Building an AI creator community w/ Civitai founders Justin Meyer and Maxfield Hulker
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Ever since internet modems found a place in our homes, people have been logging on sometimes simply to look at all the crazy stuff the web has to offer. And since then, that need has been fulfilled by online communities where creatives comes together to inspire each other and share their techniques. Sites like deviant art gave artists of space to showcase their diverse digital creations.

New grounds became a hub for quirky flash games and animations, and female began as a humble community for aspiring filmmakers. In recent years, you probably noticed A I generated are popping up on your social needs, those usually surreal portraits or fantastic landscapes that look almost too perfect to be real. And with a new type of creation, a new platform has emerged for this style of art civita.

It's a hub ware, beginners, professional artists and engineers alike, or experimenting with the latest models like stable division and fox, tweak them, developing new techniques and sharing their workflows as the community is grown. So have the tools becoming increasingly accessible and blurs the lines between all the rolls. One can play within this ecosystem with just a few clicks.

Anyone can go from consumer to creator. But what does this really mean for the value of art? And what are the risks and rewards of democracy? Zing technology, capable of creating almost anything i'm beloved able to do.

And this is the tedi H. E. Where we figure out how to live and thrive in a world where A I is changing everything.

Much of what we once imagined about the future is here.

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To help impact these questions were joined by cofounder ers, just admire and maxfield hooker. Together, we will explore the future of content creation and consumption, the dead internet theory and why not say for where content remains on their platform? Alright, just in in maxfield. Welcome to the show.

Thanks again for having us. Yeah good to be here.

So everyone's got their origin story and i'm curious what first drew each of you into the world of A I and creative tech.

You want to go first session. So max introduced me to mid journey in August of twenty twenty two, and I had know i've been watching the development of AI image for some time. I was fascinated by what I saw with buli and have always been a creative person. Engineering always came more naturally to me, but being able to use kind of my engineering skills to to modify promisin and go back in fourth with the eye was just game changing for me, empowering.

How about you next fit?

Yeah, I started playing with dolly a way back before my journey was a thing. And like, I just an open google for that you could actually mess IT. And I spend my first images of just my like melting into a into a landscape image that was just like completely like pixel ted and destroy. And IT was really interesting to kind of like see this kind of new art form that was less human made and more computer made.

interesting. I think the journey for me as well, and I think this is twenty twenty two mid journey v three. I believe when people really started playing with IT to like just be able to query the sort of distillation of human creativity and and gets something back was super exciting.

Um and of course, that is also the year open source A I really took off, right? We had stable division and image errors pop up. So i'm curious you launch civita a few years ago and out strong in millions of visitors every month. What did you fix in the world of AI creation? Like what is where you scratching when you first launched this product?

Can I take that one? Max.

yeah, please.

It's your vision. I made that leap from mid journey into open source image generation because Midjourney unlimited plan was only kind of unlimited, had to a slower explored. And so I I needed to find a new outlet from my hobby.

And stable 的 fusion had just been released。 And so I got really active in that community. And every time somebody would post an image, people ask, what's you're prompt? How do you make IT? right? And people started to make custom models.

They're y'd add new concept, the'd add new styles. They'd new characters, things like that. And so civ ti was really aimed at solving that problem. We wanted to make IT so that people can find all of the models, all of the resources that they needed to make something in one place, and that any time they posted an image, we would capture all of the information about how was made, including the the models that were used to make that picture. And a whole lot of social features kind of grew out of that because, you know, people needed to be able to talk about these awesome things they were making. So that was the age.

I mean, it's it's really interesting because you're totally right. Everyone was very obsessed to with what prompts are using, but it's more than that. And so your platform kind of has the follow chain of custody, the full workflow that was used to generate that image for the uninitiated. Could you talk a little bit about open source AI and what IT means to sort of create these like fine tune models? And you know, people throw on terms like Laura, like, could you break that down simply for those listening?

How would do you break that down? max? I think that you can break IT down more simply than I can.

I love complexity. The problem, absolutely. Yeah, let me think about that. So I see you have general base models that are genuinely made by big corporations that in millions of dollars to be able to through that because they just require so much training.

Data Lauras and embedding are fine tunes that you're able to make off of those based metals for use with those based meals to be able to further tweak and kind of get that last ten percent of image generation. What you trying to get concept wise without, you know having to have kind of the deep payroll and pockets to be able to find to fund that. And we said it's like probably the highest level section of like what that .

allows a building on that. thanks. Do you want to just break down maybe some examples of the kind of find tunes your community is making, like, and something like maybe the killer examples that you ve come across recently?

S are probably has been the most interesting to me since of the beginning, which is this idea of, know, what would the world look like if everything was waffles, or if everything was made of wires, or if everything was made of coffee cups? Yeah, exactly. If we all felt.

