← Follow The Yellow Brick Road
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- [00:00]
A
This is going to be the largest massacre we have ever seen of livelihoods.
- [00:05]
B
To a certain extent, you can't get.
- [00:06]
A
A job mowing lawns in 10 years. In the future, robots will be doing that.
- [00:10]
B
Isn't that terrifying? At the same time.
- [00:12]
A
So I built a CPA bot. Am I acting as an attorney now? At what point am I crossing line?
- [00:16]
B
I don't even want to go down how you would do that.
- [00:18]
A
It's a matter of time before this.
- [00:20]
B
Whole AI division, I mean, I think they already have it.
- [00:22]
A
Do you really? So, utilizing AI for my sales page, copy for my ads, all of that's perfectly fine, right?
- [00:31]
B
No, there's a way to do it. And the best thing about AI is it made.
- [00:38]
A
You're using AI to scale your marketing. That's great. But if you're not disclosing that synthetic face, that ChatGPT sales script, or that AI edited testimonial, you could be violating FTC law and state regulations. Right now. This isn't just a tech issue. It's a legal minefield. And the FTC plus Attorney generals are already coming after marketers who use AI in deceptive or undisclosed ways. In this episode, Ryan and I are going to be pulling back the curtain on what's legal, what's not, and how to harness AI without ending up in a courtroom. I'm excited for this one.
- [01:17]
B
Me too.
- [01:17]
A
Let's just talk really briefly about AI overall, what we're seeing overall, and then we'll kind of dive into the nitty gritty of using AI for avatars, doctors, and VSLs testimonials. We'll get into the nitty gritty, but let's talk about AI overall. So utilizing AI for my sales page, copy for my ads, all of that's perfectly fine, right?
- [01:41]
B
Absolutely.
- [01:42]
A
But there's a way to do it.
- [01:43]
B
No, there's a way to do it. And the best thing about AI is it made copywriting so much faster.
- [01:48]
A
Yep.
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B
You figure out what's converting you, tweak it a little bit. It's legal, but you just got to do it correctly.
- [01:53]
A
Utilizing ChatGPT ideogram mid journey. Like all of these AI tools, there's hundreds of them now, to create our marketing assets. That's okay, but gotta be careful, right? And there are nuances to this. So I'd like to just kind of like dive in, ask you some questions, and you fill on in the holes at the end on what I didn't think to ask. So I'm in love with the AI world. I'm an Operator. I'm a COO and my entire job is the line on the P and L. That's profits.
- [02:27]
B
What do you love about it? The best or the most from an operational perspective?
- [02:32]
A
Yeah, there's so, there's so many things, so it's hard to quantify that in like a one minute statement. But I think the thing that I love the, the best is from an operator standpoint, from a COO standpoint. My job is the P and L, right? And the profit margin or growth, one or the other. One of the pieces of my job is development of people. Because if you're going to be scaling a company, growing a company, you have to grow the people in order to do it really, really well. And so watching people just absolutely explode and grow because they have these AI mentors, right? Like right now, for just one example, ChatGPT's IQ is like something insane, like 176. Imagine having an a person or a thing smarter than Einstein in every single subject, whether it be marketing, whether it be your own nutrition at home, operationally finance. You've got someone who's smarter than the average human in your pocket at all times. And that just watching people be able to interact with that level of mentorship and then watching them grow and flourish I think is the thing I like the absolute most about AI.
- [03:44]
B
Isn't that terrifying.
- [03:45]
A
At the same time you can be terrified. So here's the thing that you probably.
- [03:50]
B
It's this black box that you're just like talking into, right?
- [03:53]
A
I'm surprised you don't know this about me. I care about every detail and everything. It drives people insane.
- [03:59]
B
Oh you do?
- [04:00]
A
I absolutely do. But on things that I 100% cannot control, I'm just gonna ride it, okay? Because I can stress out about things that I cannot control. I can sit here and say what's going to become of the human race? What's going to become of the average person in the workforce? This is going to be, and this is a true statement, I stand by it. But this is going to be the largest massacre, the largest massacre we have ever seen of livelihoods.
- [04:30]
B
I think to a certain extent you.
