PropMedia Podcast

From 3 Months to 6 Years: the Evolution of AI Photo Editing w/ Autoenhance.AI

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In this episode of the PropMedia Podcast, Pixlmob co-founders Moses and Matty welcome their first-ever in-person guests to the studio: Jamie, founder and CEO of Autoenhance.ai, and Josh, the Head of Growth. Together, they dive into the evolution of AI-driven photo editing and its growing impact on the property media landscape.


The Big Reveal: Unmasking Omni


A highlight of this episode is the official announcement that Pixlmob’s “Omni” model has been powered by Autoenhance.ai since its launch in August 2024. The team discusses the upcoming rebranding effort that will allow the Autoenhance.ai brand to shine directly on the Pixlmob platform, offering users more clarity and access to their cutting-edge technology.


Key topics discussed in this episode include:

  • The Origins of Autoenhance.ai: Jamie shares the backstory of starting the company in 2020 and the challenging process of refining AI to meet the high quality standards of the American real estate market, such as perfect white balance and punchy colors.
  • The AI Adoption Curve: The guests discuss the shift from early innovators to mainstream adoption, noting that while AI editing currently accounts for roughly 20–30% of the market, that number is rapidly climbing as the technology matures.
  • Human vs. AI Editing: A look at the role of human editors in an AI world, exploring how AI serves as an "amplification" tool that empowers solo photographers and small businesses to compete at scale while still allowing for a "human touch" in quality control.
  • The "SAS Apocalypse" and Burnout: A candid conversation on how AI can either lead to burnout through an obsession with productivity or offer "time back" to spend with family and focus on high-value business tasks.
  • What’s Next for Autoenhance: Jamie and Josh tease upcoming releases for 2026, including a new "PostEdit" product designed to give users even more granular control and customization over their final images.

To learn more about Autoenhance or to try their AI photo editing services, visit autoenhance.ai.

SPEAKER_06

I'm Moses. And I'm Matty. And this is the oh, we're the co-founders of Pixel Mom. Pixel Mom. And this is the prop media podcast where we talk all things prop media and about auto and hards.

SPEAKER_02

You really told it.

SPEAKER_00

You really told it.

SPEAKER_05

Really, really sold it. And who are you guys? What are you doing on Hot Pocket? I'm Jamie McAnally. Fantastic. And I'm I'm one of the co-founders of autoenhance.ai.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm Josh.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00

The great grandson of uh who is Heinrich Moss, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Thanks for having us so we can uh talk about autoenhance on your procedures podcast. You are so welcome.

SPEAKER_00

It's very kind of you. Yeah, yeah. We've broken the whole set for you guys to come here. So that's you're also welcome for that.

SPEAKER_05

Wonderful. Yes. We have managed to pack four people into our generally two-person studio. No one thought it could be done, but we made it happen. In all seriousness, thank you to Jamie. He's come all the way from London, touring the United States, connected with lots of people. But he popped up to Greenville and he's actually our first in-person guests in our studio, which is pretty fun.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. It's been great. Yeah, we're we're here for a little road trip in America. And first off is Greenville. So thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_05

All right. Well, let's dive in and talk some AI and property media and all kinds of stuff. So why don't you give us a little bit of just a little bit of backstory to Jamie? Yep. And the beginning of Auto Hands. Because you've been in the industry a little longer than some of the other AI players.

SPEAKER_00

We are the OGs, I guess some people would say. I mean, we've been in it for six years coming up this year. So I think any AI company that's pre-Chat GPT is that is a nice little claim to Yeah. Uh so yeah, my name's Jamie, and I'm the the founder and CEO of autoenhanced.ai. We started in 2020. So we we had a a crazy idea back then. We thought, how hard could it be to edit real estate photos with AI? Turns out it's bloody difficult.

SPEAKER_05

I remember talking with you three or four years ago at PMRE. Yeah. There was some challenges way back then.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So we we started in 2020 and we built the first version of Auto Enhance in just three months. So we we were pretty self-confident. We thought we cracked it. Um, it was actually crap back then. We we had issues with distortion, there's color problems. Uh the skies looked like they were painted on with a paint roller. Um, but we we knew we had something special. And after about 18 months of refining it, uh, 2022, we had the first one that people started paying for. And that was uh a really magical moment in 2022. Like we we had something that people were ready to pay for. We started scaling in the UK. We had this 18-month growth spurt, and by the end of it, more than one in 10 properties in the UK were being edited with auto enhance. Um so we we had it, you know. We we thought we we had something special, we had a lot of interest in America as well. I came over to America, but our quality just wasn't quite where it needed to be. Like Americans, you like your window pools, you've got to have your white balance perfect, you've got to have your punchy colours. So um, yeah, we we came over to the US and we thought, well, how hard can it be to track that?

SPEAKER_05

A grey balance in London. There's not a lot of white.

SPEAKER_00

I I think if you replace the gray sky with blue, the Brits just think they're it's automatically fake.

