Latest / PropMedia Podcast / The Next Level of Property Media: Alok Gupta on Image-to-Video AI

Transcript

The Next Level of Property Media: Alok Gupta on Image-to-Video AI · PropMedia Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Prop Media Podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Maddie, and this is Moses.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're the co-founders of propmedia.com and pixelmob.com.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're here to talk about everything around property media.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maddie has had his caffeine today.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And today we are going to be talking with Aloke, who is the founder of Autoreal, which is a technology that takes photos and animates them into videos.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: His is set up in such a way that it's not like splicing in, it's actually creating an entire video out of the photos you might take from a general house shoot that you would do.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're interested in that kind of technology, tune in.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: We'll ask him some tough questions and see what he's doing in the industry.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we're excited to ask you a bunch of questions.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's been interesting to for the real estate photography industry, I think, to watch you guys grow.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Some good, some bad from different corners there.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: But we'd love to just rewind for a second.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have a bit of a unique origin story of getting into this space.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: So give me like the one two-minute version of how did you end up running a real estate media technology company?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Really kind of just stumbled and fell into this niche.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like most photographers I've actually talked to.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I come more so from the tech and product side.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Specifically, I used to work at Facebook and Snapchat as a product manager, as an engineering leader.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm living and breathing video and social media and even at Snapchat, a platform for private conversations, private photos, and social sharing, worked on some of the key technologies.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: I love the scare quotes, uh public profiles because you know they found that hey, people who are serious about growing their business and their brand, they need to do content that's visible for all.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then they even built their own uh TikTok competitor called Spotlight.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, video taking over the world at Facebook.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then at Snap, because I joined later, they were trying to play catch up and enable, you know, people to build their own brands and build an audience and meet their clients where they, you know, live today.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was a no-brainer.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it was clear that this was kind of taking over the world.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's no longer optional.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, I got very lucky, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Working at these companies, I ended up putting every dollar, nickel, penny I ever made into real estate.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so obviously, you know, we had a great bull run, the pandemic, uh tough time.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Pause there for just a second.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's weird for a Silicon Valley guy.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, everybody loves real estate, but what what drew you there?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Into investing in real estate?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems like most people are putting all their chips into their companies, like that kind of vein is more the vibe you get for that personality.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So just seems a little different.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, um, stumbled into it, uh, and honestly was very lucky and very privileged.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so my dad actually started investing in real estate in the Bay Area in 2010.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: So he worked for this company called.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Probably went pretty well for him.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: And VMware went public.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: We were suddenly no longer in this one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, California for 12 years.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: We got our first house, and this guy who worked for him basically told him, Hey, dude, you can go put your money in Chase, but Chase is gonna give you, you know, two pennies back every month.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you buy this 200k townhouse in San Jose, California, right?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: In San Jose, you can get 200 bucks cash flow.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that was like 200 bucks from real estate or two pennies from Chase.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go buy some townhouses.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So obviously, you know, the more you go into that, then you learn about the burst strategy, the buy, rehab, renovate, refinance.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so over time, I kind of grew up going with them to all these open houses, thinking it's silly, but then kind of understanding the value of leverage, the value of 30-year fixed loans and how real estate always keeps going up.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And immigrants, you want something concrete, something solid rather than these points and scores on fidelity.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you don't know where that's going, but like you can feel and touch a wall.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how when I started um, you know, making making my own income, um, you know, it was kind of like the route to go, which was wow, like this was obviously looking backwards.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, things have worked great, they're gonna keep going that way.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I put all my money into real estate.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I also read, uh, was a guy Kawasaki, Rich Dad, poor dad.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want the Porsche, you gotta make, you know, a thousand bucks cash flow, so then you can go and lease that Porsche afterwards.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a big car guy and uh plot twist, uh, or not plot twist, but I never got the Porsche.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: I never got the car.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I had spent it all in real estate, and then um, yeah, been just stuck with illiquid assets uh since then.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I spent a ton of time with agents growing up, uh, you know, uh as a teenager in three years, and then also just buying my own properties.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then I joined Snapchat to kind of try something new and leave the Bay Area.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and it ended up being a growth company.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: So Snapchat quadrupled after I joined.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was like, oh my God, like I can't deploy this capital fast enough.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let me go buy as much real estate as I can.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so I bought condos and Airbnbs in Palm Springs.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: I bought this place in Austin side and scene.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I just bought as much real estate as I could.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's how I kind of saw this gap between my day job, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Helping people with video.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then agents, well, even when I'm buying or selling, they can't market to sell their lives, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: To save their lives.