Episode 5 - All We Wanted to Do Was See Darth Vader and Christopher Walken in a Bar Fight

Get ready for hilarious AI antics with Mike and Rico! 🤖

In this jam-packed episode, the dynamic duo tries to make an EPIC fight scene with Christopher Walken and Darth Vader using the new AI video editor Pictory. 😂

Do they succeed in making AI movie magic? Or does everything hilariously fall apart? 💥

Find out as Mike and Rico push Pictory to its limits and share their trademark banter and AI insights along the way. From multiplayer game moderation to the latest Microsoft 365 updates, these two cover all the key AI news and tools you need to know about.

If you like laughing along with smart AI talk, ridiculous experimentation, and watching Mike and Rico's bro-mance in action - this video is for you! Smash that like button and subscribe to Artificial Antics so you don't miss the next lab experiment!

News Articles:

Speechly is joing Roblox:
https://www.speechly.com/blog/speechly-is-joining-roblox?ref=futuretools.io

Call of Duty's New AI moderator is listening to your voice chat
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2050174/call-of-dutys-new-ai-moderator-is-listening-to-your-voice-chat.html

Mike's Medium Site:
https://medium.com/@mike_onslow

AI Sites discussed in this episode:
Pictory.AI
SlidesAI
GenMo.AI
Eleven Labs
HeyGen
DeepBrain
Synthesia

Movie References:
Demolition Man (1993) - Policed speech
Snatch (2000) - "Tommy, what have you been reading?"

Special Thanks:
Episode mastered by: Nomad Studios (https://nomadstudios.pro)
Description: The team behind mastering the Artificial Antics podcast audio. Big shout out to Nick and the team! 🎉

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Transcript

Emily: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Artificial Antics, where Rico and Mike will talk about the implications and opportunities around Artificial Intelligence,

Machine Learning and Deep Learning. In today's episode, titled

"All We Wanted to do Was see Darth Vader and Christopher Walken in a Bar Fight" ... The guys will be testing out an AI video generation and editing tool called Pictory.

-Mike_Onslow: What's up everybody? This is Mike from Artificial Antics. I got my cohost Rico here. Uh, Rico and I have been doing a little more antics than Artificial Intelligence, for the last five minutes here. Getting stoked for this episode of the show. Uh, we're going to be talking about text-to-media, uh, really particularly text-to-video and, uh, media with Pictory, which is a product that is a competitor to Canva , and it's pretty interesting, uh, and we're going to be, uh, demoing it and playing around with it in the lab 

Right. And, uh, and so Rico, one of the things I was looking at AI news and man, I'm telling you, it's moving super fast. We all know that. Uh, anything interesting on your radar tonight?

-Rico: Yeah. So, uh, [00:01:00] interestingly enough, you know, you and I both have a fondness for gaming, right? It's got a special place in our heart. I found out that, uh, there's actually a, an AI company called speechly, um, who has been around, I Since 2016 is when their inception was, uh, but their aim is to use AI or use AI tools to help make a, um, a safer space and, and have some kind of, you know, applications working with gaming companies.

So they've paired with Roblox, to create a , safer environment. so what that's going to do is a chat moderation, a lobby moderation, that type of thing. But what, what it made me think of was just, uh, back on August 31st, uh, Call of Duty actually, uh, implemented something like that.

And I think, uh, they're, they're called modulate.ai, I think it was the name of their, their company, right? Uh, talks mod is the name of their products. Yeah. It's modulate.ai 

and they're going to start policing lobbies and, uh, you know, uh, voice comms in the game using AI tools that will, um, automatically look [00:02:00] for,

-Mike_Onslow: you're, you've been banned since

-Rico: yes,

-Mike_Onslow: 31st.

-Rico: no, no.

-Mike_Onslow: Cause I've listened, I play with you. I play call of duty with you and you're, you're listen, well, here's the thing though, dude, so, and I know you're about to get into this, but I also kind of want to mention here, I think about this and I think, you know, you're doing it in fun, right?

Mike: right, right. Saying stupid things to people,

-Mike_Onslow: time. Right? Like, I mean, I don't do it nearly as much as you do it, but I definitely do it too. And the thing is, ever since you told me about this story, I've been a little more, uh, reserved. Uh, you know, at the end of those matches. And so it's, it's even in the beginning and the end and so has everyone else.

And I think to myself, wow, yeah, toxicity, sure. I get it. Right. But the fact of the matter is , I know it's just you and I, and I'm sure nobody else in the world likes toxic gaming, but, uh, you and I kind of like sort of enjoy that element, right?

Rico: RUST, Call of Duty. of those games. Yes. Yeah. For anybody who doesn't know what RUST [00:03:00] is.

-Mike_Onslow: yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's, it's like, um, you know, uh, talking smack, you know, uh, playing around and, you know, just messing with people a little bit just to see if you get a bit of a rise out of them. Right. It's hilarious. Right. It

-Rico: at

-Mike_Onslow: to some really hilarious

-Rico: Fun. Death comms. Yeah. Yep.