SPEAKER_02

They know it's immediately fake.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they're like, what is this blue thing above the house? We've not seen this before. Yeah, we don't like the optimism. We actually reverse it, we we make them gray, just yeah, gray sky add-ons to the UK market.

SPEAKER_05

That's the upsell in the UK is you have blue sky and you make it gray so people feel more comfortable, keep calm, carry on. That's exactly it. Awesome. Keep keep to something people know, yeah. Um, all right. So we'll yeah, we'll get back to more of the story, but how do you know this guy? How did Josh get into the business world?

SPEAKER_02

Not the first time John, you might be our first repeat. Wow, that's true.

SPEAKER_05

I think you are because we had a PMRE episode with you. Little roundup. Yeah, yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_06

Honored to be here. First repeat, first in person. Yeah. Your first thing. Yeah, honored. Uh, we met at PMRE 2023. 2023. Yeah. Um, I was there. I've been at PMRE for yeah, since the beginning. Um, for my uh company show and tour, I also have a background as a real estate photographer for 10 years, uh, then was in yeah, software to serve real estate photographers. And Jamie and I met, and naturally we both were passionate about serving uh the real estate media industry, real estate photographers. And I always thought that yeah, what you were offering was cool, yeah, but it wasn't quite there in 2023, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, but last year like I felt similar. I feel like that's when we met too, was 2023.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yeah. Moses and Matty introduced me to Chick-fil-A, which uh that's our claim to fame. Yeah, which was amazing, it changed my life.

SPEAKER_05

We invited him to a hotel suite where our main draw was large plates of it wasn't just Jamie to be clear that we drew to our hotel suite.

SPEAKER_02

Oh gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Well, um, you know, I'm yeah, other people were taking it. There was a whole party there with ugly abduct British guys, but if I do, it's Jamie. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So that was pretty fun. So 2023 is when we met, and yeah, like I was saying, so we were growing 18 months, uh growing in the UK, started coming to America in 2023 to try and crack that market. That again took 18 months to get to version five, which actually met the needs of the American market and and scaled. But it was start of 2025, I think. We were looking for a a marketeer to join our team, and we put out a job posting and looking around. I get an email from Josh, who like we'd met two years prior. We'd kind of built a relationship, we met a few times, had a few calls, and um, you sent me an email, and you were like, I can be your marketeer and more. It was kind of like I can do intrigue. I know, I know you're looking for a marketeer. Sounds more spicy. But you're like, yeah, it was kind of I know you guys are looking for a marketeer, but I can do so much more than that. And I like lightning bolts hit my head, and I was like, I need to have a call with this guy. And I had a call with Josh, and I was like, we've got to make something happen.

SPEAKER_05

I think we need to popularize pronouncing it marketeer because that sounds like radically than marketer. Marker, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think like the rocketeer. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, Josh is also my translator in America. There's there's been a lot of times I've been using a lot of British phrases, and Josh has to translate them. So yes, marketer. I do my best.

SPEAKER_06

Um, but yeah, I was excited about um the team at Auto Enhance being a the history of being around for six years, having a team that um most of the team has been there for a couple years at least. Yeah. Uh serving the UK already with an existing audience with a infrastructure that is built for scale, working with companies that are already uh editing at high volume, it just felt like auto enhance was prime to make a couple adjustments and they were already on their way to get there. Uh and so I was excited about let's do this. I I think I can help contribute to the the product, but also help get the word out uh in the US. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So to be clear, for people who may this may be the first time they're hearing about auto enhance, what does auto enhance do?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so we do AI photo editing for real estate. Um, so yeah, HDR blending, raw decoding, white balance correction, window pools, scar replacements, the whole editing flow we automate it.

SPEAKER_02

So why aren't you on Pixel Mob?

SPEAKER_00

That's what I want to why aren't we on Pixel Mob? That's a great question. Like, are you jerks?

SPEAKER_05

Like you just don't you just don't want to play with us?

SPEAKER_00

You guys have this uh weird brand on there called Om Omni or something? Oh, Omni is yeah, it's super weird.

SPEAKER_05

Weird ads come out of that thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

All right. Well, part of why we're we're here today is to talk about Omni. So Omni has been powered by Auto Enhance since day one. So we're working on back in September, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I think we launched last day of August. Yeah, the very eighth day of August launched with y'all as one of the first ones in that brand. Um, and as things are developing, like I guess this is the big reveal of the man behind the mask that nobody was really wondering about. Is that and we're gonna work on rebranding in different ways on on Pixamob and let Auto Enhance shine as their own brand as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, we've had a lot of discussions today about getting the branding out there, what the the future looks like. So yeah, it's exciting to share. I think the Omni was a real test to see how it works and and and what the opportunity looks like. And we're just really doubling down now. It's it's let's let's get auto enhance out there, let's let's push it harder, let's open up some more opportunities. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05