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and so that's where I was like, all right, like I would love to build something to fill this gap for real estate agents, and then kind of found that real estate photographers and media companies are the marketing partners, the marketing allies for these agents.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And transparently, they help us get volume and distribution, yeah, very clear ROI and things like that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we were off to the races at that point.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So this is all 2023, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: When you're kind of like making this shift into your own startup with Autoreel.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's when we got started in 2023.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when I went home uh for Christmas, and my co-founder, CTO, uh, is my younger brother.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we were home for the holidays, kind of just brainstorming side projects, side hustle hustles to kind of get started with.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this was a no-brainer for both of us.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right, but 2023, I mean, that's three years ago.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, ChPT was a thing, all of I mean, everything existed in its kind of nascent form, but I mean there was no C dance, there was no I I mean, I wouldn't even think that your general image to video tech was good enough to start auto-reel back then.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about like like what were the problems you were solving way back then.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so back then AI was super nascent.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think Chat GPT 3 was the one that blew up, and I'm not sure if three was around, maybe we were on 2.5 and whatnot.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Around there, yeah.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, honestly had no idea what was gonna happen.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like it seems normal now.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Ski dance, cling, via, whatever.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: None of that existed back then.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: For us, we were actually using you know more traditional machine learning techniques, using replicate and things like that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the the outputs were way different as well.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: My own dad said this idea was silly and to not do it, actually, because I showed him, I was like, look at this, isn't it?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: As dads do.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's squinting, he's like, I don't see the the 3D, I don't see this depth that you're talking about.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I roast him now, looking back at I'm like, remember when you were my hater back then, laughing and saying you don't see shit.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And like, look at look at it now, like things have transformed and like we were just a little ahead of our times, I would say.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, we were kind of building the foundation because we were suspecting that obviously video is taking over the world, everyone is watching hours and hours of video content every day, and the implementation around how to build a video that was for us to figure out, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And whether it was machine learning, then switching over to AI.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I figured that all those things would get better over time.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I had no idea things would advance to this point, but that's how we kind of uh got started with this.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: We wanted to do something that was just better than the slideshows from property panorama and the likes, essentially.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: We want to come back to some things with copyright and licensing, but do you have any tech questions about the product itself or anything you want to dive into?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really interesting thing in in the media industry now.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have photos.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people have been shooting real estate for years and years, have this huge backlog of photos, and they a lot of people start out shooting photography and they think, oh man, I see people shooting videos, they're getting bigger uh budgets from their agents per house, um, higher average order values.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I better learn this video thing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're getting to a point now where you can take your photos, they're perfectly exposed.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can add great, you know, virtual staging, or you want to uh change the grass and all that stuff.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: That would be very hard to kind of get to the final product in your actual video.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Image to video is this kind of like this new untapped superpower, I think, um, for a photographer and even a media company that wants to be able to go and say, all right, I've I either I only know how to shoot photos or videos, I gotta go turn all the lights back on, make sure the doors are all set up and the meds back, and gotta go shoot it again, you know, and just make your rounds to the house.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a cool way to like reuse the media you've already created.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's not a huge skill gap to be able to go create something from an image and then go create videos from that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does it look like if in a media company to be able to go take this, you know, latent, already kind of like you already have the photos, and uh I want to go make videos from this.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: What does that actually look like?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: The more interesting is like, how do you plug it into the business?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's like the most common question that we kind of get.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's two answers to this.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: It really depends on where you are, you know, as far as your life cycle, as far as being a real estate photographer or being a real estate media company owner.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so for the real estate media company owners, they'll have teams of photographers and videographers.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but the challenge for them is that if they have, let's say, 15 photographers, um, you know, 10, 10 of them will be uh, you know, adequate with video, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And five won't know video or the other way around, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like there'll be only like 10 or 12 key photographers and three to five video guys.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so just operationally, it's hard to kind of schedule the right kind of videographer to the right shoot at the right time.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's hard for them to scale that just from a resource constraint, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, second is then kind of scheduling and actually going and shooting when there's bad weather.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: You have to go back and hope that it's not raining anymore.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to get a good quality video uh compared to a photo that you can turn into a video.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so for them, it's operations and scale-oriented as they're like, how do we bake this into more of our orders given this kind of Tetris game we're playing with our team of photographers, videographers, you know, um, and and shooting schedules that we have, right?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we scale that?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: What we actually see is, you know, they want to basically enable the image to video, these AI listing videos for the 80% of their orders that don't have any video today.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of people are nervous saying, hey, is this gonna put videographers out of business?