Creative AI Revolution: Bridging Technology and Entertainment in Tinseltown

C&C Interview Terrazas 

John Gauntt [00:00:06] This is Culture and Code, a podcast about Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. I’m John Gauntt. Culture & Code explores innovation across storytelling, technology and audiences to help professional creators collaborate better with AI and each other. Support this podcast by subscribing to our newsletter. Visit our website Culture & Code.io. This show is a conversation with Todd Terrazas, who is the founder of FBRC.ai and president of AILA. FBRC.ai is a venture studio that brings together academia, tech and the entertainment industry to create the future of content centered on A.I. supported workflows, tools and creative IP. AILA is a nonprofit organization supporting R&D, ethics and public education about artificial intelligence and frontier technologies through media, events and workforce development for Greater Los Angeles.

John Gauntt [00:01:03] Now, in this show, Todd and I will talk about two events from October 2024. The first event is the Culver Cup, which was a generative AI film competition that chose 50 top A.I. creators to push storytelling and craft to the next level by using generative AI workflows and tools. The second event was the Cerebral Beach AI Hackathon, which helped kicked off L.A. Tech Week 2024. Hackers from across the country gathered in Santa Monica to prototype the future of AI powered services in a thrilling but exhausting 24 hours. Now, full disclosure The Culture and Code podcast participated in both events as a creator and a hacker. So Todd Terrazas, thank you so much for joining us today.

Todd Terrazas [00:01:46] Thank you so much for having me.

John Gauntt [00:01:48] Let’s start with you and how you launched both FBRC and AILA. What is it specifically about artificial intelligence that grabbed you so much as an individual that you put in the work to stand up these organizations?

Todd Terrazas [00:02:02] I’ll start with AILA because it’s what I started first. So back in 2015, I was attempting to build, I partnered with IBM Watson to build a 911 operator. So I pitched them. They got really excited. And so me and my CTO spent seven months trying to work with their platform to build such a thing. Basically providing that you can scale software better than you can scale humans, right? And so we thought, why not try to focus on scaling 911 operators? That can help people save people’s lives. But we were too early. And so the technology really wasn’t there. I call it vaporware back in the 2015, same time period. So back in 2016, it was interesting how Facebook was opening up their Messenger API so that you could build chat bots for customer service and marketing for small businesses. So we jumped on that bandwagon that super early and started building custom bots, chat bots that were all decision tree based, right. So not like what you have today with large language models and the be able to use RAG. But there’s all this decision tree is with word bags. But it’s pretty exciting. So we did that for a while wasn’t a sustainable business, so the company didn’t really work out. But I had a meetup group called the L.A. Chat Bot Meetup group building community around other people, building chat bots. And so when the startup didn’t really fully work out I decided to turn the Meetup group into AlLA, rebranded to AILA, developed into a nonprofit and really wanted to focus on public education and awareness around how AI impacts our personal and professional lives. And so pretty much for the last eight years, we’ve been doing regular convenings, everything from mixers to content driven events that could be held discussions, summits, symposia, hackathons to help, you know, get people going with the innovation. And then leaning into more workforce development the last two years to really, you know, again, help people across all industries and all walks of life really get to know this technology. Of course, the last two years, we’ve had a huge uptick in interest in what we do.

John Gauntt [00:03:58] Well when a lot of people think of Southern California like, okay, that’s where they make movies. Not realizing is that it’s already a very densely packed technology corridor. So along with Media and Entertainment, what were some what are some main industries or industry sectors that are represented by the community at AILA?

John Gauntt [00:04:16] Yeah, definitely. Health care and biotech is a big one for us. There’s a huge interest. And across Los Angeles, really across Southern California, a lot of biotech. There’s a lot more investment in biotech than these recent years. So that’s always been a big interest. You know, how can we solve cancer and a number of different, you know, diseases utilizing emerging technologies like AI. Also defense tech, deep tech is a huge thing. So we’re there’s a lot of robotics companies out here. There’s a lot of manufacturing type companies that are thinking about efficiencies of using robots and AI for developing better products. And then, of course, media & entertainment is a big one, a lot of consumer products, a lot of consumer tech is here. Los Angeles, given that we have a lot of celebrities and a lot of, you know, influencers that live here. So health and wellness is a big angle as well. But of course, media & entertainment is huge and gaming is a big industry here in Los Angeles.