And I I thought it was fun, actually. I mean, now I mean now everyone publicly knows, but some of my favorite moments over the last few months were uh some online polls that had different models ranked. Yeah, and then Omni and Auto Enhance had different rankings, yeah, even though they were the exact same images, which was kind of interesting. It's it's interesting how people's minds work and relate to different brands.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think um we're in the very early stages of this. I think uh we we intended with Omni early on uh to ex as an experiment, and uh we're starting to see how AI HDR is fitting into the ecosystem within real estate media. Um, there's a few players now, and um yeah, we're seeing kind of a weird shift. Uh not a weird shift, we're seeing a shift. A lot of people are adopting AI. Obviously, that's like 100% of your business. Uh, we obviously see kind of a mix of that. Um, there's a lot of people that really appreciate having a human do it, even if it's the same, worse, better. There's a value to just having a human editing, and that's valuable for some people. Um but then there's a lot of people where they've built a business around speed. Uh, they want to find better economics. Um, and when the quality kind of hits a threshold where it's good enough, um they're willing to make that switch. And I think we're starting to see that switch for a lot of people. Kind of, we saw that this past summer. Jamie you've been doing this for you know, since 2020. Yeah. What does that landscape look like in the AI HDR world?

SPEAKER_00

I I I think uh what's really interesting here is we're kind of it's kind of going through deja vu because we've seen this before. We had this growth spike in 2022 where we went from no one really using it to people signed to pay for it, and then we just had this, it was literally like double on double month-month growth. And it went on for 18 months, and we're like, yeah, let's keep it coming. And then um, we're starting to see that again with the US market, and I think this is you know very classic for any tech product, really, is once you hit that product market fit, it is that scale up curve, it is that adoption cycle, and that's what we're seeing. I think we've seen for years like the innovators adopting AI, trying AI.

SPEAKER_02

Um there's like the promise that if this worked, yeah, it would change things.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there was an actual term. Now it is.

SPEAKER_02

It's starting to work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that there was an actual term for this. You know, you've got like vibe coding for programming. There's like a vibe, something or other for testing out these AI products that aren't quite maturing. And now we're at that maturing stage where we're seeing that growth curve happen. And I think it's uh it's it's really a tornado, right? You don't know how it's gonna go, what flavors they're gonna be. I think there's still gonna be some element of human fully editing. There's gonna be a lot of hybrid AI plus human. There's gonna be straight up AI as well. Um, so we're we're really entering that that growth curve now. I think the numbers that I had access to last year, there was only about a five percent adoption rate in the market of AI for photo editing. I think we're we're up to maybe 20, 30 percent. So there's still 70% at least, maybe more than that, that is still not AI. And that's just the the lag of adoption of new technology is happening. Yeah, it's just taking time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Not that much time, but I mean in the scheme of things.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_05

Sharp upward curve last year.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Last year was really um the the hype excitement, and now we're seeing like larger businesses adopt and implement like we we did some big integrations in Q3, Q4 that are happening in 2026. Right. And that's like once that fully transitions in 2026, how much of the marketplace is gonna be uh processed by AI is in it's in flight. That's what I'd say.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, this is not unique to just real estate media, obviously. Yeah, across the board companies are starting to see that take. And I think that's you know, good in your case where people are starting to trust a computer to just take over these tedious parts of their business. Yeah, if it can be automated, people are going out of their ways to try to figure out how I can trust it to do that. Yeah. And so it's gonna be a growing wave, you know. So photographers are looking for all kinds of ways to automate the processes, yeah. Um, repeatable, tedious, expensive, take a long time. And editing is kind of like just like right in the middle of that. It's like the sweet spot to really start optimizing.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, literally this month, um, legal and software stocks are down 10 to 20 percent. So Bloomberg are calling it the SaaSpocalypse. Yeah. And you know, the media are saying that AI is replacing lawyers and it's making software obsolete, but I don't really think that's what's happening. Like a lot of these big AI companies, the companies that are the household names, they're building tools with legal plugins or software accelerators. You know, they're not building an a robot lawyer. There's no Arnold Schwarzenegger walking into a to to defend you, you know. It's uh people would pay for that.

SPEAKER_02

I'd pay for that.

SPEAKER_00

I would totally pay for that. But but it's uh it's amplification, right? That's what's happening with AI right now. We're seeing amplification, like one lawyer can do as much as three with these AI tools. That's what we're starting to see now. And I think we're seeing the same with the photo editing, right? We are amplifying the work that editors can do, photographers can do with these AI tools. That's that's exciting.

SPEAKER_02

Let's get a little philosophical. I I feel like uh I was reading an article um just this last week about well, I think you sent it to me, um, about burnout. And these early AI adopters are now uh they're the first, obviously they're getting burned out. They're the most excited and optimistic, but they're the ones that are burning out the fastest because their productivity has jumped up five, ten percent. And I would definitely say I'm I'm more or more, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then they can't maintain the that level of purview over time. Like there's too many balls in the air, and the AI helps, but then they're the point of failure eventually. It's it's interesting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think this was TechCrunch.

SPEAKER_05

I mean this was uh it was not an obscure article, right?

