586: AI Just Replaced Your Entire Marketing And Graphic Design Team. Here’s What’s Happening

Summary

Podcast Summary: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
Episode 586: "AI Just Replaced Your Entire Marketing And Graphic Design Team. Here’s What’s Happening"
Release Date: April 8, 2025

In Episode 586 of "The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast," host Steve Chou and co-host Tony delve deep into the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the marketing, graphic design, and e-commerce landscapes. The discussion navigates through the latest AI advancements, their practical applications in business, the consequent disruptions in traditional creative roles, and the broader societal implications of an AI-driven future.

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1. AI's Disruption of Marketing and Graphic Design

Steve initiates the conversation by highlighting recent AI developments from OpenAI and Google, emphasizing how these technologies are revolutionizing marketing agencies and graphic design teams.

Steve Chou [00:00]: "AI image generation announcements from OpenAI and Google... are completely disrupting marketing agencies, graphic design and e-commerce overall."

Tony expresses skepticism about the immediate threat to the industry, prompting a nuanced discussion about the dual-edged nature of AI advancements.

Tony [02:03]: "Well, you're not in the industry, so scared."

2. Personal Experiences with AI Tools

Steve shares his enthusiasm for AI's ability to reduce business costs, particularly in graphic design, while acknowledging the emotional impact on friends in traditional graphic design roles.

Steve Chou [02:07]: "As a business, I can greatly lower my budget for graphic design... But on the other hand, I have friends that do graphic design for a living, so that's why I'm scared."

The hosts discuss practical applications, such as using AI to emulate successful Facebook ad styles by inputting value propositions and leveraging AI-generated logos from recognized publications.

Steve Chou [03:21]: "ChatGPT did the same thing. And it looks just like the style of that other ad."

3. Impact on Graphic Designers and Creative Professionals

Tony raises concerns about AI's ability to convey emotions and the unique value that skilled graphic designers bring to the table. He questions whether AI can replicate the nuanced creativity of seasoned professionals.

Tony [02:44]: "If you're a good graphic designer, one thing you bring to the table is the ability to convey emotion in your designs. Right. To evoke feelings from people. And I'm just not sure that AI is."

Steve counters by illustrating how AI can quickly produce marketing materials based on existing successful campaigns, though he notes current limitations in speed and customization.

Steve Chou [03:50]: "I've been using it... upload that to ChatGPT... and it does a pretty good job."

4. Challenges and Limitations of AI in Creative Processes

The conversation shifts to the reliability of AI-generated content. Tony shares an anecdote about a friend's experience where AI fabricated a statistic, highlighting the potential for misinformation.

Tony [08:30]: "Claude said, you know, the hook was something like 80% of parents are frustrated teaching their kids to read... and Claude said, you caught me. I made it up."

Steve emphasizes the importance of user expertise in guiding AI outputs to avoid poor-quality results.

Steve Chou [09:02]: "If she wanted real statistics, she would have used a different version that actually does the deep research on it."

5. AI's Effect on Content Quality and Originality

The hosts discuss how AI relies on existing data, leading to concerns about content becoming repetitive and stale. Tony worries about the diminishing originality as AI repetitively generates similar outputs based on limited datasets.

Tony [21:10]: "All of our blogging friends have quit blogging, basically... that's where the information comes from. So if the information is now just regurgitated old information, at some point the information sort of becomes useless."

Steve concurs, projecting a future where AI-generated content could lead to a stagnation in innovation unless new data continues to flow into AI systems.

Steve Chou [21:42]: "The next version of ChatGPT... it's already crawling all the information. And it's actually at the point now where it's crawling regurgitated information, which actually has a negative effect on the quality of the LLM."

6. AI in Business Operations and Efficiency

Tony highlights practical uses of AI in streamlining business processes, such as organizing data from giveaways efficiently compared to traditional manual methods.

Tony [16:47]: "I took the spreadsheet, uploaded it to ChatGPT... I had 10 minutes doing this... versus the 3 1/2 hours someone else did it."

Steve underscores AI's role in handling busy work, freeing up time for more strategic tasks.

Steve Chou [17:20]: "There's lots of stuff like that and I guess I'm not worried for the graphic designers and artists who are the best in their field."

7. Broader Implications and Future Outlook

The discussion broadens to societal impacts, such as job displacement in creative and technical fields. Steve shares a concerning statistic about massive layoffs in engineering due to AI, projecting a pendulum swing where jobs in certain sectors may dwindle, leading to reduced innovation.

Steve Chou [12:02]: "They just can't find them on the public domain. So if humans aren't doing anything new and novel anymore, at some point it's going to get stagnant."

Tony reflects on historical technological shifts, likening the current AI revolution to the advent of automobiles, emphasizing the rapid pace of change and its disruptive nature.

Tony [22:47]: "This is how our great grandparents felt when the car was invented... it's hard to believe that I went to all of school until college without the Internet."

8. AI in Product Design and Marketing Strategies

Steve discusses leveraging AI for product personalization and storytelling by analyzing extensive customer data to highlight unique purchaser stories.

