Don't miss the power this new AI-driven classification of media brings to the table
Just what IS synthetic media? And why should you even care?
The good news is that it doesn't have to be a mystery. More importantly, there are seriously compelling reasons to add synthetic media to your communications mix.
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, Dr. Jill Schiefelbein, AI researcher and CXO of Render Media, is joined by V2's Head of Strategy, Roger Courville, CSP.
Along the way we chat about:
What synthetic media IS
Real life applications and future business trends
How synthetic media differs from deepfakes and unethical uses of AI
Practical advice for those leveraging new classes of media to connect and communicate
And more!
***
Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
***
Unedited transcript
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: What the heck is synthetic media and why should you even care? Well, I'm glad that you've joined us today because I've got something a little different for you. And I'm really excited. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations. And you know, we here, at virtual venues, you know, specialize in helping you connect the right platform to the right,, use case.
But I. I'm really, really excited to have with me Dr. Jill Schiffelbein. Did I get that right? Dr. Dr. Jill. And I'm so excited. Before it was doctor and she just finished her PhD in this stuff that we're going to get into today. And importantly, if you want to peek into what's Not just touching down now, but how it's going to unfold in the world in a way that'll help you reach people, connect with people, generate more revenue, or perhaps even just look really cool to your mom.
You're in the right place. Jill, thanks for being with us today. Tell us a little more about who you are and your journey here. You
[00:01:03] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: know, I actually want to start with something that was in your intro that I think is You do so well, Roger, which is realizing that in your lane, right, in the virtual event space, virtual presentation space, like there's many platforms, there's many players, but depending on what your use is and what your desired outcome is, not all those platforms are created equal.
And it really takes an expert to understand and not only the differences between each of 'em, but them pairing them together, right? Matching that up. And one of the things that I love about. What we do at render. And this is a, you know, a synthetic media AI startup company. We'll talk a little bit more about, but we decided we weren't going to just like hitch our wagon to one platform or one software.
We actually are best in class integrators. And so depending on what your use case is for synthetic media, we can produce it with the top four leading providers of video cloning technology, the top audio providers for vocal cloning. And instead of just going down one route, We produce it, we can then render it with any of these technologies all in one place and being that aggregator and that strategist, if you will.
So we're aligned that way, Roger, just in, you know, slightly different, but tangential
[00:02:18] Roger Courville, CSP: sectors. I know. And you know, that's why I think one of the things that, um, that I felt akin to you with how many every years ago we met. And I'll provide a little background for our audience. But if you look at the screen, and I presume most of you are probably going to listen as opposed to watching, but RenderMedia.
ai is one of the organizations, the organization that Jill's talking about. Going back, Jill and I met in the world of professional speaking. And, uh, I found her work fascinating because she had a, an academic's eye and ear for the various ways that, that how people connect touches down when technology is involved.
So we're going to talk a little more about that. Maybe to begin with, Jill, talk to us about even what is. Synthetic media,
[00:03:15] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: you know, synthetic media sometimes gets a bad rap and people initially hear synthetic media and have like, oh, this is gross, like synthetic and like, but you know, you wear synthetic leather, right?
Like it's not that bad. But when
[00:03:29] Roger Courville, CSP: we grab with the K2, but, uh,
[00:03:32] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: right. So really synthetic media is a class of media, if you will, that synthetically generates it. new outputs. And oftentimes people confuse what we do at render, which is we produce hyper realistic avatars of people. So essentially your digital clone, you type a script into an application.
And when we produce you in video and vocal clones, we merge all those technologies together and you appear on video saying whatever those words are in your hyper realism, lightness and voice. Now, of course, like you're not as animated as I may be in, you know, real life. But it gets your social presence out there.
So people look at that and they're like, Oh, so there are deep fakes like, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Keep going. Let me, let me distill this. Right. So deep fakes, number one, people typically use that term for nefarious uses for the most part. Right. And they have been around that. We know of uncertainty and studied since 2017.