And then they're able to the city to be able to stack that with different styles, right? So here's a really to image if everything is made of felt. And then here is what a image everything was made to fell towards, if he was made like a studio gibi enemy style as well.

And the are of those kind of complex concepts on top of one another is really where open source shines because you can't do something like that really reliably with any of these closer tools. And the ability to do like specific phases of human expression is really interesting. I think that something that I love, generally I struggles with is ability to do specific facial expressions and being able to have a trained concepts like on facial expressions. This is really, really cool because again, you can get exactly what you want at that.

It's affair to say it's kind of like a fancy way of like filtering or focusing what you get out of these models and getting like a consistent atheling or style that somebody else could then reproduce. And I love you your point about stacking those pieces together too, because he does feel like they're all these like lego primitives available on the open source side that you don't really see on the close source.

Well, they eventually end up having some way to do my journey has their like style reference saying like IT slowly comes about, but the moment of paper drops. And now you see this coming out in open source almost immediately. So i'm kind of curious, like before you built this just in like what was like the ecosystem, like where was collaboration happening? You mentioned read IT you want to break down sort of what was the center of gravity for the community before civita and then after?

Yeah I think the issue was that kind of wasn't a center of gravity IT was so distracted, right? Like there were different communities kind of all around the world. You know, some of the people are focused on tooling, and some people are focused on model development. Some people are focused on, you know, whatever that latest research paper was. And IT all came together on civil.

I am IT totally makes sense. The community is a focus, because civilized derive from the lattin word for community. But what about online? Community is so important for making open source AI work, unlike perhaps all the other approaches to building out these AI creation tools with .

with close source development and things like that. It's really up to the small teams inside of a company in all of the resources they have behind them to push something forward with open source development. But really what IT comes down to is how productive a group of people can be in continuing the development of something.

And this is kind of like a new type of open source movement, where the way that people push things for IT is, you know, not necessarily through software, but through training. So I kind of create this new type of distributed training that doesn't really exist inside of these, know inside these close source models. Instead, it's allowing a lot of people to kind of add what they think needs to be added, and then people to wrap what they want from that pile. And so community is critical because IT essentially makes IT so that people can find and provide that niche that they do best. Basically, without a community, open source development doesn't really happen.

That makes sense. Or IT like why why trust a small number of annointed product managers to make decisions about what to build for absolutely everything? Let the community aside. And exactly no.

I was I was going to say um it's less about open source A I as IT is about open source content as a whole. Like the what's interesting about this is it's pushing a new boundaries in terms of just generally new content, which is that it's no longer static and more interactive. It's more customizable and personable to you know, person who is actually viewing IT.

The interesting thing about that is that when you break away from the tools themselves as a matter, their open source, close source or anything else, that would much is how easily can be replicate that content because how much has look. So the art itself has like a full stepping stone. I mean, it's and it's a whole new idea. Imagine if you had a youtube video and IT showed like every piece of equipment that was used at the shooting location, every angle, every lighting feature, every you like rough setting on every piece equipment, they are used for how to make the video so you can really accurately go out and recreated exactly um that's kind of like what this is, is the ability to completely recreate and then be able to do the remix and change media on the fly, which cool open service content.

It's a really interesting way of putting in max. It's like we saw like you a sliver of this with perhaps like the rise of tiktok and the ability to like remix content essentially, or like fly stuff together. And IT IT always reminded me of that enough all to remember photoshop tennis on like a redit communities where somebody would upload photo and then somebody else would add something to IT.

And then like through the course of that conversation, you could see this like mean basically like come to life. And we saw that in a more static vertie tary sense, again with these short form platforms. But yeah, what you're describing now, the ability to look at something and then basically take IT and like yeah remixing IT is like isn't even fully after like recreating IT and then taking IT in whatever direction you want uh is super exciting. And yeah seems like there's nothing else out there quite like IT my mind is like .

totally the new age of media, right? I mean, even in this podcast, if you think about ten years or now, be like I don't like the guests that are on here and that has replace them. Let me replace the concept or let me replace the the people who are on IT like.

Yeah, I just in the .

place let me get David and brow said it's a really cool idea and I like that a lot. And maybe this .

is for shadowing because we'll definitely come back to the lines between reality and imagination blurring and the various implications there in but of bringing IT back to civil thi IT seems like open source was so fundamental and points kind of the inherent remix ibt in being able to sea sort of the full you ingredient list and know the the set of instructions to reproduce and remix something is really cool um but clearly you just announced spine and you're also embracing close source tools like eleven labs, clean audio. How do you think about the open source and close source movements and how to see if I evolve in this sort of world where we have to live alongside both type of tools?

I think ultimately, what we've seen is that the best content isn't using just one tool. They'll start generating their image using an open source model like flux that has a few law as on IT. And then after they make that image to go taken into a video tool like luma or playing, and then they'll add music to IT using soo or audio. And and what we saw that essentially, hey, people want to be able to use all these tools to make content with the end goal of being able to support this new medium that max is talking about, where, like, we can completely recreate content and make IT remixed ble.

