what creative, like, hey, wait a minute, maybe I am creative kind of experience I have. However, the the ability, because I I'm I got a 25-year background in marketing. And I know You're gonna love this.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I'm seeing that now, and I'm like, man, I I I need to be more intentional with the use of of the image gen AI. So for anybody listening, the advice that Jesse gave earlier about giving your employees some time to learn the tools, do the same with yourself.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right? Because a couple of things. One, you're you're now gonna have a new tool in your toolkit. But on top of that, you now can go into your own team or your business or whatever, your clients' businesses. And you, from having spent that afternoon having your aha moment, you're now a bit of a subject matter expert, right? You're your the perception in the marketplace is that you are now your economic viability has improved because of the afternoon you spent on Leo, getting used to the tools. So for somebody that wants to that wants to do that, um what obviously Leonardo.ai, but is there any particular like what would be first steps for somebody that was gonna be trying it out this afternoon after this podcast episode?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cool. So I I'd do it the way I teach in university. So I would start with real-time canvas or like so Leonardo, there's like a few like real-time canvas is just a good way of being like, I'm gonna have a doodle and have that instant kind of like adrenaline hit of being like, oh my god, it's making what I want. And so like start with your little sketch, do something silly, um, and then play with the different models. So like the ray trace, this illustration, the sketch, like just so you get an idea of when when the system knows what it is that you want, it will give you what you want. And if you're getting not very good images, it's because you're not you're probably not telling it the right things or you're not using it correctly. Like the results are phenomenal when it works when when you can articulate things correctly. So I would say um probably start there and then going into the image generation area. Like image generation is where we is like our better our bread and butter. I mean, we also do like motion. I haven't got into all our other features because there's a zazillion, but um, you know, we're able to do motion as well, but let's just keep it simple for today. Um yeah, so you would you would type in a prompt, and I think when you get into prompt writing, using AI to write prompts is really helpful. Um, it's a feature that we're gonna be rolling out publicly, I think, soon. I am obsessed with it. So sorry, I think I think it might only be available to me right now, but this um improved prompt. So I will write like a simple dodgy prompt.
SPEAKER_00I don't know, whatever, like in Leonardo?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in Leonardo. So directly into the the prompt bar. So like a woman.
SPEAKER_00It's got a prompt improver that's coming.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Chris. Very cool. Game changer. I will write maybe like 10 words that aren't very good. Oh, here we here we go. Okay, type of prompt. Um, a woman hiker on a mountain side photography. I don't know. This is my excellent morning brain. And oops, and all of a sudden, if I press improve my prompt, I'm gonna get this. So it goes from a woman hiker on a mountainside photo to a resilient, adventurous woman stands proudly on a rugged mountainside, her gaze fixed at the vast horizon ahead. The photo captures her amid height with windswept hair and a determined expression. This stunning photograph showcases the beauty of nature and the spirit of exploration. The vibrant colours and sharp details bring the scene to life, making it a truly captivating image that conveys a sense of freedom and awe.
SPEAKER_00Much better picture, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a bit more detailed than a woman stands on a mountain.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and so the uh yeah, so so I think
tools like that is really helpful. But beyond that, like those are those are like your beginning entry points. It's for me when you get into the elements of style reference, of content reference, depth to image, edge to image, pose to image, like these are the phenomenal tools which are to me the step up of people who can actually use Gen AI tools. Because if I'm doing a content reference, so say there's like um, I don't know, uh, a scene of people playing basketball or something like that, I can I can use as a content reference to then be like, okay, I I also want to make a scene with a basketball, but I want it to be particularly like in this in this layout or pose the pose thing's really helpful. So like um, if you are doing a clothing shoot or something, like I could literally I could get somebody in my office, it could be you, you could be standing in front of me, I can take a photo of the model, you know, with a hand behind her head or whatever, whatever pose you want, and use pose to yeah, it's a beautiful pose. It looks it's stylish. Um, and use that pose to then um put your your model or like your character into that same position. Phenomenal. Um, you know, we've got edge to image. So if you wanted to have like say you've got your um your brand or your title, like say the word Leonardo, I could then do Leonardo in a black font, just like whatever I've, you know, whatever my tool is to have Leonardo in the font, and and then take it in and do edge to image. And all of a sudden I've got picture perfect Leonardo text used as to create a scene. So it could be like graffiti on a wall, or it could be um on a I made a silly thing for someone on a birthday cake the other day, you know, like happy birthday, Chris. And it's it's I've made, you know, I've just got black and the black and white text, but instantly I've now got it written on top of a cake in the same exact same font, exact same outline. And that was simply by using like an edge-to-image um uh reference thing. And like the the again, I can I can go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the features.