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the smart ones are actually using this for the 80% of their clients that have no video today, almost like a gateway drug to immediately add money, uh like add revenue, add a new service line.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a simple, like you're seeing people adopt it as a simple add-on that maybe it's a realtor that you're not gonna, you're not gonna sell them a$500 video, but maybe you can sell them, I don't know, a handful of reels or something for$150 or$200.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And auto reel makes that really easy.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like add an upsell for clients who wouldn't do it before.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then for individual photographers, it's their time.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, hey, I don't want to sit down and shoot the video, edit all the video.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: I would rather just have this be, you know, one of our kind of key offerings that I can that I can kind of use to scale my business before I have to go and expand the team.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we see this both in both scenarios.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I see a lot of photographers or media company owners asking how do I price AI stuff, whether it's an AI photo edit or we're talking about uh image to video um like video cuts.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of them don't know what to do with it because as far as pricing, because I think it's man, it's relatively inexpensive.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh it used to be if you're doing like virtual staging, that that was$30 a photo in hard cost to outsource.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now you're doing it for four or five dollars, really, really inexpensively.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it's like a guilt thing, the value perception has changed for them, but they still could go sell that virtually staged photo for$50.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think they similarly, with a video like the an auto-reel might be a very small uh margin, but they could in theory could sell it for$150,$200, but they could also probably sell it for$20 and still get good margin.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious how you're what you're seeing as far as uh pricing recommendations or how to kind of handle this in a new a new world of uh automated editing.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh we've seen this offered a few ways, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think a la carte, 80 to 100 bucks a pop.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty easy.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a kid grabbing a Kit Kat on the way out, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: They already charge, let's say on average, 200 bucks for the for the photo.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: They might try to sell a thousand dollar video.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's a tough sell for most agents, but an$80 to$100 upsell is super easy.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: For the ones that have real estate media companies that are kind of a little bit larger and scaling, it's hard for them to offer these a la carte upsells and it just doesn't scale well.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: What we actually see them doing is they just charge more um within bundles and include this in their mid and high bundle.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: So the first one might be just the photos and floor plan, for example, and then the middle and higher end one will pack so much value, it's that grand slam offer that's just a no-brainer for most agents to pick up on the middle and the high tier.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then they also want to make sure that this is different enough from their core video offering so that high-end package has both this for social media, but that high quality cinematic agent walkthrough that they can sell for 500 to 1000.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: It does seem like people are being very protective of that idea of like the higher quality custom walkthrough, and not to not to poo-poo on that a lot.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like right now, I mean, if you stack up an auto reel production versus a high-quality cinema, like talented videographer, I mean, there's an obvious difference.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I I wonder how long that holds up.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I and some of what we're talking about is just psychology.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's just like, well, why is this worth this?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I only paid$20 to convert it, but well, I mean, why can't you sell it for$300 instead of a hundred bucks?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of this is how you describe it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was I was onboarding someone and like it was uh in inside of Pixel Mob, we have an AI Eclipse function for like professional photographers to use to create an upscaled um moving image.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't string them together like auto auto auto-reel.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of autos in the industry right now.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: We were first to the incorporation date.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was I was onboarding somebody with that product, and he was like, this is actually better.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he was pointing out like there's there are things that it does that you can't do with an actual lens, like with backlit spaces and and different, you can do different things with the technology than you could do just with your mirrorless camera, which I think is pretty interesting that it could actually create some of its own, not just an entry-level idea, but maybe also be incorporated into higher level products, um, at least in in some spaces in some ways.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have an HDR photo, which is a composite of three like you can't do normal video.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, normal exposures.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and right, if you were to capture that through a regular video camera, you would not get this high dynamic range video effect.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: You'd that that's nearly impossible to do with any kind of like off-the-shelf system.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and like there are people that literally do like motion controlled shots and then blend exposures.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um mostly I've seen it done as kind of like an experiment to see if you could do it, but it's like that's really one of the only practical ways to do that.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to do that where you take an already edited image and it lets you do all kinds of stuff.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Remove the awkward, you know, like um exercise bike in the background, you know, that's in the master bedroom or whatever.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like uh you can go through and edit the photo, make it look great first, and then go and do that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is that like people, you know, they go shoot the house and the listing photos look great, and then they see the video, and now it's you know, it all the editing tweaks you made before the virtually staged living room, now it's this big empty room, you know, when it gets the video.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a letdown in some in some instances, but some of the technology that you're creating and others, it it it kind of you could have a more unified listing.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have an empty listing that you did staging for, that you did, you fixed the pool so that it looks like it has water in it, like all the things that are easy now to do with um just basic image editing, you can translate those into videography now with these kinds of tools that you've never really been able to do in any kind of cost-effective way before.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't I I don't see a lot of people playing with the possibilities.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I see a lot of people doing what you're describing, like tack it on as like, oh, we want fries with that.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: But really, like I want truffle fries with that, like I want something unique to this medium of like how it works and how it can be better and different than what has always existed.