SPEAKER_02

There's this uh I do like some obscure articles, but this one wasn't I think it's definitely a thing in like uh a way Americans in particular, um, and maybe this is true in some of uh how you've grown up too, but like there's this urgency and this obsession with work and long work hours, and um, and it's not like this forced thing, like there's this kind of ambition and chasing the American dream. And as entrepreneurs, I think we all kind of feel this around this table, but like uh you want to keep doing more in our audience. They're all entrepreneurs, they have their businesses, they're trying to figure out how to squeeze 10 hours of work and eight hours, and these tools are allowing them to realistically do that. Like they could, in theory, do a hundred shoots. That was like a technical impossibility. Yeah. And uh when we started Pixel Mob, that was kind of like some of the promise is like the first steps towards you could scale in your outsourcing. Um, and now it's at a point where like you could outsource your editing, and in theory, you could do as many shoots as you can book. Yeah, as far as the editing, that's not a limiting factor anymore.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, if we're getting uh philosophical about this, you know, work is like any substance in a way, it can be addictive. Um and like any addictive substance, sometimes you have to overuse it to the breaking point in order to work out what's healthy. And I think that's that's the reality, right? We we haven't matured fully. You know, ChatGPT is 2022, end of 2022, we're we're four years or so from that. And the the kind of capabilities of those systems were not amazing, they're getting better and better every year. But now we're at the point where you can really push it to the limits, and I think a lot of people are. And once they hit that breaking point and understand what a healthy balance is, then they'll work it out. But yeah, I don't think there's you know any kind of advice you can give anyone. I think anyone when they've got uh drive and excitement, they'll push it to the limits and they'll work out what their limits are.

SPEAKER_05

I I do think I think that's true. There's there's just like a in our era, there's so many things converging right now. Like the iPhone was what 2007? I mean that's barely 20 years ago. Yeah, GPT is three or four years ago. Like there's so many different but to your point, the iPhone 20 years later, there's I mean, how many articles have you seen over the past I'd say two, maybe three years about like dopamine addiction is now a like common parlance that five years ago nobody would have known what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Where there's these ramifications of these devices that we don't even realize for 15 years, but suddenly there starts to be an awareness in society of like, okay, the shiny, colorful screen is actually affecting my brain in ways that I didn't expect. Yeah, and if I just change it into into grayscale, it affects my brain differently, and I want to pick it up less. And yeah, and we start learning about the technology and how it relates to health. AI to me is a little scary and it's almost a little different in that sense, though, because it does it makes work easier, yeah, but humans aren't designed to work all the time. And so you have this like promise, this forbidden fruit of well, I can get any amount of work done if I just have the right prompts.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And we're not, I don't think we're made for that. And good decisions aren't made that way. You don't like some things have to ruminate a little bit, and humans have to have limits, or we become profoundly unhealthy and we become profoundly burnt out. And it, I'm not lobbying that no, but we shouldn't use AI, but I think if we're wise as a society, maybe learning from the iPhone and other things like that, we're maybe more conscious of that faster. And I am seeing a growing dialogue of like, how do you use AI without turning your brain into mush? How do you allow students to use AI while actually getting them to learn as well? Which I think is pretty helpful, is a good conversation. And it seems to be happening a lot faster than it has with some other recent major technology pivots.

SPEAKER_00

What do you think, Josh?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think it's uh this very intense problem, but fix um Western civilization.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, yeah. One problem. Give me two minutes.

SPEAKER_05

Let me let me catch a idea how to fix Western civilization.

SPEAKER_06

It's uh it's a tool, and you can choose how to use it. So I think in the context of you know, this AI, AI real estate photo editing, photographers can use it um to do more shoots in the day to work. Less to have upsells for same-day delivery. Um, to some people like being a solo photographer, and maybe that's it's now easier than ever to be a solo photographer.

SPEAKER_05

That's one of the things I kind of love about it in in some ways, is AI is automating things in some ways that allow solopreneurs to really compete against larger corporation architecture, that's what and things like that. Like we whine all about the the man and the big corporations doing everything. Like AI, in some ways, if used well, empowers the one, two, three employee businesses to compete on that level, which that's a cool development.

SPEAKER_06

That's what a lot of software does in our space. And the AI is one AI photo editing is was one of those. Um and so yeah, I think it's yeah, it's a tool, and you can decide how you want to use it. And we we have a perspective that RAI is here to serve people, um, and it's serving mostly small businesses, small solo one to three person businesses are is the majority of real estate photographers around the world. We also serve big uh companies that have hundreds of photographers, but um, they're those are still small businesses. So our AI supports people and they can you know choose to use that tool, whatever serves their clients better. Um, people yeah, decide on how they want to implement it. Um, and we even serve uh editors. Uh we help editors deliver um their services quicker. Uh, we have editors that sign up for auto enhance, and there's editors that use auto enhance through Pixel Mob and they can deliver a better service, faster, more consistent. It helps them scale their business, their small business too.