SPEAKER_00Um, this has been great. I was hoping that this would happen. So um how how this got started was um, I don't know, I think maybe Matt might have introduced me to I for some reason I reached out, yeah. And I had a call with somebody from your team, yeah, and then I mentioned the podcast, and I I thought this was gonna be okay, Jesse, tell me how I can use you know art in my business. I'm not that guy. However, um you've made like the the way that this conversation has gone, it's made it much more accessible to somebody who like I'm a businessman, I'm not yeah, you know, art is for other people, but now I'm very, you know, um chat that's been challenged. And yeah, so thank you for doing that. So listen, I I would like for people to be able to follow what you're doing and what Leonardo is doing. Are there specific places online where you're showcasing some of these aha moments that you're having?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's something that we're really keen to push out. I think we're gonna be starting doing monthly demos where I actually help like run through the platform and to be able to um upskill the community because yeah, it is it's like it's new stuff comes out every single week. So it's like, okay, well, let's make sure we bring everybody along with these developments. Um, yeah, I mean, I'm quite active on LinkedIn and Leonardo is also quite active on LinkedIn. Obviously, our Discord is the place to be if you're a Discord person. But again, I'm a little bit. We've got three million people. It's a lot. I know it's it's and this it's a global community of incredible, like incredible creators. And what's cool about our Discord community specifically is I say like they're predominantly early adopters, and like they are people who have been at the front of this AI wave from the get-go. They have seen it all, they get it all. Um, so it's a really great community to um be a part of and see what like the our front runners and what they're doing. Um for the for the rest of the populace, I'm sure like again, there's not really that many marketing people who want to jump on a Discord. I would say our LinkedIn is definitely um a place to be for that. We also have Twitter, um so Leonardo.ai across all of those. Um, I speak a lot because I do really love engaging with the community. So um my LinkedIn is just jessihughes at Leonardo.ai.
SPEAKER_00Um very cool.
SPEAKER_01Hopefully, we'll get to be doing these video demos. Yeah, for sure. Um, I think the the the repositioning in in the head I would have is this sense of it's a content
creation suite. So whatever content you have as a business, how do we how do we touch that content to have story and beauty and narrative and you know create compelling, specific niche content for your business needs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it takes it even a little bit further. If you're gonna be a generative AI expert, but you're siloing off, well, I create this type of content and I don't really know anything about that. I think that that would be a mistake. And if you were going to try something, I would recommend obviously Leonardo AI, just because of the ease of use. I'm telling you, haven't tried every um image generation tool out there, but the ones that I have, it was like, nah, that's why I don't use them, right? However, but with Leonardo and with all the examples that you've shared and the stuff that you guys are doing, it's a different, it's a different category. Very cool. Thank you so much for sharing all this with us, Jesse. And you're so welcome. So Leonardo.ai, and once they get there, just dive in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, make a account.
SPEAKER_00Just follow Jesse's instructions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, make an account, jump on in, play in the tools. Um, I reckon go start with real-time Canvas and then go into image generation. Get your employees to spend a day. If you don't want to give it a week, give them a day. I like I mean a full day because you do have to really start to learn. You have to make mistakes to learn how to use these tools. So um invest in a long-term, um, incredible upskilling of your workforce.
SPEAKER_00It's great advice. All right, Jesse, thank you so much. All right, guys, we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to using AI at work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer, for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. So thanks to our producer, Evan Desponier, for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle usingAI at work and visit www.usingai at work.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.