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where like I want to see people pushing the technology, and I I don't I don't see a lot of people doing that yet.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we see only a smaller percentage doing it, but I was just speaking with a media company in Canada.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're selling these for 275 Canadian, and the way they're doing so, so that's like a buck fifty American or yeah, something like that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,$1.50, two bucks.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but two seven two hundred and seventy-five Canadian by basically sell selling them the truffle palm fries.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the twilight photos with virtual staging baked into the conversion and our video effects.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: We have these new viral video effects with like the twilights and time lapses and even people in the scenes.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: And now they're selling it for damn near$300, which is pretty insane.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the earlier examples that I'm seeing, but something I'm always trying to coach and train and enable, you know, our photographer clients out.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's pretty cool.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's that's cool to see that at least somewhere people are kind of pushing the envelope.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen some of the effects and stuff that you guys are pushing too, which I love to see.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where can that go?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be really cool.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the crazy thing is the worst it's gonna be, right?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm super excited to see what we're gonna come up with.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the the catchphrase of all of AI.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Today is the worst it's ever gonna be.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like what other industry does that?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I completely suck, but it's the worst it's ever gonna be.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Positive way to reframe it.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do think it I actually am excited generally by that concept, though.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are actually seeing things at in the very early stages of an industry that is already so promising.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is kind of the point in the conversation, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the I I think the we're seeing this transformative uh technology in it really is in its earliest stages, and we really don't know where it's going to go.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm kind of curious, you're kind of breaking ground and offering a solution like this.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see this evolve?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the technology change in um how it changes things in real estate and other kinds of media.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, real estate just tends to lag, you know, so much.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's like one in three, one and four listings have video today, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, let's go find out that 75, 80 percent kind of gap first.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like AI is great at just filling in the gap.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's like a great use case that didn't exist.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's like first and foremost, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I think the second thing is then not only showcasing just like these photo to video kind of listing videos, but also showcasing the agent, right?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, like rather than just bringing the property to life, bringing the agent to life.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's still early, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And we get feedback on this all the time.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Our most common use case is the video plus the voiceover narration because we do have the digital twin, the little AI avatar, but it's a little bit early.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: We get feedback.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, this doesn't look super real right now.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I I think without a doubt in my mind, right, in the next six to 12 months, that will become actually real, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: You can actually have a digital twin that didn't have to go put makeup on and drive two hours and do a dance on right, they spent that time with their family.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's the first thing, which is like actually becoming real to high enough fidelity where you can have the listing and agent, you know, come to life, um, and and therefore, again, give them more pieces of content that they can use for marketing, right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then to your to your point, you know, it's like how do you package and differentiate this from your real video?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually think, you know, paradoxically, all the marketing that we actually do, it's all real humans, actually.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like we think our like a competitive edge, a lot of the times just Stand out for ourselves is it's both AI content, but actually real organic content where people will come make mistakes because they're human and they're real people.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we think that like a blend of this is the way that you can go and fill in a hundred percent of the gaps when it comes to your marketing needs and things like that.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually our kind of use case.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And what we see some clients also doing is our videos, the the AI listening videos by Autobiel, that's purely just the meat and potatoes of the video.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: So the intro, the hook, and the outro call to action are actually real agent videos.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's actually another offering that some of these photographers will do is the agent kind of shows themselves in the beginning, maybe even walks into the home.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, meat and potatoes is the autobiel video, outro is the agent.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you kind of sandwich this together in something that feels a lot more real and showcases the real personality of the agent.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a good idea, actually.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you get you boost up your your average order value without having to spend as much time on on location.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um in a video like that would you could definitely go into that without any kind of uh messy conscience about like an AI generated video, like you're you're doing real production, yeah, but you're still getting the best of both worlds.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not not too shabby at all.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is that time to talk about a feature of Pixel Mob that you may or may not have used yet?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: This one's pretty cool.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: We worked on this for several months early in this year, and it's kind of one of those behind-the-scenes technologies that we're baking into everything at Pixel Mob.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is we we worked with C2PA to create a way to stamp all the images that flow through Pixel Mob with a particular digital fingerprint so that everything can be authenticated.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna keep working on that where it can carry more and more data of what is allowed to be done with the photo, how it was changed through Pixel Mob, all that stuff as it continues to evolve.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, one of the best applications for it is if you or a realtor that you work with is wanting to position themselves as ethical disclosing, like I'm the realtor you can trust.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you know that these images are real.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've built a disclosure tool.