-Mike_Onslow: Right. Fun. Death comes. Exactly. And basically folks were for folks that don't know what that means is death comms is like, okay, so we're going, I kill somebody and call it duty.

Right. And they like, whatever they said right after I killed them, it comes through to my, to my, uh, you know, uh, speakers. So I can hear what they said. And it's hilarious. I mean, like, so

-Rico: funny.

-Mike_Onslow: it's always funny, right? Exactly. Exactly. And, uh, and so, uh, Rico, I'll let you keep going with your point, but I just wanted to mention that really quick, because it was something that I noticed.

Myself doing right after you mentioned that

-Rico: And, and ultimately that's what it's going to do. You know, it's, it's, it's changing player behavior. It's, it's a positive thing, uh, but I think it's a double edged sword. And you know, my, my points are 

bring both the articles forward. Uh, [00:04:00] Roblox is more of a kid's game. I know there are people who are.

The older that, you know, I'm not overly familiar with it so from a safety standpoint, it's great because. Uh, moderators can't catch it and everything. Right. Uh, and hate speech is obviously a problem nowadays. And, you know, uh, children do play these games, whether they should or not. You have a bunch of different age groups that are playing those games and the moderators can't be everywhere all the time. So if they use the AI to cut out things like hate speech, a racist speech, you know, um, any, any of the, the protected speeches, you know, that are out there that, that shouldn't be in the.

Sure. But the issue that I take with it is the fact of now you're being policed by AI. Like it, like it may just be video games, but that opens the door. Right. And it's a very slippery slope down to like, remember Demolition Man. We talked about that movie oftentimes. And if anybody has not seen Demolition Man from the late nineties, uh, there's actually.

A list, you know, a system in the [00:05:00] future that every time you curse, every time you say something that's not 

allowed, you get a fine, you get a, and it spits it out from this machine. 

That looks like a 

hand dryer to me. I 

can see in a bathroom. But, but that's the point. So, um, it's interesting. I, I like to see that AI again.

We talk, uh, you know, we're, we're, we're going to talk later in the episode about, Collaboration between AI companies, but being policed by AI this early on, it'll be interesting to see how many people get player bans just simply from based upon their speech.

And if they take it to the point of death comms and that type of thing, because ultimately people are alone in their home or, you know, you're in your household and what you say in your own home is whatever, but. Um, you know, if you, if you can't control your temper and you say the wrong thing, then, uh, you may be banned from public duty,

-Mike_Onslow: So yeah, no for sure and one of there are a couple things to note here one I was thinking about something the other day I was watching something on one of the business podcasts that I that I listened to and they were talking about the Hawthorne effect Do you know what that is?

-Rico: and now I haven't heard [00:06:00] of

-Mike_Onslow: Yeah. So basically the Hawthorne effect is the act, you know, the act of being observed changes your behavior, right?

For better, for worse, right? It isn't always for better. It isn't always for worse. And so the fact of the matter is though, the right, it changes your behavior. So, um, you know, and the thing is, they've done a whole bunch of studies on how to mitigate the effect of this and UX and whatnot, because we know the world, right, is going to a more, Let's say observed, uh, state of being

-Rico: Yes, it seems to be for

-Mike_Onslow: since 2000, we're more observed than we used to be. Right.

-Rico: You can't go anywhere without being on the

-Mike_Onslow: And so, and so nowadays though, even more so right with AI tooling coming in and whatnot, um, you're, you're seeing this, right. So, you know, it's sort of like the, the old joke of, Oh, I've got my recorder here, you know, that's recording everything with my phone, but, and people joke about that, but like.

Now it's like very clear and in your face with this. It's like, no, you are being watched. You are being moderated, you know? [00:07:00] And the thing is like, I agree, like certain hate speech and whatnot. Like I, I get that. Like, That, that, to me, that feels like, all right, that makes more sense, but like people just say a lot of goofy stuff that isn't necessarily hate speech that is aggressive.

And I do not think that you should be banned for all of that. Right? Like, I mean, there's, there's an element of, uh, of, of smack talk. Right. Um, and if I were swearing, I'd say another thing, right. It's literally just part of the game. It's part of the experience. Right. And, uh, yeah.

-Rico: Right. And you and I both know, you know, we've been in lobbies where the wrong thing has been said,

-Mike_Onslow: of course. Yes. Many times.

-Rico: and what do we do oftentimes what people do, you know, and of course there's a juvenile element to it, to the game where a lot, there's a lot of teenagers in there and they kind of go along with it, but then you'll have some that actually will be heavy handed and say, Hey, that's not the right thing to say.

You know, you shouldn't say that right. And that's what AI is going to do here is it's, it's going to moderate that for them. Um, so yeah, it may, uh, [00:08:00] save some jobs or, or, well, not really save jobs, I guess, but it may save some money, uh, by not needing people to review that type of thing when it's reported, but it'll be interesting to see what words they actually include in that.

