- 5 hours ago
As AI enables anyone to generate content at scale and virtual influencers blur the line between real and synthetic, where does value creation start and authenticity end? Should synthetic creators be required to disclose their artificial nature? What is creative freedom vs consumer deception? Do avatars and AI-generated personas create genuine value or simply flood platforms with low-quality content that undermines human creators?
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TechTranscript
00:19all right everybody welcome back last session of the day up here last session in our creator
00:24economy block this one is going to be a blockbuster we have three people here on stage
00:29who made three different bets on what authentic means when a machine is doing some of the creating
00:34one built a person who doesn't exist one clones the minds of real people so they can be everywhere
00:40at once and one's building an enterprise ai platform for brands filmmakers and creators
00:46we're going to talk about is it authentic but who is it authentic for what does that word even mean
00:51i mean god please welcome on stage uh over there adrian lawns the co-founder and ceo of infinite
00:57studios built tiktok's creator marketplace across 24 markets uh tiktok symphony now building an
01:03amazing platform for creators brands entertainment companies uh we have um dara uh legevardian
01:11dara legevardian so great to see you uh doing ceo and co-founder of delphi ai a platform that builds
01:19digital clones of real people experts and creators like jay shetty and eckhart tall and then ruben
01:24cruz co-founder of the clueless built itana lopez an ai model with 300 000 followers here in style
01:31she earns thousands per post runs the agency uh and mariana who's here to translate uh for ruben
01:39ruben uh as we move through it um and i hear itana is here somewhere so i'm glad that the
01:44uh
01:45virtual creator is here as well so let's start off ruben i want to talk with you first 300 000
01:50followers celebs are dming her did did they know we're keeping people guessing that whether we she
01:56was real or not that it just happened or was it on purpose uh at first time no i think
02:03that always
02:04we when we start this project we want to say always that itana wasn't real because is the key of
02:14the itana is a good thing of itana influencers there's a lot of influencers in the world but
02:21a synthetic influencer it's different and this is a competence or competencia see of of a real
02:29influencer we always say that itana it's not real and this is the funniest thing because if we say that
02:38it's real it's competing with the same influencers of the market so that there's value to not being
02:45real and also so what is what does a brand get from her that a brand can't get from a
02:51human
02:51for example uh people wants to um it's it's a tricky question first of all because it's cheaper
03:02and easy to manage and easy to manage and the company always have control of the avatar or of
03:09the influencer sometimes some brands has a influencer that the next month has another brand that pays
03:17more and goes to that brand or sometimes you can control the the influencer imagine that i have one
03:25um football player that has a crash with a car this can be not good for the brands of the
03:34car or
03:35sponsors and all these things when a company contracts itana or all our hires itana or the other avatars
03:44they know that they have the control of the persona right guaranteed brand safety you're not crashing
03:51from the forward uh dara you're sort of the inverse with delphi you're cloning real people
03:55but they let you do it is this preserving their own authenticity is it making a performance out of
04:02them talk to me about how that works yeah for us we view it more as access you know the
04:07same way
04:07someone could write a blog post and you could read their thoughts a digital twin is just a new kind
04:13of artifact where you could interact with their thoughts so we're not trying to say hey this is the
04:18person but this is what it would be like if you could talk to them directly and have that access
04:24that only people who have their one-on-one time have and what happens if the clone does something
04:30that the human never would say like what happens if they go off the rails what happens if they start
04:35saying something that like jay shetty for example would never say or eckhart would never say this is the
04:40thing i have nightmares about every night but you know in order for our company to even work and attract
04:46people like jay shetty we had to solve the hallucination problem first because everyone's
04:51like what if it says something wrong and they send a picture to the daily mail and i get cancelled
04:57and
04:57so we have a very very strict guardrail system it will only say the things that it's trained on and
05:02notify you otherwise interesting adrian on your side you're building this enterprise platform where
05:07you're working with aiding humans to create creating some permanence of characters and other things
05:12talk about how you see that ai amplified human versus a fully synthetic persona is there a difference
05:20between them how do you visualize it yeah so i've been building in the creator space for the last 15
05:26years i'm super long on the future of the creator economy and we are building this platform in order
05:33to really help supercharge the most creative humans we're focused on enterprise brands and agencies who
05:39also are often working with creators and it's really a hybrid production so there is you know the
05:46ability to create things that are fully synthetic characters that are fully synthetic that are fictional
05:51characters but also work with the traditional creators and be able to augment their content with
05:58ai generated clips or revisions etc and what about trust i want to talk a little bit about
06:05so tilly norwood for example i don't know if you know tilly norwood which was a an ai actress emily