Steve Chou [38:08]: "We are going to be publishing stories of the people who actually embroider the handkerchiefs... AI can parse lots of data... very good application."

Tony echoes the sentiment, pointing out AI's strength in handling data-heavy tasks but maintaining that certain creative aspects still benefit from human intuition.

Tony [34:13]: "It's just busy work. Right. That's not skilled, it's not skilled labor I guess."

9. Innovation and the Future of Content Creation

Both hosts express concerns about the homogenization of content due to AI's reliance on existing data. They question whether true innovation can flourish in an environment dominated by AI-generated derivatives.

Tony [30:06]: "No one's going to be different anymore. Everyone's just going to be versions of something else."

Steve anticipates a cyclical nature where AI's dominance may eventually give way to renewed human-driven innovation as data sources evolve.

Steve Chou [31:29]: "That's the phase we're in right now. Until all that dries up... people will be encouraged to innovate again."

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Steve and Tony wrap up the episode by acknowledging the dual nature of AI advancements—acknowledging both the efficiencies gained and the potential societal disruptions. They advocate for embracing AI tools while remaining vigilant about their limitations and the broader implications on employment and creativity.

Steve Chou [43:13]: "Even if you don't have any interest in this stuff, you should probably get interested in it and learn it because otherwise you could be left in the wayside."

Tony [43:35]: "Figure out ways you can use it in your everyday life. I mean, I think it's pretty fascinating in general."

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Key Takeaways:

• Efficiency vs. Creativity: AI offers significant efficiencies in marketing and graphic design but poses challenges to traditional creative roles.

• Dependence on Expertise: The quality of AI outputs heavily relies on the user's ability to provide precise and knowledgeable inputs.

• Content Quality Concerns: There's a risk of content stagnation as AI-generated material becomes increasingly derivative of existing data.

• Societal Impacts: AI advancements may lead to job displacement in various sectors, with long-term implications for innovation and economic structures.

• Future Outlook: While AI will continue to evolve and integrate into business operations, human creativity and strategic thinking remain crucial for sustained innovation and differentiation.

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This episode serves as a comprehensive exploration of AI's evolving role in e-commerce and creative industries, offering valuable insights for entrepreneurs and professionals navigating this rapidly changing landscape.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I dive into the latest AI image generation announcements from OpenAI and Google and how they are completely disrupting marketing agencies, graphic design and e commerce overall. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over@sellers summit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an E commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. I personally hate large events, so the Sellers Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we've sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we're talking about AI and specifically the latest releases that just happened with OpenAI and ChatGPT4O. I personally think it's going to disrupt a lot of industries and I'm both excited and scared at the same time.

[Tony]

Well, you're not in the industry, so scared.

[Steve Chou]

Well, okay, so the reason why I'm excited is because now, you know, as a business I can greatly lower my budget for, you know, graphic design and that sort of thing. But on the other hand, I have friends that do graphic design for a living, so that's why I'm scared.

[Tony]

Okay, so I would like to just kind of talk about this before we talk about all the ways that you're using it. We were just chatting before we started recording and I said that I haven't had this much luck and you told me it was user error.

[Steve Chou]

So yeah, I mean I was looking at your prompts, like there's like five words, right?

[Tony]

Well, I had much more prompts before that.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Tony]

So with the new AI tools with image generation, people are saying that this is going to put graphic designers out of business. But if you're not a graphic designer, like I just. Part of me feels like some of. If you're a good graphic designer, one thing you bring to the table is the ability to convey emotion in your designs. Right. To evoke feelings from people. And I'm just not sure that AI is. If, if you don't have the ability as the inputter, then I don't know if AI is going to get it, give it back to you.

[Steve Chou]

Well, okay, so let's just take a typical use case here. Let's say you see a Facebook ad from the Facebook ads library that you really like, you would upload that to Chat GPT and say, hey, I want you to use this style with this product. And then here are the value props here, the whatever. I've been featured in these magazines. Just put out something in this style and it will do it and it does a pretty good job. So that's how I've been using it.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And what's nice is it literally grab. So we've been featured in Brides Magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings and Real simple. And I said that was one of the things I wanted to insert in the ad. So it actually went out and grabbed those logos and put them on the ad. And then you know how I'm not a graphic designer obviously, but you know how graphic designers, you know, they use different size fonts and whatever to make it look good.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

ChatGPT did the same thing.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

And it looks just like the style of that other ad.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Except it was for my product. Now I did have to tweak a couple things because like some of the text value props that I gave it were a little too long. So they were just kind of off center. And like the call to action button wasn't the color that I wanted. And you can iterate.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

The problem right now is because it just kind of got released, everyone's using it right now. So unfortunately right now it literally takes like five minutes an image which. Which tries my patience.

[Tony]

Right now I feel like it took even longer when I was working through stuff. But so. So let's just say you get this graphic and there's some text that needs to be shifting. There's updates. Like what is the format of the graphic that. Because all I did was go through it in ChatGPT like what if you want to make edits, then how do you do that?