You described spine as what A L was to the internet. Spine is to AI art. Can you elaborate on that? And please do keep in mind that some of our listeners are Younger than thirty and do not remember a world what is a what is well, installation risks for crime out? Yeah yeah.

So I guess for those that aren't familiar with a ol IT basically made IT so that the internet was all accessible in one place, right? You could do your instant message, you could do your email, you could find your stocks, all of that, the stuff that people were kind of doing on the interface time.

And in a way, essentially what we're doing now is trying to bring together all of the tools that people are using to create content using A I into one place in the same way, so that now, rather than having to know all of the different things, are knowing what the best tool is at a current time and trying to figure that how we can help you just find something that you think is interesting, will allow you to swap out the the video that was used with a different you animation or an animation style. There is something like that. And and now rather than having to figure out where to go to to do a specific thing, you can come to one place that kind of brings IT altogether and see, you know, based on the best content is being made. What's right for what IT is that you're trying to make as well?

I love IT, love IT. okay. So it's interesting, right, the essence of being able to have visibility into how something was created as the same. But since people are using close source tools, you can now kind of incapable ate that information as well and kind of make those workflows accessible to other creators like i've talked to designers and big tcc companies to that are like yam on civili all the time downloading models. And they're also like, I got to be really careful about what I have on my screen.

Some people think that i'm actually working and that this is what of the interesting things about open source right not safe for work content has been interesting ly a huge driver. Many aspects of open source A I R it's a part of civets. I can you explain why to our audience you know not safe or content has been important um in the evolution of open source ai.

Um a couple things I mean I think first and farmers is a cliche right, that all new media format ATS are pushed ford by port. It's a true it's a clay for a reason and a lot of ways is only the people who are pushing this. I actually have like a deeply and desire to want to make this stuff. And there also the ones are pushing the technology forward.

In our minds, we rested a lot when we were first turning something that do we have a separate section for not safe for work or do we not allow not safe work? I think since just for and that, like we need to main maintain IT was the multi usability of these resources right now because many different things that can be used, for instance, at the time, one of the best models that was for doing an enemy was actually a porn model, because I had been trained on the most amount of, like, you know, human bodies, obviously. If so, I was being used by tons of people who we are not doing anything that was not safe work, but they're using this porn model because they we're just getting the most accurate representations of, like human figures in different poses. And at that point, I think, you know, just I had a conversation really like, we can we can close this stuff out like IT has so many more uses beyond just what is being advertised for and what that could potentially be used for.

Would you anything that you I I agree with you essentially what we saw that a this energy that people are putting into producing, you know, adult contemporary content with AI was ultimately pushing the quality of the model ford. And so IT was important for us on that side of things. We wanted to make sure that we could support everything that people were making with A I.

And like you said, part of the draw of open source tech was those limits that were being placed on you by these close source platforms didn't exist, right? You could make all kinds of things good and bad and uh you know being able to have B A space that could support that hasn't come without chAllenges. And we've continue to learning, grow and do our best to kind of put put the rails in place at least through our site as well.

But uh, definitely IT. IT was A A difficile decision, but I am happy that we made IT because I think that is kind of makes a unique experience and that allows us to be the hub of all things. Say, I not just know half of IT, if you will.

IT is interesting that the earlier versions of stable division were really good at anatomy. And then when stability went through scribing pornography from their training data, suddenly there was this massive decrease ation know, and how you reconstruct anatomy. But I have to imagine there were some like moral and ethical cones that you'll have to deal with.

For example, season like I know you've made a huge attempt to reduce the amount of not safe forward content on the platform itself, and there were instances of people using some of these models to create A C M content. What was that journey and experience like, you know, putting the rails back on there. I'd love for you to go into a little bit more detail.

Yeah was he was an interesting learning experience for us because obviously wouldn't were putting IT together. We were like, oh, no, I guess we won't really aware of how the brave people could potentially get with this. So exam and really even into our minds, we were put together this site.

And when we were first confronted with her, really, oh, okay, got IT. So we should we need to start making some moves here really quick to be able to kind of limit this. So one of the first things we did was, but together, some content policies that we considered common sense.

Content policies around, like what we would consider, not only, you know, obviously legally what you can put on the internet, we allowed the host, but also ethically, what we thought was, was right, both rounds content for real people and for content around miners. For instance, one of the things that still rule today is that we don't allow any photo realistic depictions of miners of platform period. And that's purely just for the reasons of like, again, IT has too many, too many possibilities of potentially being misconstrued or abused by by people.

And then we don't allow any dependence of real people that not in a um are either like a work or school type setting, essentially allow out of you who used in those environments. And I include poses as well as facial expressions. And our main thought process around that was kind of like we're both dads and we're both married and it's like, do we do we want we want to have our own kids? Are our own spouses like portrait this way? no. So let's in trying put some rules in place to prevent that.