06:11blunt said terrifying sag after said no life experience itana gets fan mail like people send her fan mail
06:21do you need a real person at the end of that for that kind of a trust and a fan
06:25mail experience to exist
06:41i think when itana has a trained model she understands what people talks always don't say things it's more or
06:52less as the clones uh she never says anything that the company or itana's persona wouldn't say and the cool
07:05thing of itana or all the
07:08synthetic avatars is that they can generate real connection of with the audience and you will say why a real
07:18connection
07:19imagine kim kardashian imagine kim kardashian i always put the same the same example uh kim kardashian
07:26it's famous but they don't talk to the audience with a synthetic avatar they can connect better with the audience
07:35and
07:35have a better interaction between the people that wants that that character imagine that it's harry potter or
07:45or wherever it is and it's a real connection it's not an image that one guy uh repose and all
07:53these
07:53things with a synthetic avatar you can connect better because it's more proximo uh like it's closer to you
08:03like you can have a full connection with him or with it uh because you feel it like more near
08:09what do you think about that dara well i think uh when my sister was little she would send fan
08:15mail to
08:16uh captain jack sparrow who wasn't a real character so i i think there is entertainment um and then i
08:22think there is actual relationships and i think the gray zone is where like defining authenticity is
08:29really your intent and what actually happens and so if you try to frame something that is entertainment
08:34and it ends up being used as a relationship i think that's really where the gray zone zone is and
08:39so
08:39with something like delphi we try to make it very clear this is not a relationship product this is a
08:44learning access same way you might listen to a podcast or watch a youtube video you can now talk
08:51to a youtube video in a way yeah and adrian you've talked about how creativity is kind of the most
08:56powerful
08:56force online can synthetic creators whether they're synthetic like what ruben is building or the type of
09:03stuff that dara is building do they hold that same power yeah i mean i think like when when we
09:11think
09:11about synthetic creators it is really an evolution of animated characters or fictional characters and
09:20people have always had relationships you know with the mickey mouses the barbies of the world
09:24and to daren's point it's you know it's really uh about you know how we approach it is very much
09:30from
09:30entertainment and from a marketing perspective and what's really interesting about what this unlocks
09:36for brands is the ability to create really participatory experiences really interactive
09:43experiences with their fans and with their consumers and rather than you know thinking about
09:49ai as simply just a replacement to what's already possible with traditional production which sure there's
09:56cost efficiency there's speed that that unlocks but that's actually like the most boring part of it
10:01all it's more about what is the new creative unlock and how can we create cinematic experiences at
10:09scale that were never possible with you know maybe a limited budget or with uh all of these different
10:15micro communities that want to be engaged with in a really unique way you know when i think about
10:22synthetic creators and the relationship that humans have with them i'm struck by a couple of different
10:26things i mean one is that in the u.s and i'm not even not really even sure that this
10:32number is right but
10:33i'm going to put it out there because there's some fraction of of gen z now the number i saw
10:37is 80
10:38but i don't believe it gen z said they would marry a synthetic creator yeah uh i think that's a
10:42crazy
10:43number but at some level there is a connection that these these synthetic creators are building real
10:48relationships with humans and sometimes i think of it as you know the parasocial relationship which is
10:54the way that a we watch a youtuber or a tiktoker and we think i have this relationship with that
10:59person
11:00i know them and you can have a relationship with ai and a synthetic creator like itana where to your
11:07point i know them but they know me too and i tend to think of this as more of a
11:13robo social relationship
11:14versus a parasocial relationship and adrian you live the world of tiktok with parasocial
11:19relationships and have seen that and creativity go through is the next step these robo social
11:24relationships how do you think about that um i might be a little old-fashioned but i appreciate a
11:33little bit more human to human connection when it comes to marriage um but you know there is a loneliness
11:38epidemic and people are finding real connection with llms and when they can connect with llms on
11:47deep emotive levels you know there's something to be looked at there um but i think you know from a
11:53from a brand perspective again kind of thinking about how can we uh you know for example we're working
12:01with a luxury fashion brand that uh they are creating an experiential um activation inside of
12:10their store where we can have the the phone essentially scan a garment and it can unlock a
12:16whole cinematic experience that the audience can engage with and actually co-create with the
12:23synthetic characters and create their own version of the commercial so this is where you can get like
12:29really participatory and interactive and co-created uh experiences with brands i think that that is
12:36something that's really interesting for the future of marketing yeah i think that's fascinating and you
12:40started you know you're a marketing agency ruben and and you built this and and people are building
12:45real sounds like real relationships with itana but how does that tie into some of the marketing side of
12:51it the marketing size in for example in europe it's a little bit of skirt and being honest we all