[Steve Chou]

I mean, the easiest way right now is to tell Jackie Beatty to just edit it. Yeah, right. But I didn't have the patience for that right now, so I just threw in a Photoshop and adjusted the things manually.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, yeah. But I mean right now it's slow because everyone's using it, but once all the server. Remember when ChatGPT was like super slow when it first came out?

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

It gets better. They'll add servers and whatnot. And if it gets as fast as mid journey, like mid journey is like 30 seconds. Once it gets to that point, I don't think this is going to be a problem. Just, you know, giving additional prompts to get it what you want. Also, Google Flash 2.0 is super fast. You can just take that ChatGPT ad, move it into Google now and say, hey, I want to adjust. I want the model to be crying or I want the model to be smiling and it'll update that in like 30 seconds.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah, I guess I feel like this is really good if you know what you want.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, isn't everything in life better when you know what you want?

[Tony]

Well, I feel like. Well, here's the thing. I feel like a lot of people, and I see this a lot with E commerce and profitable audience, is that a lot of times people don't really have a firm grasp of what they want. Right. They have this like very abstract level idea. And so that's where I think the art based people can help take very abstract concepts and make them come to life. So I feel like this is as good as the person using it. Right. If you're. I don't think there's any. Like, if I think if you're not great at this, then you're not going to get the results you want.

[Steve Chou]

I agree with that. But on the flip side, you can ask ChatGPT give me some examples of great ad campaigns over the years for this type of product and it'll show you. Of course, if you're going in this with no research and nothing. Yeah. You're going to get crap in, crap out. Right? Yeah, but it's really easy to find good examples of good ads, for example, that you can emulate. And let's say you have canva, like even the free version of Canva, you can do a search for e commerce templates.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right. And then just feed those into ChatGPT and have it do all the work.

[Tony]

Yeah. So I guess, I guess My concern, I think if you're a good graphic designer, you're fine. But I. I think if you. If you're a mediocre, if you're doing this on the side, you're probably in trouble. I guess the one issue that I've. I've noticed recently is so my client started a YouTube channel. They're using Claude specifically to basically turn blog content into scripts, right? So the content's pretty much already existing, and it's turning out some pretty good stuff, right? I mean, for the most part. But the other day she put in some content and she asked for a statistic. She was making a video on how to teach your kids to read and. Cause she's coming out, you know, the company's coming out with a reading curriculum and. And she asked for a hook. And, you know, it was like the back and forth that people do. And Claude said, you know, the hook was something like 80% of parents are frustrated teaching their kids to read, right? And so she said, wow, that's so interesting. Where did you get that statistic? And Claude said, you caught me. I made it up.

[Steve Chou]

Like, well, that's well known, Tony. Like, you can't trust any stat that.

[Tony]

Comes out of al, of course, but that's. That's where I feel like. I feel like, how often is AI gonna deceive you? Like, oh, these colors look good together when they don't look good together. Like, if you don't have an eye for things, I feel like AI will get away with a lot of stuff. Just like, if she would have just taken that statistic as like, oh, 80 of parents, you know, I mean, that.

[Steve Chou]

Was the wrong approach. Like, if she wanted real statistics, she would have used a different version that actually does the deep research on it, right?

[Tony]

Well, she didn't ask for a statistic. It came up with it in the hook.

[Steve Chou]

Okay?

[Tony]

This was part of the hook. And then she was like, huh, this seems high. You know her because she has a knowledge, right? Like, she has the knowledge of this. So if you don't have any knowledge, I feel like you can be led astray pretty quickly.

[Steve Chou]

And this is why I think the industry's in trouble. Like, sure, there's people who are ignorant, you know, who don't know anything. Of course there's always going to be business for them, right? But who employs most of these graphic designers that make a living doing this? It's large corporations or bigger businesses who do know what they're doing because they're already making money to a certain extent, right?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And I mean, this is just the beginning. I mean, it's going to take time for this to happen and it's only going to get better.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like I just take midjourney, for example. Like when that first came out, I signed up and then I canceled because it was okay, but it was just kind of fun, fun tool. Now I'm paying for it every month because it actually, up until Chat GPT came out, I thought Mid Journey was the best. And it's, it still is the best for certain applications. And again, of course, you have to take the time to learn how to use these tools. And so I guess, yeah, from your perspective, if someone's not willing to learn how to do this correctly, then of course you, you can, you can pay someone and there's always going to be people like that.

[Tony]

Well, and I also feel like one of the things that I dislike about AI is I feel like it flooded the market with people who don't really know anything but are using AI to create content, make videos, whatever. Right. And a lot of the information is wrong, misleading. And so I feel like the, you know, the better AI gets, the more fake people we get. Right. Trying to do these things.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Which I think we heard. I don't remember who told us this. We were at a conference a couple years ago and they were talking about understanding how to use AI is like the next skill. Right. Being able to put in the right prompts, being able to talk to it correctly. And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that makes total sense. Right. But then over the past couple of years, especially when we do webinars or we're talking about AI use cases and we share prompts. Like I shared a prompt at my talk last week. You share prompts and webinars. People are like, give me the prompt, give me the prompt. And like, people are like dying for that information. They want, they want to learn how to do this better. Because usually, like you said, garbage in, garbage out. If you're not putting the right prompts in, you're probably not getting the best information.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I mean, that's correct. You know, what I started doing now is once I get Chat GPT in a good place with what I wanted to do, I say, hey, take this conversation and then turn it into a prompt that I can ask you from now on. So I have to go through all this again.

