Transcript: The AI Content System Behind 200M Views — Sarah Chieng, Cerebras & Cova Lee, OpenAI

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0:01 — [music] » Really quickly, before we kick off, I think it’d be super helpful to understand for the room, um what percent of people, just raise your hand, like you’ve created some form of video content before? Nice. Amazing. And then, raise your hand if you do it from scratch, like no AI.
0:34 — Amazing. And then the last question is, what percent of people started creating content because of AI and using AI tools? A handful. Okay, nice. Um before we get started, I think there’s a really helpful quote that or metric that we like to reference, which is from John Medina about memory. And so, there’s a stat that after 3 days, people remember about 10% of the information that they input, but when there’s a visual aid, like what we’re
1:04 — going to help you learn how to do today, it increases to 65%. So, let’s get started. So, I’ll introduce myself first. My name is Sarah Cheng. I am the head of developer experience at Cerebras, where we are building the world’s fastest and largest AI processor. And so, we power a lot of models with OpenAI, Mistral, Cognition, etc. And as part of my job for developer experience, I have to create a lot of technical content telling a lot of the stories behind our hardware and how we power fast
1:35 — inference. But separately, I also create a lot of content on my own personal YouTube channel and LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter. Um and and yeah. » Hi everyone, I’m Kova. Um I just joined the developer experience team at OpenAI. Prior to that, I was a full-time content creator, mostly making stuff on short form, so Instagram, YouTube shorts, and TikTok. And yeah, our mission is to make AI beneficial for all of humanity.
2:05 — » Okay, so to preface how everything is going to run, um most of our examples are it’s going to be a deck pretty full of like prompts, exact workflows that we use, tools that we use. And so as a preface, a lot of this is going to be on top of ChatGPT, previously known as Codex. Um and we’re using GPT 5.6 Soul ultra fast, which is a one of the models inside of Codex ChatGPT that’s powered by Cerebrus. And so one thing that’s super helpful is that this model runs at 750 tokens per second. So especially
2:35 — with video, processing large scripts, processing large files, it can be super helpful. Um and it’s one of the fastest models inside of ChatGPT. So also, another form of this workshop is available in a written form. So we’ve actually published a blog together, kind of a blog form of this workshop that outlines a very similar concept. So if you want to reference it or look at the prompts again, you don’t need to necessarily like type everything we show
3:06 — here. » And I think something cool also to preface is um myself and Sarah we’re both content creators, but we create from different perspectives. So it’s like really cool to come together and work on this together. Um like we talked about this before, but like you come from this place of like um being able to do it as like a system and as a like one place where you can consistently put out like good work for your audience. And I think I error more on the side of like coming from it from like a design background. So like the like systems
3:36 — aspect and also the design aspect is something we’re combining together because we want to create like good content that resonates. » Yes. So I think one cool thing is that we do have very different styles of creating content. Um she is an artist. You will see that. You can kind of see it on the right side. They’re very artistic. There’s a lot of really beautiful text and animations and she does a lot with the lighting. Um and I am more straightforward. [laughter] Text teaching technical content. And concepts. So I think to get started, one thing
4:07 — that’s kind of helpful is that we generally always follow six stages and the rest of this workshop is really structured with these six stages in mind. And so the stages are ideating, scripting, recording, editing, repurposing, and publishing. So ideating is how do we use AI to help us come up with really cool concepts that kind of stand out from all of the noise that we see today. I think especially now that so many people can create content, it’s even harder to differentiate yourself. Um the next is scripting, how we use AI to create really powerful scripts, how
4:37 — we create our hooks, how we test different concepts, recording, editing, repurposing. Repurposing is referencing like for example if either of us create a longer form video, how do we take that to maybe create sister videos or how do we cut that up in a very systematized way and then of course publishing and writing all these captions and yada yada yada, very annoying. And so as kind of a preface, these are the tools that we’re going to walk through throughout the entire workshop
5:08 — um and we’ll kind of talk through them like oh like for this step we’ll use this tool and this is how we use it. But just so you get kind of an early preview, we’ve listed it all in here. » Yeah, so the first stage we always go through is ideation. How do you come up with the concept? Um how do you know like which audience to create for? So there’s two main parts we really like to approach ideation with. First is to build your swipe file. What a swipe file is is basically a one-stop shop for all of your favorite
5:38 — references, all of the questions you’re thinking about, absolutely anything that inspires you. This can come in many different forms. My swipe file comes as this colorful website where I just like put every video, every like Pinterest picture I save. But, it can also come on notes, Obsidian, and Notion. We are attaching Swyx’s swipe file strategy cuz this is also um something you can find online and use to create your own swipe file. And in addition to having a one-stop
6:09 — shop for references, by the way, this is an order for your agent to be able to pull from those references and understand what kind of creative style you’re going for. We also want to understand how do we build things? Like, who do we want to build for? And to do so, we really like to create custom tools. For myself, an example is to build a research tool for YouTube. I was thinking, okay, I’m new to YouTube. How do I understand titles and thumbnails? Extremely important because 50% of a
6:39 — YouTube’s performance is really based on its packaging. And I didn’t know how to start. So, I used this exact prompt to create a research tool that allows me to pull thousands of videos from my favorite creators, be able to see them all in one place, and also be able to remix and create new thumbnail inspirations from my favorite thumbnails, which you can see a bit of a screenshot of. In addition, I ended up building upon that tool by thinking, okay,
7:11 — YouTube is so much about seeing if a title and thumbnail stands out in comparison to the other thumbnails, the other videos on the on the YouTube homepage. So, does it stand out on the homepage? I created this simulator, which on the right side simulates the YouTube homepage, and I’m then able to see and basically do research on how can I make this idea stand out before I even start building. So, I think one of the best things about agents is it allows you to be able to build custom tools for understanding how
7:42 — you can build things before you go ahead doing them. And this was just a way for me to understand the YouTube system uh the YouTube ecosystem without really having to go through, you know, all of the trenches of creating a video and then yeah, doing all of that. » And I think adding on one more thing to what Koda just mentioned is that something that is extremely underrated whether you’re creating a video or you’re creating an article is how important your title and your like title images. It’s the first thing that people
8:13 — see. It’s going to determine whether or not people actually read or watch whatever you’re creating. And often times I think it’s common like you create your content and you spend like maybe 5 seconds or a few minutes thinking through your title and your header when really you should be spending 50% of your time on it. And it will make I think both of us from experience and just from anecdotes in the industry like they will make such a big difference of whether or not you get 500 views versus 5 million views. » And then also on the swipe file note, my
8:43 — swipe file is not nearly as beautiful but I it’s I can be as simple as my version which is anytime on Twitter that I see something I like I literally just paste a link in this notion page and it’s something that my ChatGPT can always reference as like this is my taste. This is what I’m recognizing as good quality content. Um and right, Swyx has a great article as well outlining like how you should think about a swipe file and how you can build one yourself even just as a good reference for yourself. So like and once in a while maybe once a year you look at it and you remember like oh yeah, like this exists.