13:01the
13:01clients that we have are outside europe are more in latam and also in in arab countries and also in
13:10south
13:10korea for example now because they are more prepared to these synthetic people to ai to all these things and
13:19they understand and that they there's a benefit behind having a synthetic people or having a
13:27marketing of different ways of marketing and all this kind of stuff for me the in the marketing
13:35perspective uh europe is a little bit slower than the rest of the world and but the last year was
13:45not a bad year but the people was super scared and this year people are starting working with this
13:53synthetic avatars or synthetic productions or wherever uh we can produce for example
14:00daryl what kind of relationships do you see evolving between some of the virtual creators that
14:07you're building built off of real people um how much time are people spending with them what sorts of
14:13conversations are they having that seem to indicate maybe that there's like a real sort of deeper
14:17connection than just oh wow i can chat with this person and learn with them that's really cool
14:21yeah i mean it's just a stronger version of the parasocial relationships we see today when someone
14:25publishes a book or appears in a movie you're like wow this person's awesome like i want to meet them
14:31and now you can talk to them and they're giving you personalized advice for your situation so the initial
14:37fear with delphi that people previously had was this is going to cannibalize the value of my actual time
14:42because now my time is abundant but it actually led to people wanting to meet the person even more
14:48because the more time they're spending talking to their ai the more trust they're building in this
14:53person's brand and what they have to say so we have this dating coach named matthew hussey and people
14:59will call him for like six hours and talk about their dating life which sounds insane but you could also
15:06just read a book for six hours this is just a choose your own adventure book um and we have
15:10other
15:10people who are you know getting fitness advice from arnold schwarzenegger's ai and they come back and say
15:15they say thank you they know it's not arnold schwarzenegger but they know it's check marked by arnold
15:20which makes them trust it a little bit more than just black box chat gpt yeah it's fascinating to me
15:26that
15:27we are developing relationships at some level um i want to talk about trust though so we have these
15:34synthetic creators whether they're built on real people whether they're built on uh they're not
15:38built on real people whether they're elements of narratives that real people are building in the
15:43case of what you're doing um can we trust them and more than that i want to talk about whether
15:51we
15:51have to disclose that how do you think about disclosure for what you're building adrian
15:55so all of like depending on where that content is living there's various like terms of service if
16:01it's like on tiktok or youtube and they require disclosure on certain levels uh i think like the
16:07topic of disclosure is a really complex one because a lot of it is hybrid and it's it's less in
16:15my mind
16:15about like what uh if if ai was used it should be disclosed that ai was used i don't think
16:21that's the
16:22right framing i think it should be more about the creative itself and what is the intent so for example
16:29if we're doing a recreation of an actual event like in documentaries like there's recrees all the time
16:37right that like kind of bring to life historical events and they hire actors and they go and they
16:42produce that uh that content uh you can do that now with ai and oftentimes you could do that in
16:48even
16:48a more elevated way does that is that something that needs to be disclosed that ai was used i think
16:54that audiences will care less about that over time but if it's like misrepresenting a real event uh if
17:02the intent is like fake news or if it's misrepresenting like a deep fake versus a real person who has
17:10consented to have their likeness be used in a certain way all of these are um you know the the
17:16space is
17:16very dense in terms of all of the applications and i think it should be really looked at on the
17:21application level and the people who are the most um ill intent are going to be the least likely to
17:26actually disclose so in that case we really need to think about uh maybe there's more of a need to
17:32disclose non-ai content i'm human i really am how do you think about disclosure with what you're
17:39building what are you doing that's sort of mandated versus we need to do this because it's the right
17:42thing yeah i mean we do not allow any kind of deception or like adding your clone to your twitter
17:47dms
17:48it's fully like hey this is an ai version of myself it's not me and you know in terms of
17:53trust
17:53there is trust in the information you're getting which is accuracy which we solve with citations
17:58like this is exactly where a response may come from and there's accuracy of intent which is like
18:03what is the intent of the platform that you are using so if you know character ai which is a
18:08character
18:09platform their ai team is fully focused on making those conversations more addictive and engaging
18:16um which is an intent that someone who goes to the platform may not actually know and all of a
18:21sudden they're spending 12 hours a day talking to characters so i think that part on intent
18:24really depends on the person and the founder of the company that's providing these services
18:2912 hours a day yeah there are people spending 12 hours a day on character ai
18:33uh so um ruben itana in her bio says she's ai but you know people don't really read bios
18:42is there a mandatory label that you've thought about using or put in do you do how do you
18:46how do you let people know that this is not a real person
19:00the problem is that people sometimes don't read yeah and and now yes itana is super famous but we have