John Gauntt [00:05:10] Now, with that that last category, media & entertainment plus gaming, that was the nucleus around which you built FBRC?

Todd Terrazas [00:05:18] Yeah, exactly. So my background. I went film school at USC, worked in production for a few years after college before getting into the tech startup I talked about before. And it was funny because I’ve been building this community around AI as a non-technical person that just is really good at bringing people together and knocking on doors or creating my own doors when necessary. And so I always knew that I really wanted to get back into the creative and creative parts of life. The pandemic is really what showed me that that pathway. And so two years ago, I went back to a friend of mine, Rachel Joy Victor, who I knew through the VR, the VR industry community, and then also through just volunteering through AILA and said, Hey, I really want to start this new type of company. It’s something to do with, you know, new technology and storytelling and do you want to be a part of it. And but even that most basic, you know, expression, she was like, Heck, yes. And so we started working on it. In the early iteration, it was called the AI creative Collective. So we always knew we were thinking about building like a creative collective of people that were using AI and other emerging technologies to tell stories. And we knew would need a better name than the stack because there already was another AICC out there. And so the acronym wasn’t going to work in our favor. And so one day it was just like one of those shower moments where I thought of “fabric” and, and that was the new name of the company.

John Gauntt [00:06:39] How would you describe those initial communities? Where are they being drawn from?

Todd Terrazas [00:06:43] Yes. It’s interesting. I feel like I’m in such a weird 1% of the world where everyone’s talking about AI and mostly around the benefits and the positivity around it. Right. But then I slip out of those bubbles and then you hear all the noise and the discomforts about how it can take jobs and how is the biggest heist of the century. And they know copyright concerns and all these things which are very valid. But it’s very interesting that I live in a very bubble. In a bubble, right? And sometimes I hate that because I hate always being around yes people. Right? I want to hear people give me conflicts about like, how they use these technologies. So I feel like for me, how we really have a genesis of all of this is centered around people that are very positive of knowing that there’s just the next transformation in this industry around developing content. The studio system and the entertainment industry already was pretty broken, and it’s the pandemic and the writers strikes in the in the strikes in general that’s really helped kind of uncover or showcase those highlight those cracks. And so AI steps in, you know, about two years ago and now it’s like the new new villain because it’s like people have to point somewhere to, you know, the scapegoat. And it’s really interesting that because I feel like AI has an opportunity once we figure out the copyright issues and a lot of ethical considerations, as could be a savior to Hollywood, be a savior to the entertainment industry, or now you can hopefully be able to do things more efficiently, be able to tell stories and other and new means that probably were otherwise not possible. Right. So it’s interesting seeing like the type of people that we bring together are everything from the traditional storyteller who has a crazy idea in their head that wants to show it to the world, to the technologists who sees everything you know, has a hammer and sees everything as a nail and is trying to teach the entertainment industry that, you know, how their technology could be used in a could be used as a meaningful way. And sometimes those those two worlds clash because knowing, you know, one that’s been set in their old ways wants to be told what to do, right?

John Gauntt [00:08:46] So let’s now make this more concrete in the sense of the  Culver Cup and an actual project. So Culver Cup, surprisingly, when we’re talking about how everything’s changing, took place in a very traditional spot, which was Culver City, California, in a large theater. So can you walk me through some of the genesis behind that project and how you engage some of the first sponsors who helped make that real?