And you, of course, talking about some of the nonconsensual deep fake problem, right? Yeah you could just in anything, dad.

yeah. We hit new milestones all the time of a the amount of content being upgraded. And so having to kind of handle the volume has not been without chAllenges. And we've had to make you know unique models of our own help, the text stuff. And it's been it's been a journey and we're constantly improving IT.

One of the things that we are committed to back in um we kicked IT off and and like september of last year actually was we we started working with thorn, along with a few other AI companies in the space to prepare a White paper called safer by design with the intent to really start to, I guess, this start to establish of the the lorma for reporting on on what we see and kind of handling these models so that we can kind of help, I don't know, make things safer in the future. Um things are inherently not very safer right now. It's the wild west.

It's a whole new frontier, right? And that doesn't come without risk, doesn't come without danger. And so really, what we're trying to do is think about, okay, if this is where we're at night now and this is the wilderness that we're living in, what does that look like in the future? How can we make things safer in the future?

How can we start to handle this volume that that's coming at us as people are generating billions of images a month? Now we do actively work with government organizations like nick mic as well as others to kind of compass sa sam in general. And it's been helpful to have their support as well and kind of understand how we can do our part to help fight this problem as a kind of takes on on a new shape, if you will.

There is this dichotomy you often have with open source rate, like you trust people and give them agency to do whatever they can with minimal guard rails. And you want to put minimal guard rails there because that's how you Foster innovation, right? And maybe on the other end, end of the spectrum, as you have a bunch of these close source models, who might where I might add, there are some other.

Ethical countries were clearly they're training on all this type data. They don't just let you prompt IT. If I take IP as an example, I can't ask dolly for godzilla, but if I ask for a dinosaur, know with a really long tail like i'm going to have basically goza.

And so, you know, so the question is, where does enforcement happen? Does this happen at the point of model creation? Does that happen at the point of generation? Does IT happen at the point of distribution? And i'm kind of curious if you have any thoughts about that since you are really deepen on the model craon side. But now you do have, you know inference capabilities in your offering workflows, but then again, you can't really control distribution, right?

right? Yeah, I think ultimate leads going to have to be both. Uh, one of the interesting chAllenges with open source tech as you can really control what people do once they have the model in their hands.

So the best you can do is kind of control what you're training on actually kicked off something called the open model initiative back in june. I shortly after S D three was released. People like k, we've got to start building our alternative of our our own driven by the community with a with an open license.

And one of the decisions that we made early on as we were kind of talking about what that data that should look like is, sure, we can have mature content. We need to be able to capture human anatomy, but let's keep that separate from the ability to create children, right? So there's already some work that needs to be done kind of at the model development side of things to make sure that you know at least you've producing and releasing something safe.

Now what people do after that, that's that's the joy of open source could could be dangerous. But that's where that second part comes in, right? And and where we're enforcing things like the ability to control what out of those models. So I really ultimately, i'd say that IT kind of needs to be both. But I think thinking even further down the pipeline, what are people doing with that content really where we should be managing this stuff is on the sites where it's getting posted, on the tools where it's shared.

Can we instead enforce policies around what people are doing with the stuff that they're making? If they have the ability somehow get around filters that are put on by tiktok and microsoft and able to produce content, they shouldn't shouldn't beyond the platforms where they're sharing them to, like prevent that a spread of that content that shouldn't be made. So I think that that's kind of like where I imagine the ultimate x filter should get applied, but certainly got to to do do stuff on both sides of that equation.

Totally IT sounds like we need to full that solution. But to your point about you know what the community is doing with these models and these capabilities in twenty twenty three, they're about ten thousand unique creators that contributed models monthly to civility, which drives that level of engagement like this like you know like small minority of ultra super users, if you will.

I I think max would jump and say cloud as the first cancer. I could see. I could see that in his mind. We have leaderboards. I'm at the game myself, maxes as well.

And so we understand how incentives work, and we want to encourage the community to participate, engage in and give them the means to continue to create. And that's kind of where buzz comes into play. But before even buzz was introduced, I would say that the first thing that motivated people was, you know, hey, I want my name to be up in lights.

So to access certain tools on samedi, you use a currency called buzz, and you can purchase buzz with currency or earn IT through conception or contributing to the platform. How does this work and how does that play into the creative economy that you're are constructing? Max, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

We we were my transitioning from having everything be free because originally, like all generation, everything on the site was free for anybody want to use IT. And we we is not sustainable. We have to actually be charging ing a fee, especially if wanna start supporting a created economy. Then the other thing is that, okay, well, can you can give value by actually know, interacting? You can give value by giving you your feedback on the most, as you ve used by images.

