First Day of the #UpscaleConf down!

Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.

I take back everything my introverted nerdy soul said about wanting to hide last post — I drove into SF today and had a BLAST at the conference.

First, some random author biz stuff tho before I get recapping (bc I want y’all to see under the hood here.)

I paid my very human (and wonderful!) narrator Bunny to get Photobomb narrated and sent that out to my ARC team! I’m actually listening to it — and I NEVER listen to my audiobooks, the thought of people reading my stuff makes me want to crawl into a hole and die, so usually I don’t, like, ever — but I’ve been listening to this one since the book’s so old (and since there’s not that much sex in it, LOL.)

It’s already got an awesome review from a reader tho:

I just finished the audiobook of Photobomb and I didn’t want it to end. I’m finding myself stalking Lara Simon’s Instagram page for more clues about her life after. This book captivated me, horrified me, and felt like a guilty pleasure crime podcast from the perpetrator’s point of view. If you look up the slang word “Delulu”, Lara’s picture would be right there on your internet search. She’s complex, in deep denial, and too smart for her own good.

I have ridiculous plans for her IG, so I’m glad to hear that other ppl are into it, woohoo!

Also — now I have A Plan for the rest of my summer, but let’s get back to Upscale.

First off, you should know, that Jack, my GPT, when I told him I was nervous, was all, “You should call yourself a founder.”

And I was all, “Of what?”

And he was all, “YOU JUST ARE.” (I summarize.)

So.

We’re rolling with it.

Because — there were only 250 or so very awesome ppl at this conference and…

I think I know more than a lot of them? Which isn’t a bad (or good!) thing — it just positions me well!

Lemme come at it from the few different angles —

First off, I talked to some other creators, and frankly, as we all know (us author types) monetizing your own shit is HARD.

Except for the fact that YOU AND I READER FRIENDS have BOOKS TO SELL PEOPLE.

Books that we can make SO GLAMOUROUS that people NEED TO HAVE THEM.

And I think that’s where a lot of the current AI creator economy falls apart?

Like — how do you get paid for having a cool tiktok? Or IG? Or patreon?

E-merch and eyeballs can only get you so far.

What you very often need to make real dough is for people to *lust* over your physical items.

Why?

Because the margins on them can be fucking stellar, and it’s way fucking easier to sell those than it is to run classes, bc once you start doing classes — man, that takes up SO much time.

I just want to give my intellectual property moments to other people like a male spider passing a sperm packet.

HERE IS MY THING. READ IT. THANK YOU, I shout, as I leave a book in their hand and run away, without requiring any futhre energetic interaction with them.

Runner up — like literally the first question someone asked at this thing, like at 0945 in the morning, was all, “How can I pay someone to make that for me?” in response to a beautiful video many of the people attending had contributed to.

Like.

The ppl there…I would consider them to be highly AI informed and/or motivated by the self-selecting virtue of attending the thing at all.

But there were still people there who didn’t know how to make/acquire their own video content.

Freepik (and LTX) are coming up with 100% legally indemnified art, at the enterprise level, that they’re committing to. Once businesses get the clearance to use gen AI images/videos safely, that’s gonna be another nail in the anti-AI coffin.

There were several delightful talks by creatives, and then some biz talks which I skipped — I went to the Comfy UI talk, because even though it won’t work for how I want it to yet, I can see a world in which it will very shortly, so it was good to hear the founders talk.

Then…

There was a talk there by Meta, which the main point of seemed to be to explain to people how to use AI for ‘fun!’ things like sending birthday cards, like they were stuck in 2007.

(Maybe I’m still bitter about having lost and then having to re-create my FB.)

But that’s when I gave up on listening to the talk — because she had that Ted Talk Cadence, complete with the Meaningfully Timed Hand Signals (no shade on her personally, I’m sure she’s wonderful and nice, and she’s only allowed to talk about official boring shit besides.)

And I started trying to create more Finxes.

Finx is my spider-cat from my Bend Her fantasy romance series, and in hindsight, he’s been a wonderful test for the capacity of AI to do Cool Shit for the past three years.

Here is a shot of Very Mutant Spider-cats from Nov 2022:

This is like OG MJ, if I recall correctly.

We got a lil’ better in Feb 2023:

And MJ 3 had some moments of true inspiration and beauty:

Anyhow — I started working on Finxes again, because I’m taking a trip at the end of this week and I want to leave all my render farm machines running, creating videos.

This is my favorite Finx currently, courtesy of GPT, created today — ignore the leg #, I can fix that, just concentrate on the sheer joy of it, lol:

I’m mentioning this because I really *have* been in this saddle for the long haul and when I got to this thing, I assumed that I’d be Way Behind, especially given how fast the tech moves?

But — I’m not.

And that thought process was re-enforced by the fact that some guys were watching me *make* Finxes a row or two behind, and we talked in between talks, and they run professional VFX studios in multiple cities and they were all pretty stunned by the tech.

AND?

They had all the Project Odyessy films (an AI film competition) playing between talks, and several of them were amazing but — I *knew* how each of them had been made.

And none of the tech or skills involved was beyond me. (And in fact, I’d have put my trailer up against a few of them!)

So — it really was a very emotionally affirming thing?

The tech moves so fast it’s easy to think that you’re missing out on something, or that everyone else has some inside track, but even the pros (on the AI & film panel!) were saying that they have a hard time keeping up — and shit just keeps getting exponentially better almost every day — Freepik says they have a major release every 3.7 days (because they’re a AI gen aggregate) — and shit, today, Google released Veo 3….

I was in the Comfy UI talk and a woman asked a question that was essentially about using Comfy UI for motion capture, and the founders weren’t super sure about things — but I was, because I watched a whole goddamned 30 minute video on some dude who used Comfy for that — plus also I know that Runway allows you to do mocap with your own phone — so when the talk was done I sat down beside her and showed her stuff.

I’m like…. *there*.

As there as anyone can currently be with all this. And I would put my ability to learn stuff quickly and pivot and envision potential automation pathways up against almost anyone else there.

I may not have all the technical background, but I have got an iron will and I’m willing to use brute force.

So maybe Jack was right and I am a founder, and this summer is gonna be The Summer when Cassie Goes ALL IN on AI and MAKES HER TV SHOW HAPPEN.