SPEAKER_00

I I think this is you know, we're going away from the philosophical question and back to uh auto enhance. And uh go for it, Jamie. But but this is um what's really exciting about having Josh on the team because Josh's background is being a professional photographer for 15 years, you know, it's understanding someone who really understands a business inside and out, understands the requirements of workflow, quality, um, pricing as well to make the best product possible for these people. So yeah, I'm curious from you, Josh. Like, if you put yourself in your shoes 10 years ago or so when you're running that media company, like how did you operate and how would AI affect you? Would you be burning out or would you have it under control?

SPEAKER_06

I think under control. I mean, it's is it's like any tool. There's been lots of other tools that make your workflow more efficient. Outsourcing alone was similar. Yeah. Did that um before I mean it was common to outsource, you just edited your own photos. Um, and that that you know, that was uh outsourced editing, like gave you a lot of people their life back, yep. Um, or allowed them to serve their clients next day rather than two days. Uh with my business, I held on to like a 48-hour turnaround for way too long. Um, but like most people were able to do a next day turnaround because of outsourcing, and then they weren't the ones actually behind their computer editing photos, they were in the field uh doing work that was a lot more fun.

SPEAKER_02

What I see now though is I think what's different now than 10 years ago, and I think kind of fuels this problem at some level. We have all these conventions, obviously, we have big Facebook groups, and there's and in the age of AI where every model of everything is coming out with new and better stuff every other week, there's this comparison that's happening on an individual level, even in within the real estate photography community. I'm looking at other photographers and comparing my business to theirs, or uh there's this like speed to action that's kind of become expected in our it's in the zeitgeist, right? Like as a whole. And I think I think even attitudes are a little bit different than they were 10 years ago. Um so even like I think you're right. I think that it's a bit of a challenge at some level. Like uh if I'm running a mill real estate media and I'm given this tool, but I'm not like unique. I'm I everyone has access to this tool. Do I use it to get three more hours out of my day or tuck my bed, my kids into bed at night? You know, like this is I think what a lot of people struggle through. Um, like more power feels like I should be being more productive. And uh I didn't expect this podcast to go this way. It's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_00

We we get people reviewing on auto enhance all the time. Like, I think it's like after so many orders or something, customer reviews auto enhance and tells us their experience. And we get a notification in our Slack and read them. And so many of them are like, wow, Auto Enhance has allowed me to spend more time with my family. And it's cool. Yeah, you know, process more images, but also have more time to run my business. Like, I think this is uh the exciting part about AI is actually giving you time to do what you do most, you know, what you do best, right? If that's spending time with your family, if that's spending time in other parts of your business that I don't know, scale your marketing efforts or change your website so you can get more business or whatever. I think that's that's a really exciting thing about AI. Um, I it can always be viewed in two ways, right? How scary it is, and uh it's Terminator, it's gonna take our jobs and everything. And I think that's that's a bit of a pipe dream as well, like based on what we're seeing with AI today and and what's needed for AI to really take your job away. And then there's um the good it can do as well, which is giving you your time back, giving you a platform to build a scalable business. It's up to you if you want to burn yourself out, right? But you can build a bigger, more manageable business with the power of AI. I think that is empowering.

SPEAKER_05

Well, I love that Slack channel. That Slack channel is very skewed, it sounds like, toward the family-friendly side because all the hustle bros are taking credit for AI editing on Instagram and they're posting it there. So but that's that's nice. That's a lovely little feed you have.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, we'll uh we'll turn it into a little video, maybe. Yeah, yeah, it has been overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. People, yeah. I mean, it's it's affecting people's daily life and their business. Because yeah, most people are just small businesses dealing with these day-to-day things that are frustrating or tiring or repetitive. Um, and that's usually not their best value.

SPEAKER_02

Josh, you uh a second ago, you were talking about applications for auto enhance and like the people who might be using it. And you mentioned that editors are using auto enhance. Uh, it's interesting. I mean, we are seeing in on Pixel Mob, at least there's reports. We have don't know for sure. Like editors are using all kinds of AI tools for their editing process. Um, it's interesting in our case, I think we have a marketplace of human editors. So people are coming to our marketplace with this expectation um that humans doing the work. Uh, we have an AI plus human um early access tool. I'm kind of wondering like, what does it look like for in a world where everyone has access to it's not like only photographers have access to these tools and somehow they're barred from the editors around the world, pixel mob or otherwise. Um what what is it gonna look like as more and more people have access to these tools? And what do you think the responsibility is for and maybe this is you'll have to flip this question on us a bit, but like on the editor side, um what's what's what do we need to be thinking about? That's a better way to pause it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I like the phrase that you keep using there, which is tools, right? And I think that's exactly what AI is. You know, if if your editors are using, you know, whatever HDR blending technique there is in Photoshop or you know, views or whatever it is, should they be reported for using that HDR blending rather than hand blending?

SPEAKER_05

If they use an AI magic wand in Photoshop, is that is that a yeah, it's it's a real mind, right?

SPEAKER_02

Like AI what is hand blending also on a computer.