Every image that you produce, you're giving some value back to the community itself, whether people use that for training data, where they use that to actually like their own prompts, or where they just use that his feedback on the round resources that you've created, every interaction you do in the community, is as has value. And we should not be giving you value accordingly for that. And our solution.

That was buzz, right? So the idea was like going to give them buzz as a way of saying, hey, thank you for interacting with the community. And also hear how you can then use that to now use this now paid generation service, because he uses, use the bus platform, and then we can use that to fund the creative economy.

The created conomo is holes, like when I think one of the core goals that we had when we were setting out uh, for getting subtitle going, we noticed that I mean, if you've talked into these creators, you know how much like time and sweat and like tears, aten cash goes into creating some of these resources, especially through really high end once like IT takes a lot of money and a lot of time to do this well. And all of these people just doing IT for free and like that does not make a lot of sense. We have to get them some of payment here, especially with all the people who are benefiting from IT.

And the create economy really stemmed from that idea of like that. We don't make sure that these people are getting compensated correctly that let us into the bus system. And we've kind of distributed that in two ways.

So creators have two ways of earning on the platform, and I even early access system, where they can put a resource p kind of in the spirit of open source, rather than making IT just a purely behind a pay wall. You can put IT up for fifteen days, uh, essentially is really access. And then we also allow a split for all generations that are on the platform itself.

So creators think twenty five percent now, twenty five percent of a all buds that spent on any single generation. But yeah, now we have more plans for more ways for creators, be able to motives in the future. But those are like the two main ones right now, and they've been going pretty well. We've meant to getting some good feedback. G for people who can using them.

you're totally rate. Like open source people are putting a disperse tion amount of time into essentially like a public comments community resource that to see you know a community where you can make money and get a slice um of even your model being used to create an image that that's really, really cool.

Are there different personas for the types of users that you end up seeing? Like I have imagine summer, like the regular model contributors somewhere there, just like I don't know paying and downloading models. Um others are creating content on the platform itself. How do you all think about the the various stakeholders that you serve as civita?

Yeah yeah pretty tty early on. We kind of divided them into three categories um and they each kind of serve a different purpose and they kind of build on each other. The first class of user was what we call our creators.

They were the people making models that then attracted our next class of users called the enthusiast, who would then going take those models and create images, create content, which would then attract the next classic users, which is called consumers. So, uh, we kind of treat them in those layers in that way. And what we found is that, you know, there's a ton of consumers.

There's basically, you know ninety percent of our users are consumers, the next nine percent our enthusiasm than the top one percent our creators, which I hear is pretty common for the public, kind of yeah yeah exactly. So one of the interesting things about this, though is that there's kind of less arries than ever before to move up the stack. And so one of the things that we're constantly pushing for us figuring out ways to help consumers become enthusiast and to encourage enthusiast to become creators because you don't need to be, you know, some super technical person to figure this stuff out, because at this point now, anybody can create, you just need to have a good idea. N A, I can kind of hold your hand to make that thing awesome.

Hi, I am grant, host to the podcast rethinking, a show where I talk to some of today's greatest thinkers about the unconventional ways they see the world on rethinking, you'll get surprising insights from scientists, leaders, artists and more people like race, weather, spoon, welcome, glad well and yu here lessons to help you find success at work, build Better relationships and more find rethinking wherever you get your podcast.

Speaking of money, I have to ask up. So you'll raised a five point one million dollars seed round last year LED by injuries and horowitz. The air landscape has shifted a lot over the last year.

How do investors view your refined mission now? And are you having to deal with this pressure to perhaps be profitable a versus your original mission that now focused on art and community? They are those incentives perfectly aligned? Or is there some tension there you're having to contend with?

It's interesting. Yeah I mean, there is pressure to be profitable um and there is pressure to to be a business. The cool thing about this medium though is that unlike traditional art where you know it's on a single person to go produce a piece of work and there's not really ways for other people to put money into IT.

It's different, right? Like we have lots of room to monetize on top of services that people want to use. And so reaching profitability ties something that I think will only become more and more sustainable. It's actually funny.

Part of the the pitch that we were sharing was that when we added monetization, when we turned on the bus system and started charging for generation, we actually saw an increase in the amount of engagement and increased the amount of creators within the community. So IT is cool because IT actually makes r and and community sustainable in a way that kind of doesn't exist right now because IT adds this whole new way to participate, the naturally attracts dollars. So i'm hoping that we can keep IT that way that we can make IT sustainable. And so far, IT seems like we're on track, but certainly getting that funding help us. We had thought we could boost strapped initially, but doing that for a million people at once, it's just a hard thing to do when you're small company there.

Anything to add, max?

Yeah say one thing is interesting is that everybody looks for comparables, especially in the in the VC world of like you know what what industry are you upsetting or what who currently are you like turning over you replacing? Are you doing whatever with its very hard to come to do is like, oh, no, we're actually like designing a whole new form of content and content consumption IT.