19:09hundreds of hundreds of avatars that we already put that is ai and people don't trust and all these
19:15things i don't think that we need to put this being honest because for example in advertisement
19:23or publicity when you see the telepizza or the pizza that it's a glue and it's not cheese
19:33in the advice that the book this is glue no we invent photoshop and photoshop
19:39it's to retouch things and to fake things and i think that it's the same but now people knows
19:47that it's fake and years ago people understood that this pizza can be like that and i think that one
19:57what people it's worried about is that now i am saying you that this is fake and this is what
20:03people
20:03don't understand but for me it's it's como un periodo de paso y llegará un momento que todo será
20:11ai okay no tendremos que poner esa etiqueta por ejemplo uh so what ruben was saying is like uh ai
20:18is
20:18finding its place right now and we think that uh later on we won't need this tag anymore uh because
20:25what we think it's going on right now is like people are having a hard time uh acknowledging like
20:30this is the truth or and this is fake uh but when ai will find its place in the future
20:36i think we
20:37won't need that tag because like no one would care about it do you think we're going to get there
20:41dara
20:42no one's going to care about whether you're tagged ai or not i think people are going to care
20:46i think people are going to care i think uh you know when when everything is ai generated and the
20:53tools
20:53to make ai characters become very very easy we're going to have infinite ai characters and i think
20:59there's going to be a sense of distrust in what we see on the internet i imagine there'll be a
21:03whole
21:03movement around this until we get to a point where there are social media feeds that are real people
21:08only and there are social media feeds that are ai only and those serve different needs those serve
21:13different things one is human connection and relatability one is maybe more entertainment
21:18adrian what are you thinking go back and see like helping to build tiktok and doing all the other
21:22stuff that you've been doing in creator economy for 15 years do we need a way to differentiate are we
21:26going to have to keep this going or is it eventually we're all just going to know and not care
21:29maybe not
21:30care at all i think two things can be true at the same time i think that the pendulum swings
21:35one way
21:36and it swings back the other way um i kind of like mentioned that at the top of this like
21:40i'm super long
21:41on the future of the creator economy and i believe that human connection is going and human connection
21:47with real creators is going to continue to be one of the most important things that drive social media
21:53and creators are moving it's kind of like also opening up so many like these conversations are
21:59i think are like really important and it's getting to the heart of like what is authenticity what is
22:04intent what is connection and creators are now you know coming into more irl experiences and creating
22:12more offline um more offline spaces so i think like the the the all of what's happening with ai actually
22:21indirectly indirectly benefits creators in the traditional sense i think it also directly
22:27benefits creators because now creators have everyday creators who work out of their bedroom
22:32have access to cinematic quality production tools without requiring access to hollywood which i think is
22:39one of the reasons why i was very very excited about ai in the context of the creator economy
22:44to start uh so yeah i i think it's a good thing overall there one quick note on the pendulum
22:50because
22:51i i agree i i feel like whenever there is an era of abundance the pendulum usually swings towards a
22:57desire for curation and trust so you think the dot-com era just infinite websites the creator economy was
23:03almost born because you wanted to figure out okay when there's infinite information what do i listen to
23:09and how do i trust it and so you listen to the individual so i think right now we're in
23:14this era
23:14of abundance with chat gpt and claude eventually the novelty of abundance wears off and we want some
23:20sense of hierarchy to world order and you know trust who to listen to what matters so it sounds like
23:26to me
23:26we're going to have curators that help pick the best of the ai and the best of the humans to
23:31put them
23:31into your point do you think you're going to build a synthetic creator that's going to be telling us what's
23:36good in the human world or synthetic creators finding the best other synthetic creators and bringing
23:41them to the front is that is that a world that i think yes i think the future will
23:56will evolve evolve a lot and now we are in in in in the first steps of ai and this
24:05new economy creation
24:07and all these things and the future it's it's it's huge and i think that in the future we will
24:13have
24:13people or agents or avatars that will say that way or that way so for me just the future will
24:22will
24:22change and now all the things that we are doing here are more or less speculation about what is
24:29happening in the future i don't know i think that in the future i can have brad pete the clone
24:34in my
24:34house because in 10 years we don't have mobile phones i don't know and there's another way to connect
24:42with people or or to generate trusts so i think that yes yeah i mean these tools are so powerful
24:53and
24:53what you can do with them is so immense and with that comes like great responsibility so like dar to
25:00your point about like being able to like set the rules for these celebrities or these creators i think
25:07that's like something that's really important that's something we focus on a lot like with the platform
25:12that we're building is like how do you build trust for brands to be able to know that if they
25:18create
25:18a participatory experience for their consumers that it's set with all of these guardrails and i think