Um, you know, because I, let's face it, there are some curse words that are like lower tiered curse words that aren't exactly hate speech that if you got banned off of a game, you just paid 60 or 70 for, because you're in your home alone and lost your temper, you know, one time, um, well, it'll be interesting to see what the player base does with that.

It really will be. Cause I know it's already a struggling, uh, a game because of. Um, streamers and what they like to see versus the player base itself and that type of thing. So this is just another thing that's a, it'll be a catalyst to see what happens. So anyway, the point I just wanted to make was being policed by AI is now becoming a thing.

I think we're going to see it in other applications in the future. Uh, but now Roblox and Call of Duty are two, you know, pretty big games that are out there..

-Mike_Onslow: Oh, yeah. Yeah. [00:09:00] Roblox. I mean, that's like, you know, kids play it, adults play it, whatever. And, uh, and same with Call of Duty, right? Like, and we're going to probably see it in more games as well. Very interesting. stuff that's come up in the news with that at the Roblox thing. I wasn't on my radar and, and really like thinking about companies that build their whole presence around doing this type of moderation.

Right? Like what was the one you said was called? 

-Rico: It's modulate, modulate that AI. Yep. And the other one's speechly.

-Mike_Onslow: I was like, yeah. So that's, that's, that's pretty interesting. Um, just like any other, you know, uh, niche, right? Like this is a very niche thing and it's going to be something that we'll see more and more of.

Right. And, uh, so yeah, one quick thing I want to mention, um, you know, I'm not going to go too deep into this, but one of the news things that I've seen recently, uh, it's been on my radar for a while and we've talked about it a little 

bit is Microsoft Office 365, the co pilot, which is all of the AI enabled features.

These are things like being able to like. You know, talk to your spreadsheet and get like quick data and [00:10:00] stuff like a lot faster than, you know, building queries or formulas, right? Um, that is getting closer and closer to being available for more companies, more people right now, I think that it's just available to 600 companies and unfortunately my company is not one of them and I'm, we're on, we're on the waiting list.

We're on the waiting list, but you know. They were talking about the demand and everything for it. And, um, and so they're getting, you know, they're getting there. Right. And, uh, you know, we talked about it on, uh, one of our other news segments, but open AI also now has like the, the, uh, enterprise version of it.

So, and I'm on that waiting list as well. We'll see who gets back. No, for, for us, right. We use office 365 already. And it's like, we were talking about what we could share with AI, what we can't, whatever, and the reality is it's like. The, the ideal situation is that you're already in the tool where the data exists and you just like query the data, you know what I mean?

Like talk to so with these, with these LLMs and whatnot. So that's the ideal [00:11:00] situation because, you know, sure people say, Oh, well, it's a third party. Maybe they're using, maybe they're using some, but really no, like Microsoft owns part of open AI. Like there's a whole thing. It is what it is. Like it's already there.

Right. It's already there. Right. So, um, that. Yeah, so that exactly. We're, you know, we're talking about collaborations with OpenAI and Canva, right? So OpenAI built a Canva plugin that supported with the chat GPT plus account. Another one that we were talking about. Recently too, uh, funny enough with Canva as well.

They're kind of all over the place, right? It's Heygen. So that's text to video and a Canva and HeyGen have teamed up right to give some of those features, uh, across the, across the lines of the two products. So we'll get into the episode now, folks. So we're going to be talking

about text to video with Pictory and we're just going to dive right in.

-Mike_Onslow: Excellent. All right.

-Rico: All right.

-Mike_Onslow: So you [00:12:00] go ahead. You've got the wheel there and let's see what what she can do. This is something that, uh, our good buddy Matt Wolf from future tools suggested and he played around with little little bit. I thought it was kind of interesting.

Mike: So yeah, we're going to go ahead and walk through pictory. And, uh, for our audio only listeners where we've got a special version of this, where we're going to basically do a recap for you, Rico and I, uh, in, in the lab, uh, on video really did a lot of experimentation live. And, uh, we realized that once we were cutting up the episode, it just wasn't exactly right.

For audio. So y'all get a special version. Uh, we're going to walk through everything from pricing to the good, the bad, and the ugly, of, Pictory specifically. And then we're also going to talk about some other text to media, text to video products. so Rico, let's actually walk through pricing first and then, um, we'll walk, we'll walk through and get a take on each of the specific features of Pictory 

Rico: All right. So, uh, [00:13:00] we discussed it a little bit, you know, of course, in the video, uh, recording of this, but, uh, to go over some of the pricing, uh, what, one thing we did enjoy with pictory is that they, you know, you can make three videos for free and it doesn't take any of your, I guess we will, we call them tokens, but you know, it doesn't, uh, take away from the three videos that you have left just because you've actually created a video.

yeah. So, uh, like we said, Mike, uh, on the website itself, uh, there's. Three tiers, uh, of the premium that you can purchase, uh, one being the standard, which is 19 a month offers. Um, there's a range of things here, like 1.

