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

AI Engineer · 53 min · 631 sentences · from YouTube's caption track

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00:01[music]
00:12Really quickly, before we kick off, I think it'd be super helpful to understand for the room, um what percent of people, just raise your hand, like you've created some form of video
00:23content before?
00:26Nice.
00:27Amazing.
00:28And then, raise your hand if you do it from scratch, like no AI.
00:34Amazing.
00:36And then the last question is, what percent of people started creating content because of AI and using AI tools?
00:44A handful.
00:45Okay, nice.
00:46Um before we get started, I think there's a really helpful quote that or metric that we like to reference, which is from John Medina about memory.
00:54And so, there's a stat that after 3 days, people remember about 10% of the information that they input, but when there's a visual aid, like what we're going to help you learn how to do today,
01:06it increases to 65%.
01:09So, let's get started.
01:12So, I'll introduce myself first.
01:13My name is Sarah Cheng.
01:14I am the head of developer experience at Cerebras, where we are building the world's fastest and largest AI processor.
01:21And so, we power a lot of models with OpenAI, Mistral, Cognition, etc. And as part of my job for developer experience, I have to create a lot of technical content telling a lot of the stories behind our hardware and how we power fast inference.
01:36But separately, I also create a lot of content on my own personal YouTube channel and LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter.
01:43Um and and yeah.
01:45Hi everyone, I'm Kova.
01:47Um I just joined the developer experience team at OpenAI.
01:50Prior to that, I was a full-time content creator, mostly making stuff on short form, so Instagram, YouTube shorts, and TikTok.
01:58And yeah, our mission is to make AI beneficial for all of humanity.
02:05Okay, so to preface how everything is going to run, um most of our examples are it's going to be a deck pretty full of like prompts, exact workflows that we use, tools that we use.
02:16And so as a preface, a lot of this is going to be on top of ChatGPT, previously known as Codex.
02:21Um and we're using GPT 5.6 Soul ultra fast, which is a one of the models inside of Codex ChatGPT that's powered by Cerebrus.
02:29And so one thing that's super helpful is that this model runs at 750 tokens per second.
02:34So especially with video, processing large scripts, processing large files, it can be super helpful.
02:39Um and it's one of the fastest models inside of ChatGPT.
02:47So also, another form of this workshop is available in a written form.
02:52So we've actually published a blog together, kind of a blog form of this workshop that outlines a very similar concept.
02:59So if you want to reference it or look at the prompts again, you don't need to necessarily like type everything we show here.
03:07And I think something cool also to preface is um myself and Sarah we're both content creators, but we create from different perspectives.
03:13So it's like really cool to come together and work on this together.
03:17Um like we talked about this before, but like you come from this place of like um being able to do it as like a system and as a like
03:25one place where you can consistently put out like good work for your audience.
03:29And I think I error more on the side of like coming from it from like a design background.
03:33So like the like systems aspect and also the design aspect is something we're combining together because we want to create like good content that resonates.
03:43Yes.
03:43So I think one cool thing is that we do have very different styles of creating content.
03:48Um she is an artist.
03:50You will see that.
03:51You can kind of see it on the right side.
03:53They're very artistic.
03:53There's a lot of really beautiful text and animations and she does a lot with the lighting.
03:58Um and I am more straightforward.
04:00[laughter]
04:00Text teaching technical content.
04:03And concepts.
04:05So I think to get started, one thing that's kind of helpful is that we generally always follow six stages and the rest of this workshop is really structured with these six stages in mind.
04:13And so the stages are ideating, scripting, recording, editing, repurposing, and publishing.
04:19So ideating is how do we use AI to help us come up with really cool concepts that kind of stand out from all of the noise that we see today.
04:27I think especially now that so many people can create content, it's even harder to differentiate yourself.
04:33Um the next is scripting, how we use AI to create really powerful scripts, how we create our hooks, how we test different concepts, recording, editing, repurposing.
04:43Repurposing is referencing like for example if either of us create a longer form video, how do we take that to maybe create sister videos or how do we cut that up in a very systematized
04:54way and then of course publishing and writing all these captions and yada yada yada, very annoying.
05:02And so as kind of a preface, these are the tools that we're going to walk through throughout the entire workshop um and we'll kind of talk through them like oh like for this step we'll use this tool and this is how we use it.
05:12But just so you get kind of an early preview, we've listed it all in here.
05:18Yeah, so the first stage we always go through is ideation.
05:22How do you come up with the concept?
05:24Um how do you know like which audience to create for?
05:28So there's two main parts we really like to approach ideation with.
05:31First is to build your swipe file.
05:34What a swipe file is is basically a one-stop shop for all of your favorite references, all of the questions you're thinking about, absolutely anything that inspires you.
05:43This can come in many different forms.
05:45My swipe file comes as this colorful website where I just like put every video, every like Pinterest picture I save.
05:53But, it can also come on notes, Obsidian, and Notion.
05:56We are attaching Swyx's swipe file strategy cuz this is also um something you can find online and use to create your own swipe file.
06:07And in addition to having a one-stop shop for references, by the way, this is an order for your agent to be able to pull from those references and understand what kind of creative style you're going for.
06:18We also want to understand how do we build things?
06:21Like, who do we want to build for?
06:23And to do so, we really like to create custom tools.
06:28For myself, an example is to build a research tool for YouTube.
06:31I was thinking, okay, I'm new to YouTube.
06:34How do I understand titles and thumbnails?
06:37Extremely important because 50% of a YouTube's performance is really based on its packaging.
06:43And I didn't know how to start.
06:45So, I used this exact prompt to create a research tool that allows me to pull thousands of videos from my favorite creators, be able to see them all in one place,
06:55and also be able to remix and create new thumbnail inspirations from my favorite thumbnails, which you can see a bit of a screenshot of.
07:07In addition, I ended up building upon that tool by thinking, okay, YouTube is so much about seeing if a title and thumbnail stands out in comparison to the other
07:18thumbnails, the other videos on the on the YouTube homepage.