Um, some of the first uses of them were for unfortunately, uh, revenge porn. You know, just being blunt with where all this stuff comes from. We're used to threaten, uh, journalists from covering stories, threaten people going for political office. I mean, people have died over deepfakes in different parts of the world.
And Nina Shrack is, uh, has a book called Deepfakes, and it's one of the best books you can read if you really want to know more about this from a geopolitical standpoint. But deepfakes are kind of like What we did with photoshop like photoshop you take a picture and you edit an existing image a deep people
[00:05:07] Roger Courville, CSP: have been faking Photographs.
Oh, it's long before there wasn't an internet, right?
[00:05:13] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: Way way before that and with deep fakes you're taking an existing video and then imposing Maybe someone's face over it imposing their voice and generating it over an existing piece of content the difference with synthetic media is that it is wholly newly generated from different input sources.
And those input sources in my case for hyper realistic avatars are a video clone and a vocal clone of myself that then generates a completely new piece of media after that. And so that's the big, big difference there because honestly, and this is not meant to scare people, but people are like, well, why would I ever want to clone myself?
That's dangerous. If you have a single image of yourself and about 10 seconds of audio online, anyone who really wanted to deepfake you could already do it. Right. So you might as well own it and control that narrative.
[00:06:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, so that's a good transition. Why would someone want to clone? visually and verbally or visually and orally or however it is that you describe that.
Why would someone want to clone themselves?
[00:06:16] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: For me and why I became so passionate about this technology as I consider it a new channel of communication, right? A fundamentally new channel is that We know if we look at hundreds and hundreds of studies across marketing, customer loyalty, retention, employee retention, brand loyalty, education, political alliances, anything where we need humans to kind of converge.
We see that if we can personalize the experience one on one to someone, it yields in general, better results. If we can customize an experience, maybe to a subgroup of people, similarly yields good results. If we can provide choice in how people engage with us and can consume content, just like you're doing, you can watch us in video or listen to it in audio.
Again, providing that choice moves the needle in a positive direction. And hundreds of studies. continually show these variables, but why don't we do it as business owners, as thought leaders, as innovators? Well, because this stuff takes time, right? I may have, for example, a log of a hundred different clients that I want to send a holiday message to, right?
It's around holiday time right now when we're recording this. So let's say I want to send this out and you know, hi, insert first name is. really not personalization anymore, right? So instead of that, I want to send a great message out to a hundred people that's personalized. There is no way I am sitting down in front of my camera and doing a hundred different videos.
Like at best, maybe I can create a mail merge like thing with variable fields in a database that then does it via text. Maybe then, if I am really on top of it, I could pair that with AI audio. But, what I would much rather do is download the data from my CRM, I have CSV files and fields, where I can create one script with maybe five different variables that are personalized to everybody, merge those all together, bam, a hundred different scripts, and then bam, a hundred different videos unique to each individual person.
That, to me, is the power of this, because it is something you never would have done otherwise. Right. The best you would have done the best, let's be honest, is you would have spent time creating one generic video for everyone, but maybe you still do that, but you append it with this personalized video at the onset of it, right?
To cater that communication and make it more meaningful and leveraging technology in a way that allows us to be more human has always been a huge passion of mine. And to me, this technology lets you do that when you do it strategically.
[00:08:47] Roger Courville, CSP: My brain is spinning because one thinking about various use cases, but to think about in the context of a, uh, the general audience that we're going to have here at virtual venues, which would be, you know, corporate typically fortune 1000 kind of clients.
And two, those who are thinking in terms of Virtual events, hybrid events, and that kind of thing. Share with me, because I know you have a deep background that includes excellence in virtual presentations, for instance. Share with me how someone might use this in the context of events, online or
[00:09:21] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: off. So take, uh, you know, I'll, I'll just throw out a whole lot of things here, Roger, because I know you and I geek out on things like this.
So hopefully your listeners will too, everybody. The, uh, take, for example, Fortune 1000, 1, 000 company that is going to have their annual event. Let's say it's an all hands type employee event, or maybe only special, maybe you had to earn your way to be in this event. Let's go with that example. Let's make it really good.