5 million story block visuals, 30 videos a month up to 10 minutes, uh, text to video, 10 hours of video transcription a month, customize and save three brand templates, 5, 000 music tracks, 34 AI voices, and the video format and 16, And nine 16. And then if you go up to the premium version, it's 39 a month and there's a, there's actually a slider here that you could slide up, uh, [00:14:00] from 60 videos a month upwards to 220, uh, videos a month.

Yeah. And that it kind of changes the services, , and what you get with each one. So folks can check that out at pictory.ai if they're curious. that's the $39 a month for the premium there. And then of course, teams, you know, so if you're working with a team of people, uh, that's 99 a month. And again, same slider starting from 60 videos a month upward to 240.

Mike: Yeah. I would, I would agree. Another quick thing related to those sliders that you're talking about Rico from what I remember, and this is off the top of my head, but basically you could choose kind of a, there's a balance between the number of videos and the length of the videos. Right. So if you wanted like a lot of videos.

They would have to be a little shorter. Right. And I forgot what the specifics were. Um, we don't necessarily need to put that in, but if you have them, you know, in front of you now, we could probably let people, people know a base sample.

Rico: Yeah. So most people will be using the premium version. You know, not a lot of people are going to be working with teams with this. So we'll go to the top [00:15:00] end, uh, again, 39 a month for the premium 220 videos a month, uh, and that changes the time of the video. . So you'd be able to create each video of up to five minutes , on the top end of two 20, but if you're only making 60 videos a month, you can do 20 minute videos for

Mike: Ah,

Rico: that was the difference we were

Mike: That's what I remembered. Yeah. It was something. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. So a lot of flexibility there, folks, I think is, is really the, uh, the main thing and, uh, and so, you know, as Rico said, it's not something that I don't think we're going to actually subscribe to. Uh, but, you know, it's something that, you know, may be completely valid for, for your use cases, right?

And then, so, um, some of the features that they have folks, or they had script to video, uh, they had, so this is basically, you know, your, it's text to video. So. You put in a script, uh, we put in, you know, one of these scripts from a story that we're writing and we wanted to see how it did with that. Uh, they also have article to [00:16:00] video.

So we put in a blog post, uh, of mine into the article, the video, and then there was the, uh, you know, edit video using text. So this is basically similar to like Descript where you're, you're, instead of editing. The timeline of a video, you're kind of editing using the script of the video so you can like, kind of edit the text, delete words, add words, et cetera.

It's kind of a neat way to edit. I found that, uh, it, it's a little inferior in my mind. To what Descript Well, the, the whole program itself is very inferior to Descript in my mind, but, uh, but it's a neat way to edit for sure. And then, um, they also have visuals to video, so this would be like, You set, you know, like a few frames of something and this is kind of what the episodes named after, right?

Hey, we we just wanted to see, you know, darth vader and christopher walking in a bar fight Well, I had some I had like four pictures that depicted a few frames of of those that scene And we were trying to turn it into a video what it [00:17:00] really gave us kind of was more of a slide showy video Uh didn't really do, you know much on the way of Of transition.

And, um, and so Rico, do you have any, you know, I want to get your thoughts to you on script to video. What did you like about it? What did you not think was not so great about it?

Rico: So I guess, like with most of our experience, uh, our experiments here in the lab, we always, we don't always know what to expect. Right. So, you know, we, we kind of had an idea, uh, that it would be similar to other, uh, text to video that we've tried in the past. There was that one that we had used a while back where I gave it a prompt of like, you know, a car, a street, you know, uh, uh, I think it was sun setting in the neighborhood, that type of thing.

And it gave like a four second video where the camera kind of. And down the street and showed the sunset. So that's what we had expected here. So of course, when we put that in, like you said, you know, I made more of a slideshow of things, uh, with some stock footage or something like stock footage in the background, uh, for the scene.

Uh, one thing I did like about the script of video [00:18:00] was that it did match up relatively well, uh, with the series of words that it chose, you know, and, you know, with a happy smile, you know, those types of

Mike: Right.

Rico: um, It did find videos are relatively close to what we were describing in the prompt there. So I was pretty impressed with that.

Um, their stock footage was good. You know, it, it wasn't bad overall. Uh, it just didn't really hit the mark for what we thought it was going to do for us. Uh, so, uh, on the article, the video again, uh, you know, we talked about seeing some of that online with, uh, people summarizing videos, using that type of technology, um, and of course taking your medium article.

So if anybody hasn't been to Mike's, uh, medium, uh, website, they should, we should see that we'll put that in the show notes so you can go there and kind of check out some of the things he's doing there. Uh, but yeah, the, you know, the, the music to that was kind of on point. So it did really well with it. Uh, the imagery wasn't bad.

Um, I can't remember. I don't think that was, we didn't have the issue with the text boxes [00:19:00] with that, did we? It

Mike: No, I think, I think, I think that one was, uh, that one was fine. Uh, you know, the article, the video was okay. You know, you, you could definitely tell that it's, uh, it's AI. And one thing that. You know, we'll mention, you know, a little further down too, is they do have voiceovers. We didn't find them to be, to be very great overall.