9:14 — I would love to do it’s it’s in it’s instilling and helping inspire me with these ideas. » The swipe file strategy is like it’s A+ because I think agents they understand the best like what you want off of references. Text can very rarely get to the impact a reference has. » Exactly. Um the next one is is of how you create the script. So I think there’s kind of two ways to do it. There’s right, there’s I love Whisper flow. Um and I always just like say a concept. Like if I’m trying to create a technical
9:45 — concept, I think one of the biggest things you have to remember is that when you’re creating content, you always want it to feel educational, right? It should never feel like marketing. You guys have probably heard this a million times. But, I think it’s part of that. Like a really helpful way that I like to do it. I feel like when I just start writing, it can sound very marketing and I’m defaulting to these phrases I’ve written a million times. Versus if I say it out loud, like teaching someone, like this is the concept and this is why it’s important. And then I can basically you can package all of that up into like uh ChatGPT. Or, of course, voice mode is
10:16 — amazing. Having it just interview you and kind of flesh out like this part’s not super clear. How do I, you know, understand this better? Or like I’m not really sure how this is related. Like maybe we should cut it. And so, it’s super super helpful. Um and then this is like an example of a prompt for like how you can use Codex voice mode. Be like I’m writing a video about this idea. Interview me about it. Um there’s two keys. Always concise and clarity. The two the two C’s of writing content.
10:48 — And then uh similarly, I think something that Kova mentioned, but it’s not just about like looking at all these references, looking at other creators, looking what’s on Twitter. But, you always want to look at like what stand out above average. So, I think a good example is right, like right now, like Alexander Wang could tweet anything and it would probably go viral even if it’s like a really dumb tweet. And so, you always want to look at engagement relative to other engagement. So, it’s always like how did this post that I do compare to other posts that I’ve done? Um historically, how did this post about
11:18 — this harness engineering topic compared to other posts about harness engineering? Um and this is such a great thing that you can do with automations. Um I think Dots, especially, is such a great way to be always monitoring what’s happening. But, here’s like a really good prompt that I like to use. Um and then I think similarly to this, this is of the same vein. It’s like also a prompt that’s great in terms of we love creating skills, um so many skills in our ChatGPT setups and this is a great way to just also help you then refine the script in the
11:49 — scripting step. Yeah, so pretty straightforward. Um » [clears throat] » once you’re able to capture your voice as a script skill. And this is ideally you already have a few pieces of content out and you like mold through them. You’re like, “Okay, like this is how I want to sound.” And now you build your script skill as you saw previously. Um I’ve personally really like to always generate three script options just to kind of see the lay of the land. If you want to add on to this prompt, you can also be like, “Oh, do you want to rank
12:19 — the script like the three scripts in terms of what you want to optimize for?” Like rank them in terms of like, I don’t know, um score them in terms of 50% on engagement, like 50% on cut, you know, something like that. And on top of like scripting, the next part is thinking, “How do I turn this into something I can film with?” And for myself, I personally like to have a lot of different kinds of shots. Especially for short form, you realize
12:50 — that you want to always keep the audience on their toes in a way. So, shot list is something that is extremely helpful for me. I create a shot list off of my script. And what this looks like is Oh. Basically, I have one pass which annotates my existing script and adds like A-roll, B-roll, screen recording graphic. And I also have a second pass which you can see in the I know people are taking pictures.