You had to earn your way. And in the company, there's maybe 2000 people that get to come to this event in a company of, you know, 100, 000 people, whatever it may be. So you've earned your way into this event. The CEO will be present at the event. But you've maybe never gotten a personalized message from the CEO in your life.
So now you have the CEO's hyper realistic avatar and you create a personalized message congratulating each and every employee for being there. Now, do you want to create one like really formal one? Sure, you can do that. But again, it's that personalization and I don't say to put this off as, hey, this is me on video.
I would be, you know, if I was a CEO, I'd be like, you know, Roger, congratulations on being accepted into this year's, you know, top 2000 employee, you know, conference event. The real Jill Schifelwein is excited to welcome you and to get to meet you in person and spend three days with you in, you know, sunny San Diego, California next month.
But I wanted to make sure my likeness got out to you now to communicate that You truly are an important part of this company and what you've done in and then insert something that is personal, uh, really has moved the needle for us this year and I can't wait to thank you for that in person, right?
Imagine what that would feel
[00:11:02] Roger Courville, CSP: like. Oh totally. I mean my brain is spinning. It's like, oh, here's the sales team Uh, they got to go to president's club and it could be just hi. This is ceo jill Yes, I look forward to being with you in real person. But here's the digital me and Roger, right? Insert field on your little customization.
Roger, you were part of helping us get to. Uh, our result, because you personally got to 132 percent of your target objective this particular year. And I just wanted to personally thank you. Right? Or something like that. And now for me, I'm just kind of like going, Oh, how could we use that in a virtual event?
Got clients. They do, they do an event with 500 people or 1500 people. And now you could have this personalized thing that goes out that says, Hey, It looked like in the, in the poll of the event that you just attended, you said B, whatever B was, right? And I just wanted you to know that we see you and that touches down for us and whatever, right?
I mean, I'm thinking, Oh, you could just take the data that you've generated from this particular event and personalize the follow up in just some mind blowing ways.
[00:12:14] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: It's amazing. And when I first started in this space a little over two years ago, which I know sounds crazy, right? You're like, wait, this has been around for two years at this level.
I'm like, yes, yes it has. But when I first started, you know, playing in this space and how I ended up becoming a partner was I was actually the second paid customer at Render. Uh, and I was the one who was using it And using it effectively, which in hindsight makes sense because of my, you know, my expertise in communication and that type of integrative background.
And so conversation started and it ended up becoming a beautiful partnership, uh, you know, becoming a partner in the business and being chief experience officer. And so all I do. Is not all I do, but my favorite thing is aside from, you know, getting on stages, educating, meeting people, it's I, I get to educate people on use cases.
I get to talk strategy day in and day out and find ways to leverage this technology to make those connections more meaningful. And I use the analogy that, you know, how, when you've met someone once in person. And then you follow them on social media and you can kind of see them throughout the year when you see them again the next year conferences, for example, your connection is stronger because that social presence was there.
Now, it's not just through social media, you can reinforce your social presence, your likeness, your voice. And video continually throughout the year without, again, having to set up this camera every time. And that, um, aside from the fact that, you know, I'm jealous of my avatar, she wakes up like she does every day.
Like this is, you know, a normal day here for me. So like she looks polished and ready to go and I just kind of show up. So it's a way to really have our presence out there and extend the meaningfulness behind relationships, through communication in those in-between times. It's not a replacement for being human, it is.
We put in there as a different channel.
[00:14:07] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I mean, I'm in my brain. And obviously it's been, I don't know, it's been a few years since you and I caught up, but in my brain, I'm already applying this into thinking about how the nature of like content marketing or the nature of how you might, I mean, think about Seth Godin's been blogging daily for, I don't know, since somebody owed Moses five bucks, right?