- [04:31]
A
Can'T get a job mowing lawns in 10 years. In the future, robots will be doing that for far cheaper and they won't complain about the heat or the rain. So I'm just saying. So in the future world, things change drastically. I don't worry about that. I spend all of my time focused on how do I make money, how do I get more profitable, how do I learn. How do I adapt? How do I grow? Because adaption will keep me around longer.
- [04:56]
B
All right, so you were talking about. This is like this magic mentor in a box that's sitting there guiding your employees. Right? And me and you.
- [05:05]
A
I'm not paying for the one on one coaching anymore. I can build any coach, I truly can, and multiple coaches. I can have a brain trust that is Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk advising me on my business at all times. I actually don't use them because they don't do small business, but you get the point. I can build in projects or in custom GPT mentors that will far exceed any mentor. And they're in my pocket 24 hours a day, seven days a week, not $16,000 a month for two calls that are 30 minutes long, scheduled inconveniently for me.
- [05:41]
B
So what scary me from a legal perspective about all of that? Because you were talking about, you know, it's the best mentor. Now these GPTs have this authority. You were talking about Warren Buffett, right? Like you have this Warren Buffett in a box that you ask investing questions to. Now you turn this over to a copywriter or your creative team, you start asking a question, what can I. What can I say about my product? And spits back this beautifully crafted AI script. What can I say about my product? It spits back a list of things that you can say about your product. And then people take this and they just run with it.
- [06:08]
A
Yes, there's an irresponsibility factor. I thought you were talking about AI in general for the human race. Well, no, you're talking about from a legal.
- [06:14]
B
No, no, I was just segueing into AI for a copy.
- [06:17]
A
No, it makes, it makes sense. Like, let's talk about that. You're gonna have people that use it responsibly and you're gonna have people who don't. You have people who sell supplements white hat, you have people who sell supplements gray hat, and you have people who sell supplements black hat. So of course you're gonna have these rogue people that put everything into AI. Don't hire copywriters to look it over and make sure it's right. And they're gonna probably not convert that well anyway or they're going to have ridiculous claims and ridiculous pages that they're going to end up getting in trouble for. And it's a matter of time before the FTC really crack. And I think they already are. You're going to talk about that in a second. But it's A matter of time before there's a whole AI division.
- [06:58]
B
I mean, I think they already have it.
- [06:59]
A
Do you really?
- [07:00]
B
I think it falls under the umbrella of the division of marketing practices. It's a new marketing practice. It's incredibly easy to use. It all of a sudden has this authority, like you were saying. It has this, you know, 176 IQ.
- [07:12]
A
I could be wrong.
- [07:12]
B
About what?
- [07:13]
A
I mean, it could be about it all the time.
- [07:15]
B
Whatever it is though, right?
- [07:16]
A
It's much higher than the average human being. Genius level human.
- [07:19]
B
I mean, we're onboarding AI at our law firm. I've been sitting in all these pitches from various companies. They're like, this AI will be the. It's like a fourth year associate that you get to have like sitting on your computer all the time. You get to ask questions.
- [07:30]
A
It's 100% more efficient. I remember creating the Damon has. Damon Wright, one of your partners, has a lot more stuff online than you have. So I tried to make Orion bot and that didn't work out too well because you just don't have enough stuff out there online. Damon has a lot more. And so I fed it everything I could find about Damon as well as like a whole bunch of emails back and forth between me and Damon just so it could get Damon's tone. Like, I really trained this thing. And then I put this whole Klem has this, this product 3x incubator I think is what he calls it. And so I put a bunch of his stuff through just to see like, where, you know, where is his weak spots, where could he get in trouble legally. And like it came out and I sent it to Damon and he was like, man, that is good. That's really good advice.
- [08:19]
B
Damon, you would be happy you have an AI bot.
- [08:21]
A
I would love to get to a place where I could build those bots and use them perhaps. But here's the caveat to that. Let's say I go use Daemon bot for a client and I say, look, this is what we're gonna do. Daymond bot did it. Am I acting as an attorney now? Right? If I use. I built a CPA bot based off of a CPA that I just think is super brilliant. So I built a CPA bot that I can go and talk to about, like, hey, for taxes, da da da da. And so if I use that for clients and not just for myself, at what point am I crossing the line? It's a serious question for you probably at the moment that I give them advice from the bot, right?