13:22 — » Are you going to be sharing this deck online? » Yes, this is recorded. Yes, you guys will have access. And it’s all in the blog. » Yes. [laughter] » Um Exactly. We have the blog out. So, this is all on the blog. But, feel free to take pictures. So, the second pass is also what creates a checklist at the very bottom. So, not only can you see in the annotated script where these are going, so you can kind of like understand, okay, this is the voiceover, this is the shot, but you can also have a checklist for when filming you’re like, okay, tick tick tick, I’m going to just
13:53 — get all these shots in. » And a really, really helpful tool that I have used for finding, especially screen recordings. And a lot of, you know, especially when we make dev related content, we we want to show demos. Um One app I really like to use is Coast, and it integrates with the Codex um CLI, and what it does is it basically records your computer over all time,
14:24 — which is pretty crazy, but it’s able to find, and it’s all local, and it’s able to find like this instance where you created a certain demo. I like to use this as reference, so I can find what those demos are in some of my favorite demos, and then re-record them. » And then I think similarly in the same vein, um we also, another great tool is CleanShot. And so, I think a sister to this is like Screen Studio, but I love ScreenShot because it’s really easy to
14:54 — it’s just like you add it to your to your system, you can very easily like record, screenshot, but it’s really great for annotating as well. So, a lot of the times, if you’ve probably seen anyone will do like a blur effect, like they’ll blur a certain like they’ll blur their email in a demo, or they’ll outline something, or they’ll create arrows, or add text. Like, it’s so easy to do like instantly, and then just save it. Um there’s no like opening DaVinci or a editor, etc. And so, this is a great way that I like to record, like if
15:24 — you’re recording demos, coding tutorials, etc. It’s so good. And then I think the la- Oh, it thinks too. Oh, I guess all right. Oh, I think the last slide um the last um one more note on editing is just again organizing all of your footage to the point of like A- so A-roll, right? It’s just like you talking specifically or it’s like the actual thing that’s happening. B-roll is kind of maybe side shots, screenshots, screen recording, screenshots, etc. Um it’s super helpful to have, you know,
15:55 — all of them is like screen recording 09436 on your laptop. You should organize it and ChatGPT will do such a good job of doing it instantly for you. And then it’s also really good at attaching media. So like once everything is organized and named and in the folder, like whatever editor you use, which ChatGPT can control for you, um it’s really good at attaching and linking media as well, which yeah. » Yeah, cannot emphasize how important it is to organize your assets. This list pretty much covers all the types of assets you need and this is for like the
16:26 — most extensive video you can you can make. Usually you don’t need that many, but it’s great to still have as reference just in case. Um personally I find Astro extremely extremely good at computer use on if you use Premiere, for example. DaVinci is um DaVinci is also extremely extremely good, but I I think Astro is probably the best for um computer use and yeah, Premiere. » And I will add a side note that as someone who’s used DaVinci, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere, my favorite is
16:57 — CapCut. » [laughter] » It’s like the TikTok editor, but there’s a desktop version and it’s phenomenal. » [laughter] » Okay, so the next thing that’s really helpful is actually creating a design system. I think this is actually one where because Soul Ultra Fast is so fast, um you can really spend a little bit more time on the design aspect of it. And so, there’s kind of different ways to do it. I think one, Figma has a lot of great like MCPs and plugins now that you can really take advantage of. Um,
17:27 — and so here’s an example of prompt of like I want to visualize several different ways. Like this was really helpful for us creating the slide deck. But then I think also similarly, um, one thing that I actually really like to do is like when you have fast inference and you kind of have the luxury of this, is like we will have Um, we will have like ChatGPT generate like literally 10 different versions of like the branding and the logos and kind of the feel that we want any video to have. And then you can actually cherry-pick the version that you like best.
17:57 — » And use your swipe file for this? » Yes. » Uh, yeah. So, um, similarly to what Sarah has done with a design system, because I already had a couple of videos out because I just wanted to be like, okay, this is exactly my style. You kind of want to turn that into a system, which makes it easier for agents to help you with that work. So, I simply gave my Codex as prompt to study my most recent 50 Instagram videos and turned
18:28 — the recurring visual style into a Figma document. So, similarly I created my own design system off of my own videos. » So, I guess another one is right how we actually edit. And this is more in the weeds of like, how do you do all of this without an editor? We are both very busy people and I feel like we both create a good amount of content despite how busy we are. Um, so I think one of the tools that I really love using is just generally with tools like ChatGPT Codex, there’s actually a lot of great like,
18:59 — uh, APIs that you can use for all of these video editors. So, I think example is like HyperFrames by Haydn is really cool one. It has an API. You can tell ChatGPT, here’s the like docs page, set up this API for me. Um, and it does a great job of doing all the heavy lifting. And then it’s really great at just like editing, rendering, reviewing. So, I’ll just give it a bunch of raw footage. I’ll be like, “Hey, stitch these three angles together. I want some text. Here are some reference videos. Edit it.” And then I will give it some feedback. I think another thing So,
19:29 — Hyperframes and HeyGen is also really good for Their main thing, bread and butter, is like creating avatars of you. So, like if you want to record a video, let’s I generally don’t like filming the entire video and having it all be AI avatar, but like once in a while, like let’s say I mess something up, like I say the wrong like tokens per second, and I need a fix it, like you can have an avatar for like 0.5 seconds just like fix it for you. Um And I think similarly, we’ll get to this a little bit later, but I think we’re just mentioning like Hyperframes and HeyGen now is like it’s also really good
20:00 — for if you want to take like long-form video and you want to snippet it into like a bunch of short-form videos. Um it’s also really helpful for doing that all by itself autonomously. And then you you can We’ll also tell you how ChatGPT can also upload and schedule and write captions too. So, you owns it end-to-end. » And on the the video editor side of things, like there’s a lot of video editors. There’s CapCut, there’s Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve, etc. I think a bit of a lay of the land is
20:30 — with Hyperframes, you have these videos that are already like pre-rendered. So, if you were to want like an edit, um in my experience at least, you would need to like re-prompt and it would re-render and produce you like the new file. If you want something more granular, so you want to see all of your layers, all of your clips, titles, music, etc., you would need to use, you know, a video editor. Um Astra is really good for computer use on Premiere. I think that’s something we’re working on. So, if you’re doing some like computer use stuff with our models
21:00 — on Premiere, I would love to hear about it. Um I think Final Cut is a lot better cuz it has a really good um MCP that um yeah, like so ultra fast is extremely good with Final Cut and yeah, there’s just like a couple of my notes on that so far. » Okay, um and so again kind of with hyper frames, so this is an an example of like you literally just prompt like first, here’s the docs set up hyper frames. You can use a bunch of different tools. This is just one example of like one that we like to use.