[Tony]

That's smart though.

[Steve Chou]

And, and it works to a certain extent.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Here's my long term worry for all this. So there, there was a, there was a A friend who posted something on Facebook recently where they said that they just laid off 95 of their engineering team because of AI. Right.

[Tony]

Really?

[Steve Chou]

So what's going to happen going forward with artists and everything is, you know, as soon as you see that there's no jobs and no work in this field, less people are going to go into it. And at that point, you know, ChatGPT and AI, it's just derivative works off of what if humans have done. And if humans aren't doing anything new and novel anymore, at some point it's going to get stagnant.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

It's going to take years to get to that point, but I think it's just going to pendulum back and forth. Right. Like, it's going to get to this point where ChatGPT or AI doesn't know anything new because no one's putting out content on the blog anymore. Right, Right. And then at this point, every human who's creating new stuff, they're not going to want AI crawling their stuff. So they're going to create these silos now of data where they charge AI for it, and this pendulum is just going to kind of swing back and forth. We're right now on this disruption phase.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And it'll probably take, I don't know, years for it to get to that point. I don't know. I'm already very frustrated, to be honest with you. On TikTok and YouTube, like, whenever I get a piece of AI video, I just stop watching. Like, I can't, I can't stand it.

[Tony]

What type of AI content are you seeing on Tick Tock and YouTube?

[Steve Chou]

It's mostly sports for me.

[Tony]

Okay. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But every now and then I get a, like a personal development one. You know what I'm saying?

[Tony]

I don't get those, but tell me.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, you don't get. Well, maybe it's because that's my niche and I. I browse competitors and whatnot. But it's basically teaching you how to, you know, like, if you're stuck in a rut or whatnot, like the mindset you have to, like, I'm not going to watch an AI video for that.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Although there are YouTube channels like Motivir City, where they have millions of subs and it is all AI generated. So I mean, who am I to know orcs in that department.

[Tony]

Okay. But my question would be for personal development. Once again, it's sort of the pendulum, right? The AI can have the information right now because there's millions of pieces of information on personal development on the web. But in 10 years, you know, where is that information going to be?

[Steve Chou]

I mean, to be honest with you, I think personal development information was way saturated, like 10 years ago, right. I mean, it's the same stuff.

[Tony]

I feel like there's new stuff, there's.

[Steve Chou]

New stuff, but I watch personal development stuff based on the person who's giving it because that person needs credibility.

[Tony]

Correct, Right.

[Steve Chou]

And so if I see a robot or an AI person doing it means nothing to me.

[Tony]

I would never take personal development from a robot. Other than you. You're the only robot I take personal.

[Steve Chou]

Development because it's just some kid probably.

[Tony]

Correct.

[Steve Chou]

Just a script kitty.

[Tony]

Yep.

[Steve Chou]

Pumping all this stuff out.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one thing that I'm glad about, and this is. So I go back and forth, right? Because I don't want to put people out of jobs. Obviously. I have a lot of friends who are graphic designers too, but also I feel like there's a lot of jobs being done that are so useless. So, for example, we ran a giveaway and we. In the giveaway, one of the entries was like, what content do you want to see on YouTube? Right? Like, what content do you want me to create? We got like over a thousand entries. And whoever set up the contest wasn't me, decided not to make that a multiple choice, but rather a fill in the blank. Which is great, right? Until you have to parse the data and then it's like you could have 15 of the exact same answer, but because it's nuanced in a sentence, it's not. Not like, you know, coming together. So the company paid somebody, like, I don't know, 25 bucks, 30 bucks an hour to, like, organize this data for several hours. And I was like, you did what? Like, what? And then they didn't really organize it in the correct way. It was like this whole big mess, right? Waste of money. I took the spreadsheet, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and I was like, organize this by category and frequency, right? So, like, how many times you had the word high school or whatever? And then like, ChatGPT gave me like, draft one, and then I was like, okay. Now, like, then I kept parsing it down, realizing, like, okay, let's look for these keywords and these keywords. And within 10 minutes, I had, you know, a thousand pieces of information organized pretty well. Like, I think I could probably be a little bit better, but I'm like, So I spent 10 minutes doing this with, like, not. I didn't really know how to do. I'd never done this before, I'd never like asked for spreadsheet organization from ChatGPT versus the 3 1/2 hours someone else did it where they didn't even really organize it in the right way. I think those types of uses to me are really exciting because that's just busy work. Right. That's not skilled, it's not skilled labor I guess.

