The most important episode of the year: A cautionary tale about AI

In this episode of Crystal Uncorked, we are talking about AI, and in my opinion, this is one of the most important episodes that you might listen to of CU all year, if not ever, because it’s going to help you understand the capabilities of AI, what you could do today. And there’s so much we don’t know of what’s coming in the future, but when you understand what it can do today, it’s going to help you when you see content online that could be fake. It’s going to help you ask questions to determine what you’re seeing, hearing, reading is actually real or not. 

Are you ready to open up and talk about things business? I’m Crystal Vilkaitis, a curious entrepreneur who loves talking about business, especially over a glass of wine. I started Crystal Uncorked to share open and honest conversations about my journey and talk to other entrepreneurs about their experiences.

We pull back the curtain and talk about the highs and the lows. Wine isn’t required, but is recommended. This is Crystal Uncorked.

I’ve got such a great story to help paint the picture for you that blew my mind. So we’re going to talk about it today. 

Before I dive in, AI is such a powerful tool for you to use in your day to day life, as well as your business. I did a whole episode on AI for CU last year, I believe it was. I also did one on my other show, Rooted in Retail, and I talk about it in our Insider Membership Group each month because it’s something we can’t ignore. And I just want to stress the importance of understanding AI, of understanding how to use ChatGPT, ChatGPT, some people think I say B P T it could save you a ton of time in your business, in your life, it could give you ideas, it could be like your whole marketing department, like it could do such incredible things for you, and it’s important for you to not bury your head in the sand, but for you to ask questions, understand, and learn.

One of the best places for you to learn about AI technology, what’s coming, the future of marketing is my conference Evolve, which is happening April 28th and 29th in Denver, Colorado. And until the end of the year, December 31st, 2023, you could get super early bird tickets. So you could go to crystalmediaco.com/evolve, check out the agenda. We’re going to talk about AI, but we’ll talk about so much more. It’s really important to understand these tools and what the future of marketing holds so you can stay relevant, stay in business, stay ahead of the competition, and also come and hang out with me and my team and our incredible speakers and sponsors. We’d love to see you there. 

Okay, let’s talk about this story. I was listening to the Marie Forleo podcast a few months ago, and her guest was Seth Godin. Now I absolutely love Seth Godin. I have been trying to get him to speak at Evolve actually as of now he stopped doing in person and is only doing zoom. And also his speaker fees a little out of my budget, but maybe we’ll get there one day and maybe he’ll come back in person one day. 

But if you don’t know Seth Godin, I mean, he is a pioneer in the marketing space. space. He has been blogging, I think daily for 10 plus years about marketing. Some of these blogs are just a paragraph long. Like it’s just a thought and idea, you know, nothing too detailed, but very helpful and impactful. And he’s a visionary. He has just incredible insight as it relates to marketing and is an author. And has written so many fantastic books, he was a guest on Marie’s show, and he was talking about how he created a podcast episode, 100 percent using AI. And he talked about some of the dangers of this. 

So what Seth did was he went to ChatGPT and the prompt he put in was write me a script for a podcast about ChatGPT. You know, what are the benefits? What is it? XYZ. Within seconds, ChatGPT writes the script for the podcast. 

Then Seth Godin goes over to 11 labs. I’m pretty sure it’s 11 labs.com. Otherwise, you can just Google 11 at 11, 11 abs. That’s a whole nother site. 11 labs. And there you can train AI to create an audio from your voice. So I’ve done this. I’ve gone through this process. I only like half assed it because it was taking more time than I expected because you can upload, I think, up to 20 audio files of your voice to where it understands your cadence, your inflections, like everything about your voice.

And then you have your voice that can then read scripts. So Seth did this. He created his voice on 11 Labs, then read the script from ChatGPT. A 20 minute podcast episode took Seth 15 minutes to create, which is wild. And he had his wife listen to the episode and she could not tell that it was not actually him.

She said that there were a couple of parts where she was kind of like, Hmm, like maybe kind of had a Hmm about it, but didn’t really throw her off that much. Mind. Blowing. 

