Humantel

Understandably, many creatives have a visceral negative reaction to anything "AI." It may threaten creative jobs. It raises legitimate ethical and legal questions, including whether training models on artists' work without attribution or payment is theft. For some, it threatens their very identity. But in this piece, I explain from a technological perspective why GenAI is foremost a creative tool. * Fundamentally, GenAI models are impenetrable—because they are based on sub-symbolic systems that humans can’t easily understand or modify—and unpredictable—because their output is probabilistic. Their unpredictability is a feature, not a bug. * The cutting edge of research is focused on ways to improve their reliability, such as through increased scale (of compute and training sets); agentic workflows that spread tasks among many models; and augmenting or conditioning them with known information. But today, they are primarily concept machines, not answer machines. * As a result, they aren’t currently well suited to many use cases, especially high-stakes environments that require definitive, precise answers that are costly to verify. * Instead, they are very well suited to the opposite: conceptual, low-stakes, iterative tasks where the quality of output is easily verifiable. * In other words, GenAI tools are great creative assistants. They dramatically speed the creative process by providing faster feedback; they make it possible to try out a wider breadth of ideas, including riskier ones; they help give shape to partially-formed concepts; and they increase the “surface area of luck.” * Creatives have a long history of rejecting new technologies as unnatural, threatening and unartistic that later become integral. * It isn’t possible to stop technology, even if we wanted to. Legislating it, regulating it, shaming it or wishing it away probably won’t work. GenAI is just another tool. Progressive creatives would be wise to learn how it might help their process. https://lnkd.in/eQ8NFRGE

My problem with our obsession with data is two fold, one is obvious and frequently discussed. OBVIOUS - We are obsessed with what we can measure. I've complained before about our obsession over measuring anything, everything, precisely, and in real time, and how we're now subject to near endless meetings about things which actually have zero meaning........ and because people LOVE numbers, we can spend 4 hours over any TLA which measures any number divided by another, which people REALLY love, because they are often not round numbers, so it feels sciency......but this is old news. ------- NOT OBVIOUS - The corrorally...We have lost ANY remote interest in ANYTHING we can't measure, regardless of how utterly vital it could be. I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything that happens offline. - A high end distributor of Kitchen equipment could be selling nothing because it's not open at weekends, and nobody would care because it's not on an online dashboard. I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything thats subjective - A car dealership could be selling no cars, because all the sales staff are extremely rude and lazy, and since there likely isn't a way to put numbers on this, nobody cares I keep being in meetings where nobody cares about anything that happens a long time after the event. - An advertising campaign could ensure that a price increase in 2 years time, goes through without any decrease in sales, due to brand favorability, and nobody would care. I keep being in meetings where amazing things can happen and we don't know - Sponsoring a stadium can lead to brilliant meetings in fancy pants corporate hospitality suites that save a company from bankruptcy, but thats not going to show up in a dashboard. The closer we get to data, the further away we get from common sense. The more we obsess over data, less we understand people. The more that we look at what we know, the more we refuse to look for what we don't. And for 95% of companies, it's likely you have 0% visibility into about 95% of things that matter. For 95% of companies the stream of data is so strong, and narrow, it's blinding, not illuminating And about 50% of the time, the data we do get access to, is of such unusual customers, behaving in rather atypical ways, it actually does a brilliant job of totally misleading us. We're obsessing over and tweaking strategies based on borderline lunatics, or at least statistical anomalies. We are driving the car with almost no understanding of ANYTHING, while we focus maniacally on what we can see, in precision, in real time feeds, despite it AT BEST meaning ABSOLUTELY nothing.