Todd Terrazas [00:09:11] So it was interesting because we’ve been talking to AWS Startups for a while, and then they came to us with this big idea that they want to do a competition of some sort, a film type of competition during the L.A. Tech week. And so we came on board to support them and help design it and execute it with their amazing team. And so during that process, you know, me and Rachel really nailed down exactly how we were going to build it. And so because we also produced AI in the Lot wearing my AILA hat we already knew David Slade, who is the director of Bandersnatch, and, you know, a number of other amazing Hard Candy and a number of other amazing films and shows. And so we went to him and said, Hey, would you like to help us with some creative direction on this crazy new type of competition? And he said yes, immediately. And so a friend of ours, Mike Goya, I actually sat down with him for an hour and a half and helped us kind of nail down the meat and potatoes of what this creative direction would be. And what we came up with was this idea of liminal spaces, right? And so through that, through that creative direction, we went out to the market and tried to look for 3D assets. So we knew we wanted to focus on using 3D assets, something different than other than any other competition that existed before. Most competitions that we’ve been part of, even ones I produce are all stems from utilizing image generation type platforms like Midjourney, animating those photos and stitching them together to create a motion picture or make a short film. Right. And we want to do something a little bit different and stretch the bounds of creativity using 3D assets of the 3D world. And so we went to our friends over at Global Objects who had this really cool diner diner set that they already had digitized. And they were really gracious to allow us to license that for free for this competition. So not only do we have a now David Slade with a creative treatment, we had a 3D asset. Basically the set that you had to use. We also, through AWS Startups partnership with Luma AI. We had Luma AI as a partner and then one of our portfolio companies, Playbook 3D, was a partner where you would ingest that 3D model, be able to set up your virtual cameras and you would do style transfer on the assets to be able to demonstrate this, you know, short story that was under five minutes, that of beginning, middle and end. And so it was it was interesting, you know, quick iteration or process was like any type of creative project to build this. It started from like a vanilla level of a competition. And then once we were through as a full sundae with the cherry on top.

John Gauntt [00:11:42] So let’s talk now about what were some of the final results. You invited 50, 50 creators and narrowed it down to a elite eight, which then you used kind of a March Madness type of bracket system. Can you give us some color on that?

Todd Terrazas [00:12:01] Yeah. So the bracket system was pretty interesting because we knew we wanted this to be a competition, given that the branding was Culver Cup. And so we thought a bracket system would be pretty appropriate. And so as we said, right, we had 50 artists that were selected out of a ton of hundreds of different applications whittled down to the top eight Elite Eight. And then during the actual show on October 14th, right during LA Tech Week, we went through those. We showcase all eight films. And then we had live judging. We had a panel of judges plus we allowed for audience participation. And through that right, really down to the top four. But that whole process there was it was interesting because accomplishing that live was none of us had done before. And so I can tell you that behind the scenes it was just us figuring out leading up to that day of event, which what I thought went really well. So for me, having sleep deprivation from the hackathons before, I thought we did a really great job of actually executing on that vision, of being able to have a live, a live showcase and then also judging. And so it was something that we were we’re thinking about how we’re going to do it differently next year.

John Gauntt [00:13:11] To turn now to the Cerebral Beach hackathon, which was in Santa Monica at 1217 Second Avenue. Let’s first just give a basic summary of what the what the event was about and also talk more about some of the hacker population, because I was one of it as a rather, how should I say, more mature hacker if there’s such a thing. And there were at the same time a bunch of different universities being represented.

Todd Terrazas [00:13:39] Yeah, we have well over a thousand applications we had at the other day. We had 405 hackers actually participate. We had 92 projects submitted. Within 24 hours, we scored 56% of that 405 were students. We drink 16 over 1600 Red Bulls in that 24 hour period, which is pretty nuts. And we had 31 schools, 31 schools and 120 companies represented there. And so it was nuts because the genesis of that hackathon was me having a conversation with a friend of a friend of mine who’s an executive at Red Bull, and we were at this. We’ve always wanted to do something together and never, never really panned out. And I was like, What if we did the largest hackathon ever? Like? And he was like, I’m in! And then that got me this. That’s all I needed. I see someone that said yes to allow me to go ask for more yeses from other people, right? And so it started off with that, that we were into the world’s largest hackathon, figured out once we were pitching that the people that Google had already done it in July in London for about 1000, 1160 people. So we knew, okay, if we got 1200 people, we would we would beat that Google record. And so we got this like, you know, a lot of people moving, my God, what could we do that we thought we were going to do it inside of an aircraft hangar in Santa Monica that didn’t fully pan out. And so then we got this beautiful property in Santa Monica, 1217 Second Street that, you know, we host this hackathon app and we weren’t able to do the world’s largest because it was a would have been a huge feat for us to do that. But we were still able to do LA’s largest generative A.I. hackathon, which is pretty impressive in itself. And so for us it was funny how it started off with like shooting for the moon, right? We’re only the world’s largest. So then, you know, what we can still do is do L.A. slash Southern California’s largest iPhone and totally I can go to sleep at night feeling great.