07:21So, does it stand out on the homepage?
07:23I created this simulator, which on the right side simulates the YouTube homepage, and I'm then able to see and basically do research on how can I make this idea stand out before I even start building.
07:35So, I think one of the best things about agents is it allows you to be able to build custom tools for understanding how you can build things before you go ahead doing them.
07:45And this was just a way for me to understand the YouTube system uh the YouTube ecosystem without really having to go through, you know, all of the trenches of creating a video and then
07:56yeah, doing all of that.
08:00And I think adding on one more thing to what Koda just mentioned is that something that is extremely underrated whether you're creating a video or you're creating an article
08:09is how important your title and your like title images.
08:12It's the first thing that people see.
08:13It's going to determine whether or not people actually read or watch whatever you're creating.
08:18And often times I think it's common like you create your content and you spend like maybe 5 seconds or a few minutes thinking through your title and your header when really
08:27you should be spending 50% of your time on it.
08:29And it will make I think both of us from experience and just from anecdotes in the industry like they will make such a big difference of whether or not you get 500 views versus 5 million views.
08:41And then also on the swipe file note, my swipe file is not nearly as beautiful but I it's I can be as simple as my version which is anytime on Twitter that I see something I like I literally just paste a link in this notion page and it's something that my ChatGPT
08:55can always reference as like this is my taste.
08:57This is what I'm recognizing as good quality content.
09:01Um and right, Swyx has a great article as well outlining like how you should think about a swipe file and how you can build one yourself even just as a good reference for yourself.
09:09So like and once in a while maybe once a year you look at it and you remember like oh yeah, like this exists.
09:14I would love to do it's it's in it's instilling and helping inspire me with these ideas.
09:20The swipe file strategy is like it's A+ because I think agents they understand the best like what you want off of references.
09:29Text can very rarely get to the impact a reference has.
09:32Exactly.
09:33Um the next one is is of how you create the script.
09:36So I think there's kind of two ways to do it.
09:38There's right, there's I love Whisper flow.
09:41Um and I always just like say a concept.
09:43Like if I'm trying to create a technical concept, I think one of the biggest things you have to remember is that when you're creating content, you always want it to feel educational,
09:51right?
09:51It should never feel like marketing.
09:53You guys have probably heard this a million times.
09:55But, I think it's part of that.
09:56Like a really helpful way that I like to do it.
09:58I feel like when I just start writing, it can sound very marketing and I'm defaulting to these phrases I've written a million times.
10:04Versus if I say it out loud, like teaching someone, like this is the concept and this is why it's important.
10:10And then I can basically you can package all of that up into like uh ChatGPT.
10:15Or, of course, voice mode is amazing.
10:17Having it just interview you and kind of flesh out like this part's not super clear.
10:21How do I, you know, understand this better?
10:23Or like I'm not really sure how this is related.
10:25Like maybe we should cut it.
10:27And so, it's super super helpful.
10:31Um and then this is like an example of a prompt for like how you can use Codex voice mode.
10:35Be like I'm writing a video about this idea.
10:36Interview me about it.
10:38Um there's two keys.
10:39Always concise and clarity.
10:42The two the two C's of writing content.
10:48And then uh similarly, I think something that Kova mentioned, but it's not just about like looking at all these references, looking at other creators, looking what's on Twitter.
10:56But, you always want to look at like what stand out above average.
10:59So, I think a good example is right, like right now, like Alexander Wang could tweet anything and it would probably go viral even if it's like a really dumb tweet.
11:08And so, you always want to look at engagement relative to other engagement.
11:11So, it's always like how did this post that I do compare to other posts that I've done?
11:16Um historically, how did this post about this harness engineering topic compared to other posts about harness engineering?
11:22Um and this is such a great thing that you can do with automations.
11:25Um I think Dots, especially, is such a great way to be always monitoring what's happening.
11:29But, here's like a really good prompt that I like to use.
11:35Um and then I think similarly to this, this is of the same vein.
11:38It's like also a prompt that's great in terms of we love creating skills, um so many skills in our ChatGPT setups and this is a great way to just also help you then refine the script in the scripting step.
11:54Yeah, so pretty straightforward.
11:56Um
11:56[clears throat]
11:56once you're able to capture your voice as a script skill.
12:00And this is ideally you already have a few pieces of content out and you like mold through them.
12:04You're like, "Okay, like this is how I want to sound."
12:07And now you build your script skill as you saw previously.
12:10Um I've personally really like to always generate three script options just to kind of see the lay of the land.
12:15If you want to add on to this prompt, you can also be like, "Oh, do you want to rank the script like the three scripts in terms of what you want to optimize for?"
12:22Like rank them in terms of like, I don't know, um score them in terms of 50% on engagement, like 50% on cut, you know, something like that.
12:33And on top of like scripting, the next part is thinking, "How do I turn this into something I can film with?"
12:42And for myself, I personally like to have a lot of different kinds of shots.
12:48Especially for short form, you realize that you want to always keep the audience on their toes in a way.
12:54So, shot list is something that is extremely helpful for me.
12:59I create a shot list off of my script.
13:03And what this looks like is Oh.
13:06Basically, I have one pass which annotates my existing script and adds like A-roll, B-roll, screen recording graphic.
13:15And I also have a second pass which you can see in the I know people are taking pictures.
13:22Are you going to be sharing this deck online?
13:23Yes, this is recorded.
13:25Yes, you guys will have access.
13:27And it's all in the blog.
13:28Yes.
13:28[laughter]
13:30Um Exactly.
13:32We have the blog out.
13:33So, this is all on the blog.
13:34But, feel free to take pictures.
13:36So, the second pass is also what creates a checklist at the very bottom.
13:40So, not only can you see in the annotated script where these are going, so you can kind of like understand, okay, this is the voiceover, this is the shot, but you can also have a checklist for when filming you're like, okay, tick tick tick, I'm going to just
13:53get all these shots in.