Right. So that was, I think, a shortcoming of that area as well. Early all areas,

Rico: And, and for, you know, anybody who's checked out Canva so far canva. com, um, we found that the UI or the interface of it was very similar to Canva, if not almost identical to Canva as far as, uh, inputting elements. So if you weren't pleased with your, uh, article to video, you can change the, each one of the slides.

You can swap stuff out, change the music, that type of stuff. But, uh, like Mike said, the, the, um, the AI generated voices, uh, were horrific. I guess they're, they're, they're nowhere close to 11, 11 labs or Hey, Jan, or any of those others that we've used [00:20:00] before. Um, we didn't play too, too much with the edit video using texts because again, it wasn't exactly what we were looking to do with it, but we did try it out, uh, and of course, you know, we did not get to see Darth Vader fight Christopher Walken, which we need to make happen.

Mike: we, we, we definitely did not get. Get to see it in an animated way, right? Like where, you know, Vader's throwing a punch or whatever the, the pictures for folks at home that are just listening. I had, you know, kind of both of them start out in the bar. They're across the table from the other, uh, Vader kind of is getting up in that 1st pose.

And the 2nd, when he's sort of swing in and. Walk in is sort of like, kind of like duck in or whatever. And so it's just four pretty basic frames. I just wanted to see what would happen. Right. And to your point, Rico, earlier in the episode, we were talking about how, um, it could be deceiving, right? About the capabilities of AI.

And so people are, Oh, well, is that AI? Is that AI? And there's some real telltale signs [00:21:00] of, of, of AI and deep fakes and also. You know, it's not, uh, it's not simplistic generally to generate what you'd be talking about with like these movies and things like that. There's some, some easy ways to do it that create a great demo, but overall, like, just like, you know, you know, I think about chat JPT and how I could sort of dream something and it can create something very quickly.

The text of video is not like that, right? Like we're not, we're not quite there yet to that same level of just like, I can dream it and it's there. Um, you know, similar to like mid journey and image generation, they're, they're much better and much further along than text to video. In my mind, uh, text to video, like you said, Rico runway ML is one of the ones that will create those four second clips based on an image and a prompt.

And there are some other ones as well. Runway is pretty good, but it's still. You know, not great. Right. You could definitely tell that it's, it's like, okay, this [00:22:00] is cool. And how people are making movies is they'll actually generate. Well, just consider the math, right? However, many four second clips or, or whatnot to create their movie.

It's painstaking. It's a real process. It is probably quite a bit cheaper than making a real movie though. You know, I mean, all things considered here.

Rico: Right. And most of that technology is probably even nondeterministic, right? As we've said before, that even though they're using the same inputs in the prompt as far as maybe their description of the character or the scene itself, it would still be incredibly time consuming.

Mike: My God, Tommy, what have you been reading? Sorry, folks Rico just mentioned that non deterministic, which we explained in a in a previous episode.

Rico: couple of them, I think. Yeah,

Mike: a couple of them. Yeah. So deterministic basically means for the same set of inputs. You're going to get the exact same outputs. Non deterministic is exactly the opposite of that where.

You're, you're not going to, it's very unlikely that you'll get the same outputs. Right. And so, [00:23:00] uh, tools like mid journey and all, really a lot of these generative AI, even the chat stuff and chat GPT, uh, if you put in the same prompt and you hit that chat button or generate button twice, you're very, it's very unlikely.

You'll get the exact same thing. You might get something similar. You probably will, but you won't get the exact same thing. Right. So that's non deterministic.

Rico: And we've seen the challenges with, uh, generative art so far, just making, um, you know, still photos, right? When we did, uh, with, uh, Lily and the Kindness Kingdom, uh, trying to get her characters to be, uh, the same way in mid journey, uh, and then we had to, like, kind of find the seed number, you know, and that, that number was high and then keep inputting that and, you know, You know, it's always a trial and error thing.

So, uh, uh, you know, to Mike's point, if you think you're going to, uh, take a prompt and go ahead and create a 22, uh, minute episode on something or a full, uh, feature film, uh, based on your prompts, uh, I hope you're, uh, you're , you're ready for. A reality check because it's just not going to [00:24:00] happen. So,

Mike: Right, exactly. Exactly. Now, Rico, I think we covered enough on pictory. Um, you know, let's talk about some of the other text to media tools. We'll focus. We'll focus heavily here on text to video, because that that's kind of what the episodes about, text to media would be text to audio to, you know, uh, text you other creative techniques.

Text and then also text to video. you know, some of the text to video products that we've, you know, looked at Rico and tested our, um, our HN, you want to give folks a little idea of what HN does?

Rico: yeah. So Hey, Hey, Jen is more of an avatar driven one, right? So you're, you're, well, a lot, a lot of them are, but at least what we did with HeyGen, uh, one of the things we did with it was, uh, we gave an app, we don't pick an avatar, you pick a voice for that avatar, and then you ask it to, to, to explain something.