For a long time. And, uh, one of the ways that I've thought about that, it's like, okay, what is the right frequency for me and my audience and that kind of thing and, um, uh, this will be a slight derivation. What's the word I'm looking for? Rabbit hole. Rabbit hole. But you know what? I'm just going to think out loud because I think somebody that is interested in something like this is probably for visionary and forward leaning, right?
You're, you're in a new something and I think it's kind of cool. So I recently did an analysis, used AI to do an analysis of, so my doctorate's in spiritual formation and one of the heavy hitters that's been around for a hundred years has this really famous book that. That lots and lots of people read that has this little daily reflection.
So I took a whole bunch of his entries, put them into ChatGPT, and I did some analysis and said, hey, what is the pattern here? And can we recreate the pattern of this thing that has just been, you know, really successful for the last 80 years? Voila! Of course, AI comes back and, and creates. And so I'm going, I'm like, okay, I'm going to test this.
plug in some content and say, using this pattern, generate something in my voice. And I trained it on some of my other writing, generate something in my voice, my writing style that follows this particular tactical or rhetorical pattern that this particular writer, uh, used and, and bam starts kicking out content.
So now all of a sudden my brain's going. Ah, now instead of me having to sit and put on some makeup and sit in front of a camera every single day, I can go BAM and, and, and, and it would be me. Now, I don't, to be, to be honest, and to be totally fair, I don't let AI write content for me. Right? I was just, I was just using this as an example because it doesn't, it still doesn't write like I do.
I don't care how much I've trained chat GPT. Uh, it still isn't. I speak like I do, but the point being, I could use this as a form of touching folks or generating content in a way that would drive a huge amount of the labor out of the process. And I'm thinking, ah, with the right disclosure, I would be very happy to have this represent me, right?
I'll use another example and it's a little too much of me talking, but you probably, of course. of course you have, saw that, say, YouTube has just announced that, you know, they don't want, they're going to make you label or before you, if you put content on there, that's, that's generated with AI, right? And if you've seen, you have seen, probably our viewers haven't seen like the stuff that Joe Rogan has generated, where it's like Joe Rogan and a guest entirely generated by AI.
And you're sitting there scratching your head going, dang, that's, wow, what are the implications? It's a piece of me going. This could transform the, the, the level and nature of how I create content in a corporate context in a way that gives me comfort to say, yes, this is me. This represents me to your point.
It's a different channel, just like. One is video, one is blogging, one could be this synthetic AI, and it's a new channel for which, through which I can create something, and this is not me seeding myself or my personality to some AI large language model, this is me actually using a new way of doing things to create stuff.
And my brain is already spinning. Talk to me. Well, here,
[00:18:10] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: let, let me, let me make your brain spin a little more. So the real power, and you're smart. Uh, we know this, your listeners already know this, like you're experimenting with things and you've learned the power of training and the power of prompting correctly with GPT.
Now imagine the power of. Training your own entirely private model that would be more like you because when it's generating answers, it's not pulling from any other databases It's solely pulling from the large language models that you have trained it on So for example, if I take every blog I've ever written every podcast I've ever been on the transcript of every speech I've ever given Etc, etc copies of every book that I've written all those things and put it in to train a model Those responses are going to be a lot closer to what I may look and sound like in giving advice.
Now, let's take this a step further. So one of the things when I started speaking on this, you know, this generative AI topic, I mean, year and a half ago was probably about around that on a bigger stage level from a strategy standpoint, it was, okay, you want to create, uh, five videos and five blogs and five newsletters and five descriptions in under two hours.
Okay. Here's exactly how you do it. Bam. And I map out your exact strategy to do that. It's, it's easily possible now, easily possible. And I am not an advocate of copy and paste, which at GPT puts out, I am an advocate of using it and then editing from there. Right. With your own voice, your own language, et cetera.
And I'm a massive believer in using it to help you solve the blank page syndrome. I add to my next book is, uh, in the four dummies series, you know, that big brand. Um, so it's effective business communication for dummies. And I haven't taught nonverbal communication as a course and God, I don't even know.