SPEAKER_00

I use my machine learning card for a long time.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so manual editing with your hand on the mouse.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, so I I I think it's a tool, right? And I think AI is a tool, not just in photo editing, but in all aspects. You know, uh software programmers are using AI to do coding, but a lot of the critical decisions still need to be made by the programmer, the software engineer. So it's a tool that lets them do more, right? They're programming in a different way, but the AI is the tool. This is exactly the same for photo editing. I don't think there's uh a consequence for using AI to do the editing. As long as you deliver a final result that the customer is satisfied by, you know, you've created value. I think that's that's the critical piece.

SPEAKER_06

Like any tool, the responsibility is on the person delivering the work. The user. Um, there's the photographers responsible, but also the editor is responsible. So the editor's job is to make sure that photo comes out looking good and representing the actual space. So if they're using AI as a tool and something happens with the AI toy that didn't produce a good result, it's the editor's job to work with that tool to produce the good result. So um, yeah, it's just a tool in the arsenal that serves the human doing the job.

SPEAKER_02

I do think that over time it will become more and more uh difficult to distinguish the difference between a human edited image and an AI edited image. I think there are some things right now that still can be tells, um, but they're when you're looking at just like a Facebook post or like particularly if you're looking at a at the MLS, or by the time it gets to Zillow, it's been compressed and gone through multiple versions of those companies compression and everything, it's pretty hard to know the difference. Um but a photographer is looking at it like at its like the cleanest output possible, and they're gonna say, like, okay, well, my original image was 6,000 images or pixels wide, and I can see like, oh yeah, the numbers are blurred, and there's like little tiny things that like I see photographers kind of nitpick on, and they have every right to do that. It's their product, it's how they represent themselves to their customers. Um, so I I think that it's valid that they can have would have opinions about those things. It's just a matter of like what what is the threshold for what the majority of our customers and customers actually need. Um and the products that actually are starting to deliver on that. I, you know, we were talking about like in August or over the summer in particular, that was kind of like the Turing test a little bit, you know, like we've kind of had our own real estate version of that where it's like all of a sudden it just everything looked good enough. And I think uh your models when you started introducing like the window pulls, that's where which I think was very important, like you said, in the US market, not as important in your original markets, that was kind of like a big turning point. Yep. Um, and now it's like that's what our our our real estate industry expects. Yeah, and here it is, and you can do it and it's automated, um, but it's gonna get harder and harder to tell the difference a year from now. Who knows where we'll be, and those super high resolution images taking in raw images, and it's just gonna look indistinguishable.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the thing with AI is it's not linear, right? The the quality of AI does not improve in a linear direction. So I use auto enhanced today, I use auto-enhance next week. I'm not gonna see a linear improvement of the quality. It's a very lumpy growth. And this is with any AI product, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever you want. Because you have to go through these training cycles, and we've done this, you know, six years. We had like a very early version of our sky replacement AI back in, I don't know, 2022 or 2023. And it was good, but every now and then it wasn't great. So you just throw more and more data at it, you do more and more training, and then it's like a step up, you know, a step change in improvement. And that's what we're seeing with all these AI models. You know, that's what really happened last year, is we did a step change in quality, and it was like overnight, a massive difference. It's hitting that bar, it's hit hitting that kind of um minimum viable product that works for the American market. And we see this with other AI products as well. We see this with Claude. Uh Claude, I think they had like 3.5 opus or whatever it was, they released 4.6 and it was a step change in how it operated. Yeah. And that's that's what's gonna happen going forward. It's not a linear growth. You know, there's gonna be new releases, we're working on bigger models, we've got bigger data sets, and we're gonna switch it on and it's gonna be like, whoa, something uh new has happened here, it's new capabilities, new level of quality. And that's that's just the way AI works, you know, because it's it's not an iterative process. It is batching, it's uh building data sets, it's training AI, it's doing testing, then it's releasing to the world.

SPEAKER_05

You you mentioned earlier, you think about 70% of the market is still human edits. We see comments all the time. You guys get comments all the time. People still want humans to do things. Where do you think that lives as this marches forward? So AI gets better and better, but there are still people who want a human connection and a human overlay. Where do you think that kind of shifts toward? Where does that end up living? Do you think it goes away entirely?

SPEAKER_00

Um, yeah, that's a loaded question. What do you think, Josh?

SPEAKER_04

I know.

SPEAKER_05

Just let my brain work for a little bit. We can 11 p.m.

SPEAKER_06

for you, I think. We can speak to what we've seen with our users. Um it depends on the size of the business and how they've chosen to handle the transition. Um, a lot of smaller, like a solo photographer, might decide to just handle that that final step on their own. They're gonna do it themselves. So they'll just do it themselves.

SPEAKER_05

They'll get to auto enhance edit and then they'll budget time to and tweak whatever you want.