- [08:58]
B
Well, you need to start preface that by like, hey, I built this legal advice.
- [09:02]
A
First of all, I don't show clients this. But yes, 100% when I'm talking to like my inside crew and I'm just like, when I brought it to costume, I absolutely told them like, hey, I built this bot and this is what it says and I agree with it. As a CEO, I think it makes a lot of sense. But sure, preface it. But yeah, still giving legal advice.
- [09:21]
B
No, I think anybody can opine on a variety of issues. It's whether or not you're like, hey, if you're holding yourself out as a lawyer and this is legal advice, I think that's a better dividing line.
- [09:29]
A
I wonder. As a C suite executive, though, I want you to think about this from the aspect of, remember all those C suite people from Wells Fargo, As a C suite executive, if you're going and utilizing bots and giving advice based on.
- [09:41]
B
Bots, well, if the audience knows what you're basing your decision making on, that's going to be key.
- [09:47]
A
That's wonderful.
- [09:48]
B
And I also think it's like, how are you holding yourself out as an attorney or a compliance expert or whatever it is. If you're doing that, you're cloaking whatever advice you're giving in some sort of, you know, the gravitas of like, oh, this, this is legitimate, this is, you can trust it. I think that's kind of the dividing line. I mean, when people, when your clients come to you, they, they know you're an operations expert, they know you're a CEO, they know you're not a lawyer. You do a lot of contracts, you do a lot of legal.
- [10:12]
A
I'm responsible for the complaints.
- [10:13]
B
Clients, you probably look at more contracts.
- [10:15]
A
Than I do, that's for sure.
- [10:16]
B
I mean, so you know how to redline a contract. You, I mean, most corporate business people.
- [10:21]
A
But I don't, I want to, I want to throw this in there, but I don't. I'll redline my own contracts for my own company, my own, my own self. But for clients, I send them to you. I never do because I don't want to be held responsible for acting as an attorney. Yeah, if I'm going to redline something, I'm going to redline it and send it to you and say these, right. These are the questions I have on this contract. What do you think? So there's a bunch of different ways to use AI, and one of the ways is to create people like you can create actual people. And so I Want to talk about this? Because I've seen this done a bunch of times and I actually don't know what's okay and what's not for regular content that isn't selling anything but is just pieces of content to build a brand to get followers.
- [11:05]
B
I think it's incredibly low risk.
- [11:07]
A
Yeah, agree. So I don't want to talk about that. What's up? We interrupt this podcast to remind you to like and subscribe so that you can always be in the know of when Ryan and I drop a new episode of Marketing on Trial. Also sign up at www.specialopspodcast.com for our visionary vault and get all of our freebies. What I wanna talk about is, okay, I make an AI generated human to now be the face of my brand. I'm selling supplements and they're in. I'm gonna give you a couple of different scenarios and let you pick them all apart. I got them wearing a lab coat. I don't call them a doctor. I'm not saying anything like that. But I got them in a lab coat and they look like they're a doctor. That's one, two. I've got an AI generated fitness coach who's giving me fitness advice and is in like yoga pants. Now here's the thing, because this AI coach was built using NOSSEM certification guidelines. Now I'm saying it's a NASM certified fitness coach because. Because I trained the AI in it. So that's the next one. Then I'm going to give you one more and I'm going to let you dissect each one. Last one. I've got really great testimonials and I'm going to give you this one two ways. They're really great testimonials. I'm going to build avatars that look like my customer base and I'm going to have them read the testimonials exactly word for word so that people can relate to it more than just words on, on a screen. So one way is, you know, nothing malicious about it. The other way is I got a 320 pound woman who gave me a, a testimonial. I love that you laugh at that instant.
- [12:52]
B
No, I know exactly where you're going.
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A
I had a 320 pound woman who lost 40 pounds, so she's now 280 and say 60 days. So I create someone who's 180 pounds who now looks. How much did I say 40 pounds, 30 pounds, whatever. Who looks that amount less, creating an illusion, all of that and Whether or not I can do it and if I can't do it, how to do it, because you know, that's my favorite.