IT does feel like it's not just about creation IT totally is about consumption to and how about shifting? You talked about this notion of remix ibid. It's kind of making creation more accessible in the sense that you don't have this blank canvas problem, right, like suddenly you have a starting point or you have multiple know primitives that you can put together to make something else entirely.

And one of the things I think about is going back to the shorts analogy of remix ibt, is how quickly these platforms, like kind of reverse engineer your soul, like they figure out what kind of content you like. And of course, you've got a user generated content on one end. You've got, you know, users on the other.

And an algorithm that sorted does the matching. And I can help but imagine in the future that we're headed to where content will be a personalized, disposable, able created just in time for you. How do you all think the future of consumption is going to evolve with the kind of tools and capabilities are building?

I love the way that you're thinking about IT. I completely agree. I think that I mean, with so much content that can be created now, there is no reason then all of IT won't be personalized for you. Like even if IT was something that was made by somebody else, if IT was made in a language that's not native to you, they'll be translate ted. I mean, why I wouldn't be right.

Um so I think that you know it's it's going to be interesting to watch the bubbles that we're kind of already sitting inside of with these algorithm and serving us exactly what we want to see taken even to another level as it's further personalized to you and of what those limits might be. Are all advertisements going to include pictures of me or pictures of family or pictures of the person that he thinks that i'm gonna most attracted to or something? It's kind of a while to think about what those constraints might be and and how how we still kind of have a collaboration experience in sight of that, right?

If everything's personalized, how do we connect? Can we view the same content? But have I have minor differences in there? Can I still connect with you around the story of you know um breaking bad or something like that?

Even though there was parts of the this series that I saw that we're completely different than yours, it's going to be interesting to see kind of how the world is shifts as content as we see. IT today is more like a universe than a snapshot. So looking forward, that the .

universe analogies and interesting one, and I did hear your quote, don't build movies, build universes and yeah, it's at the heart of the question that I wonder about this. Like what is the future of shared experiences? Did you watch season, you know, seventeen of csi miami or whatever? Is that going to be the case? Like these kind of shared stories and experiences that bring us together vers kind of being lost in their own islands of personalized contents. And one of the things that kind of feels into this lately is every time I ask somebody like, what's you like favorite youtube or i'll get like three new name and looked them up, they all have like millions of followers, and I have never heard of them and so that I imagine leering generate a ee on top of that and it's just like this turtles all the way down infinite fractal. Um yeah i'm curious if that like evoke any responses in you because IT seems to be headed that way yeah no.

Um I just and I ve talked about this a lot. My personal view is yes and we essentially just go into rabbit holes of our own media creation and we never emerge because there be no incentive to I mean, why would you right? It's like if if you look at the popularity of something like tiktok and tiktok entirely like an algorithm that has happened to content, right, that that is what tiktok value is.

And you give tiktok the ability to then generate this content on demand on the fly for everything you want to see ever like you, you just never will get people off that they will be a escaped. And I think that's going to be the fate for large portions of of the of population, for sure. IT reminds me of the team in wali.

where is just like people like floating around what there is like hesea and it's just a mount and do straight to the vain and honestly uh this also brings up a really fun um you kind of chemistry both of you'll have as o founders here is you are like a bit of an odd couple or just then you strike me as far more of an AI optimist and max, like I don't want to call you a pessimist, but certainly you have a more pragmatic perspective.

I consider myself a realistic optimists as there which .

means pessimism ah, it's a nice pessimism. I am curious like how does hyda namic play out when you're building this company in making product decisions and figuring out where to take stuff?

I think IT works really well personally. Most of the features that come in going to the platform itself or justice brainchild, and he gets there from getting feedback from the community. We take spend a lot of time getting feedback, the community, and then it's always fun because they have like, oh, we should do IT this way.

We should make IT this way is like, no, people will abuse that. We will be launching money if if we implement that, you know like we can do that. Um um so it's it's nice max basically .

will tell me all of the ways that people are going to abusive because is that pessimistic view and it's .

like the red hat, you know like .

saves us tons of legal fees, right?

Because I just do what the you're right, you're right, we can do that.

So it's great for for like platform building because it's it's a good baLance in terms of like okay, well, like this is something we really want to put in. But you know, how could I go, right, right? And then use most of time, you know, I even know, I think, what the plus sides of my pessimism is like, I part of me really wants to see to go, right.

So I still like going to do IT push IT regardless. I I want to see what breaks. And that means that we pushing out a lot of features really quickly. So that works well for the platform, I think.

Love that. Maxfield, do you think your world of you contribute to your belief in the dead internet theory? And can you explain what that is to the uninitiated?

sure. yeah. My personal definition of dinner or theory is this idea that we replace enough of the content on the internet with content that myself ics actually coming from other people, or that you could be instinctual from come from the people or you just don't care if they comes from other people to the point where he loses all hair value.

