

Culture & Code
The Augmented City
The intersection of technology and creativity. We explore how evolving technologies allow us to tell better stories, expand our creative potential, and cut through the noise of discovery.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 7, 2024 • 8min
AI Meets Storytelling: Why Creative Pros Are the New AI Developers | Tech Innovation Series
Discover why creative professionals are at the forefront of AI development. In this first episode of our groundbreaking series, explore how storytelling shapes AGI and why the fusion of creative and technical skills will define the future of digital media. Essential listening for creators, developers, and innovation leaders.

Oct 30, 2024 • 19min
Digital Truth Crisis: AI, Elections, and the Battle for Reality
Explore how AI-powered misinformation is transforming global politics in 2024. From celebrity deepfakes to election manipulation, discover the tools and tactics behind digital deception. We examine real-world cases, reveal the psychology of belief, and provide practical strategies to combat false information. Learn why traditional fact-checking isn't enough and how societies can maintain truth in an era of artificial intelligence. Essential listening for anyone concerned about democracy in the digital age

Sep 12, 2024 • 38min
Responsible AI: Crafting the Future of Creative Content
This show features a conversation with Noelle Russell, a multi-award winning technologist and the founder and Chief AI Officer at the AI Leadership Institute. With a career that spans leading roles in tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Accenture and IBM, to name a few, Noelle has been at the forefront of A.I. innovation. She's built over 100 conversational A.I. applications that have millions of users and has worked on customer projects worth billions of dollars. Noelle and I will focus on the intersection of innovation and ethics for generative A.I. as it applies to creative marketing and media professionals. We're in this moment when I can craft amazing stories and accelerate creative design at blistering speed. And yet the world is simultaneously more vulnerable to deepfakes, misinformation, bias and the death of privacy. And so balancing innovation and ethics isn't some esoteric academic subject.

Aug 2, 2024 • 51min
Digital Hollywood's Virtual Humans: The Impact of Advanced Intelligence and Technology Panel
Virtual Humans: The Impact of Advanced Intelligence and Technology
The integration of advanced intelligence and technology into retail and consumer-facing experiences is revolutionizing the way we shop, interact with brands and their online support, and make purchasing decisions. As virtual humans and AI-powered systems become more sophisticated, they're transforming customer service, product recommendations, and even in-store navigation. This panel will explore the current state of the art in virtual human technology and its impact on the retail and complex online interaction, as well as examine future trends and challenges in this rapidly evolving field.

Jul 24, 2024 • 38min
The Rise of Digital Twins: Exploring the Virtual Human Economy
This show is a conversation with Natalie Monbiot was head of Strategy for Hour One, an AI avatar and synthetic video company based in Israel. Natalie focuses on synthetic media and the virtual human economy, in which real people create and profit from their digital selves. Natalie and I are going to explore the virtual human economy through the examples of AI twins made for business leaders like Reid Hoffman and Jensen Huang. We'll touch on how AI twins are poised to transform life, work, and play as people not only offload tasks onto them, but expand their possibilities with them. We'll drill into what the virtual human economy could mean for content creators, and where listeners can learn more about this burgeoning field.

Jul 17, 2024 • 40min
The Future of Visual Storytelling: AI Tools in Creative Collaboration
This show is a conversation with Jose Aragon, an international fashion photographer and AI artist based in Madrid, Spain. As his work has appeared in magazines like Elle, Vogue Italia, Vogue UK and Vogue Japan, and was most recently featured in Synthetix, Brazil's leading journal for art and artificial intelligence. Jose and I collaborated on a generative AI story project called the Naruto Whirlpools, which will make his public debut later in 2024. We'll draw a lot of this conversation from that experience, talking about how two people from different creative disciplines work together in the context of generative AI. We're coming together with different skills and mentalities, but with the common thread of using AI to do things we couldn't do before.

Jul 10, 2024 • 40min
From ChatGPT to Digital Clones: Exploring the AI Revolution in Art and Media
This show features Helen Todd, who focuses on AI and creativity. She's not just talking about the future. Helen Tod is building it via her podcast, newsletter and YouTube channel called Creativity Squared. In this show, Helen and I will explore why the nexus of creativity and AI is such a critical area to cover from both a professional and a social point of view. We'll drill into what people mean when they discuss creative uses of AI, including digital cloning, storytelling and the next iteration of the metaverse. So you put all that together, and you've got a spicy cocktail for talking about the future of creative work in an AI environment.

Jun 27, 2024 • 34min
AI, Storytelling, and Cybersecurity: Navigating the Future of Technology
This shows a conversation with Kate Baucherel, who is a speaker, author and consultant specializing in blockchain, crypto and emerging technologies. Kate has spoken at events across the world and online as a keynote, a panelist, a mentor and chair, and regularly appears on BBC radio and TV as a blockchain expert to provide straightforward commentary on news stories. Kate lectures at Teesside University in both the International Business School and the School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies.

Jun 20, 2024 • 31min
Storytelling with AI: Exploring the Future of Interactive Narratives
This is a conversation with Guy Gadney, of charisma AI, a company that enables rapid creation of story driven experiences with digital avatars for web, mobile and VR platforms. Charisma AI has collaborated with Hollywood studios, global brands and universities, delivering award winning campaigns and educational content built on their ethical AI technology stack. We'll dive into creativity and technology, the cutting edge work at charisma AI, and his views for the future of storytelling powered by AI.

Jun 13, 2024 • 32min
From Idea to Studio-Quality Audio: Unleashing Creativity with Oskar Serrander
This is a conversation with Oskar Serrander, a co-founder of Wondercraft.AI, an AI powered creative platform dedicated to audio. Wondercraft launched in 2024 to democratize audio
Oskar and I will explore the intersection of AI and audio through the lens of Wondercraft. We'll focus on the obstacles and opportunities that inspired his launch, and how AI helped make that dream become a reality. Then we'll move to the bigger picture, which is how AI audio will impact podcasting and other media sectors going forward. We'll wrap up by covering things that audio creators and publishers can do today to help thrive in that new environment.