- [13:16]
B
So I think just a little bit of level setting. Just because we're using AI, none of the rules really change. I mean, your ads need to be truthful, not misleading and substantiated. Right. And so now just because you have this new little widget that creates all this great new content, nothing really changes. So just keep that in mind. Dr. In a lab coat. It's basically a fake actor or a fake person wearing a lab coat that you are touting as this expert or.
- [13:45]
A
You never said it was a doctor.
- [13:46]
B
Yeah, but the lab coat, what is any reasonable consumer going to think about that lab coat? So you have this fictional person character. Now you're giving them a lab coat. You're not necessarily saying that they're a doctor, but then you put them in front of a, you know, a bunch of scientific looking lab stuff in the background and then they're talking in a very eloquent and scientific tone. And so any reasonable consumer is going to come away from that and be.
- [14:09]
A
Like, oh, the doctor said.
- [14:11]
B
Yeah, the doctor said. Or this has been clinically studied and the advertiser, the brand doesn't have any of that on file. I don't even want to go down how you would do that because that is just.
- [14:22]
A
I can go down how you would do that.
- [14:24]
B
Yeah, okay. This will be dangerous.
- [14:27]
A
It's really not. It's actually quite simple. Do things the right way, invest in your brand so it's a lot easier and a lot more affordable to go partner with a real doctor or a real biologist, biochemist, whatever, even pharmacist. You create an AI avatar that looks like them. You disclose that it's AI in their likeness, you get their consent and permission and then you can make a thousand variations of VSLs ads, all kinds of stuff with their face. It's such a simple disclosure. No one gives a shit about the disclosure. Everybody knows that this is going on now. And you're just free and clear and you pay the doctor almost nothing you can give a doctor. Now. They're so screwed right now with all the health insurance issues and they still have their malpractice insurance. They still have a gazillion dollars. They're paying schools that just, you know, destroyed their lives, like lawyers. And so they're looking for money. So you can literally pay a doctor. And we found them very easily from 2,500 bucks to $5,000 to use their Name and likeness. They just want to be able to write, you know, sign off on it. And I know they never read the damn copy anyway, but I mean, like, it's so cheap to do and it's so easy to do, and that's how you can do it.
- [15:42]
B
Yeah. No, my blood pressure went down initially and then went back up at the end. Yes, it is way easier to find somebody out there, create an AI avatar based on their name and likeness. Now, the question will be that person that you ultimately retain or whoever you're building this avatar about, like, are you retaining an osteopath or a chiropractor? And they're touting themselves as an MD 100%.
- [16:07]
A
If you're going to hire a pharmacist, you have to present them as a pharmacist with you. These chiropractors, we've worked with some. These chiropractors that come out and try and make it seem like they're a primary physician. They want to be called Dr. So and so. They never disclose that they're a chiropractor, not a medical doctor. Completely different. Completely different. I agree with you completely. But I'm talking about people who want to disclose exactly what they're hiring. As a pharmacist with many years experience, I've seen dozens and dozens of patients come in and big pharmacists just completely ripping their wallets off. And this all could have been solved with ashwagandha. They'll have to be careful of their own claims and with what's ethical. Right. But, yeah, we're talking about two different tomatoes here.
- [16:52]
B
All right, let's move on to the second one.
- [16:53]
A
Yeah.
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B
Coach.
- [16:54]
A
Yep.
- [16:55]
B
NASA, what was it? NASA.
- [16:56]
A
Nasam.
- [16:57]
B
Nasam.
- [16:58]
A
Yeah. That's a. It's a fitness certification. It's the most popular.
- [17:01]
B
Yeah. So the way you're going to do it is you're going to create an avatar. It's going to be some attractive man or woman, you know, fit and all that.
- [17:07]
A
Here's my argument, and I absolutely. Don't come at me because I know this is wrong, but I'm trying to lead you. But if I took the NASM certification material and I fed it into a GPT, it would know more than anyone who went through that certification. My argument to you, devil's advocate, is why couldn't I say that they're NASM certified?