Right. Like since I was back at the university. And so yeah, over 10 years at this point, um, I stare at this page, I'm like, what the heck? And so I just type in chat GPT, you know, what are the 10 most common questions business professionals have about non verbal communication? And bam, then I could start answering those questions as an expert, and it was easy to start then outlining things.
But now let's go back to this private model thing, right? We take this private model, you're training it. Now, we pair this private model. With you could even have like secondary and tertiary models as backups, right? So let's say within a big company, um, and let's say like for an event even, right? Let's say you wanted to have like a digital assistant to help an event or in any company in HR and whatever it is You have the individual private trained you have the company based private trained and then you could have a tertiary every like You know a general GPT private trained or a third layer so you can have multiple layers That's a complicated part right now, but you can do this So then your responses are increasingly more accurate and now you compare it where within minutes at this point.
You can have instant if you want cartoon esque quality or very cheeky quality. Right. But if you want hyper realism, within minutes you get a video response of the person. Doing this so now imagine this for help kiosks for coaches for true thought leaders in this space who? People want access to them, but can't afford the ten twenty thirty thousand dollar price tag on those You know human interactions now they have access to your brain digitalized in a privately trained model with your digital presence Being socially available to them
[00:21:35] Roger Courville, CSP: just in case, uh, someone kind of gets it at 50,000 feet, but needs it to be a little more tactical.
Let's talk about training a language model. And if this goes a little far afield relative to what you're used to chatting about, um, you can shut me down or steer me correctly here. So I have, uh. I have begun doing that. I've experimented with training, say, a particular bot within ChatGPT. Um, I've experimented with a couple other tools that I've found, and of course, the space is moving so quickly, it's just crazy how many new vendors are available on a weekly basis.
But, back up from there, a lot of folks probably ChatGPT, isn't that just like another variation of a search engine? What are you talking about training your content? So start right there, and then let's, then let's take it down and maybe offer a suggestion of, of not just how it works, generally speaking, is there a vendor or three that someone might go try with regard to going, Oh, yeah, that might be interesting to train that on all my 500 blog posts?
[00:22:45] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: Sure. So before I answer directly that question, there are two things that I want to say that are kind of blank statements. And, um, I have no idea why that just did confetti. Did you see that? Yeah. Uh, it's the whole new i, the i, the iOS system. Oh, right, right, right. So, I just threw confetti. They put the new features in Apple.
That's great. Like, let's see. Can I give you like a heart too? Well, it actually can. Oh, yeah. There we go. Look at that, you know, anyways, technology, right? Augmented reality.
[00:23:13] Roger Courville, CSP: So if you're just listening to this, if you're just listening to the audio, and I presume you are because most of you probably, I mean, you're probably here watching Jill, but you're not certainly not watching Roger.
But if you're just listening to this, what just happened is we're chatting on video and, and Jill's camera starts like raining. digital confetti. We're like, I'm like, Oh, what are you pulling out? You got some, you got some game,
[00:23:37] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: girl. You know, it's, uh, thank you, updating to the latest iOS, and, uh, apparently these are new features.
I had not seen the confetti one before, everybody, but there are hearts. In a previous interview, I had done something, and a random thumbs up popped on the screen, and that was Literally just, um, an hour and a half ago, so I didn't have time to change my settings yet. So, uh, sorry for the squirrel moment, everyone, just listening in, but, uh, be, be forewarned because if you have a Mac and you've updated recently, any video interview you do, your random hand movements can turn into digital gestures.
So now that we have that disclaimer out of the way. Two phrases that I say very regularly, um, on stage and consulting, even on shows like this, uh, number one is your AI output is only as good as your human input. Period. End of story. Your AI output is only as good as your human input. And to that end, the number one thing that any person, any company, anyone considering truly leveraging AI can do is to get your data in order.
If you really want to leverage the power of these tools, and I'll transition Roger into this whole, you know, privately trained GPC thing, you have to get your data in order. What I talked about earlier about, Oh, do you want to send private, you know, Personalized messages to hundreds of people if you don't have the data that's going to be inserted into those customization fields for all of these people in a way that you can access it, export it and manipulate it, it's, you're not going to be able to leverage this technology and that's one of the big things with entrepreneurs that start out and I.