21:30 — Um hyper frames is by Hagen and then you can basically just be super just like about that edit that you want and it will do all of the captions and the text animations and you can give it kind of brand guidelines from Figma and it will do all of it for you. Yeah. With very minimal prompting. » Have you once used like hyper frames and just decided, okay, that’s the video. I don’t need to like do anything else to it. I don’t need to » Yeah. Yeah, yeah. » There you go. One shot. » [laughter] » Um yeah, so on the other end of things, if you wanted to be more granular with
22:01 — your editing, I like to always build my own editing tools and my custom tools because I prefer to control every part of the story cuz I’m a bit of a Yeah. I » She’s a creator. » Yes. Um so for example, I one shotted this music pad, which is the little nine button tab on the bottom left and basically it’s a sound pack. So whooshes, clicks, shutter sounds that I could just like click and it inserts it automatically in
22:31 — a certain track. And so this is how I can either use computer use and be like, okay, this is my sound pad, go and use my computer and just tap through my sound pad and just add sound effects exactly as I would choose and I can easily go back and just click through myself. Otherwise, you would probably need to drag a sound to the timeline and things like that. So I like to build tools to make it easier and it’s extremely easy to do so. So I would encourage it. » And so I’m like ways that you can use sound is right like when you have a transition, I think whoosh is a pretty
23:01 — popular one. Shutter click is a popular one. And then whenever you want to insert like an image or a screen recording, you would add like a click sound. Yeah, those are like the most common two. » Yes. Yeah, so another editing tip trick I really like to use is transforming the visuals. So, the reason I actually blew up and became a creator like full-time like a year ago in the first place was because I was able to make videos out of my like grad school dorm,
23:31 — which was really like there was nothing. Like as you can see like the walls are completely blank and then transform it. Like I added like a robot and it was moving and like a window and I added shelves and lights and like a fan and like a turning vinyl disc and all of that. And this was really early. Like this was back in the days of um like Photoshop generative fill. But now you can easily do this with Image Gen by um in ChatGPT for fun people by just being like, “I want to enhance my
24:02 — background, but keep like but keep myself completely, you know, the same.” And then you would mask in the background. This is a really underrated way of doing it. It’s one prompt to make your video look so much nicer, especially if you don’t have the luxury of a really nice set. » Well, I have a question. How specific did you have to be in terms of adding the robot, adding the background? » Yeah, so with generative fill, what I could just do is mask out. So, like draw a circle around the area I want it to be filled in. So, I would draw a circle around the top and just be like
24:32 — literally fairy lights. I was not specific. I always got three options and I could select my favorite option. Now it’s a lot better. Back then it was not so good. And yeah, I could still get this result. Yeah. So, a couple of other examples of how you can use AI to make better-looking videos. So, floating objects you can create with AI now. I did this in a couple of different ways. I used computer use with Astra to just be like
25:03 — add floating objects. Refer to this video. And all it did was it went into After Effects. It generated the models in Blender, exported them as GLB files, put them into After Effects, rotated them, put them on top of my original video, and we had floating objects in barely a prompt and a swipe file reference. The second is an older example, which you just saw. And the third example is I wish it was a a GIF, but it was really cool animated titles. That was done because Image Gen took like an you know,
25:35 — like a a text and just turned it into like collages and watercolor and just compiled them all together as a GIF. So, it looked really cool. More tutorials on @kovacut. Okay, I’m just saying. » Um and then kind of Okay, so I did mention this earlier, but similarly like I think a big part of recording is like sometimes you mess up. And so, a great way of just fixing it is like I still think avatars are not good enough to like do the whole thing, but it’s great like if you say a wrong word, you say a
26:06 — wrong date, you say something short, like AI now is really good at just correcting that one small part that you can then just cut in. And it saves a lot of time. And then I think to that point, you can use any tool. I’m just using mentioning the tool that I use, but now it is so good and so easy to just clip the hell out of videos that you create. Um and so, this is a great way of just repurposing for like YouTube shorts, Tik Tok, Instagram reels. Um and so, I’ll take one video, like usually a long interview will take me
26:37 — about a month in terms of preparing for it, filming it, editing it. Um and so, I definitely want There’s a lot of great sound bites in there and I definitely want to make sure that I’m being able to identify the best ones and get them out. Um to as part of that, I think one thing that’s really helpful is also writing captions. Um, it is very obvious when a caption is AI generated. There’s a lot of things that you can do so that your caption does not sound AI generated. I think one is of course obviously um, kind of studying your voice and studying your brand. I think two, this
27:08 — is a place where the swipe file comes in so handy. Um, and I you know, I always bookmark a bunch of tweets that I really like and so that’s also a form of a swipe file. Um, in terms of studying different formats, I think a key is also like one, you have to make sure that you’re differentiating different voices. So like my voice versus my company voice, etc. You always need to make sure that you’re differentiating different formats, whether it’s a long-form interview, it’s a technical demo, it’s a short conversation, etc. Um, and I think