So here’s what Seth said. He said that content video or audio more audio after, but I do feel like he said video on Marie’s podcast, but audio and video, let’s say that’s recorded in 2023 and beyond. We have to be very careful about because it could be AI. It could be completely fake. We can take people’s voices and have them read scripts. And we can use AI to even do this from a video aspect. I’m actually doing something very creative with this. There’s some cool things you can do. I’m doing something very creative with it on my other show, Rooted in Retail.

This was Dustin’s idea. And that episode is going to drop the first weekend of December. You’re going to want to watch it. You should definitely put like a little alarm or reminder to go listen to it. I think it’s December 3rd. Let me just look real quick because it’s a really unique creative way of using AI for good.

Yeah, December 3rd, that will be live on Rooted in Retail. But he was basically saying like, okay, so imagine that we take a political leader. Their voice, all, all these people that are actors, celebrities, politicians, their voices are out there. So you could take all those files, create the video, have it read a totally fake script, and then you could put it onto a video that’s either just b roll, or you could actually have AI generate that person and have them read it.

And it looks like it’s actually coming from them. I do feel like the video aspects of these. AI videos are further behind, it’s easier to detect, but audio. So if it’s a podcast, audio book, anything like that, or audio over B roll video can be hard to know if it’s real or not. And so why this is so important is if you use social media, if you’re on YouTube, if you consume any kind of content and you see a video or hear, you know, a podcast or see a reel or something like that, and it is controversial, it is alarming, it is whatever, especially I feel like in the political world, please do your research. Like, we have to now take the extra step to make sure that this is actual factual information and not fake.

And you know, I do have concerns that this can create chaos. This can create even further division. If people aren’t smart enough, really, and take that extra step, you gotta like, just ask the question, is this real or not? And even, even if it doesn’t seem real, do the research. Do the research, do the research.

You have to take the extra step to do the research. And it’s my concern that a lot of people won’t. And then a lot of people will share. And you know, some people will be able to be like, this is fake. No, this is fake. And they’ll do the work to tell the people, no, this isn’t real. But then it can create chaos and problems. 

We don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what the future holds. I know that the government and ChatGPT and I think Elon Musk is a part of this. They’re all working on legislation and like in different rules and regulations, but nothing is here today. And how can you really stop some of this stuff?

Like for me, I have hundreds, if not thousands of hours of my voice out there. You know, would I have to go and take it down to protect myself or do I have to put that behind a wall? Like, I don’t know, but let’s say somebody took my audio and then wrote a script and just like had me read something awful, like terrible and cruel, like whatever it is.

And then publish that and it wasn’t even me imagine how damaging that could be for me how much work and cleanup. I would have to do. I like to talk about more of the positive things. Be more optimistic. How can we use this for good? There’s a lot that we could do for good.

I teach it. I teach ChatGPT and AI. There are a lot of amazing things on the flip side. There are some not great things, and I just want you to do your research, pay attention and know that this is possible. So that is our quick tip, our quick episode today about AI. 

I want to know, what do you think about this? Will you send me a DM on social media? I’m Crystal Vilkaitis. It’s just my first and last name. And let’s connect there and DM me. Like what questions do you have about this? Or questions you have about AI, anything like that? I’m happy to answer. And, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about this episode.

And if you found this episode helpful, please review it on Apple podcasts or Spotify. You could do Q and A, but those reviews help shows like mine tell Apple that we’re producing content. That’s interesting and encourages us to keep producing and keep creating. So I’d love to hear from you. And I’d also love to see you at Evolve.

Go to crystalmediaco.com/evolve to learn more and get your super early bird ticket. Be careful on what you’re consuming online and on social media. Pay attention. Be alert. Don’t put your head in the sand. 

In next week’s episode, I am talking about five questions that can really change your perspective, can change your life, can change how you’re spending your time and energy, the things you’re working on, the things you’re worrying about.

I found these five questions from another podcast. And I did the work. I came back from my walk. I wrote down the five questions. And I journaled and did the work and I’m going to share some of my answers to those five questions, but I really feel like these can be a game changer in your life, in your business. They were so good. It was very eye-opening for me. So I’m going to share that in the next episode. So I will see you on the next. See you. Bye.