[Steve Chou]

I mean in my first job out of college I was doing board design and there was one lady, her only job was to take a data sheet for like a chip, draw a picture of it so someone could place it in a schematic tool. That, that was her job and it was something that anyone could have done or like any software program, like if they just took the time to write, it could have done. So you're right. I mean there's lots of stuff like that and I guess I'm not worried for the, for the graphic designers and artists who are the best in their field. There's, there's always room for people who are the best in their field. Same with engineering and whatnot. Yeah, but I mean the vast majority, like 80% are not the top. Right. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Tony]

Well, I would say the people who are in trouble are the people who learned canva. Right. So they weren't like actually trained graphic designers. They're self taught. They have an eye, they're definitely creative, they have an eye for design, but they rely on tools to implement ideas. Whereas like when you work with like a true graphic designer creative director, they're going to do a lot more for you than just put together an image they're going to talk about, you know, like for example, you know, with product photos. Well you have, you have regular product photos which I feel like AI can probably assist with pretty well. But then you have like lifestyle type photos where it's like, what do you really need and want in these photos that will sell the product? And that's Right. Like, what pages do you pick out of a book to show, like, you know, how you can, like look inside or see that, you know, those types of things I feel like will still be important for humans to have a component in.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, again, you can take something that you like. And I've done this experiment not with images, but with words. I'll have something and I'll say, hey, using cashvertising's Life Force 8 principle, you know, give me some taglines like tell me which Life Force 8 to use and then just give me some really catchy hooks for this product.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And does a really good job. So presumably, you know, with photography also you could take something you like and it's really easy now to just put your product in there.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Instead of the one that's being displayed in the advertisement. And again, it does take creativity to get that initial idea. And once those ideas dry up, like, meaning you just can't find them on the public domain.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

They'll. It'll be harder to do. Yeah.

[Tony]

So I'm curious as to. When you say, show me the top performing ads or whatever, you know, where are they getting. Where is AI getting that data?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So right now, actually it's. It's from the web.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Right. So it'll do web searches and whatnot. And if that, once that dries up, that prompt won't work anymore.

[Tony]

Right, right, right.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Yeah, that's. That's what I feel like. I feel like that's. And the other thing is if this is why I worry, like all of our blogging friends have quit blogging, basically.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

I mean, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. And it's like that's where the information comes from. So if the information is now just regurgitated old information and then regurgitated. Regurgitated information, at some point the information sort of becomes useless.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Actually I read some article recently that the next version of ChatGPT, which I guess is 5. There's not enough info. It's already crawled all the information.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And it's actually at the point now where it's crawling regurgitated information, which actually has a negative effect on the quality of the, of the LLM. So maybe we're already at that point.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Like who's publishing? Like the whole blogosphere? Like the people who just blog for a living. That's pretty much dead.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And so where are people getting information from now? Who's still putting out information, like, the big mainstream publications at this point? Because those are the only ones that can rank right in Google Search. But think about what happens when Google goes away. Like, Google Search is already dying. Yeah. I can't remember the exact stat, and you'll have to look it up after the fact, but the amount of people starting their searches with ChatGPT now is really high. I mean, it's just gaining ground at exponential rate. And I remember this happening back in the day when I was in college when Google overtook Yahoo. And what seemed like just a year.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And the same thing's happening.

[Tony]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's. I don't know. I feel like we're like old people now.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Because it's like this is how. This is probably how like, our great grandparents felt when, like, the car was invented. Like, like, think about it. Like, one day there's like, one car on the street. Right. And everyone else is still on the horse. Right. And then, like, two years later, everybody has a car. Right. And. And then it's like, well, how do you adapt to life with cars when your roads are built for horses? And, you know, like, you have all these new problems that come up because the technology changed so quickly. Right. And ever since that point in our history, like, the changes have been quicker and quicker and quicker. Like, it's hard for me to believe that, like, I went to all of. All of school until college without the Internet.

[Steve Chou]

Like, is that true? I. I didn't. You're not that much older than me.

[Tony]

There was. I mean, when I was in, like, 11th grade, I think it was like. I mean, the Internet existed, but not for, like, regular people with, like, you know, the people who had computers in their home were people like your family. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Yep.

[Tony]

You know, like, I remember my dad got, like, his. The first computer. I was probably 16.

[Steve Chou]

Wow. Okay.

[Tony]

You know, so, like, like, we didn't have the ability to Google stuff for school.

[Steve Chou]

Or, like, it was Yahoo back then and Excite and Lycos.

[Tony]

And I am like, we had to go to the library.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Like, and then you had to look stuff up on, like, micro Fish or whatever. Like, you think about, like, I mean, we're old, but we're not so old that, you know, so like, my kids, I mean, they've been to libraries, but, like, they have no concept of what it's like to, like, have to get a book to do a paper.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I know.

[Tony]

You know what I mean, and, like, go pull old magazines or publications. It's like, no, you just open your. Like, not even a computer. You open your handheld phone, like, your tiny little technology piece like that. It's crazy. So you think about, like, that progression to now this. It's just getting faster and faster and faster.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, this is the last skilled generation. Just think of how many students are. I feel like my writing skills have gotten worse because of ChatGPT. Because now it's just so easy for me to just spit out garbage. Like, just dump my brain onto this thing and have it make it sound better. Right?