27:38 — another thing that is really helpful here actually, which is not mentioned, is I love doing this, but there’s this like article on Wikipedia that’s called like signs of AI writing and I will always just paste it in and be like, do not do anything that is mentioned in here. And it’s actually pretty good. Um, and then the last thing that I will say and this is again, just one tool that you can use. This is a tool that I use. Swyx was actually the one who put me on to it initially. Um, but I at the very, very end of the
28:09 — process of course is actually posting all of this and so, you know, you have a video, you have six cutdowns, you want maybe one cutdown to post every like Tuesday for the next six weeks and I want to post it on like five different channels and I really don’t want to write the captions and do all this myself. Um, again, this is a great one where there’s so many APIs out there for all of these like consumer products that you just tell ChatGPT like, take this docs and do it for me and like set it up and it sets it all up. Um, but this is like basically how I post a lot of my content
28:40 — is through Buffer. I’m like, hey, here’s a folder of all these posts, post them one every Tuesday, schedule it for all these different platforms, figure out and like do some research yourself about what the best time is for each of these platforms, um and then write some captions that I approve ahead of time. And then just like that, you have content for weeks. Um yeah, and so I guess this is very similar to what I just mentioned in terms of I have scripts um sorry, skills for like TikTok versus Instagram versus
29:10 — YouTube Shorts. Um and then I’m saying to publish every Wednesday. And send it captions for approval first. And then this also is um kind of yeah. » Yeah. Um so with all of our systems and all of our processes and we’ve went through a lot um and we want to like post every week and we want to make sure it’s good. We also kind of want to take a look back and understand, okay, like how can we be better in our process? And
29:40 — one of our favorite skills, like this is for sure like one of my favorite is to review my process, review my video creation process. Show me where I spend the most time and suggest repetitive tasks I could turn into tools or automate. Um I think a lot of the time as busy people, we spend a lot of time creating and we don’t have a lot of time to kind of look back and go through all of our processes and understand inefficiencies, but really if we want to build better systems over time so we can focus more on like the creative aspect and the stuff that gives us the most
30:10 — joy. So, this is something that, you know, I would run every week. And for example, I would identify like oh like you probably need to update these Premiere skills that you have because they’re not being the most effective and so and so. And it’s a very simple prompt that would save you a lot of time and build better systems. » So, what are some examples of things that this has surfaced? » Yeah. » Yeah, like a few things. So, for example, it identified that I kept two different places for my morning triage
30:40 — of things to do. And so, it was like, “Oh, you mostly check this um ChatGPT space, which is our new kind of like place for putting like docs, slides, etc. Like I’ve now moved everything to one doc, but it’s still surfacing everything over a Slack thread that I never check.” So, that’s what this skill told me that was like, “Hey, like I’m sending you all these reminders on this thread, but you’re never checking this thread. So, like you’re not working on your videos properly.” Something else it also identified was like some really niche stuff when it
31:10 — comes to like the Premiere um MCP and like operating Premiere. And it was like, “Oh, like I’m running all these checks on understanding like if like the videos are importing correctly. Like every time I open up Premiere, like this check takes me a lot of time. I don’t need to do this check.” And I was like, “Okay, let’s not do this check.” And it was a lot faster. Yeah, so this is also similarly we can review monthly not just our
31:40 — processes and their efficiencies, but also our posts. And like you know, uh Sarah was saying earlier, we can look at, “Okay, what are the best better performing posts on my account specifically?” So, I can learn from them and improve my content over time. And also update my skills. Okay. Um I think one kind of meta thing that we want to really emphasize is that we would be really sad if your takeaway from this workshop was like, “Ah, I’m
32:10 — going to just go create all this AI content that’s actually just slop.” Like I think the way that you really have to think about it and internalize it and believe because everything in content creation is very like wishy-washy and I can’t concretely be like, “Do XYZ and your video will be really good.” But I think the important thing that I I we both want to emphasize is that at the end of the day these tools, right, are just to help you so like automate away the things that are very tedious so that you can actually treat treat treat content creation like a
32:41 — craft and so that you can learn like constantly and improve. I think without these tools it’s very hard to know like unless you spend a lot of time whether what you’re doing is working or whether you want to are on a track to be like more successful. And so with scripting or ideating like you should be creating multiple different versions. Like the AIs should be helping you create these different versions that ultimately you are looking at. It should do the tedious work of like adding these captions and normally like the rotating objects like that would take you hours.