So say if you were going to make a commercial or maybe an introduction to your podcast or something like that, you know, we did some ridiculous thing that it's actually on tech talk. If you want to check it out there. That, uh, just says [00:25:00] that, uh, uh, Artificial Antics podcast, you know, Mike and Rico helped this guy buy a, buy his first boat or something like that, you know, something ridiculous.

But, um, you know, his, his mouth moves with the words that we put in there, you know, the voice we chose was one that we customized and, uh, the other Hey Jen thing I think we did right. It was yours. Uh, where. Uh, Mike, actually, this was great because he was working on this individually and we were discussing it.

And then Mike sends me this link and here's Mike, uh, you know, everybody knows what Mike looks like and sounds like. And then Mike speaks in English and then a couple of seconds later in the video, Mike starts speaking perfect German and his mouth was moving with the German. It was a fantastic time for the show.

It was like, you know, uh, An area we had not gotten into yet, but it also showed us that, you know, you could break down some of these barriers, uh, to getting your podcast, your information out there, uh, and reach a further audience. Uh, and there were a lot of languages to choose from there. Um, so they do, they have some really cool things happening [00:26:00] at Hey, Jen.

Um, uh, the only one I've really toyed with was just the avatar one, but Mike has tried the other. And what's the, what's the term for that, Mike, I guess, um, as

Mike: Uh, that would be, it'd be like internationalization, right. Or, or, or video translation. And, and the big thing here, right. Is a lot of programs will translate the voice, right? Like. Even some of the automated stuff, I think on YouTube, we'll do that. But the fact that as Rico said, my lips were moving as if I were Sprechen the Deutsch, right?

So, I mean, it was, it was, it was really impressive. And the reason I chose German, they have 28 languages, I believe. But the reason I chose German is because I knew Rico had lived in Germany for a bit and kind of understood, you know, at least some German, right? You could gauge this. And, um, and, and you gave me all positive feedback on that.

Right. So that was pretty

Rico: Yes. Yeah. It was pretty cool because they, they also used, um, uh, language from, you know, the area that I lived in there, uh, they say choose, uh, for Tchuss. Uh, so, uh, you [00:27:00] know, it's, it's not just like a conversational German or, you know, something like that. Uh, it's come a long way. So if you haven't checked that out, folks, uh, take a look at our TikTok

uh, Did you post that on, it might be on our YouTube as well. 

Mike: It's definitely on the YouTube as well. Yeah, 

Rico: so yeah, that was, um, that was part of the cool thing. You know, some of the things we've done with HeyGen so far, uh, you know, in, in looking at Pictory, uh, it had more of a feel to me, like, uh, slides. ai that you and I had discussed before, where, um, you, you create a whole, uh, slideshow or, you know, like a PowerPoint type presentation based upon a prompt, which is great if that's what you're looking to do.

Um, The unfortunate part for us in this experiment is that's not what we were looking to do. We didn't want Lily and the kindness kingdom to end up being a bunch of stock footage with some wording over the top. And even though we did add in, you know, our own little flair with, uh, with Brian's voice, you know, that we got from 11 labs, um, still didn't meet the mark.

So, you know, um, I [00:28:00] guess if you wanted some moving pictures, you know, you could use this in place of it, but, uh, slides.ai, that's what it kind of felt like to me, and if anybody hasn't checked out slides. ai so far, you know, what do you do there is you just enter a prompt of what you're trying to create for a presentation, and the AI will automatically create those slides for you.

It will add stock art and, uh, And all that stuff, even the, the wording on each 1 of the slides. So, uh, something to be checked out, but that's what it felt like to me. Um, and you checked out another 1, didn't you Mike?

Mike: Yeah. I, I checked out a couple of other ones here, like in my, you know, actually it was really in my journey to HeyGen. Um, I was looking for like creating avid, you know, like video from text with avatars, uh, either a pre made avatar of myself or like others. And I started with just, you know, the, the canned, uh, avatars that these programs had.

So one of the ones I tried out was deep, deep brain. io. that one was pretty good. You know, it was similar to HeyJen. [00:29:00] I'd say it wasn't as impressive to me, quite as impressive as HeyGen. Uh, another one that I tried out that was pretty good too was, uh, Synthesia. And this is Synthesia. io. We'll have that in the show notes for you folks.

Right. Uh, again, similar to HeyGen, uh, not in my mind, wasn't. You know, exactly the best one for it. And then of course, ultimately we, I landed on, Hey, Jen. And I was just like, wow, this, this could do a lot. Right. It does it very well. And, uh, I was super impressed with it. Uh, another competitor that's similar to pictory is in video like I N and then the word video.

io, uh, now. Honestly, like I, I tried it out. I spent probably 15, 20 minutes with it. It wasn't quite as impressive as Pictory. I think Pictory is like decent for what it is. It's just what it is, is not really the type of stuff that we're looking for. One thing that I like, uh, [00:30:00] slides, uh, dot AI, you were talking about that a few minutes ago.