Give this example because I am sorely guilty of this. I mean, sorely guilty of this. Oh, I can manage my data. I can manage my clients. I have this Excel sheet. I'm not that big. I don't need to do anything. And then you realize what a CRM customer relationship management software is like, and you're like, oh, crap.
And then by that time, It's so much work to start it up that then you delay starting it up and the problem just keeps compounding. And so to earlier stage businesses that are listening, or to people, you know, Roger, in your space with events, look at your event platform that you're picking, and I know your team helps with that, Roger, but it's, does it give you the data in a way that you could use it strategically to leverage these tools?
AI output only as good as human inputs, and you have to get your data in order to truly harness and leverage the power of any of these AI interventions. That being said, when you're starting to think about maybe privately training a model, and I don't know down and deep the programmatic nuances of it, so that's about where my expertise ends, but what I do know is in getting that data in order, you have to, you know, have the data in order, but then also have it in categories.
For example, if I am taking transcripts from an interview, my words that I use are going to be different than written for blog. or written in a book. The phraseology is going to be different. So if I'm going to train a model and then I want to have it write a script for me that may sound natural like I may do on video, it's going to be different than writing a professional themed target audience.
And so you can expect these tools to one, do things with data they don't have. And the number two, to do things without your accurate human input saying to chat GPT, for example, write a 500 word blog post about the benefits of using synthetic media is going to give you a generic. output that can, you know, maybe apply in certain areas.
But if you say write a blog post in 300 words explaining synthetic media to a kindergartner, you're going to get very, very different results. And so as you're thinking of what you might want to train a private model for, start thinking for those different uses. Start thinking in what categories you might want to use.
And it's not just getting all this data and just like throwing and dumping it in there. It's the same way that when you think of how information was cataloged on the internet, it started with keywords. It started with categories. Now we have media types. You have to be able to get that data in order, in order to really leverage those tools.
And if you want to start looking at something, because that was one of your follow ups, um, private GPT is the first one that comes to the top of mind. But if you type in, you know, private trained GPT models, you'll be able to go and see a whole host of different options, uh, that come in.
[00:28:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I mean, and that's just recently added to ChatGPT, and I just began starting to, uh, to, to, I, I would hesitate to even say use it.
I started loading up some content and said, hey, how, how realistic can I get this to, to learn my voice because I kind of have my own way of writing. And I say, okay, here's my blog. It's got 500. Here's PDFs of a couple of my books, et cetera, and you know, I, I have a lot to learn and to your point, I'm going to maybe use different language, but there is an art to learning prompting and there is a, if there's one thing that I've learned, uh, and I don't take credit from this.
I'm, I forget who I learned it from, but credit goes to somebody else. You can start this dialogue going, Hey, what else should I know? What, what should I be asking you? And you can begin to have a dialogue in a way that's scary intelligent and say, I don't even know the right questions to ask. What questions should I be asking?
And it'll come back and say, uh, well, you should. Consider these data points. These things from you would help me do my job better is literally what, what the GPT told me. And I'm like, Oh, dang, that's awesome.
[00:29:18] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: There is so much power in iteration, right? And this is in so many different areas of life. But when it comes to using GPT, uh, you know, tools, iteration.
That dialogue, if you want to call it that, right? It's really where you can start to understand better, you can learn to communicate better, and it becomes like a relationship that you have with any other human. You learn each other's nuances, right? I studied back in the early 2000s, my master's was in computer mediated communication, and starting to study, you know, how humans and computers interact, and much of my success in the digital space early on, uh, specifically in YouTube, was because I figured out how to communicate to a computer with my keywords and my descriptions and my titles by anticipating what a human might input into an imperfect system.