33:12 — And it’s like you know you want to do it. You know you want rotating objects. Now you’re like wasting hours doing it versus like the AI can do it for you. But at the end of the day like this is your craft and like this is your voice and you always have to be in the driver seat otherwise nobody is going to watch your content. » 100%. I think this like there’s been like a lot of like philosophical questions have come up for us when it comes to like um what does like creation routine mean now when like AI can help us generate so many things and we guys we just showed you guys so many different like tools and processes and systems. But yeah like
33:43 — the one goal of it is to like get closer to like the thing we want to say and like our voice. And like I think the role of us now is like to think of like the big ideas. And treat these tools as like getting closer to help helping us to execute on those ideas. And like A honing in on like our taste you know reference references swipe file. B thinking about like the big ideas we want to create and like C like leveraging all the tools to create bigger things and better things now that
34:13 — we have better tools. A bit on our favorite equipment. So this is just sharing exactly what we use. Yeah starter pack. So I would not say my stuff is a starter pack. Not going to lie. I use the Sony FX3. Um I use so that’s just Okay, it’s a bit overkill. » Give a price. » Okay, my camera is like my most expensive purchase ever. It’s like it’s 2.5k for the body and it’s about another
34:45 — 2.5k for the lens. It is my most expensive purchase. It is a cinematic camera that is like the creator camera that is actually like cinema grade. Like you can show it in theaters. So, it’s a bit overkill. But before then, I had the cheapest camera. It was a $300 Canon EOS R50. But yeah, I use the Sony FX3. I use a tripod. Peak Design has carbon fiber tripods which is really good. It’s very light, very strong. Photodiox Gobo for creating effects like a warm window
35:15 — effect. And mic mini is like $60 and it’s for really good audio that you can use even for talking to agents on WhisperFlow. So, very helpful. » Yeah, I think like Rode and DJI minis are probably the industry standard. They’re both pretty cheap. Um, and then I think a good starter camera is the Sony ZV-1. I think it’s probably around $500, but it’s such a good investment. And I think most like YouTube vloggers like either default to this or like the Canon Mark like Mark II. But I think that’s like no longer
35:45 — sold and everyone’s switching to this one. And then as a very almost last slide, another creator who we both really respect, Matt Palmer, who was previously at Replit and is now at SpaceAct, who has hacks, does great like at home content and he actually published this really great resource that um, we’ve referenced a lot. Um, but this is like his starter pack and these are all like what you could do with an at home setup. If you wanted to invest a little money or if you wanted to build out a studio for your company, this is like a great great starter pack. And some of the stuff that we just
36:15 — talked about is also mentioned here. And yeah, thank you so much for listening to our talk. Um, I think we have a bit of time left. So, we have like 20 minutes to answer any questions you have and this is our account handles on our socials. Feel free to reach out. » And if you want any credits, plans, just DM us. » Yes. And feedback, especially like I have a personal interest in computer use, so please let me know what you think. Questions?
36:45 — » So most of my stuff probably lives in Notion. Like I think you can actually be pretty unstructured with it and get away with it. Um, I think like my swipe file exists in Notion. All of my scripts exist in Notion. I have all of my scripts in one place, like all of my historic scripts in one place. And so, um, I have the Notion connector for ChatGPT and it just There’s actually it’s very There’s actually like you don’t have to overthink it. It will do it all for you. » I do overthink it, but I also agree overthinking is never good. But I can
37:15 — also share a bit. Um, I used to use Notion a lot. I recently switched to ChatGPT space cuz it’s just like very easy to like I think not need to go through the Notion connector, but I love the way Notion is designed. So it’s like a give and take. Um, I’m like super like hyper control of like my process. I have like one skill for everything to do with operating Premiere. So like all of the best practices that I update with like the inefficiencies over time I care about, I have everything in there for like color grading, sound effects. I
37:46 — have a caption skill um and it’s all grouped under like this Premiere skill bracket as like sub skills. Um, so every time I call upon Premiere I would it would be like, “Oh, like I see you’re in the editing stage of the process and I see that your sound effects are done, but I see you don’t have captions yet.” So like it has like this process list of like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 to like 12. And it has like skills for each step and I’m constantly updating it over time. Like I’m constantly looking back at it, making sure it’s readable cuz that skill’s like the most important
38:17 — skill to me. Maybe I should like share that skill. Yeah. » I think to me the ways that I would be most excited for Dots is probably one, I think with automation. So, in the sense of like it can be constantly monitoring like Twitter or LinkedIn at things that it’s like oh, here’s some inspo that’s performing really well, here’s a trending topic like in surfacing that and kind of looking at it constantly. And I think two, to the point of also monitoring how well your content is performing. I think something that can like regularly be like, okay, it’s like
38:47 — constantly looking um this is like a comment that you should reply to. Here’s this is like performing super super well, maybe you want to like here’s like some wise, here’s how you can learn from it. I think you should update your skills, that kind of thing. » Yeah, this is really interesting to me. If any of you guys have Dots feedback, I would love to hear. Yeah, like the key thing about like Dots and Space is with Dots, it’s proactive. Instead of like needing to run like a scheduled like task, which is like oh, check my content
39:17 — every like day. Um Dots is proactively being like, hey, this video is outperforming, it’s like doing really well. Or like oh, like um did you forget to post that video? So, it’s like proactive. It’s like reminding you not at scheduled moments, but it feels like it’s on the go just like um my favorite Dots task is like just tell me if there’s anything that needs my immediate attention. And then like I just like don’t look at other stuff and I’m like okay, like I’m just like checking my chat with Dots. It’s like literally my
39:47 — own personal assistant. With Space, it’s just like a way to be integrated with ChatGPT and all of your threads and all of your tasks. So, I’ve moved off Notion um even though I do still some things on Notion like the more creative stuff just because it can talk to chat very easily, you can spin off sub threads and like have it quickly update Space um and it’s really easy to just like tell your agents MD like this is like my one-stop shop, like update these pages for these things and it’s all in one place. » Um I think the one thing that’s really