One thing that I think that I really liked about that one is that that made. Uh, it would export to powerpoint, right? Which I'm not sure that these other ones really do that. So I thought that was great.

Rico: Right. And like you said, with pictured AI, you know, they, they're doing some things right. It's just not there. Right. They're not, they're not excellent overall. Um, and I guess, you know, you're talking about these other, uh, AI's that you tried. Is Vader going to fight walking? Like anytime soon or

Mike: That, that actually just depends on how much time I want to spend on it. I, I think I could, honestly, I tried it in Runway, Runway ML, and it was more impressive than the stuff that we had in Pictory. It, um, It at least tried to do the transition. Although I will say, I think I tried the same four images and really only two of them transitioned.

Well, like it was like Vader's punch after that. It pretty much just said, Hey, I'm going to do [00:31:00] the slides thing that these other ones are doing. Right. But it was, it was decent. Uh, I think if I had more clips, uh, like more frames, I think it would probably do a better job.

Rico: yeah, you saw the, uh, the clips I had sent you the other night too, right from GenMo. Did you mention that one?

Mike: Genmo? No, I totally didn't mention that one. Is that, is that the one that was, um, the sunshine on the street and all

Rico: no, this was actually the one I found the other night I was playing with. Uh, Gen, Gen Mo G E N M O dot AI. Uh, and it, it, uh, what they tote, you know, what their headline is, is that they create videos, images, and 3d objects with AI. Uh, so in that case, and. Interestingly enough, because we've, we just talked about, uh, in the last, uh, well, we'd, I think we did an AI bite on it about being policed by AI, right?

So there's already some guardrails in place here because what I was looking for was just simply a dog reading a book. And a smoking jacket, smoking a pipe, right? You know, like the classy, [00:32:00] you know, old

Mike: Right,

Rico: den type feel to it. And it would not allow me because I put smoking a pipe, you know, and, and, you know, you wouldn't think that a pipe would be inappropriate, but I guess there is some age restriction, maybe.

to, uh, tobacco products or, you know, depicting it or the use of, um, so it would not allow me to do that. But, uh, but the prompt that I gave it was, I create a video of a dog reading a book in a red velvet chair, wearing a smoking jacket. And it did accept that one. And I think, uh, the video was maybe three to four seconds long, just like the other one we had discussed.

Um, The dog slightly moves. It's very cartoony. It's very cool. It's similar to what we saw in other generative art that we've used before with mid journey or Bing's AI. Um, and, uh, but you know, again, you're getting like three to four second video. The eyes are a little bit wonky as the dog moves its head.

Uh, again, uh, Vader will not be fighting walk in anytime soon, but I'm definitely going to feed it that, uh, that prompt and see, see [00:33:00] what it comes out with. It'd be a very short bar fight, right? Three to four seconds. So,

Mike: Yeah, and that's all you need. I, I just want to see, like, one person throwing a punch, and then the other person falling over. And, like, that's it. That's all I wanted, right? So.

Rico: wait, let you know, uh, well, I can't, I can share the screen so you can see it, but people aren't going to see it on the audio version, but, um, this was the, uh, you know, that, that's what it did. I, uh, the prompt I gave it for, uh, for the Vader thing was to create a video, Darth Vader in a bar fight with Christopher Walken.

And for those who can't see this, obviously the audio version, it's just, uh. A funny looking version of Vader slightly twisting at the waist, you know, backwards that there is no Christopher Walken. There is no bar. There is no fight. It's

Mike: There is no building there. Like, maybe that is a building, but that's like, it looks like he's under, uh, one of the starships. Like, that's, that's pretty hilarious, man. Like, that's, so yeah, that this, this folks, uh, for the folks who can't see this, you know, that [00:34:00] this did definitely miss the mark. So,

Rico: So, uh, we won't be seeing those two fight anytime soon, unless we find something this week and revisit it.

Mike: right. Excellent. All right. Well, um, yeah, so I, I think that's it for this. Uh, we're going to go ahead and wind down any closing thoughts Rico on, uh, On Pictory, text to video in general.

Rico: I know I just will, I will say that, you know, if, if. Pictory, anybody from Pictory does watch our YouTube, you know, there are video version of this. Yeah, we were kind of harsh on your application overall. Don't mean anything by it. I really hope to see those things improve. And again, I think what we're going to see a lot of in the future is going to be collaborations with folks who do things very, very well, collaborating with others who, you know, are doing other parts of it well, and the collaboration between the two will make a better product.

So I would like to see their, uh, their AI voices improve, obviously. Um, but, uh, yeah, victory. ai, um, good luck to you. We'll, uh, revisit, uh, hopefully in a few months and see where you guys, [00:35:00] where you guys have gone.

Mike: Excellent. I would just, uh, echo what Rico said about the voices. Really, really the one thing that, like, surprised me was just how, how bad the voices were, right? Like, every one of them sounded like AI. And I would just challenge Pictory to, to do better. Um, you know, maybe collaborate with Eleven Labs or, or another provider.