And that's how I got higher in search engines, higher in algorithms with YouTube pretty fast. And now when we have near Human, you know, syntactic delivery and search and we're using voice to search that's changed how people find things. And so when you're looking at something like, uh, using chat GPT or even the, the, you know, whether it's a private GPT model or a private model within another system, just some cautions.
Read the fine print because anything you put into chat GPT, unless you're in a special category and you do it. is actually adding to the bigger picture model. And so what was happening in a lot of companies is people were like, Oh, we can use this to do things. And they were uploading private, um, you know, policies, uh, operating procedures, that type of thing to try to get results.
And then those go into the database. You have to be careful with where you're putting your data.
[00:31:10] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I remember the first time I plugged in a couple of questions related to virtual presentations into chat GPT and the answers. that it came back with were scary good. And I realized, Oh yeah, all my stuff's been out there for years.
Me personally, all my stuff's public anyway. I mean, I've just been giving it away for us such a long time because that's, you know, I don't make money selling books. I make money, you know, consulting and teaching and speaking and things like, so I'm not worried about did that cost me selling a book. But, um, as we transition here, maybe toward, you know, hitting coming back toward the runway.
What questions should someone in the corporate world be asking? So, we've covered a lot of territory here. If I was asking you this question, just like I was describing what I did with, uh, with ChatGPT, what questions should somebody even be asking to evaluate their next step with something like Synthetic AI or Synthetic, the stuff
[00:32:18] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: that you do?
Yeah, yeah, this is one of my favorite questions to answer, so thank you. This was not even pre planned, which is what I love about it. When I go in and consult with companies, and this is what I've been doing for well over a decade on, you know, my individual side, the dynamic communicator side of my business life, um, you know, separate from Render, but now it all merges, is I always go into companies and help them discover and uncover their communicative gaps.
And typically that's around a sales process. It's around a customer experience process. It's, you know, something to do obviously with communication because we spend so much time in businesses setting up what we believe are, you know, these great experiences for customers, for our attendees at events, um, as it may be, right?
However, We're doing this from our own bias perspective, and there's always things that we are not thinking of, and there's always going to be areas where maybe you get a lot of questions back. Okay, clearly there's a gap. The first thing I do with anyone is say, yes, I know you want to experiment, they're shiny new objects, they're cool, but what you're doing when you do that.
is you're just putting a bandage over maybe one ineffective or inefficient process in a company. And that's not what you want to do to be sustainable with this usage. So I always say, if you're going to play with these, you have to have a single use case. and need for it. Identify that, and I help people identify the full breadth of their customer experience, whether that's an employee as a customer or, you know, a paying customer.
Where are you having friction? Where are you having frustration? Where are you getting a lot of pushback? Where are you getting not, uh, you know, where are you having attrition? Where, you know, where in your process where if you change the ratios that you're getting in whatever area, would it really change your business?
Let's look there first and decide, is this a messaging issue? Is it an efficiency issue, you know, or is it, you know, something else? And if it's a messaging issue, fix the messaging. If it's an efficiency issue, then technology can help. And it may be a channel issue, which means also you're communicating only via email now.
Great, let's add video and let's see how that changes. So that's what I do and I like to go in and approach it with a single use case because if you don't have a baseline, if you don't have measurable data, how do you know if this actually helped or not? You laughed. I saw you laughing, everybody. So we're on video.
Roger like fell back in his chair. I
[00:34:45] Roger Courville, CSP: know and I, I was gonna butt in skin and I thought, no, I'm just gonna let you finish because you're saying something really good here. But it's worth a big exclamation point. You know, I started in the virtual, this virtual event space in 1999, right? We were happy if people had a 56k modem.
And particularly early on. People would come and say, and want to talk about doing webinars and what kind of results they were going to get. And, on my days when I was feeling snarky, I would hang up the phone and go, If you don't know what problem you solve for who and what they're willing to pay to solve that problem, changing the channel through which you contact them isn't going to solve, isn't going to solve your problem.