[Tony]

Yeah. So then are we gonna get dumber?

[Steve Chou]

Like, seriously, even coding? Actually, I'm not getting any. I'm getting worse at coding, probably, because now I can just tell it what I want. I know conceptually what I want. And the. But then I'm having AI do most of the heavy lifting.

[Tony]

Yeah. Although I have noticed. So, you know, I spoke at that event last week, and there were some great talks, great speakers, but every single one of them used AI for their talk title because you. You could see the same words, like, throughout all that. Like, you know, if it's, like, you say, hey, I'm speaking at an event that's for people who have pets and they're influencers and they showcase their pets. Like, you put all that information in there, it's spitting out very similar. Obviously, the talk titles are different based on what they're talking about, but it's like, the adjectives and adverbs and things like that. That. That AI uses is like, okay, if you're talking about pets, you use these six words. If you're talking about this, use these six words. Right. So we were. We were looking at the schedule in the speaker lounge, laughing that, like, everybody had to have put their Talk title through ChatGPT because they were also similar.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. All right, should we shift gears now that we've established that we're old?

[Tony]

You're getting older too.

[Steve Chou]

I know. So how are people using this right now? I've actually fundamentally shifted my class now. Like, there's an AI section in there, and I don't think that any new shop owner really needs to pay for photography at all.

[Tony]

Really.

[Steve Chou]

Because you can. You can take a photo on your phone, and let's say it doesn't look that good. You can just have AI touch it up, put it in different environments and whatnot. If you sell apparel, you can just literally have a model with. Wear that apparel. Right. And if sometimes AI screws that up. So if you want something more robust, you can pay for a tool that's super cheap, where you take a picture of your. Yourself in the pose or whatever that you want with your product and you can tell these new tools, like you can mask out, you know, what your. What your product is, and it just changes everything else around it. Like, you can replace yourself with a supermodel. Right. And then you can animate a photo for an ad. Like, you just upload the photo, tell it what you want to do, and it does a scarily good job.

[Tony]

Now you talked about this in office hours a couple weeks ago. What's the tool that you're using for this?

[Steve Chou]

Cling.

[Tony]

Cling. Okay. Yeah, it was, it was impressive. What you. When your examples were very impressive.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, that was in a different environment too. That was like a cartoon that I animated, I think for office hours.

[Tony]

Yes. But just in general, like.

[Steve Chou]

But for real humans.

[Tony]

Yeah, it.

[Steve Chou]

It does an amazing job, kind of scarily. So like I animated an old family photo. Just for fun. Just for fun. And my dad who passed away a while back, like, they. It animated him and I was freaking out.

[Tony]

Yeah. I don't. Have you seen those things on TikTok where they animate people like that have already passed away?

[Steve Chou]

I. I didn't. I don't. I'm not on that TikTok, but I.

[Tony]

I don't know how I got on it, but like, it's basically all like people, like famous people, actors and stuff like that. But like, you know, Robin Williams and Chadwick Boseman and people who like Jose John Belushi, like all those, like, they show them like as an age progression to how the old they would be today if they were still alive. It's. It's kind of scary.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Yeah. So you don't have to take photos, you know, provided you're willing to go through the headaches of using AI right now, which it's not that bad. I mean, it takes a while to get an image you. You exactly want, but you don't need to hire models. So maybe like the whole modeling industry is going to decline. Also, H and M just recently announced that they're going to be using AI models.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

It's a big press release, I think like a week ago or two weeks ago.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So, I mean, it's already happening. Hm. Is a pretty big company.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. In the apparel space. So that can't be good for society. Right.

[Tony]

It might be good for the models. Maybe they'll start eating now. They don't have to be £82 and.

[Steve Chou]

Then product descriptions, everything. I mean you can already. There's this tool that I just recently came across that I haven't gotten a chance to try yet, but I looked at the demos. If you see a website, you can literally use it to clone it. Every single page, everything. Like it'll crawl the page of the website and it'll give you the code. So you can just literally clone that exact website on your server.

[Tony]

I hate AI sometimes. So where's the innovation?

[Steve Chou]

Well, no, that's what I'm saying. Like right now it's all freely available on the web. Right? You clone someone's web. Like if you like a cool feature, you can just clone that feature.

[Tony]

Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's great. Like, I think it saves, I think it, it will give. It's kind of like another level the playing field thing. Like just like I feel like the Internet leveled the playing field for people and then, you know, video content, level the playing field. Right. Like you could get your, like for musicians, right? All these people putting their content out on YouTube or on TikTok or whatever. Right. And getting discovered and being able to like make a living as an artist, you know, through not having to go through traditional like record label type thing. Right?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

But also like, if you, if I think about the people that like I've admired or followed, it's usually because they've, they've kind of been innovative in the space, right. They've come up with something very different or unique. Like their value proposition is different than everybody else's, which is why I like them. Kind of like your book, right? Like in the entrepreneur world, the message is almost always hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Right? Like work your 90 hour weeks. And then you came out with a book that was like, hey, you don't really have to be that way. You can put your family first, you can have a balanced life. It is possible. So it's like, are we losing? Are we losing all the innovation? Because everyone's just like, oh, I like that site. Let me. Like, no one's going to be different anymore. Everyone's just going to be versions of something else.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I mean, that's the phase we're in right now. Until all that dries up.