And there's no real reason to be on the internet as a whole except just as an entailment device. yeah. No, I think we are actually be contributing to IT.

I think A I is actively contributing to IT. And I personally find that to be a great thing. I've been dissolution with the internet for years, and I would like the entire thing to burn down if possible. So if we can help IT.

then i'm all for IT. Just what do you think of maxfield belief in this?

I mean, I sit here laughing because he's talked to me about this so many times and he's not wrong. I mean, it's definitely to be a chAllenge. It's so easy to make so much content, so much A I slop as they call IT these days, that it's just the beginning of IT.

All too, it's gonna require us to kind of think differently. And the interns going to have to change like how long until only ten percent of the content of the internet is something that was made by a human. And I guess the other part is like doesn't really even matter. Like there's people that I already wish I didn't actually have to talk to that I could just like say, hey L M B, me to talk this persons that I have to manage this relationship .

like like a digital twin of Justin delicate.

Yes, can we have the Justin agent take care of things for me?

That would be great every time i'm like forced to go on twitter. Like, you know, this should Better if these were AI chap ots. Like I think you would actually be a Better experience if the entirety of twitter is just AI chaos because as IT is, it's like when my force to just experienced this like slob all of the time.

So I agree with you. IT is inevitably like, it's this weird thing where, you know, i'm doing some prompting to take my few bullet points to turn IT into an email and the other persons using an nel lamb, the new apple intelligence, to summarized IT like why couldn't we have just sent the bullet points? And so this is like compression and decompression, uh, that's happening, but still kind of human intense at at the core of IT. But you could easily see that change all the the fully generated tiktok feed example that were kind of speculating about. So I have to ask, what do you think creation looks like in three years from now?

I think that thing that makes IT still difficult is I look at how quickly video has moved over just the last year. I don't know if you guys i've seen like that wild Smith eating speaking ti from like a year ago compared to like today what it's like you that could actually be will Smith big um I don't know that the auto generated tiktok thing could be real. I wouldn't be surprised here.

There was already automated generated shorts in three years, and maybe they are not fully personalized yet, but they're probably working towards that. I think the other one that's really interesting to me is probably going to be game development feels like we're still thinking about, you know, how do we make things cost less, but really, there's only so much cost cutting that you can do before you you know change from looking at efficiency into looking at OK. Well, what interesting stuff can we do this with this? And how does that kind of change change the game?

Can you double click on the gaming point is IT is interesting. I did get a chance to ask janson about this a gtc, his prediction that everything will be generated and not rendered in the future. And I think it's interesting to think about what happens when the model isn't the means for creation, but the model is the content in itself that you're experiencing. Um does that Spark and any thoughts in you?

Yeah a few different things. Um I had the opportunity to make my own little A I game about two or three months ago over a weekend and using A I agents as essentially people that were managing the game, people that were characters in the game, people that were creating content for the game.

If he came prety clear that like, hey, if we can already do this this stage and I did this in the weekend, definitely we're going to have these AI generated games where it's like you come in. Maybe some of its been structured by somebody else, maybe not, but everything can be made on demand and I can adjust itself to kind of fit what you're doing. And I think what I am imagining is the majority of content that's going to be generate in the future is going to be stuff for games where people aren't there.

To create something is not about a creative act. It's about enjoying content. It's about expLoring, about making choices and kind of seeing the outcomes. I think I will probably change gaming and probably make a lot more people gamers that weren't before because now it'll fit whatever IT .

is that interested in totally back to personalization. So max, everyone is talking about making movies with A I right like that seems to be very popular on twitter. But again, when I look at what content people actually consuming with their eyeballs and driving watch time, it's a lot of short form content. It's a lot of means that I think of really drive a lot of attention. What do you suspect is going to be like the most dominant form of consumption in a couple years?

Tape thing is now show form content, right? I mean, I attention are only going to get shorter, if not already. I mean, what are the interest things about google? Google came the scene as we outsource a lot of our monitor memory to the internet, and we just going to stopped enhancing the ability with ourselves.

And as ChatGPT and other general tools become more prevalent in our lives, were going to be outsourcing more and more variability to think, create and really actually, you know, engage. I mean, you know, one of the most popular forms of content that you can see on youtube is after the new movie comes out, is a bunch of explanation videos that recaps or reviews, right? Because people don't like, I don't want to watch this movie.

I wanted watch IT eight minute, you know, recap of IT and have sibly tell me what I was about the end that I don't have to think about what I was about. And in my mind, I think the telex ninety percent of people engage with content. Now this in the world is they want to just be given the short form section of IT, not because they're lazy, but because because they're condition their mind to be OK.