- [17:28]
B
Because NASM hasn't conferred that certification.
- [17:30]
A
Okay?
- [17:31]
B
Right.
- [17:31]
A
NASM trained. No, because I trained the AI in it.
- [17:34]
B
Yeah, but NASM is the NASM is the object of that sentence, the subject of that sentence, and they're the one that is actually conducting the training. You can say that we have trained this AI avatar bot in disclose on what you've trained. You might also get into some copyright issues because you're feeding in a bunch of copyrighted materials. But that's another issue that we'll talk about later. But no, you can talk about what you use to feed into this so that the output and if they don't believe in the quality of the input, they can make their own purchasing decision. So if it's ryan, who's a 40 year old male, that doesn't work out very much, writing workout programs and feeding it into a bot, nobody's gonna buy that. Nobody's gonna really trust the output.
- [18:17]
A
But if you are, if Ryan trains the bot right. I'm just saying, yeah, if Ryan trains the bot right, it's gonna be 100 times better then any human being is gonna come up.
- [18:27]
B
Well, no, no, but it's all based on what you're putting into it and you just need to accurately disclose what you're putting into it.
- [18:32]
A
And so how do I disclose it?
- [18:33]
B
Let's move to setting aside the copyright issues. We have used proven like we develop training content or we train the bot using NASM certified instructors and their workout programs. There's also a difference though, if you're talking about a NASM certified instructor. Right. We use their. The not. Not the NASM content.
- [18:53]
A
I would. How's this? So let's back up for a minute. I don't want to tell people to do that because I feel like the first person does that's going to get sued by NASA and our names are going to end up on it. So is this a reasonable way to do a disclosure? Because I think that this would work. We've developed a bot who has been trained in multiple proven disciplines, fitness disciplines or fitness strategies, and that have produced X result for many people. That would be a reasonable disclosure, right?
- [19:28]
B
That's a reasonable disclosure.
- [19:29]
A
I would go so far as to. I would not only disclose that the person is an avatar generated person, but I would literally say like if you go and you follow a fitness coach, you only know as much as they can retain. This bot was trained on 22 different philosophies in fitness and therefore you couldn't hire a human being that could do more for you. You know, you have to play with that quite a bit in the copy world.
- [19:57]
B
But yeah, that's the way to do it.
- [19:59]
A
All right, so I want to just Wrap up a little bit. I want to move on really quickly.
- [20:03]
B
Well, let's just net this one out if you're going to. And this is where you have testimonials from real consumers that you want to highlight particular attributes from. One of, I believe the first one was overweight person lost 40 pounds. And then the AI avatar, instead of.
- [20:21]
A
Having 320 to 1 280, you've got someone who's 180 to 140.
- [20:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, I want to. I think this goes to fitness, like weight loss, cosmetics and everything. So if you're going to show efficacy or results that it needs to be genuine, it needs to be real. So on the weight loss side, 40 pounds for people who are massively overweight is nothing.
- [20:46]
A
I mean, you lose the first £40 when you're over 300 really quickly and easily.
- [20:51]
B
Exactly.
- [20:51]
A
You have to eat a lot. It's dedication to maintain that kind of weight.
- [20:55]
B
Totally. So to then have an AI avatar that is in shape, you know, low body fat and all that, and be like, hey, I lost 40 pounds. Deceptive. But I mean, that's kind of just general advertising rules. Like, you can't misrepresent the underlying testimonial. So if you are going to use that, you need to disclose that you're making an AI avatar based on a real person, their name and likeness. And it just needs to genuinely reflect their. Their use of the product. So if you say they lost 40 pounds, they lost 40 pounds. Make sure the avatar matches that.
- [21:26]
A
Why are attorney generals going after people right now?