13:58And a really, really helpful tool that I have used for finding, especially screen recordings.
14:04And a lot of, you know, especially when we make dev related content, we we want to show demos.
14:11Um One app I really like to use is Coast, and it integrates with the Codex um CLI, and what it does is it basically records your computer over all time,
14:24which is pretty crazy, but it's able to find, and it's all local, and it's able to find like this instance where you created a certain demo.
14:32I like to use this as reference, so I can find what those demos are in some of my favorite demos, and then re-record them.
14:42And then I think similarly in the same vein, um we also, another great tool is CleanShot.
14:47And so, I think a sister to this is like Screen Studio, but I love ScreenShot because it's really easy to it's just like you add it to your to your system,
14:58you can very easily like record, screenshot, but it's really great for annotating as well.
15:03So, a lot of the times, if you've probably seen anyone will do like a blur effect, like they'll blur a certain like they'll blur their email in a demo, or they'll outline something, or they'll create arrows, or add text.
15:12Like, it's so easy to do like instantly, and then just save it.
15:16Um there's no like opening DaVinci or a editor, etc. And so, this is a great way that I like to record, like if you're recording demos, coding tutorials, etc. It's so good.
15:30And then I think the la- Oh, it thinks too.
15:34Oh, I guess all right.
15:35Oh, I think the last slide um the last um one more note on editing is just again organizing all of your footage to the point of like A- so A-roll, right?
15:43It's just like you talking specifically or it's like the actual thing that's happening.
15:47B-roll is kind of maybe side shots, screenshots, screen recording, screenshots, etc. Um it's super helpful to have, you know, all of them is like screen recording 09436 on your laptop.
15:59You should organize it and ChatGPT will do such a good job of doing it instantly for you.
16:05And then it's also really good at attaching media.
16:07So like once everything is organized and named and in the folder, like whatever editor you use, which ChatGPT can control for you, um it's really good at attaching and linking media as well, which yeah.
16:18Yeah, cannot emphasize how important it is to organize your assets.
16:22This list pretty much covers all the types of assets you need and this is for like the most extensive video you can you can make.
16:28Usually you don't need that many, but it's great to still have as reference just in case.
16:32Um personally I find Astro extremely extremely good at computer use on if you use Premiere, for example.
16:39DaVinci is um DaVinci is also extremely extremely good, but I I think Astro is probably the best for um computer use and yeah, Premiere.
16:50And I will add a side note that as someone who's used DaVinci, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere, my favorite is CapCut.
16:59[laughter]
17:00It's like the TikTok editor, but there's a desktop version and it's phenomenal.
17:06Okay, so the next thing that's really helpful is actually creating a design system.
17:10I think this is actually one where because Soul Ultra Fast is so fast, um you can really spend a little bit more time on the design aspect of it.
17:21And so, there's kind of different ways to do it.
17:22I think one, Figma has a lot of great like MCPs and plugins now that you can really take advantage of.
17:27Um, and so here's an example of prompt of like I want to visualize several different ways.
17:31Like this was really helpful for us creating the slide deck.
17:34But then I think also similarly, um, one thing that I actually really like to do is like when you have fast inference and you kind of have the luxury of this, is like we will have
17:44Um, we will have like ChatGPT generate like literally 10 different versions of like the branding and the logos and kind of the feel that we want any video to have.
17:53And then you can actually cherry-pick the version that you like best.
17:57And use your swipe file for this?
17:59Yes.
18:03Uh, yeah.
18:04So, um, similarly to what Sarah has done with a design system, because I already had a couple of videos out because I just wanted to be like, okay, this is exactly my style.
18:16You kind of want to turn that into a system, which makes it easier for agents to help you with that work.
18:21So, I simply gave my Codex as prompt to study my most recent 50 Instagram videos and turned the recurring visual style into a Figma document.
18:31So, similarly I created my own design system off of my own videos.
18:39So, I guess another one is right how we actually edit.
18:42And this is more in the weeds of like, how do you do all of this without an editor?
18:46We are both very busy people and I feel like we both create a good amount of content despite how busy we are.
18:51Um, so I think one of the tools that I really love using is just generally with tools like ChatGPT Codex, there's actually a lot of great like, uh, APIs
19:00that you can use for all of these video editors.
19:03So, I think example is like HyperFrames by Haydn is really cool one.
19:06It has an API.
19:07You can tell ChatGPT, here's the like docs page, set up this API for me.
19:12Um, and it does a great job of doing all the heavy lifting.
19:15And then it's really great at just like editing, rendering, reviewing.
19:18So, I'll just give it a bunch of raw footage.
19:20I'll be like, "Hey, stitch these three angles together.
19:23I want some text.
19:24Here are some reference videos.
19:25Edit it."
19:26And then I will give it some feedback.
19:28I think another thing So, Hyperframes and HeyGen is also really good for Their main thing, bread and butter, is like creating avatars of you.
19:35So, like if you want to record a video, let's I generally don't like filming the entire video and having it all be AI avatar, but like once in a while, like let's say I mess something up, like I say the wrong like tokens per second,
19:47and I need a fix it, like you can have an avatar for like 0.5 seconds just like fix it for you.
19:52Um And I think similarly, we'll get to this a little bit later, but I think we're just mentioning like Hyperframes and HeyGen now is like it's also really good for if you want to take like long-form video and you want to snippet it into like a bunch of short-form videos.
20:06Um it's also really helpful for doing that all by itself autonomously.
20:10And then you you can We'll also tell you how ChatGPT can also upload and schedule and write captions too.
20:16So, you owns it end-to-end.
20:19And on the the video editor side of things, like there's a lot of video editors.
20:24There's CapCut, there's Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve, etc. I think a bit of a lay of the land is with Hyperframes, you have these videos that are already like pre-rendered.
20:34So, if you were to want like an edit, um in my experience at least, you would need to like re-prompt and it would re-render and produce you like the new file.