Because, uh, AI voices is definitely, uh, evolving. And, uh, I think that would be a really good, uh, benefit of, of, you know, Pictory if, uh, if you add, you know, updated those voices.

Rico: Yeah, with their slides, if, if you're having it give a presentation for you and the narration is going to be a very important portion of that, especially to go with the video. So yeah,

Mike: Yeah, exactly. And it, it also, uh, yeah, it really, like I think about how, what, what we ended up doing folks to get around this was we actually used a voiceover from, 11 labs and imported it into Pictory. And I will say, [00:36:00] I appreciated that them having that feature. I think that's a great feature. So it's not like this is insurmountable.

Uh, I think the product is, is absolutely, uh, usable and beneficial in its current state. And, uh, I'm, I'm interested to see what they do next.

Rico: definitely.

-Mike_Onslow: It's kind of like doing cartoon art, right? Like, you have your, you know, your initial 1, your different sprites, and you're tweening between, you know, the different. And so it's, it's going to be similar to that. Honestly, I'm sure that the more frames you have, right, the less it has to fill in, hence the better it can do.

Right. So my point is that I can't give it four images and say, Hey. Create that as an awesome movie and like it just

does it Right.

like it 

-Rico: make millions in our

movie making. Right. Yeah. So there you have it, folks. There's Pictory AI. , it was a fun experiment as, as most experiments in the lab are, uh, but, uh, kind of over underwhelming. They have some, some areas to improve upon. [00:37:00] Definitely their, uh, their voice stuff, uh, and you know, overall, it seems relatively easy to use.

 As far as their AI, uh, speech, you know, the text to speech, uh, not really great there.

You could definitely tell it was AI. Uh, and we kind of thought that there would be more text to video, , type options there. I could definitely see some applications, uh, you know, with Pictory. ai, but I think they

-Mike_Onslow: Yeah.

-Rico: A bit of work to do. That's all. So, you know, fun to, fun to check it out here in the lab.

But what do you think Mike?

-Mike_Onslow: Yeah, I would agree with with all of that. And I think that, um, they, I think, you know what I think Rico, I they are trying to compete in a world where every tool does a lot of things. They do a lot. So if you look at the bullet items of the things that they do, They show a lot of things. What they don't do, I don't think, is anything excellently.

Rico: Right. They're not

Mike_Onslow: don't have a, yeah, to me, they don't have a competitive advantage. They have a list of things, and you know [00:38:00] what? Honestly, folks, like, It's it's hard, right? Like I look at like even great tools that people love, like ones that I use all the time, like runway and different stuff and all of it. They have you know, their shortcomings and they're all, you know, they're all the worst of they'll ever be today.

So they're all getting better. Victory is going to get better too. I think that they've done some great things. I think it has some, some serious rough edges. the AI voice was probably the one thing that turned me off the most. You know, I thought to myself, like, gosh, there are much better options, right?

Like, I think if they collaborated with 11 labs or 

Rico: HeyGen

HeyGen. 11 labs.

Mike_Onslow: Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. Now, what's interesting is that HeyGen and one of Pictory's competitors, uh, Canva actually did do a collaboration because this type of stuff is like, if you could do it and you can collab and stay in your lane and do it really well, and then Canva can do its thing well, and, you know, like Hey, Jen does this thing well, but they both [00:39:00] work together.

That's huge, right? Same with ChatGPT, right? ChatGPT OpenAI just released a plugin for Canva, right? Which you can actually build out your Canva slides and get ideas and stuff instead of going and pasting back and forth. It's a plugin, and Rico and I are going to play around with that a little bit too. Uh, that's not really text to video, but we're going to do an AI byte on that.

And, uh, and so, I think that... You know, a big part of this industry right now is really teaming up with other people that, have their niches and something that's complimentary to what you're doing. Right? And then you collaborate. Right? And everybody wins. And I feel like for audio, like, text to speech, 11 labs.

I just, I'll tell you what, here's a challenge. Show me something that's better than 11 labs for text to speech. I can't wait to hear the answers on that one. I'm really, I'm excited to get feedback because even if something even comes close, but has some additional functionality that 11 doesn't have, like I'd be very surprised.

I mean, 11 labs is just. So good. It's so good that I'd like pay [00:40:00] for it and then use it to like import the text and do all the work of syncing and everything else because the voice is so good in 11

-Rico: that good. Absolutely. Yeah. So folks, if you want to reach out to us, we're at antics.tv. Please check us out on all of our socials, interact with them, like, and subscribe, share it with a friend. We would love to hear what you think about the podcast. If you'd like to hear more or see more on any topic that we've covered so far, or you want to see us cover a new topic of something you're interested in, please reach out to us.

So again, antics. tv. Uh, we are artificial antics. I am Rico. And. Mike,

-Mike_Onslow: yeah. Um, I think that I pretty much said as much as I need to say, Rico, uh, looking forward to seeing everybody back in the lab soon. And, uh, yeah, we're out.

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