- [21:28]
B
I think it's the big beautiful bill. There is a lot of the big beautiful bill. So there's been some reluctance at the federal level to regulate AI for good reason, because, you know, it's brand new. It's the shiny new object. We are hopefully going to continue to be the leader in AI as a country. Federal government's like, I don't want to stymie creativity in that space. The states are a little bit more reluctant because they see the effects of deception every day. I mean, the state AGs and local law enforcement, that's where people go when they're angry. And so I think that's why we're starting to see states pay more attention to it in terms of comprehensive legislation. I think it's on the horizon. I think that there will be some legislation, but I also think that it's not going to be as draconian as people think, because truly, AGs have all the remedial powers already in the deceptive Trade practice statutes like California, you know, you don't need additional tools to regulate AI. I mean that's, I mean, I think disclosure requirements perhaps, but the way it's being used, I just don't see that, that coming.
- [22:32]
A
Okay, so my last question to you, Ryan, is over the past few months, this is going to be multifaceted. Over the past few months, the FTC and the state levels have been changing the rules or adding rules. It isn't changing the rules, they're adding rules because they didn't exist before. And so you've got people who are selling online, you've got 50 states. I'm not even going to go into the international aspect because the EU and Australia are doing some crazy things when it comes to AI and regulation. But how me as a marketer, I'm a couple million a year. I can't afford to be sitting on calls with lawyers every month. And it's literally changing every month. How do I keep up with the rules regarding AI as AI explodes?
- [23:15]
B
I think press releases from the ftc. I'd pick whatever state you're doing business in. Subscribed.
- [23:22]
A
I'm doing business in every state. I'm an online marketer.
- [23:25]
B
That's too much, right? Too much to keep track. So I, I would put a dinger on the Wall Street Journal. I put a dinger on the FTC press releases for AI and then I'd figure out whatever state you do like you're located in. Like if you're California. California. California is the bigger one because I mean everybody, it's what, the fourth largest economy in the world?
- [23:45]
A
The thing about California is their regulations are always worse than everybody else's. So if you follow California's regulations, you're probably, probably going to be okay.
- [23:52]
B
I think that's a great, that's a great.
- [23:54]
A
I love doing business in Texas. I can do whatever I want. I can do whatever I want. However, I don't sell to a lot of people in Texas.
- [24:04]
B
You do in California.
- [24:06]
A
Even if I sell to 10 in California, 10 in California will take my business away because that state and those AGs are really serious over there. So my, my go to is follow California regulations. You'll likely be okay because they're going to be the harshest for everything.
- [24:23]
B
Otherwise you're going to have to modify your marketing practices.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah.
- [24:27]
B
So no, I think that's a good one.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah. The Wall Street Journal, ftc, California, California in your state. How do I do that?
- [24:37]
B
So go to the FTC's website. There's a little Press release button click, subscribe. Wall Street Journal. I think pretty self explanatory. And same thing for California. Go to the California AG's office. And there's also a privacy regulator in California.
- [24:49]
A
I didn't know about this.
- [24:50]
B
Yes, go to the privacy cal, what it's called. We'll link it, go to their website, we'll throw it in the chat. You can subscribe to press.
- [24:58]
A
We don't have a chat, but we'll certainly put in the show notes like zoom calls. Awesome, awesome. Anything before I wrap up?
- [25:05]
B
No, I think we covered a lot.
- [25:06]
A
What do you think about AI?
- [25:08]
B
I think it's cool. I think we're trying to adopt it as fast as we can. I think it makes us you guys in moderation.
- [25:13]
A
I mean, five years in, you're just starting to actually pull some lever.
- [25:17]
B
Well, I mean like Virginia was in law and equity until that's fair. God knows what, the 70s. So you know, five years is not too late for us.
- [25:25]
A
Fair enough. I mean we are still at the beginning of it all. We're barely scratching the surface of what this is going to be. I believe it's the smartest it's ever been. It's only going to get smarter. And number two, the best time to adapt AI was five years ago. The second best time is right now, if you haven't already. So yeah, amazing. Thank you. If it looks human but it's synthetic, you better tell your audience or the FTC will tell your lawyer. AI is rocket fuel for marketing, but without the right compliance guardrails, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Ryan and I have created an AI compliance kit to help you scale safely and stay ahead of regulators. It's free inside the Visionary Vault. Go ahead and sign up for the Visionary vault today@ww.special opspodcast.com don't forget to like and subscribe so that you get notifications whenever we put out a new episode.