20:43If you want something more granular, so you want to see all of your layers, all of your clips, titles, music, etc., you would need to use, you know, a video editor.
20:51Um Astra is really good for computer use on Premiere.
20:55I think that's something we're working on.
20:57So, if you're doing some like computer use stuff with our models on Premiere, I would love to hear about it.
21:02Um I think Final Cut is a lot better cuz it has a really good um MCP that um yeah, like so ultra fast is extremely good with Final Cut and yeah, there's just like a couple of my notes on that so far.
21:17Okay, um and so again kind of with hyper frames, so this is an an example of like you literally just prompt like first, here's the docs set up hyper frames.
21:26You can use a bunch of different tools.
21:27This is just one example of like one that we like to use.
21:30Um hyper frames is by Hagen and then you can basically just be super just like about that edit that you want and it will do all of the captions and the text animations and you can give it kind of brand guidelines from Figma and it will do all of it for you.
21:43Yeah.
21:43With very minimal prompting.
21:45Have you once used like hyper frames and just decided, okay, that's the video.
21:49I don't need to like do anything else to it.
21:51I don't need to
21:52Yeah.
21:53Yeah, yeah.
21:54There you go.
21:54One shot.
21:55[laughter]
21:57Um yeah, so on the other end of things, if you wanted to be more granular with your editing, I like to always build my own editing tools and my custom tools because I prefer to control every part of the story cuz I'm a bit of a
22:09Yeah.
22:09I
22:09She's a creator.
22:11Yes.
22:12Um so for example, I one shotted this music pad, which is the little nine button tab on the bottom left and basically it's a sound pack.
22:23So whooshes, clicks, shutter sounds that I could just like click and it inserts it automatically in a certain track.
22:32And so this is how I can either use computer use and be like, okay, this is my sound pad, go and use my computer and just tap through my sound pad and just add sound effects exactly as I would choose
22:43and I can easily go back and just click through myself.
22:46Otherwise, you would probably need to drag a sound to the timeline and things like that.
22:50So I like to build tools to make it easier and it's extremely easy to do so.
22:54So I would encourage it.
22:56And so I'm like ways that you can use sound is right like when you have a transition, I think whoosh is a pretty popular one.
23:02Shutter click is a popular one.
23:03And then whenever you want to insert like an image or a screen recording, you would add like a click sound.
23:08Yeah, those are like the most common two.
23:09Yes.
23:12Yeah, so another editing tip trick I really like to use is transforming the visuals.
23:19So, the reason I actually blew up and became a creator like full-time like a year ago in the first place was because I was able to make videos out of my like grad school dorm, which was really
23:33like there was nothing.
23:34Like as you can see like the walls are completely blank and then transform it.
23:38Like I added like a robot and it was moving and like a window and I added shelves and lights and like a fan and like a turning vinyl disc and all of that.
23:47And this was really early.
23:49Like this was back in the days of um like Photoshop generative fill.
23:55But now you can easily do this with Image Gen by um in ChatGPT for fun people by just being like, "I want to enhance my background, but keep like but keep myself completely, you know, the same."
24:06And then you would mask in the background.
24:08This is a really underrated way of doing it.
24:10It's one prompt to make your video look so much nicer, especially if you don't have the luxury of a really nice set.
24:17Well, I have a question.
24:18How specific did you have to be in terms of adding the robot, adding the background?
24:22Yeah, so with generative fill, what I could just do is mask out.
24:26So, like draw a circle around the area I want it to be filled in.
24:29So, I would draw a circle around the top and just be like literally fairy lights.
24:33I was not specific.
24:35I always got three options and I could select my favorite option.
24:39Now it's a lot better.
24:40Back then it was not so good.
24:41And yeah, I could still get this result.
24:46Yeah.
24:48So, a couple of other examples of how you can use AI to make better-looking videos.
24:53So, floating objects you can create with AI now.
24:57I did this in a couple of different ways.
24:59I used computer use with Astra to just be like add floating objects.
25:05Refer to this video.
25:06And all it did was it went into After Effects.
25:09It generated the models in Blender, exported them as GLB files, put them into After Effects, rotated them, put them on top of my original video, and we had floating objects in barely a prompt and a swipe file reference.
25:24The second is an older example, which you just saw.
25:26And the third example is I wish it was a a GIF, but it was really cool animated titles.
25:32That was done because Image Gen took like an you know, like a a text and just turned it into like collages and watercolor and just compiled them all together as a GIF.
25:44So, it looked really cool.
25:45More tutorials on @kovacut.
25:50Okay, I'm just saying.
25:51Um and then kind of Okay, so I did mention this earlier, but similarly like I think a big part of recording is like sometimes you mess up.
25:58And so, a great way of just fixing it is like I still think avatars are not good enough to like do the whole thing, but it's great like if you say a wrong word, you say a wrong date, you say something short, like AI now is really good at just correcting that one small part that you can
26:11then just cut in.
26:13And it saves a lot of time.
26:16And then I think to that point, you can use any tool.
26:19I'm just using mentioning the tool that I use, but now it is so good and so easy to just clip the hell out of videos that you create.
26:28Um and so, this is a great way of just repurposing for like YouTube shorts, Tik Tok, Instagram reels.
26:34Um and so, I'll take one video, like usually a long interview will take me about a month in terms of preparing for it, filming it, editing it.
26:41Um and so, I definitely want There's a lot of great sound bites in there and I definitely want to make sure that I'm being able to identify the best ones
26:47and get them out.
26:50Um to as part of that, I think one thing that's really helpful is also writing captions.
26:56Um, it is very obvious when a caption is AI generated.
26:58There's a lot of things that you can do so that your caption does not sound AI generated.
27:02I think one is of course obviously um, kind of studying your voice and studying your brand.
27:07I think two, this is a place where the swipe file comes in so handy.
27:12Um, and I you know, I always bookmark a bunch of tweets that I really like and so that's also a form of a swipe file.