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's free to use where you can actually stamp it so it survives from the MLS to Zillow to Realtor.com or whatever, puts a little QR code in the bottom right and it links to the original image.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: So wherever that edited photo goes where it has been changed, you can actually get all the way back to the original image just by scanning the little QR code.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So a consumer is never led astray.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: So already in California and New York, there are these they're leading the way in requiring real estate agents to make sure these kinds of disclosures are baked in with actual legislation that's in the wild.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we've created a tool to make sure you stay ahead of that.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're in one of those states and you have to use this, or whether you're in the rest of the 48 states and it's still coming and that legislation is still working through your representatives and all that jazz.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is a real thing that's happening right now.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So check it out.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can stamp them for free on propmedia.com, or it's built into the backside of Pixel Mob.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: So check it out.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Disclosure is pretty cool in real estate.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Back to us.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let's um, all right, there's there's an elephant in the middle of the room, but we've we've seen it online.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to, so let's let's talk for a second and shoot the elephant of what you're what you're doing in converting photos into videos.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody who doesn't own the copyright to those images does that, that's a problem that I've seen blow up several places online where photographers have gotten pretty angry because the well, actually, let me make this even more pointed.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I saw an ad that I was I was whining to Maddie about for you guys on social somewhere.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it was basically encouraging people to take photos off of Zillow and then convert them into a video.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that that would technically violate a a good chunk of copyright law in the United States to take somebody else's media and then convert it into a derivative work.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious what you guys are doing.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is this like, are you are you really aware of this?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Did you get into this space?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're not as sure.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where where is this going?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of photographers are interested in the technology, but they're they also don't want stuff that they created to be ripped off and somebody else profit from it when it's it wasn't the their work to actually use.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe one other piece, and then I'll I'll let you you do your your um however you you guys are thinking about this.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is I was talking with some realtors.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was on a podcast with the National Association of Realtors on Tuesday, and a lot of the realtors have no idea.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like part of the podcast was talking with them about copyright and statutory penalties for ripping off photos and things like that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there were there was a string of comments in there where the realtors didn't have a clue.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got this like perfect storm of these photographers who are like, This is my media.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I own the copyright.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can't do that.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these realtors are kind of oblivious a lot of times.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, I thought I bought those photos.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have Autoreel who's taking the photos.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think legitimately, like the technology side is really cool.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's creating something new in the space.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: But then you got to navigate this whole little thing.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the floor is yours.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: What what are you guys thinking about this?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I think, you know, first and foremost, I think it's nothing new.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like this has existed for a while.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like agents would take the photos and and mark it online, but also use tools for staging themselves, right?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like they would use Zillow has their own tool for virtual staging.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think I might have even heard it's free.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: They do, yeah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's free, right?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, not like none of this is new.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, um, that's the first kind of thing around it, right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think second is, you know, the agents who, you know, to your point, when they work with the photographer to get the photos, right, they are basically using this for marketing purposes.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so to them, you know, this is just another marketing use case with the photos that, you know, they have uh, you know, or at least they thought they have the right to market, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so whether it's the virtual staging or creating the video out of it, as long as the agent has the right kind of legal contract and partnership with the photographer to market the property, that's I think that's totally fair game and nothing new, right?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: In our TOS, and we're probably gonna actually add a little check mark, also, is what we say is that when people come in and use our platform, they authorize that they have the rights and permissions to use the photos for marketing purposes, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think things get a little bit even hairier if the agents, for example, try to take this and make a buck off of it by reselling the videos, but that's that's not the case.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's just to market uh the the property that they're already trying to you know sell today.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: The other use case besides all of this um is that a lot of the agents will actually go and and legally partner with the photographer, or sometimes the partner has the photographer has to sell them the permission to do this.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes they the photographer that they might be very glad to give that derivative.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of photographers would be really glad to give that derivative license to a realtor to work with, but others wouldn't.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's exactly the case.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like some will either just do it because they'd rather have the recurring business than churn and lose a realtor who will go and find another photographer.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Others, in fact, we actually see the realtors after they check it out, they're like, honestly, I'm on the road, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to show open houses.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna give this tool to my photographer.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so they just they just enable the photographer back to sell it to them because admittedly, the tool, it is a monthly or annual subscription.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: You're you are signing up for a technology platform committing to something, and so that's just an easier pill to swallow for photographers who have an arsenal of tools that they subscribe to already.