25:24the misconception just about synthetic creators or ai generated content at large is that machines are
25:30creating an isolation and that's not really true when it comes like ai is like really its own art form
25:39and
25:39there's a human behind whoever is prompting that output and when you see like a creator who's able
25:47to reach 300 000 followers that's because they've been able to i'm sure that was a lot of work like
25:54you didn't just press a button right you know we have itana works so we have 20 people in the
26:00team and i
26:00then have five persons behind it's like we start two persons and now we are 20 and itana only has
26:09five
26:10people or five five persons dedicated to itana because the persona what they think also the images we
26:19can can't automatize all the content so wait ai created a job a lot of jobs create ai and also
26:29that
26:32nowadays we need people behind i don't know in the future behind i don't know in the future but
26:40now we need to see if it's yes if it's not but i'm not sure if in the future these
26:51three people will be
26:52two or will be one or will be completely automat talking about do you want to say something there
26:59i was going to say it's from both what you just said it's clear that the the future is not
27:04really
27:04determined here and you know there is a future where we end up like the characters from wally and like
27:09we actually don't talk to humans and ai is the main character of history and there's a future where
27:14humans are the main characters of history so i i kind of think it's up to everyone to decide which
27:19future we want to be in i want to talk a little bit about a future that we know is
27:23going to happen
27:24so sag after which is the actors guild in the u.s just ratified this deal about synthetic performers
27:29where they can't be used in movies unless they add significant additional value and actors can't
27:35strike about it till 2030 i think this is creating this real uh like shift and change like uh traditional
27:42hollywood can't use it ai innovation is going to be frozen but companies like yours and like yours
27:47are going to be able to go out and just do whatever they not not worry about big media
27:51companies leaning in am i seeing this right or wrong and adrian you sit in the middle of this
27:55how do you see this new law or this new rule for sag after and is this going to hamstring
28:00a lot of
28:01traditional media companies from really leaning into using partially or fully synthetic ai
28:06i mean i think it's a i think overall it's a good thing to set some of these restrictions because
28:16when we think about hollywood budgets and they are dwindling for sure but they aren't you know
28:22small like they aren't like they're bigger than someone you know a creator working out of their bedroom
28:26again right and who doesn't have access to to hollywood and it it should these tools should push the
28:35industry to dream bigger because otherwise what are we doing if we're just taking what we can
28:41already do in a traditional way and we're just replacing it with ai that is not the future i
28:47think anyone is excited about and not the reason why so many people like myself left a nice corporate
28:54job at tiktok to build in this space because i personally am so excited about what this means for
29:00the future of creativity i don't think there's ever been a more exciting time to be a creative
29:05person and we should push ourselves and each other and the industry to add to use these tools to add
29:12more value dara how do you see what you're building adding value there uh and allowing this sort of new
29:17world of entertainment to develop and build yeah i mean one part of it is for the consumer you know
29:23direct mentorship and access to those you look up to is not something that a lot of people have the
29:28privilege to have um so we hope it's impactful just on the consumer learning level in the on the larger
29:33scale we already do have people licensing their minds to companies so they can actually scale
29:39their impact in the way that they would and they have full ip ownership over their mind so i think
29:43it's a the incentives are aligned where you've spent your entire life building a mind that people
29:49want access to and now time is no longer a limit of what you can do amplify and extend and
29:56build out
29:56ruben on your side um you've got itana you're working on other creators as well how do you see
30:02the synthetic world evolving at clueless and what should we expect to see in the next couple years
30:07coming out of that your agency i think that my our company will change not in an avatar company
30:14it's more a media tech tech company i think that people every time needs to consume more content
30:23uh i always says that my father see a series of tv in three months because they are advice
30:31ads and all these things and now we can see a series in netflix in one weekend
30:39and this is changing completely the way that we see content and what we are working in the clueless is
30:47to generate hundreds of avatars that can generate audience and then we can sell productions or we can
30:56sell products or we can sell wherever but the the key of the question is not the avatar it's the
31:04audience behind the avatar this is the value of the avatar we could spend another half hour talking
31:11about micro domas and avatars and and synthetic creators and actors and what it's all building
31:16we're out of time so i think that's going to have to wait until next year there's going to be
31:19a lot of
31:20change between now and then but for now what i'd like you to do is thank ruben thank dara thank
31:25adrian
31:26and thank mariana as well and thank you all uh and uh there is so much going on i can't
31:32wait to see
31:32the future develop so thank you very much and um thank you for viva tech and that's it for our
31:38creator economy block there'll be a lot more on this stage tomorrow so you all have a good night thanks
31:42guys
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