27:18Um, in terms of studying different formats, I think a key is also like one, you have to make sure that you're differentiating different voices.
27:24So like my voice versus my company voice, etc. You always need to make sure that you're differentiating different formats, whether it's a long-form interview, it's a technical demo, it's a short conversation, etc.
27:37Um, and I think another thing that is really helpful here actually, which is not mentioned, is I love doing this, but there's this like article on Wikipedia that's called like signs of AI writing
27:48and I will always just paste it in and be like, do not do anything that is mentioned in here.
27:52And it's actually pretty good.
27:57Um, and then the last thing that I will say and this is again, just one tool that you can use.
28:02This is a tool that I use.
28:03Swyx was actually the one who put me on to it initially.
28:07Um, but I at the very, very end of the process of course is actually posting all of this and so, you know, you have a video, you have six cutdowns, you want maybe
28:16one cutdown to post every like Tuesday for the next six weeks and I want to post it on like five different channels and I really don't want to write the captions and do all this myself.
28:25Um, again, this is a great one where there's so many APIs out there for all of these like consumer products that you just tell ChatGPT like, take this docs and do it for me and like set it up and it sets it all up.
28:37Um, but this is like basically how I post a lot of my content is through Buffer.
28:40I'm like, hey, here's a folder of all these posts, post them one every Tuesday, schedule it for all these different platforms, figure out and like do some research yourself about what the best time is for each of these platforms,
28:54um and then write some captions that I approve ahead of time.
28:58And then just like that, you have content for weeks.
29:01Um yeah, and so I guess this is very similar to what I just mentioned in terms of I have scripts um sorry, skills for like TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube Shorts.
29:11Um and then I'm saying to publish every Wednesday.
29:15And send it captions for approval first.
29:19And then this also is um kind of yeah.
29:23Yeah.
29:24Um so with all of our systems and all of our processes and we've went through a lot um and we want to like post every week and we want to make sure it's good.
29:33We also kind of want to take a look back and understand, okay, like how can we be better in our process?
29:38And one of our favorite skills, like this is for sure like one of my favorite is to review my process, review my video creation process.
29:47Show me where I spend the most time and suggest repetitive tasks I could turn into tools or automate.
29:52Um I think a lot of the time as busy people, we spend a lot of time creating and we don't have a lot of time to kind of look back and go through all of our processes and understand inefficiencies,
30:03but really if we want to build better systems over time so we can focus more on like the creative aspect and the stuff that gives us the most joy.
30:10So, this is something that, you know, I would run every week.
30:15And for example, I would identify like oh like you probably need to update these Premiere skills that you have because they're not being the most effective and so and so.
30:22And it's a very simple prompt that would save you a lot of time and build better systems.
30:28So, what are some examples of things that this has surfaced?
30:31Yeah.
30:32Yeah, like a few things.
30:33So, for example, it identified that I kept two different places for my morning triage of things to do.
30:41And so, it was like, "Oh, you mostly check this um ChatGPT space, which is our new kind of like place for putting like docs, slides, etc. Like I've now moved everything to one doc, but it's still surfacing everything over a Slack thread that I never check."
30:57So, that's what this skill told me that was like, "Hey, like I'm sending you all these reminders on this thread, but you're never checking this thread.
31:04So, like you're not working on your videos properly."
31:06Something else it also identified was like some really niche stuff when it comes to like the Premiere um MCP and like operating Premiere.
31:14And it was like, "Oh, like I'm running all these checks on understanding like if like the videos are importing correctly.
31:19Like every time I open up Premiere, like this check takes me a lot of time.
31:23I don't need to do this check."
31:25And I was like, "Okay, let's not do this check."
31:26And it was a lot faster.
31:35Yeah, so this is also similarly we can review monthly not just our processes and their efficiencies, but also our posts.
31:44And like you know, uh Sarah was saying earlier, we can look at, "Okay, what are the best better performing posts on my account specifically?"
31:52So, I can learn from them and improve my content over time.
31:56And also update my skills.
32:02Okay.
32:03Um I think one kind of meta thing that we want to really emphasize is that we would be really sad if your takeaway from this workshop was like, "Ah, I'm going to just go create all this AI content that's actually just slop."
32:15Like I think the way that you really have to think about it and internalize it and believe because everything in content creation is very like wishy-washy and I can't concretely be like, "Do XYZ and your video will be really good."
32:27But I think the important thing that I I we both want to emphasize is that at the end of the day these tools, right, are just to help you
32:34so like automate away the things that are very tedious so that you can actually treat treat treat content creation like a craft and so that you can learn like
32:44constantly and improve.
32:46I think without these tools it's very hard to know like unless you spend a lot of time whether what you're doing is working or whether you want to are on a track to be like more successful.
32:54And so with scripting or ideating like you should be creating multiple different versions.
32:59Like the AIs should be helping you create these different versions that ultimately you are looking at.
33:03It should do the tedious work of like adding these captions and normally like the rotating objects like that would take you hours.
33:12And it's like you know you want to do it.
33:14You know you want rotating objects.
33:15Now you're like wasting hours doing it versus like the AI can do it for you.
33:18But at the end of the day like this is your craft and like this is your voice and you always have to be in the driver seat otherwise nobody is going to watch your content.
33:27100%.
33:27I think this like there's been like a lot of like philosophical questions have come up for us when it comes to like um what does like creation routine mean now when like AI can help us generate so many things and we guys we just showed you guys so many different like tools and processes and systems.
33:42But yeah like the one goal of it is to like get closer to like the thing we want to say and like our voice.
33:47And like I think the role of us now is like to think of like the big ideas.
33:53And treat these tools as like getting closer to help helping us to execute on those ideas.
34:00And like A honing in on like our taste you know reference references swipe file.
34:06B thinking about like the big ideas we want to create and like C like leveraging all the tools to create bigger things and better things now that we have better tools.