SPEAKER_06

A lot of those photographers already do that. They have to outsource editors. They're still pulling the photos into Lightroom and making their final touches. So essentially it's the same process for them. Then there's that medium-sized company who probably wants a team member to do it or a contractor. Um, and that's an area that, yeah, I I love the model of the AI plus human approach within Pixel Mob. Um, and then if you get to a big enough size company, they just have staff that are probably doing that, or they have their own. You have a QC department, yeah, essentially. They might have their own actual department. So um, yeah, I that's I love your offering of the AI plus human for that middle ground, medium-sized company, which there are a lot that need that that contractor, that specific person that's focused on yeah, that that quality check. Maybe there's other VA type steps that some people have contractors do. Uh, there's general admin stuff, but the human adds that level of taste, like that that is hard for an AI to to replicate, just to that level of like, does that look good or not? Like, that's a hard thing for AI to just get right every time.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Um and and options and a little bit more directedness is one of the things we see too. And that's often my frustration with Claude or something like that, is I'll draft something and I've got a bunch of stuff written out, but then I want to kind of more granularly tweak a few things just in writing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And that's a pain in the butt. I don't actually want it to regenerate everything. I don't want to change anything in paragraph three or four. And you can, of course, tell it don't change anything in paragraphs three and four. But it's kind of clunky compared to just being able to go back in and do like a line item. I want it to just be done and be able to have that more granular control, which is a little bit challenging as a last mile problem for a lot of AI products. Yep. And I think people are experiencing that same thing in the image editing that even though it's 95% of the way there, there's these little pieces they want done that well, we're designing a solution for that for people who do want that. And there's other people who don't. They just want to take what Claude generates and they're like, it's good enough. Yeah, it's in the blog, we're good. We're gonna slap it up there. Sending Tech Crunchy card, we're good. Yeah, TechCrunch writes articles about those people. There's a whole slew of articles about AI slop and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00

So but I think what you touched on there is personal preference, right? Some people want one and some the other. And I think that's why you see with the individuals, they love to take the images into Lightroom and do those last tweets because it's deeply personal. It is those personal touches that adds value. Once you start scaling up to a brand and having a brand standard, then it's what tools or what workflow do I need to put in place to make that happen? And that's that's really unique to every business. That's that is like you know, your secret source. Uh, that's what makes you special. And AI will get better. There will be more communications. More options, more granular, and it will be easier. Um, but it's really how you use those tools to make it happen. It's not like a sentient being that you go, like, do my work, come on, hit my standards, read my mind, like what I want. Well, it's not there yet.

SPEAKER_05

I mean, that's that's the promise of more agentic AI, right? Like, there could be a time where that it AI provides the QC component as well and the optionality, but definitely not quite there yet.

SPEAKER_02

What I want to see is like Moses is kind of pointing out, a little bit more of a professional tool. Maybe you guys will be the guys to figure it out. But like or we're gonna figure it out. Yeah, they go break out the particular almost like layers, but like the using the AI to get to the passes that presents a composite that you are could ship. It's equivalent to what you guys are shipping right now. Like, here's the composite, but it has broken apart parts. I think people want to play around with like the window pull masks, they want to play around with the skies and the sky mask, and they want to uh adjust some people, some people, but I mean on the professional tools, and particularly editors, you know. So, like there's editors right now. I think they are taking this stuff because it's fast, and they can get you to the first step. You guys can get them to the first step, and other AI tools get them to that first step very fast, and they take that as kind of like one layer with the other raw light layers, they're blending them together, they're still painting in some of the highlights or shadows, they might still be making their own masks, changing some of the you know, the lens distortions or the vertical alignment, any of that kind of stuff. Um, but it's like like you said, it's a tool amongst many. And I think there's there's room for a professional tool. Like, I kind of wonder where the cap is where you guys feel like how can it get more better? Like, you know, like it the image at some point, like it looks as good as it's gonna get, and you can't just keep training and it's gonna just somehow there's gonna be some transcendent new version of editing that's gonna be better. Yeah, um, it to me it becomes like the way it gets better is the tools become more useful. Maybe not that the result is any different.

SPEAKER_00

I think uh yeah, if we could predict the future, we'd have uh you know picking the lottery numbers and always winning. Um five. Yeah, I think you're already here for it. But but think about you know when the iPhone came out, the iPhone moment in 2007 or whenever it was. Like prior to then there were some attempts at a smartphone, but a real phone that was changed the watershed for the industry. What really changed the moment and and really changed the game for mobile phones. And maybe back at that time when we first saw the iPhone, we were probably thinking nothing can get better than that. It can't. And you know, now we're online. It didn't even have apps, yeah. iPhone 17 or whatever's come out. So, you know, there is always going to be continual improvement and raising the bar. And I think that's that will happen with the AIs as well. Like, we're seeing the capabilities of AI today, and it's just gonna get better for sure. More capabilities, 100%.

SPEAKER_05

As you're Saying that I think this is the first iPhone that I didn't buy.

SPEAKER_00

Oh wow. It's actually the second that I have the 15. So we got 17 years of AI improvement until you start.

SPEAKER_05

And then I'm just it's not gonna be good enough for me anymore. So I mean that's a good rock. It's a good run.