This is like the easiest way I can get the stupa in head. I've already at the point where I don't consume any media. That's not a two time speed now, just it's too long now. I can't I can't be bothered to to watch anything is not to speed.

yeah. It's also the volume of content is growing, right? So there's so much more for us to choose from verses like you know like the list of books, movies, T, V shows and certainly, you know, a social media content is absolutely exploding. So this is like one way to make sense of IT is just a speed run at all. And like IT was really interesting for me to see the explosion of no book alem and people like getting like podcast summaries. It's it's like whatever modality your medium or format at your most comfortable consuming and you can can IT translate any content into any content and and IT has that a remix ibid aspect that I see on your platforms as well because its more on the crazy, but I can told, imagine attending more towards consumption to one .

the more like size I extrapolations of this is, you know, I now have like at least one day I told that records every single meeting i'm in and like, check, check every single email I sent and has just billing a database of me, right? I can see a very, very possible future where rather than having me on a podcast and just, hey, you take my AI equivalent and will do IT and then they even give me a pocket where I do that, you can have some day equivalent, just ask them questions if you are in those questions or know I could take an equivalent of you and have you asked questions of my equivalent for me, a different how to summer ze IT for me and so like, okay, well, you know at this point, at this point, you know like what even is like with the most summarized form of content that I could possibly get at all that, right? Do we need to bother with any any of that? Or can I just get a bolted list to be? And like this is what this person believes, move on.

I think in a sense, it's almost inevitable. We are going to have, uh, a bunch of agents that we delegate to take on a bunch of interactions. And there are we talking each other, negotiating, doing all sorts of interesting things. So as we rap things up, i'm curious for each of you what gives art and creativity in this new world deep value? And how does civita amplify that value for your community?

You know, your first, just, son, give me a second.

Sure, sure. Take your old one thinking time.

I'll have to report exactly what i'm thinking for you.

exactly. Not cool. That's opposing ted. We can see the real shame of thought .

not to do a quick pass. What you're thinking, Justin, if you want, go for IT. Yeah, yeah.

No, I think I think the thing is really interest me about all this creativity wise is the less human aspect of IT, right? It's the idea of sure humans are giving some sort of uh, general guidance. But really what IT is is almost like kind of a ghost in the machine aspect.

My, my favorite art that comes out of any of this is when people combine these resources and they give IT no prompt, what's ever? They give IT absolutely no nothing to go off of us to what I should make. And what IT pops out is a thereof and strange and obviously as an altitude of the training data.

But it's it's different than what I would think a human artist would would think of making IT has less intent to to a degree um which is unna to me because it's like the the artist that I think we hold up on the highest pastore, the wonderful to can be emotion in the most like transcendent kind of way so that you're going able to get a feeling of some sort without actually having like being spelled out for you in some kind of art form. And that personally, is kind of the feeling I get from a lot of this just direct, direct robot creation that has has no human intervention was soever. Does these models get Better? They actually you lose a lot of that. You lose more and more of this this my kind of static and more of like you more more intent from people and that, you know, that's interesting too, because it's cool to see these people who obviously have no classical art skills, whatever, will never, never be able to make these things otherwise, are able to convey an idea that as value and meaning to them, and feel like you be able to communicate with somebody on a way think that you are otherwise would, maybe just through a conversation.

Love that. What do you think, Justin?

Yeah, I think I think the thing I would say is really along with end of what maxus saying there, I think the thing that i'm most excited about with what we're doing here is empowering every individual to be able to kind of create, communicate in a way that was very limited before the required you decades of training and experience and exploration.

And now you can see somebody else make something and make something of your own that's like that or Better. And thirty seconds, you know, I I think that, that fundamentally changes the capacity for he managed to communicate and and I think that improving our ability communicates, and I going to help us work together Better. And that's really what I want to do, is I want to help us kind of moved towards the utopia that I dream of, rather than the possible disturbia that maybe max, max is telling me is gonna happen.

max. Justin, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having us so much of.

right. So talking with just in a max, I can't help but feel we're at this fascinating inflections. Point stands out most is how civility is essentially bake the entire creative recipe. Every model, every prompt, every single step Operation right into the content itself is like having the tutorial embedded in the artwork, creating this unprecedented level of remix, ibt and transparency. Whether you're looking at an image or video, you can see exactly how IT was made and can build upon IT.

But this also raises deeper questions about where we're headed as content becomes less static and more dynamic, almost personalized to each viewer, what happens to share the experiences are we had to, towards individual bubbles of AI generated content, perfectly tailor to tests? Or will we find new ways to build shared universes together, cocreate and remixing, in ways we can't yet imagine? And while Justin max might disagree on whether we had IT towards utopia or the dead internet, they're both helping build the tools that will define how we express ourselves and connect in the new era as the lines between human and A I generated content continued to blur, platforms like civita remind us that community and creativity will be crucial to whatever comes next.

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Our show runner is evon a tucker. And our engineer is asia polar simpsons, our researcher and fact checker is Christian. Apart to our technical director is Jacobinical and our executive producer is a lizer smith. And i'm beloved s to do. Don't forget to rate and comments, and i'll see you in the next one.