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of how we see it in a nutshell.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, like it's nothing new.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think you have to go and verify that you do have the kind of right uh permission to be able to use these photos for marketing purposes, and then make sure that you have a good understanding with your photographer that, like, you are marketing online, you might do the virtual staging yourself, or you might do the photo to video and figure out that kind of partnership with your photographer.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: But we're not trying to kind of steal any photos from online and reuse them in a way that the photographers had no idea it's it's it's happening, right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an unsolved problem, but it's one that's been unsolved from the past.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we might add that explicit check mark and confirmation that by proceeding to create this, I confirm that I have the you know rights and permissions to use this for marketing purposes.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that that sounds like it might be a great way to take a step in that direction to maybe push slightly harder.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was playing on your site, and it actually, like the main workflow of ingesting photos was I think it was a partnership with realtor.com.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Does that sound right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's find the listing on realtor.com and then you'll auto-ingest it into auto-real.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: That seems a little different than what you're saying, in terms of you're you're saying ideally, there's a photographer and they have an agreement with the realtor and they they make this collaborative thing together.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I would agree that's ideal.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're enabling people to just go on, and really, even the flow is designed to just grab a particular listing, maybe the last time it was listed, and then create a video out of it that's that seems to be very intentionally enabling a bypassing of that photographer relationship.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: We just have a few different ways to import the photos from different sources.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so for us, you know, we actually recommend uploading from your computer or Dropbox for best results.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: We showcase that in all of our kind of learning, training, and enablement.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we do have direct import in addition to your computer and Dropbox directly from realtor.com because we actually see it as just another source to go and get the photos in one click.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you're pointing it to a Dropbox directory or your already uploaded photos on Realtor, that's just a way to remove the friction and import the photos.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: But you're spot on in that, like we need to make sure we have the right partnership and contract between the realtor and the photographer that they have the right permission to do so.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for us, you know, adding that kind of final confirmation step that by importing these photos, regardless of the source, I confirm and authorize that I have the permissions to use these photos for marketing purposes, is kind of like how we think we can bridge the gap, at least through technology.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: But there is some behind-the-scenes kind of uh partnership that the agent and photographer need to do, regardless of which source that you're ingesting the photos from.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: For us, it's just a workflow thing to remove friction transparently.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and Maddie's even made that point to me.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I was when I was talking about the ad campaign, then I was like, this is a little stilted.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, his pointing out, like, I mean, we don't get mad at Photoshop for being used as a tool.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: You could use Photoshop to infringe all kinds of copyright, right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about whoever's doing it or selling it or whatever then it is using a tool to create something because there's a lot of legitimate uses for autoreel.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I as a photographer could use it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm I'm gonna play around with it this weekend to to try to create a video, just see what it see what it does.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like there's gonna be copyright isn't just gonna be solved by the technology, but I am encouraged to hear that you're at least thinking about it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping that maybe we can actually meet you in the middle with some of the stuff we're working on, with how um photos can actually have licenses baked into them and trace their provenance and things like that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you would know whether the photographer who took it allows it to be edited and made into a derivative work, or whether the license says it can't be done, which we're hoping to be able to add into the industry in a way that is positive for these kinds of relationships.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're in a weird spot where the technology is moving faster than the industry is, in that like we have these new capabilities and real estate in particular when it comes to media, is one of the most confusing when it comes to provenance and ownership.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and and from a realtor standpoint, and I mean photographers talk about this all the time.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, my how do I let my agents know like I own the copyright?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: But then also like the photographer is shooting someone's house, it's not their house, you know, like and they're gonna put those online.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: The there's it it's a very confusing stack of ownership.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who means what?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the MLS says that they own everything, and they just put a stamp on it and it's like we own it, and it's ours.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone else is like, no, you don't.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've got this layer layer upon layer of confusing ownership and who can use what, who can make derivative works, um, and everyone along the way feels enabled uh to go do whatever they want with it and entitled to that ownership.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't, and I actually don't begrudge anyone actually in this process.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's extremely confusing.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: The um I don't think there's a ton of malice in it, usually.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's usually ignorance.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It on all sides.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't even think there's a person or a entity that truly has the full picture on this whole thing.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's got a different uh everyone has a different use case for this media.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: In I mean, the thing was made to sell the house, obviously.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um the photographer was paid to go do the work.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so the realtor might naturally believe, like, well, those are my photos.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: I if I paid a carpenter to make me uh a table, well, I own the table.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's different than that?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so there's all these this there's confusing layers to that.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now we've got we're at a place, and we're a media company or uh a tech company just like you, and we edit like on our platform, it is there for editing um media.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, it is a confusing place to be, I think.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you want to give people the opportunities to do all the amazing, cool stuff that the technology can do.