34:19A bit on our favorite equipment.
34:21So this is just sharing exactly what we use.
34:23Yeah starter pack.
34:25So I would not say my stuff is a starter pack.
34:27Not going to lie.
34:28I use the Sony FX3.
34:30Um I use so that's just Okay, it's a bit overkill.
34:35Give a price.
34:36Okay, my camera is like my most expensive purchase ever.
34:40It's like it's 2.5k for the body and it's about another 2.5k for the lens.
34:46It is my most expensive purchase.
34:48It is a cinematic camera that is like the creator camera that is actually like cinema grade.
34:54Like you can show it in theaters.
34:56So, it's a bit overkill.
34:57But before then, I had the cheapest camera.
34:59It was a $300 Canon EOS R50.
35:02But yeah, I use the Sony FX3.
35:04I use a tripod.
35:05Peak Design has carbon fiber tripods which is really good.
35:09It's very light, very strong.
35:11Photodiox Gobo for creating effects like a warm window effect.
35:16And mic mini is like $60 and it's for really good audio that you can use even for talking to agents on WhisperFlow.
35:23So, very helpful.
35:24Yeah, I think like Rode and DJI minis are probably the industry standard.
35:27They're both pretty cheap.
35:29Um, and then I think a good starter camera is the Sony ZV-1.
35:33I think it's probably around $500, but it's such a good investment.
35:36And I think most like YouTube vloggers like either default to this or like the Canon Mark like Mark II.
35:43But I think that's like no longer sold and everyone's switching to this one.
35:48And then as a very almost last slide, another creator who we both really respect, Matt Palmer, who was previously at Replit and is now at SpaceAct, who has hacks,
35:57does great like at home content and he actually published this really great resource that um, we've referenced a lot.
36:04Um, but this is like his starter pack and these are all like what you could do with an at home setup.
36:09If you wanted to invest a little money or if you wanted to build out a studio for your company, this is like a great great starter pack.
36:14And some of the stuff that we just talked about is also mentioned here.
36:21And yeah, thank you so much for listening to our talk.
36:25Um, I think we have a bit of time left.
36:27So, we have like 20 minutes to answer any questions you have and this is our account handles on our socials.
36:32Feel free to reach out.
36:33And if you want any credits, plans, just DM us.
36:37Yes.
36:38And feedback, especially like I have a personal interest in computer use, so please let me know what you think.
36:43Questions?
36:45So most of my stuff probably lives in Notion.
36:47Like I think you can actually be pretty unstructured with it and get away with it.
36:51Um, I think like my swipe file exists in Notion.
36:54All of my scripts exist in Notion.
36:55I have all of my scripts in one place, like all of my historic scripts in one place.
36:59And so, um, I have the Notion connector for ChatGPT and it just There's actually it's very There's actually like you don't have to overthink it.
37:10It will do it all for you.
37:12I do overthink it, but I also agree overthinking is never good.
37:15But I can also share a bit.
37:16Um, I used to use Notion a lot.
37:18I recently switched to ChatGPT space cuz it's just like very easy to like I think not need to go through the Notion connector, but I love the way Notion is designed.
37:27So it's like a give and take.
37:28Um, I'm like super like hyper control of like my process.
37:33I have like one skill for everything to do with operating Premiere.
37:37So like all of the best practices that I update with like the inefficiencies over time I care about, I have everything in there for like color grading, sound effects.
37:46I have a caption skill um and it's all grouped under like this Premiere skill bracket as like sub skills.
37:51Um, so every time I call upon Premiere I would it would be like, "Oh, like I see you're in the editing stage of the process and I see that your sound effects are done, but I see you don't have captions yet."
38:03So like it has like this process list of like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 to like 12.
38:08And it has like skills for each step and I'm constantly updating it over time.
38:13Like I'm constantly looking back at it, making sure it's readable cuz that skill's like the most important skill to me.
38:18Maybe I should like share that skill.
38:20Yeah.
38:21I think to me the ways that I would be most excited for Dots is probably one, I think with automation.
38:28So, in the sense of like it can be constantly monitoring like Twitter or LinkedIn at things that it's like oh, here's some inspo that's performing really well, here's a trending topic like in surfacing that and kind of looking at it constantly.
38:39And I think two, to the point of also monitoring how well your content is performing.
38:44I think something that can like regularly be like, okay, it's like constantly looking um this is like a comment that you should reply to.
38:52Here's this is like performing super super well, maybe you want to like here's like some wise, here's how you can learn from it.
38:59I think you should update your skills, that kind of thing.
39:02Yeah, this is really interesting to me.
39:04If any of you guys have Dots feedback, I would love to hear.
39:06Yeah, like the key thing about like Dots and Space is with Dots, it's proactive.
39:12Instead of like needing to run like a scheduled like task, which is like oh, check my content every like day.
39:19Um Dots is proactively being like, hey, this video is outperforming, it's like doing really well.
39:25Or like oh, like um did you forget to post that video?
39:27So, it's like proactive.
39:29It's like reminding you not at scheduled moments, but it feels like it's on the go just like um my favorite Dots task is like just tell me if there's anything that needs my immediate attention.
39:41And then like I just like don't look at other stuff and I'm like okay, like I'm just like checking my chat with Dots.
39:46It's like literally my own personal assistant.
39:49With Space, it's just like a way to be integrated with ChatGPT and all of your threads and all of your tasks.
39:55So, I've moved off Notion um even though I do still some things on Notion like the more creative stuff just because it can talk to chat very easily, you can spin off sub threads and like have it quickly update Space
40:06um and it's really easy to just like tell your agents MD like this is like my one-stop shop, like update these pages for these things and it's all in one place.
40:16Um I think the one thing that's really helpful for me is that I've actually like just fully set up the Twitter API and connected to it to chat GPT and then it can like pull data really easily.