If you don't know who you're trying to reach with what kind of message, just switching from email to a webinar doesn't solve your problem. And so, you know, in a way, you're, you know, 25 years later, you're, you're, you're You're going, Hey, you better get clear on, is this a messaging issues? Is this an efficiency issue?
Is this a channel issue? And I really appreciate, um, how you put that, um, Jill, how does somebody get in touch with you with regard to wanting to go more deeply in the various things we've been talking about here?
[00:36:05] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: You know, the easiest way for me, uh, my last name is a, uh, a bear, to put it nicely. So, I am everywhere on social, at DynamicJill.
And if you want to learn more about hyper realistic avatars, this generative AI and synthetic media space, RenderMedia. ai is, uh, the company website. But truly reach out to me on social media, um, anywhere at dynamic Jill, super easy to find and I'm happy to engage in these conversations. And if, can I go on a little tangent for like, so it's, this is a thing.
And I think any entrepreneur is guilty of this. Any leader is guilty of this at some point in time, right? Is you identify that there's a problem. Like for example, I need more sales. So what do you do? And early stage entrepreneurs do all this all the time. Oh, well, I'm going to spend more time making social media content.
Okay. But you're making content, but you're not marketing with it. You're actually not paying to get eyeballs on it. You're just putting it out there, you know, and hoping people will come to it. It's the same type of thing. Like, you know, in a relationship, if there is a problem, Instead of actually doing the deep work to examine the true feelings behind the problem.
You're like, oh, let's just go try this new thing instead. And you know, let's mask the issue that's really there. This is what so many people use technology for. And then when it ultimately fails, they blame the technology. Right. No, it was a crappy use of the technology. It was you putting a bandaid
[00:37:30] Roger Courville, CSP: on it.
You're all academic and erudite and, and, and well spoken. And I just go, no, webinars don't suck. You suck.
[00:37:40] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: That also happens to, it's, it's just frustrating because people will blame a tool when the tool wasn't being used in a good situation to begin with. Right? It's like, if you put me out in a situation where I'm supposed to go scuba diving, I am terrified of fish.
I know this is crazy. I am terrified of fish. I am going to fail in that situation or have a really, really difficult time, right? But you put me on top of a paddle board or in a kayak? I am great, right? That's how I interact with water well, is skimming on the top. Don't put a tool in a place where it wasn't designed to be used.
[00:38:19] Roger Courville, CSP: Jill, thank you so much. Uh, Are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:38:27] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: No, I mean, this is, it's a great conversation. Um, you know, we've known, I think it's about almost 10 years now. Cause I think it was in 2014 that we initially met and we individually, I remember connecting initially cause I started doing a lot of, I was doing, um, I'm not 1999 OG, but early 2000s, very early 2000s OG, in the virtual event space.
And there weren't many people like us, so. It's been interesting to see everything evolve, you know, through COVID and everything and how you've really found, you had found your place before, but people finally realized the true value of it in many situations. And then to see how your consistency with that, my consistency with communication always being the heart of what I did, just how it does manifest differently.
And seeing how this can all really come together now has been super fun in this conversation. I hope those listening agreed. And genuinely, I do mean it when I say follow up if you have questions. I'm, uh, very approachable and love teaching. Yeah,
[00:39:24] Roger Courville, CSP: uh, and I can validate that, uh, cause I've Well, I've known Jill for a good long time and I, and I've seen what she does in terms of living this out in a very real way in various channels of social, social contact.
Rendermedia. ai or at Dynamic Jill is, uh, is where and how you can find her. And, and Jill, thank you so much. I know this was just kind of an unstructured. Get together and chat about something that you know and love and I and you're awesome at this and I really thank you for Taking a little time to do this with us today Thanks
[00:39:57] Dr. Jill Schiefelbein: for having me and thanks everyone for listening.
Thank
[00:39:59] Roger Courville, CSP: you to each and every one of you This has been the latest episode of thought leader conversations And if you've got somebody that you know that you would love to to hear on on With just such a chat as this we hope you that you will do so shoot it to me at Roger at virtual venues calm And we'll see you next time around