“The average attention span today is only eight seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish. I’ve found that presenting data visually is very helpful because people absorb and process visuals much more quickly than they absorb words.” It was such a pleasure to connect with Donna Foti of KIND and get her best practices for communicating data. Donna talked about using the “granny test” and storytelling narratives, as well as leveraging designs and visual assets. She also discussed her approach for leveraging consumer insights to optimize marketing mix modeling. #CustomerInsights #DataStorytelling Link in the 1st comment 👇

Excited to share that I'm wrapping up some fantastic brand strategy consulting projects next week and will soon have availability for new opportunities. If you're looking for expert insights, strategic guidance, or innovative design work, I'd love to connect. Feel free to share this with your network, and let’s collab this summer! Eliza #brandstrategy #insights #branddesign #strategy #consulting #innovation #design #marketresearch #linkedin

Sora, Veo, Runway Gen-3, Kling and Dream Machine are amazing, but what do they really mean for Hollywood? For the past 18 months, I’ve been writing why GenAI threatens to disrupt Hollywood by democratizing high-quality video creation. In this post, I explore another angle: why it will be so hard for the major studios to capitalize on these tools themselves. * GenAI has many potential applications to complement the traditional film and TV production process. These include assistance in scriptwriting, concept art, localization services and VFX processes. * The most potentially transformative tools, in terms of time, labor and cost reductions, are AI video generators that may replace some or all principal photography. * AI video models are advancing at a head spinning pace. In February, OpenAI shocked the industry with its announcement of Sora. Google announced Veo last month and in just the last week or so there has been a spate of similarly impressive next-generation models released or announced, including Kling, Dream Machine and Runway Gen-3. * As impressive as these models are, the studios won’t be able to use them to replace principal photography for a very long time, even if they want to, for three reasons: labor relations, important unresolved legal issues and technical limitations. * With a bad taste still lingering from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and IATSE negotiations underway, anything AI is “third rail” for the studios right now. * If the mantra in Silicon Valley is “move fast and break things,” the mantra in Hollywood is “better run it by legal first.” There are a host of open legal questions about AI, but the most pressing concern copyright infringement and IP rights. For studios, using AI trained on others’ copyrights is a lose-lose: they are either infringing or undermining their own rights. * Despite the amazing quality improvements in these models, they won’t meet the needs of the most demanding directors/showrunners/cinematographers, probably for years. Sora (and Veo, Gen-3, etc.) “don’t know much about history”—or geography or physics or film school. To really replicate cameras, they will require much larger (maybe annotated) training sets, better understanding of physics and much finer-grained control. * The earliest adoption and most important use cases will come outside of the major studios. These include empowering the massive creator class and independent producers (who are starting to experiment with animation, horror and sci-fi/fantasy genres), as well as advertising, music videos and educational/corporate/documentary video. * AI won’t replace Hollywood, but the bigger risk is that it disrupts it. Disruption requires two main ingredients: a disruptive innovation that lowers barriers to entry and incumbents who can’t respond. This has both. #disney #netflix #NBCuniversal #YouTube #paramount #warnerbrosdiscovery #GenAI #Sora #TVandFilmProduction https://bit.ly/3VygYYd

Yesterday, we brought together industry leaders to discuss the crucial topic of defending high-quality journalism, supporting publishers, and ensuring brand safety for advertisers. 2024 is a critical election year, with national elections in at least 64 countries, impacting nearly half the global population and underscoring the importance of reliable news. Defending quality journalism is crucial for maintaining informed societies and global democracy, while brands must balance protecting their reputations with supporting the integrity and sustainability of news content. Our Expert Panelists Included: • Mia Lehmkuhl Libby, SVP, Enterprise at The Wall Street Journal • Samantha Gladis Mellor, VP Marketing, BBC • Rob Bradley, SVP Revenue, Warner Bros. Discovery / CNN • Ben Hovaness, Chief Media Officer, OMD USA Stay tuned to learn more about the session takeaways and findings. #Cannes2024 #CannesLions #CannesLions2024 #BestinGlass #BestinGlassAdvertising #TeadsBestInGlass #Teads #Omnichannel #CTV #BrandSafety #Contextual Neala Brown Simon Klein Lee Fels

If you live in the Atlanta area & have a combo of brand marketing experience but also like to create (pick up the camera or hop into PhotoShop) this is an awesome opportunity https://lnkd.in/eqeqMBPY

Just a week away from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Excited to release the list of featured speakers at United Talent Agency MediaLink Beach. We have partnered up with some of the most forward-thinking companies and talent in the media, technology and entertainment industries. Hit us up so we can connect at the beach! Brittany Balbo, Brett Duchon