40:18 — helpful for me is that I’ve actually like just fully set up the Twitter API and connected to it to chat GPT and then it can like pull data really easily. And so that’s really helpful in terms of I think the biggest thing is that it’s less so like maybe on your video script, but especially with your caption like the captions that I used to have versus now are like so different because it just really is like, okay, this type of hook is not working for this interview like for interviews like let’s try out all these different styles and it can tell me like this performed
40:48 — really well, this didn’t perform well. Um, I think a one nice thing to do it more apples to apples for example is if I like take a longer video and I have several cut downs and then I test different experiments with like the captions and things like that for the different videos and then like using the API can compare the engagement because then your base content is like more similar to each other. » Mhm. » Yeah, completely agree. I feel like the fastest way to like be a creator. Um, you probably have thoughts on this too. I will say that in terms of
41:19 — understanding the algorithm, the only thing I’ve really done is that Twitter actually open sources uh or like it’s a public repo in terms of how their algorithm works and you can download it and or you can give it to chat GPT and have it like kind of help you talk you through some of the insights. And it talks about like the scoring and things like that for how the Twitter algorithm works. It’s all public. » We have a lot of our prompts out. I don’t think any of our specific
41:49 — skills. But I also think it’s very specific to you individually, right? Like you would use these prompts to create the skill, but like these skills are capturing my voice and I don’t necessarily think that everyone here should write tweets in my voice. » [laughter] » I feel like it’ll be cool to open source some stuff, but yeah, I I do Yeah, like framework, exactly. That’s a good idea. » Yeah. So, I think the way that I like to think about it for both videos and vlogs is that and I think a most people would agree is that um you would want it to help you do a lot
42:21 — of the preliminary research, but that at the end of the day like or the final product should be written by you and then you can use um a tool to kind of like clean up the grammar or like be very explicit that it should have make very little edits. I do think when you don’t want to sound AI generated, some like really helpful things are like um you should use a lot of like metrics, numbers, examples. Um that kind of makes it feel more human. I think always actually being very personal with how
42:52 — you write, um a lot of anecdotes. There’s like the really good um There’s a lot of frameworks out there for how you can make content sound more personal actually. Um there’s actually a whole science behind it and you can see There’s like frameworks that like politicians will use for all of their speeches for how to make people feel really drawn in. Um so you can find things like that. » Ooh. I That’s interesting. I have to look into the frameworks. Um the question is like really good. I guess I’d like to add on a little bit onto like what Sarah’s saying. I
43:24 — I feel like two other things that I would also really recommend, at least like as someone who’s like found like success in kind of the more like Instagramy, like YouTubery, like more like normie ecosystem is like one like live in the real world, experience a lot of things, and like pay attention to the things that like draw you to them. I think people I think taste is a bit of an overused word, but I think everyone has like a personal POV in the way they live in the way they live their lives and
43:54 — experience different things. It is so important. You live more of real life and not try to like absorb things you see from the internet and think like, “Okay, I’m going to like adopt that mindset. I’m going to adopt this.” Because it’s going to prevent you from developing a very strong and unique POV. I really deeply believe the reason Sarah and I have succeeded in content creation is in part because we have had really strong POVs that we’ve cultivated over real experiences. And I the second thing to add on is just like treat yourself and think of yourself as a curator of your life and of experiences. And like
44:24 — be very like intentional about the things you choose to do. And I think that’s a good framework to also approach content and anything you do in general. » I think two more like kind of anecdotal things that I will say. I think earlier we had a great example of like I’m coming from this engineering background and then I’m trying to create content. I think like Tarik, if you’re familiar, who is like a dev rel at Cloud Code, has this like really great thing that he likes to say which is like reaping and sewing. So one way to make really authentic content is like you don’t just sit down and you’re like I’m going to create
44:54 — content. Let me like something. It’s like especially if you’re an engineer, you’re actually in a great position or you’re a founder, you’re in a great position because you’ve spent so much time doing the reaping already. And then the reaping, right, is like all the engineering work that you do is all the is like, you know, um all the code that you write, all the learnings that you’ve had like being really hands-on. And then that also helps you create really authentic content that’s not like overly generic. Um and then the other anecdote that I will say is if you’re familiar with um his name is like Tice Simonian who was
45:26 — an intern at OpenAI and he created a lot of the really great Astra demos like the robot um painting the Golden Gate Bridge or um kind of being able to fly over San Francisco etc. And like for him like a lot of his inspiration isn’t like it’s right it’s like shower thoughts, it’s like at random moments, but he himself is also like a very creative person. And he cites this like oh like he did this like um this like tech this video about his about like you just take pictures of
45:57 — your wardrobe and then it creates like an AI wardrobe and it makes it really easy for you to dress yourself. He was like “Yeah, like that just came because my sister’s like really into fashion and she I was just talking to her about fashion and then that’s how this idea came about.” Um so I think it’s like very, very underrated of like exiting this tech bubble and just like letting you actually follow your natural curiosities. » I mean, I think my voice is my most prominent through video just because I’m such a visual person and it’s just something that I really enjoy like curating and developing. Um secondarily it would be music. I think especially on
46:27 — like um platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Like the key thing that makes things go viral is alignment between music and visual and text. If everything is aligned, it will go viral. It’s just very hard to make it all align, but I always to get closer to that alignment, I pick the music before I make » mean to that um to have alignment? » Like alignment. So for example, if you saw that like dancing dog video, like that yellow dancing dog video, » Who’s seen the yellow dancing dog video? » Okay, like two people. Okay.
46:57 — I’m on some corner of internet, but it’s to like Steve Lacy’s song, like it’s called playground and then there’s like this yellow dancing dog and it immediately comes to mind because like the vibe of the dancing dog and that music and like the visuals it’s overlaid on is so coherent. Like this particular group of creators on the internet, just cinematic creators, like all made videos because it was just so aligned, it was such a vibe, it was so resonant. Um it’s hard to describe what it means, but just like when it all fits together, when it all goes together and it creates a vibe.