[Tony]

It's annoying.

[Steve Chou]

Right? Well, once that all dries up and everything else is the same, then, you know, people will be encouraged to innovate again and they're going to lock that stuff behind a paywall. Right. Because what's the incentive of doing it.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like right now I actually haven't been putting out blog posts because what's funny is what's been happening with my blog is I'll put out a blog post which is a derivative of a script that I hand wrote on YouTube.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And it's actually, I think it's had a detrimental effect on my blog.

[Tony]

Really?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Like I, maybe I haven't kept up with all the Google updates lately, but maybe that's just an artifact of just everything declining in the Google space in general. But like, I see no reason to do that now.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. But if, if for some reason there was a, a way for me to get compensated for it or if it led to traffic, I might do it again. But definitely not if AI is just going to steal it and I'm not going to get anything out of it.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And that's what's going to happen here. Right.

[Tony]

Well, I think that's what's going to happen with people that are still putting out content.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. But I mean, that's going to decline.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. I don't know. I don't know how long it's going to take to get to that point, but I would imagine, you know, at least a few years.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

For that to happen.

[Tony]

Okay. So before the world ends, before we go into absolute decline. So you shared some ways that you're using AI to streamline, make your business more efficient. I think the photo thing is actually really interesting. I'll be curious to see how that all rolls out. I just, I truly think some people are terrible photographers. I don't, I feel like, I don't know, like maybe AI can fix the worst of the worst, but.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. I absolutely agree. But even if you take a bad shot.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

You can have AI change the shot.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah. One of the, the ideas that I like, which obviously this puts people out of business, but is the illustration side only because I work with a company that does tons of illustrations and it's, it's not just a price issue. Right. Like, illustrators are expensive. They are hand drawing things like that. I mean, that's, I don't have that skill. I can't draw anything. But the bigger issue that we bump into all the time is time. Right. It takes them a ridiculous amount of hours to draw this content. So it's like, well, if that could speed up production. Right. By probably months. I mean, that's a huge advantage in a business. Right. Not, not just financially, but like on the timeline for product development. That's Huge.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, no question. If you're a business owner, this is a huge benefit.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I mean I'm actually looking forward to robots and I know I shouldn't be, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking how cool would it be for us to be able to fulfill and ship orders without, on the weekends, without having us having to be there or do anything. Right.

[Tony]

Yeah. So when I worked with Valpak years ago, they have a state of the art facility in around Tampa, Florida and basically it's almost entirely run by robots. Um, I think there's maybe one or two people on the floor where they're printing, stuffing envelopes. Like there's these little robot things that go all around and you know, they've got like the magnet tracks or whatever. I mean it's pretty impressive like what, what they're doing. And I'm sure like obviously cost savings and things like that are huge, but also did put a bunch of people out of work as well, so. But yeah, I mean you would think that with robots that you have less margin for error, Right. So there's probably a much greater chance that a human's going to mess up an order fulfillment over a robot. Yeah, but it doesn't, doesn't. But here's, here's where I feel like then it, then it goes full circle, right? So like a robot's probably not going to make a mistake that a human's going to make, but you're still dealing with humans on the first side of this, right? So like the people that put their zip code in wrong to their order or something in like something that a human might catch the error because it's like very gross, a grossly obvious error. But then a robot would probably just process something through without catching it. So it's like you kind of go back and forth, right? Because at some point whenever the humans involved, the error rate is going to go up significantly. So even if they're the customer.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, but then the robot will learn. There's a recent report that came out, I think Waymo put it out that said the likelihood of an accident is significantly lower. Like it was something like 80% lower when the robot is driving the car versus a human.

[Tony]

Well, yeah, because they're not on their phone and they.

[Steve Chou]

I think Waymo has millions of miles at this point. Or. Yeah, I can't remember what the exact numbers are. I just saw the article in passing. But yeah, I mean it does a better job than humans.

[Tony]

Have you been in one of those cars yet? They're in Vegas.

[Steve Chou]

The reason why I haven't. Maybe I'll do so because it started out in sf, but yeah, it's more expensive right now than to get a regular Uber.

[Tony]

Oh, is it? Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, which.

[Steve Chou]

Is why I haven't done it yet.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I've just had a cheapness.

[Tony]

I would. I still am a little afraid to do that, but I don't know, it's probably safer than driving with my kids.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. What else is on the. On the line for disruption? So engineers, like my fellow engineers here, are hurting.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I'm kind of glad I got out of that industry to a certain extent because, like, the number of CS majors has not declined coming out of universities, but the amount of jobs has greatly declined.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Which. Which means that, you know, a lot of these people are going to be looking for jobs that just aren't there.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But on the flip side, like, a lot of the innovation is coming from these engineers as well. So if there's no jobs, people aren't going to become engineers and then who's going to advance, like the. The industry.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Later on.