40:26And so that's really helpful in terms of I think the biggest thing is that it's less so like maybe on your video script, but especially with your caption like the captions that I used to have versus now are like so different
40:39because it just really is like, okay, this type of hook is not working for this interview like for interviews like let's try out all these different styles and it can tell me like this performed really well, this didn't perform well.
40:50Um, I think a one nice thing to do it more apples to apples for example is if I like take a longer video and I have several cut downs
40:58and then I test different experiments with like the captions and things like that for the different videos and then like using the API can compare the engagement because then your base content is like more similar to each other.
41:08Mhm.
41:09Yeah, completely agree.
41:11I feel like the fastest way to like be a creator.
41:15Um, you probably have thoughts on this too.
41:17I will say that in terms of understanding the algorithm, the only thing I've really done is that Twitter actually open sources uh or like it's a public repo in terms of how their algorithm works
41:30and you can download it and or you can give it to chat GPT and have it like kind of help you talk you through some of the insights.
41:39And it talks about like the scoring and things like that for how the Twitter algorithm works.
41:43It's all public.
41:45We have a lot of our prompts out.
41:46I don't think any of our specific skills.
41:51But I also think it's very specific to you individually, right?
41:53Like you would use these prompts to create the skill, but like these skills are capturing my voice and I don't necessarily think that everyone here should write tweets in my voice.
42:02[laughter]
42:03I feel like it'll be cool to open source some stuff, but yeah, I I do Yeah, like framework, exactly.
42:09That's a good idea.
42:10Yeah.
42:11So, I think the way that I like to think about it for both videos and vlogs is that and I think a most people would agree is that um you would want it to help you do a lot of the preliminary research, but that at the end of the day like or the final product should be written
42:26by you and then you can use um a tool to kind of like clean up the grammar or like be very explicit that it should have make very little edits.
42:35I do think when you don't want to sound AI generated, some like really helpful things are like um you should use a lot of like metrics, numbers, examples.
42:46Um that kind of makes it feel more human.
42:49I think always actually being very personal with how you write, um a lot of anecdotes.
42:55There's like the really good um There's a lot of frameworks out there for how you can make content sound more personal actually.
43:02Um there's actually a whole science behind it and you can see There's like frameworks that like politicians will use for all of their speeches for how to make people feel really drawn in.
43:11Um so you can find things like that.
43:13Ooh.
43:14I That's interesting.
43:16I have to look into the frameworks.
43:18Um the question is like really good.
43:20I guess I'd like to add on a little bit onto like what Sarah's saying.
43:23I I feel like two other things that I would also really recommend, at least like as someone who's like found like success in kind of the more like Instagramy,
43:32like YouTubery, like more like normie ecosystem is like one like live in the real world, experience a lot of things, and like pay attention to the things that like draw you to them.
43:46I think people I think taste is a bit of an overused word, but I think everyone has like a personal POV in the way they live in the way they live their lives and experience different things.
43:55It is so important.
43:56You live more of real life and not try to like absorb things you see from the internet and think like, "Okay, I'm going to like adopt that mindset.
44:03I'm going to adopt this."
44:04Because it's going to prevent you from developing a very strong and unique POV.
44:08I really deeply believe the reason Sarah and I have succeeded in content creation is in part because we have had really strong POVs that we've cultivated over real experiences.
44:17And I the second thing to add on is just like treat yourself and think of yourself as a curator of your life and of experiences.
44:24And like be very like intentional about the things you choose to do.
44:27And I think that's a good framework to also approach content and anything you do in general.
44:32I think two more like kind of anecdotal things that I will say.
44:35I think earlier we had a great example of like I'm coming from this engineering background and then I'm trying to create content.
44:41I think like Tarik, if you're familiar, who is like a dev rel at Cloud Code, has this like really great thing that he likes to say which is like reaping and sewing.
44:51So one way to make really authentic content is like you don't just sit down and you're like I'm going to create content.
44:54Let me like something.
44:56It's like especially if you're an engineer, you're actually in a great position or you're a founder, you're in a great position because you've spent so much time doing the reaping already.
45:04And then the reaping, right, is like all the engineering work that you do is all the is like, you know, um all the code that you write, all the learnings that you've had like being really hands-on.
45:13And then that also helps you create really authentic content that's not like overly generic.
45:18Um and then the other anecdote that I will say is if you're familiar with um his name is like Tice Simonian who was an intern at OpenAI and he created a lot of the really great Astra demos like the robot
45:31um painting the Golden Gate Bridge or um kind of being able to fly over San Francisco etc. And like for him like a lot of his inspiration isn't like
45:43it's right it's like shower thoughts, it's like at random moments, but he himself is also like a very creative person.
45:49And he cites this like oh like he did this like um this like tech this video about his about like you just take pictures of your wardrobe and then it creates like an AI wardrobe and it makes it really easy for you to dress yourself.
46:01He was like "Yeah, like that just came because my sister's like really into fashion and she I was just talking to her about fashion and then that's how this idea came about."
46:09Um so I think it's like very, very underrated of like exiting this tech bubble and just like letting you actually follow your natural curiosities.
46:16I mean, I think my voice is my most prominent through video just because I'm such a visual person and it's just something that I really enjoy like curating and developing.
46:24Um secondarily it would be music.
46:26I think especially on like um platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok.
46:32Like the key thing that makes things go viral is alignment between music and visual and text.
46:36If everything is aligned, it will go viral.
46:39It's just very hard to make it all align, but I always to get closer to that alignment, I pick the music before I make
46:45mean to that um to have alignment?
46:47Like alignment.
46:48So for example, if you saw that like dancing dog video, like that yellow dancing dog video,
46:53Who's seen the yellow dancing dog video?
46:55Okay, like two people.
46:56Okay.
46:57I'm on some corner of internet, but it's to like Steve Lacy's song, like it's called playground and then there's like this yellow dancing dog and it immediately comes to mind because like the vibe of the dancing dog and that music
47:10and like the visuals it's overlaid on is so coherent.