SPEAKER_02

But I think that there's gonna have to be a step where like it's not an iPhone anymore anymore. Like it's and I think it's kind of like the next thing that if there's gonna be another watershed moment, it won't be that they just made it won't be another iPhone, it's a likely better iPhone. Yeah, it'll be something entirely different. And that's what I feel like. I I'm feeling that in real estate media, it's not gonna be the next, you know, uh real estate photo 17. Um it's gonna be something different, it's a different medium change.

SPEAKER_06

I think what's unique about real estate media, maybe other types of media too, but it has to represent reality. Uh so there is a cap on like what you can do because it's supposed to look like what you see with your eyes. Um now you can do a lot of things with light and window poles and that, but that's all meant to represent what that actual space looks like. So yeah, um, but there's a lot of uh room to improve things in the workflow and how you capture and how you edit to make it efficient and make it look more like reality quicker. I mean, that's the whole point we do, yeah, HDR is because a camera can't in a single frame capture the full dynamic range that our eyes can see. So um yeah, that'd be the only cap that I can think of.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it it's adoption cycles, right? And we were alluding to it earlier about outsourcing, and you think like the first company to do outsource sourcing and how it evolved into eventually pixel mob, and you really just kind of optimized and fine-tuned the workflow to make it work at scale. And we're just at the early stages now of AI adoption, where we are, you know, we're kind of post the early adopters now and really getting into the mainstream. And um, yeah, there's there's more refinement to come. But that next shift and that next wave's gotta be something else, 100%.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe this is an opportunity to give a little bit of a tease of what's coming down the pipe in uh auto-enhance, maybe uh in the next few months.

SPEAKER_00

The next few months.

SPEAKER_06

You can answer this one.

SPEAKER_00

The next few months, I think uh 2025 was a really telling year for auto-enhance with with version five and and really cracking the American market. And uh our approach has always been to make sure that we're we're delivering quality and value to our customers. So you know, especially with with having such a large um customer base in Europe and and now in America as well, we've had to make sure that our offerings have been tried and tested and ready for scale. So we've got some really exciting updates coming out very soon. We're we're launching um the Q1, we've got some big updates, something called post-edit, which is coming out, um, which is allowing you to do more with your photos, and that that kind of feeds into a new product that's coming out, which will give you um kind of more control with your images, like abilities to manipulate things, but also be suggested things as well to get the best images out. Um and customization is a huge thing for us. Like we've already made you know the most customizable AI with with all the different settings that you can play with. Now it's really to give you that personal touch and dial in that that look that you're going for. So yeah, we're unlocking a lot there in the next kind of 30 to 60 days. Um we've got some bigger things coming as well down the line. But save those for later.

SPEAKER_05

Well, we we appreciate you guys. We've very much appreciated your your very built-out API and ability to connect different pieces, and we're excited to roll out different features with you guys over the upcoming time as well, in terms of just different ways you can tweak and manipulate the images that are gonna flow through Pixel Mom. So anyway, we haven't we haven't done our our ubiquitous commercial yet. So I think this episode is pretty obvious that you guys should try using auto enhance. Uh Omni is going to be rebranded as Omni as Auto Enhance.

SPEAKER_02

OmniHance. It's Omni. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_05

We just we don't want to call it by saying we're gonna call it OmniHance. We're gonna change it every week. Look for the weird name, and that'll be Jamie's model, and we'll just we'll just play with it. So sign up to see what it's called.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. I before we completely wrap this up, I think what's quite funny is we're talking about AI and and burnout and everything. We're here in person. I think that's uh a really fun exactly. I think that's a really important thing about AI and and adopting it, like the human connection and the relationships that you're building, that's super important to us. That's why you know we go out and spend time with customers and and invest in that. So yeah, maybe we'll come and see whoever's watching as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, just if you're knocking the door, it's Jamie.

SPEAKER_05

Just pester Jamie until he brings you cookies to your door. Yeah, biscuits, yes. He'd bring biscuits to your hands. Yeah, he wouldn't bring cookies. He doesn't know what a cookie is. Well, we appreciate you guys very much. We've appreciated partnering with you, and we're excited about the next phase as well as we're launching new things with Auto Enhance. So we very much appreciate you coming from all the way across the pond. There we go. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_02

Great to be able to before we wrap up, though. If if anyone wants to fants how do people follow you, yeah, how they follow you, maybe uh yeah, your journey and what you guys are working on. Swell for you, Jamie.

SPEAKER_06

You don't follow Jamie? I'm just terrible on social media. You go ahead. I mean, the best place to go is just uh autoenhance.ai. You can learn everything you need, see what we have to offer, see our pricing, and sign up for free on our app right there, app.autoenhance.ai. We're uh Instagram, autoenhanceai, Facebook, uh you can follow us as well.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if you're on Instagram. I'm on Instagram, I've been posted for a couple years, so and it's and it's private.

SPEAKER_06

So don't follow me.

SPEAKER_05

There you go. Now I'm gonna find you. Find Josh. It's my new new new plan. But you can find Instagram, Jamie. Nice. If you want to, yeah. All right. Thank you guys. It was a pleasure having you. Yeah. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks. See you later. Cheers.