47:28 — So music and like visuals is my favorite, but I don’t know if that’s the same for you, Sarah. » Um I feel like the way that I like to do it in my actual editing. Like so for me, where my videos are less about being cinematic and they’re more so about like being educational or it’s some like coding to it’s like some technical tutorial or it’s like explaining some engineering concept. Um I think most of it is in the script, like that’s the most important thing for me and then everything else is kind of icing on the cake. Um and so that’s why it’s like to me I really like outsourcing. Like captions are super tedious. AI generated captions are always wrong. Uh Um, and so
48:01 — that is what’s like taking me hours and I literally just have ChatGPT controlling CapCut on my desktop and they will fix all of the captions. Um, it will add all of the sound effects as well. Like, it I’m like, “These are my favorite ones. Like, add it so that whenever a video whenever an image pops up on the screen, you use this sound. Whenever you do a transition, you do this sound.” Um, and then in terms of text animations, like I’m like, “I have like favorites.” and I’ll just like Um, any phrases that you want to really emphasize out of the caption, like have it just be like really big animated text
48:31 — on the screen. » 100% I think it’s doable. » Yeah. » It depends on what kind of video you want though. Like, for like a creator who’s a bit more hands-off, like, I want to talk and I want to like, you know, even during talking just be like, “Oh, I like that take.” or like, “Cut that take.” or be like, “Oh, I can like even stopping in the middle of the script to be like, “I want this image to go on the screen.” I know like a creator like he’s also at OpenAI, his name is like his name is Jason and he just like edited a full like 15-minute video like without just like in one shot through just a
49:02 — single video where you’re talking in the middle of the video saying, “I want it to be edited like this.” But, it depends on the control. If you want a lot of control, you cannot do it. If you don’t mind relinquishing control, you can. » Creative freedom. » Okay. » Creative control. Yeah. So, I think the way that I would think about it is like instead of it’s just like, “Oh, this like category of content is doing really well.” you like I think it’s really helpful at I date at identifying frameworks. So, like for example, like I know a lot of people who
49:33 — do this, but they’ll basically look on LinkedIn, especially cuz I think LinkedIn is such a like frameworks captions game. Um, and you can basically like, “These are all the ones that are performing well. Here’s the framework. Now, here’s how you like apply this to XYZ topic.” So, but I agree with your point that like if you’re just only looking at the best performing content and the best performing topics, you’re like always slightly behind. » Right. » So, I would just think of it as a framework. At least that’s how I do. it. » I think the one Oh, sorry. Just to quickly add on. The one thing that could help maybe is outlier theory. So like there’s sometimes like, you know, for example, a YouTube video that just completely outperforms. And it’s just
50:03 — like that one of one on a channel. And maybe it’s extremely different. Like for example, the like the tool I showed earlier for the YouTube research tool, it’s specifically designed to find outliers. Like it has a slider that goes from like 1x to like 20x the normal like average views on that channel. And you can really see them doing some really interesting thing with a thumbnail especially. Lots of innovation with really cool thumbnails that go viral. Um but yeah, thinking about outlier theory is something I’ve asked ChatGPT to do explicitly. For going from like full-time to like
50:34 — now like part-time content creator but also at OpenAI. Like before, I would like transparently when you’re self-employed and creation is your entire life and it’s your first time doing it, you kind of have no boundaries. Like I was just working like day to night, but I really loved it cuz, you know, you’re in the driver’s seat of your own life. So it was like constantly all the time. No downtime. Um now that I’m at OpenAI, it’s still like I’m always doing something, but I would say you know, I’m at work. And a lot of time is both like spent talking to a lot of
51:05 — users and thinking of like content on our profiles and I’m producing content for our profiles. And we’re also like constantly like fixing bugs, talking with our users, like um relaying product feedback. That’s just what our team does. And but I think I also get a lot of freedom to create for my personal audience. That’s a part of the job. It’s part of like being an advocate for developers who have just expanded not, you know, beyond the traditional devs. So I think my team also sees my own work as Oh, my own work as an extension of my role. So
51:35 — it’s still like constantly and all the time, but I would say it’s like part-time content creation is quite synergistic with my current work. » So I think the most obvious thing is that now that we have all the rise of all these AI personal assistants, right? You’re not only technically targeting a technical audience, but now you have all of this knowledge work audience. To me at least the most immediate like segment of this non-technical audience is like basically people who are non-technical but working in like a technical environment. So may it be like it’s a tech company, it’s an AI startup, but they’re like in these non-technical
52:06 — roles. Um and I think that is also a nice thing for both of us where we are both have these technical backgrounds. We um but we spend so much time like for these consumer non-technical audiences that I think we’re more allows us to cater to it a little more. » Yeah, I completely agree. Like a year ago, like the the developers is traditional like dev, you know, background. I think right now um OpenAI, we have a very big interest in
52:36 — developers not being that just being that audience, but like expanding to basically everyone. I think that’s who we want all developers to be, like everyone. Um and I I think we’re like rethinking I mean I I I think we’re rethinking a lot about what it means to be a developer, how we can speak to like a broad spectrum like of people along like especially you know, Silicon Valley is like pacing so fast and there’s so much that’s been released, but there’s also like an education gap between, you know,
53:06 — different segments of people. So it’s like an open problem, but we want developers to be everyone.