47:13Like this particular group of creators on the internet, just cinematic creators, like all made videos because it was just so aligned, it was such a vibe, it was so resonant.
47:22Um it's hard to describe what it means, but just like when it all fits together, when it all goes together and it creates a vibe.
47:28So music and like visuals is my favorite, but I don't know if that's the same for you, Sarah.
47:32Um I feel like the way that I like to do it in my actual editing.
47:34Like so for me, where my videos are less about being cinematic and they're more so about like being educational or it's some like coding to it's like some technical tutorial
47:42or it's like explaining some engineering concept.
47:45Um I think most of it is in the script, like that's the most important thing for me and then everything else is kind of icing on the cake.
47:52Um and so that's why it's like to me I really like outsourcing.
47:54Like captions are super tedious.
47:57AI generated captions are always wrong.
47:59Uh Um, and so that is what's like taking me hours and I literally just have ChatGPT controlling CapCut on my desktop and they will fix all of the captions.
48:08Um, it will add all of the sound effects as well.
48:11Like, it I'm like, "These are my favorite ones.
48:13Like, add it so that whenever a video whenever an image pops up on the screen, you use this sound.
48:17Whenever you do a transition, you do this sound."
48:20Um, and then in terms of text animations, like I'm like, "I have like favorites."
48:24and I'll just like Um, any phrases that you want to really emphasize out of the caption, like have it just be like really big animated text on the screen.
48:32100% I think it's doable.
48:34Yeah.
48:34It depends on what kind of video you want though.
48:36Like, for like a creator who's a bit more hands-off, like, I want to talk and I want to like, you know, even during talking just be like, "Oh, I like that take."
48:44or like, "Cut that take."
48:45or be like, "Oh, I can like even stopping in the middle of the script to be like, "I want this image to go on the screen."
48:50I know like a creator like he's also at OpenAI, his name is like his name is Jason and he just like edited a full like 15-minute video like without
49:00just like in one shot through just a single video where you're talking in the middle of the video saying, "I want it to be edited like this."
49:07But, it depends on the control.
49:09If you want a lot of control, you cannot do it.
49:11If you don't mind relinquishing control, you can.
49:16Creative freedom.
49:17Okay.
49:18Creative control.
49:18Yeah.
49:20So, I think the way that I would think about it is like instead of it's just like, "Oh, this like category of content is doing really well."
49:25you like I think it's really helpful at I date at identifying frameworks.
49:31So, like for example, like I know a lot of people who do this, but they'll basically look on LinkedIn, especially cuz I think LinkedIn is such a like frameworks captions game.
49:39Um, and you can basically like, "These are all the ones that are performing well.
49:41Here's the framework.
49:42Now, here's how you like apply this to XYZ topic."
49:45So, but I agree with your point that like if you're just only looking at the best performing content and the best performing topics, you're like always slightly behind.
49:51Right.
49:51So, I would just think of it as a framework.
49:53At least that's how I do.
49:54it.
49:54I think the one Oh, sorry.
49:55Just to quickly add on.
49:56The one thing that could help maybe is outlier theory.
49:58So like there's sometimes like, you know, for example, a YouTube video that just completely outperforms.
50:02And it's just like that one of one on a channel.
50:05And maybe it's extremely different.
50:06Like for example, the like the tool I showed earlier for the YouTube research tool, it's specifically designed to find outliers.
50:13Like it has a slider that goes from like 1x to like 20x the normal like average views on that channel.
50:19And you can really see them doing some really interesting thing with a thumbnail especially.
50:23Lots of innovation with really cool thumbnails that go viral.
50:26Um but yeah, thinking about outlier theory is something I've asked ChatGPT to do explicitly.
50:31For going from like full-time to like now like part-time content creator but also at OpenAI.
50:38Like before, I would like transparently when you're self-employed and creation is your entire life and it's your first time doing it, you kind of have no boundaries.
50:46Like I was just working like day to night, but I really loved it cuz, you know, you're in the driver's seat of your own life.
50:52So it was like constantly all the time.
50:53No downtime.
50:55Um now that I'm at OpenAI, it's still like I'm always doing something, but I would say you know, I'm at work.
51:02And a lot of time is both like spent talking to a lot of users and thinking of like content on our profiles and I'm producing content for our profiles.
51:11And we're also like constantly like fixing bugs, talking with our users, like um relaying product feedback.
51:16That's just what our team does.
51:17And but I think I also get a lot of freedom to create for my personal audience.
51:22That's a part of the job.
51:23It's part of like being an advocate for developers who have just expanded not, you know, beyond the traditional devs.
51:29So I think my team also sees my own work as Oh, my own work as an extension of my role.
51:35So it's still like constantly and all the time, but I would say it's like part-time content creation is quite synergistic with my current work.
51:42So I think the most obvious thing is that now that we have all the rise of all these AI personal assistants, right?
51:47You're not only technically targeting a technical audience, but now you have all of this knowledge work audience.
51:52To me at least the most immediate like segment of this non-technical audience is like basically people who are non-technical but working in like a technical environment.
52:01So may it be like it's a tech company, it's an AI startup, but they're like in these non-technical roles.
52:07Um and I think that is also a nice thing for both of us where we are both have these technical backgrounds.
52:12We um but we spend so much time like for these consumer non-technical audiences that I think we're more allows us to cater to it a little more.
52:21Yeah, I completely agree.
52:23Like a year ago, like the the developers is traditional like dev, you know, background.
52:30I think right now um OpenAI, we have a very big interest in developers not being that just being that audience, but like expanding to basically everyone.
52:42I think that's who we want all developers to be, like everyone.
52:45Um and I I think we're like rethinking I mean I I I think we're rethinking a lot about what it means to be a developer, how we can speak to
52:55like a broad spectrum like of people along like especially you know, Silicon Valley is like pacing so fast and there's so much that's been released, but there's also like an education gap between,
53:06you know, different segments of people.
53:07So it's like an open problem, but we want developers to be everyone.