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there is a layer there that isn't it's not a new consideration, but it's like a an untouched consideration.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it's like an untalked about reality that sits behind it and and nobody nobody talks about until recently with the recent lawsuits and stuff like that.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: It started to become more oh, this is something we should actually solve.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think that I I think it's going to be a kind of a it's gonna be an ongoing confusing in thing until uh people get together and in and adopt a standard, essentially.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like there has to be an understanding around this stuff.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um so anyway, we it is kind of a hobby horse for us.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are definitely interested in in copyrights, and and I think that photographers, it's not just us, I think photographers are absolutely they're looking out for their opportunities to make money off of the work that they did, um and and are continuing to do.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, Moses is right.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's good that you have an eye are you know thinking about that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the more that with work like this that you're doing and we're doing, and I think other tech companies that that work in this space in editing uh can give an eye towards the photographers and think about their their position in this, the better we'll be as an industry.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a great point.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, we started getting this objection pretty much right after we launched.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was like the first thing I had to do was add a terms of service.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if people refuse to use the product, and I was I'm not a photographer, so I'm like researching all this and going down the rabbit hole.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then the only way we get we could get people to use it was once we updated our terms of service and made it very clear around, you know, the copyright, the permissioning, hey, we're not gonna also train on it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: How's the data stored used, archival retention, all those sort of things are very valid because like in the world of AI, everyone's scared that they're also gonna become a point of training data, right?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: Without authorizing it.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I think this kind of level of confusion will continue, but it's the first thing we heard.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and Moses, the the solution you proposed is beautiful.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: I actually hadn't thought about you know, some sort of digital fingerprint or thumbprint on the photo, but I think that solves this uh pretty well.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know I think Gemini has some sort of fingerprint or thumbprint on all its assets as well.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: So this is just you know a similar use case to validate authority.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: So does PixMob.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's that's one of the things we've been working on is we have that certificating authority.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually the same baked-in technology.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's only about there's 40-something companies that certificate in that capacity that traces the provenance of the image so you know it's real.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a pretty cool technology as it begins to proliferate into the public sphere.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're I'm pretty excited that like the world we live in right now, where every image is kind of presumed fake, I think that can be reversed.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like Google is baking this technology into its Pixel phone.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think you'll see a lot of the other mainstream phones start to do the same thing where you can actually know where a photo came from and how it was changed.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as you can do that, where you kind of roll it back in the internet to where did this come from, then suddenly you can kind of believe something that you saw online again.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like right now, you're like, you if you if you're unfortunate enough to log into social media and you see stuff, like my first question is like, is that is that real?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's real.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like this morning I was looking at a loan officer put up that I know, and then and she's great, but she put up this thing of her in like a leather jacket, and it's like obviously done with AI.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: I, or at least I think it was done with AI.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there's there's nothing wrong with that, but it's like this this question that never would have been in our heads three or four years ago is now like, how did that happen?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is that real?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a thing?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's I I'm excited about it that we can hopefully restore a measure of trustworthiness to data imagery over the upcoming years.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, 100%.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I know all those platforms are trying to enforce it, but you have to opt into it, right?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to opt into this AI.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: A Boy Scout system of like, is this AI or not?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I don't know, did they click it or not?
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: I I think once they have more of a standard of kind of applying that, and even to your point, some sort of git commit history of these photos, I think that would be super cool to validate the origin that it's that it's actually real.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe offline we can talk more about that because that'd be pretty cool.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Outside of the that whole conversation, like when we're doing you're doing an image to video, there's I I I know this is another thought that people that go through people's minds if they've not played around with this, or maybe they have played around with it, but that one of their objections is okay, well, it has to make up stuff, you know, like if the camera's moving from here to here, like and it starts to see around a corner or or around the cabinet or behind a chair.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it has to make all that stuff up, right?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I'm curious your thoughts about that, like in a real estate category where authenticity is a valuable thing.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: On on Pixima, we solve that with actual magic.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have a team of sorcerers who divine what is behind furniture all day, every day.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty it's an interesting department.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I enjoy them, yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, same action.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have a we have a thousand people.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wizards, excellent.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's what we can actually that that's our QC.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um no, um, Maddie, that's a great point, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, like that's one of the key reasons um that you know we kind of differentiate ourselves at this point, right?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: People say, hey, I could go to Brock Imagine, I could use Google Vio, I could go use Cling.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many different ways to kind of go and do this.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: And what you lose is all the guardrails, right?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: Around actually creating these in a way that's quality, but also, you know, safe and compliant.