[Tony]

So how. How are you since you actually create this? You're a good case study for this, Right. Because you guys create designs at Bumblebee. Right. So are you using AI to brainstorm ideas? I know you're like, you know, you're banking on like, it's National Donut Day and all that kind of stuff, but like, how is AI doing for that side of the creation side of it?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So right now I'm not using it for products. I'm mainly using it for social media ideas. And one thing I've been using AI for is so. So one thing that we have on the horizon is we're going to be publishing stories, you know, of the people who actually embroider the handkerchiefs, since it's always for some special occasion.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

So I've gone through and we have like 17 years of database data of people personalizing handkerchiefs. So I took that database and I just fed it in ChatGPT and then I had it highlight ones that are just kind of out of the ordinary.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So anyone who's written something that's kind of funky or whatnot, like there's a story behind that, right?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And that story is very interesting to be told. That's. That's a pretty good application. Anything where it has to parse lots of data is like, generally a pretty good application for AI, but you're not.

[Tony]

Using it for any of the artwork Right now.

[Steve Chou]

So for the artwork, like if we tell someone's story, we don't use their name or their likeness and we're using AI to generate, you know, mock up people.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And fictitious names to tell the stories.

[Tony]

But what about on products that you sell? Because I know you have the. Now you, I don't know what it's called, it's not heat pressing, but you can put.

[Steve Chou]

Oh yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

[Tony]

Are you using like, hey, create a menorah because it's, you know, Hanukkah? Or create like are you using AI to come up with designs for that? Because that's been a new part of your business. It's doing pretty well.

[Steve Chou]

That's correct. That's correct. We are not doing that yet. Mainly because the text wasn't very good until recently. So. Because, because a lot of times, let's say you have an Easter design, right? Because that's coming up, you wanted to say Happy Easter or whatnot. And it just totally screws up the writing and it's really hard to modify the writing. Like you have to go through work, you have to manually erase it and put, put font, whatever. But now with, with the chat new chatgpt stuff, you're right, we can just create designs on the fly. Which leads me to think that Etsy now is going to be like this flood of AI generated junk.

[Tony]

I mean, I feel like Etsy was already getting junky so now it's just going to get worse.

[Steve Chou]

Well, it was junky because when they let Chinese sellers back in in 2022, that turned into junk. Yeah, I mean it's. Etsy is basically a poor man's Amazon now or Temu even.

[Tony]

Yeah. Speaking of Chinese sellers and AI, so one. So our friend Andrea just launched a new product and you know, they're doing this standard run ads, you know, all that sort of thing. But one of the things that they did is they did like a huge influencer seating with the product and I'm. They mailed it to a lot of people with no expectation. And I think that's the big catch here. Right. Whenever you're doing anything with influencers, you can't be like, I'm sending you this one free thing. Please post, post 6 posts and you know, whatever. Right. So they, they sent it out and it's in the crafting type space. So several of the influencers posted about the product, they've made a sale or two. But more importantly, other influencers have seen the seeding and are reaching out for the Product. And this is where I feel like you have to stay away from AI because I know people are trying to streamline and a lot of people are like one owner. Businesses, like they don't have a team. But I think when you're thinking about, like on the influencer and relationship side of things you have, this is where your advantage is over those Chinese sellers. Right. The Chinese sellers are not going to understand, even if they have, even if they speak English or can translate, they don't understand, like how to work with these people. Right. So she's really winning this game right now by the interaction she's having with the influencers and getting more influencers on board. And I think that's something. If you're thinking about how to streamline and things like that, that's something I would always keep very personal. Because, you know, from what, what I learned from TikTok last week was that like influencers are driving the majority of the sales on TikTok shop. Right. We'll be talking about that on sellers at Seller Summit. Actually, I'm really excited about that panel. I don't know if you saw my email this morning, but it's going to be amazing. But I think that side, like, certain things, I think you've got to stay away from AI to do, and that's definitely one of them because I think the relationship matters with people. And, you know, that's where, once again, you're fighting against sellers that are. Are in China or have big teams or are using all sorts of AI to create all sorts of. Right. Like flooding the Internet with content. Right. But you still have an advantage in certain areas and you've got to be able to. You gotta leverage that where you can.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I hope I didn't bring everyone down or we didn't bring everyone down.

[Tony]

I feel like we did. This was.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, it's exciting and it's just scary at the same time because I know people who are getting disrupted. Right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And if we're not careful, we could get disrupted.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. So that's why, like, even if you don't have any interest in this stuff, you should probably get interested in it and learn it because otherwise you could be left in the wayside. Not. Not a great way to end it, huh, Tony? But yeah, but go play around with this stuff.

[Tony]

Yeah. And figure out ways you can use it in your everyday life. I mean, I think it's pretty fascinating in general.

[Steve Chou]

Yep. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven't used any of these tools yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try. For more information and resources, go to my wifequitterjob.com Episode 586 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.