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so for us, you know, our moat that I think these days is actually the fact that, first of all, we're like seven to eight models now blended together.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: So first it depends on which kind of motion and movement that you select.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we actually route to different models for different use cases, all right.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: And also how we've trained some of the open source models that we worked with.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also we have a hallucination detection engine that actually runs.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: So just like a lot of people are kind of discovering these days, it's called like the Ralph loop, basically, like you might see with Cloud Code or whatever to go validate.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: We actually run a layer of validation quality check loops until we validate that there's no actual glitches and artifacts.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, it drives our cost higher in scenarios where we detect that.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yes, sometimes it's confusing actually for customers because ultimately, you know, if we detect it a certain number of times, we force the motion actually into a into a zoom in or a dolly in and a dolly out, right?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you took the photo from a certain kind of uh point or frame of reference, right, and you're just gonna choose like a orbit left or orbit right, and there's no way we can do that.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: Our validation and quality check loop is after a few number of attempts, it's gonna be like, well, that's just not possible with this scene.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And we actually, even though you selected that, you're gonna get back a zoom in or zoom out with some sort of disclaimer or some sort of notice saying, hey, we did this for actually for quality and compliance reasons, even though that's not what you originally selected.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the downsides.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like the technology is so early and evolving, like you can't get all the crazy camera motions and expect that it's gonna be picture pixel perfect quality every single time, but like that's the cost of being on the cutting edge of AI today.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the trade-offs.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there's it's funny in some regard, like it doesn't matter if AI is doing this kind of editing or if it's a human, you know.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you remove a trash can out of an aerial shot, you don't know what's behind that.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're gonna be painting it in.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're doing object removal, removing a couch, and a human is doing it on pixel mob or your editor, you know, where however you're gonna do it, or you're gonna do it yourself, like you don't actually know what's behind it.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be painting it in.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: So barring a team of wizards, it doesn't matter if it's a human or uh AI.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: You just you don't know, but but it's really important.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think people realize that and they disclose it and all those things because the fact that an outlet is or isn't there, the fact that the pool is or isn't out the window, the things that could easily be erased, they do actually.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it matters for the sale of the house.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the bigger the thing obscured, the more relevant it is to the real estate.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's something as the technology evolves.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, there's more and more guardrails that help keep the fidelity and the reality of what the images are, where consumers and home buyers can get the information they need and not be driving four hours across Los Angeles to see a home that was digitally rendered and they had no idea and they walk into a shell or you know all the horror stories that you hear.
• 44:31
  unknown: Yep.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: No, for us, like quality and and and the quality of that output is the highest priority.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: And transparently, that's why we don't have you know 30 different camera motions.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: We also don't have this newer trend also where you can make it feel like a full-on walkthrough video by basically stitching, you know, frame by frame.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't do that right, um, you're gonna notice hallucination.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna make up doors, transitions, things like that.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: When you have the frame one, frame two, frame three, frame four, it's gonna make things up.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I get feedback and pushback from people every day around that.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I just gotta say, like, we can't do that in a way that we feel comfortable releasing the quality videos at the scale that we do in a way that would, you know, satisfy the quality checks and the you know regulatory compliance requirements that we see around this.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to put my hands up in that use case, at least at this point of time.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's a tough uh needle to thread when you're an editing company of any kind within the real estate industry, um, because you have kind of a you have an eye towards we need to still maintain authenticity, but still give creative control to the creators ultimately.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh they want to be able to do, you know, and I know that you guys do are starting to get into some of this stuff with the cool AI effects of text drops or you know, reveals of the house and all that kind of stuff.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, you want to be able to provide those tools without caveat, you know, like you're a creator, here's a tool, and we're giving you the best ways to do that.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then you're also, you know, and we feel this very deeply that that uh you also want to keep a foot in reality within the real estate industry that like we're not just putting out stuff that is gonna wildly misrepresent a property.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you're doing some small smart measures, keeping some limits on the camera moves and stuff like that.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, and it's really easy to do uh camera push in, but it starts you start to do a camera pull back, all of a sudden it's making up everything outside of the original frame.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to be creative about how you you know, you start closer in and then you move out, you know, like stuff like that.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you you just have to think about that kind of stuff differently.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or just reverse it.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, and then the fire, the fire then moves backwards, then right, right.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ceiling plane starts spinning backwards, yeah.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: The waves are swimming backwards, yeah.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: All that yeah, yeah.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: 100% your time turner, and you probably make a horror crux when you're doing that too.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, Alok, it was a pleasure.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for answering some tougher questions.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they're helpful to people in the industry as people get to know you as a young company, and hopefully things can be forged in a way that there's a great ecosystem of technology around property media for a long time to come.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: So no, absolutely.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you soon.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is awesome.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: See ya.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: My caffeine is not caffeine.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: You were just really spunky in that, yeah.