John Gauntt [00:15:36] So in that sense, I want to kind of now turn using Culver Club and Cerebral Beach as examples of how to develop talent and also get people collaborating to make A.I. better. What do you find about the hackathon format and a film competition format that you think is very useful for spreading AI expertise in an ethical and effective way? And then what are some potentially other structures that we might try?

Todd Terrazas [00:16:06] Yeah, I mean, for the filmmaking one, it’s it’s more obviously catering to creatives, using technology. Right. To get a final product with them that use the restricted time period. Right. And then obviously the hackathons about it focus on your technical and you’re utilizing the APIs and getting more on under, you know, writing code to actually build something that could be supporting your your the problem that you’re trying to solve. So for you, of course, it was, you know, building a trailer for the horror film. And it’s interesting where mashing them together, I think is very is very crucial. Or it is like like for stuff that we do at FBRC, everything that we’re building is about building technology that supports the creative. And so when we’re building our custom tool sets and everything for clients, it’s all about how is this supporting the IP, how is this supporting the creative process that within that, within that studio. And so I think that having these types of, you know, time restricted processes are very crucial so that you, you just go in quick short sprints right home and through doing those sort of sprints, hopefully you’re going to see a quick quick yeses or nos. Right. What’s working, what’s not working, the move on. Right. Because you do have enough time to be able to constantly be burning the candle. So it’s about like, how are you going to be able to prototype something, see how it works and if it doesn’t, or you learn something from that process, right? That then allows you to then build towards the bigger project, the bigger product, maybe. And so I think that there is some type of hybrid model where you’re going to have a filmmaking hackathon along with a technical type of hackathon in concert. Maybe that could be pretty impressive, especially working with companies like Twelve Labs, where to your point, right, is like be able to have semantic search on video is, is so new. I mean, right now Amazon Prime just opened up a new product for their X-Ray where while you’re watching a show, you can actually ask the X-Ray Okay, what did I miss? So then actually summarizes based off where you are on the timeline, exactly what happened. Without giving away any spoilers and then allowing you to continue on and you’re going to start seeing this not just for traditional TV, you see this sorry for like for scripted TV or anything. You see there’s a lot more in sports and live content. So you walk into, you know, a sports game, baseball, whatever it is, and you’ll be able to ask, okay, what just happened? And I’ll give you a quick summary and maybe gives you a biased summary because you’re a Dodgers fan, not a Yankees fan or whatever. Right? And you’re gonna start seeing more and more of that type of technology being used at least be really interesting to see how that’s being used for not just developing trailers, but maybe like developing real time TV shows. Like there’s certain companies that for sure are going to be building out these like new Generative AI first social platforms where you and your friends are going to be creating content together. And and yeah, I think it’s will be pretty exciting to see again how people think about these technologies in a new in a new way with new formats in mind.

John Gauntt [00:19:14] So if you’re looking especially for your charter of workforce development for Greater L.A. in your mind, what do you think? You know, in 2030, 2035, an AI creative professional would look like in the sense of what skills are they bringing, what type of personality traits are they displaying?

Todd Terrazas [00:19:37] It’s funny. I was talking with someone about this earlier about so Ridley Scott just was quoted in this ah, had this editorial in New York Times, I think came out a few days ago. And he was talking about, you know, utilizing AI and how he’s leaning in. And then I think the interviewer asked “okay in what ways?” And he said animation. And then they also ask a question about how Sam Altman believes there’s been new job creation. Just like any new technology comes in, there’s job loss, but then job creation. But really then immediately said, though, in this in this article, I read that he doesn’t really believe that there’s really any job creation, which is pretty startling. He believes that there’s only specialists. And so people that are specialists will have a job in the future. Basically, what he was stating that where, you know, you would have like you’re a creative director, you have taste, you understand visual effects. You’re a great sound designer, you’re a great director, you’re great, whatever, But you’re at the top. You’re like mid or at the top of your field. And they are utilizing these technologies to help, you know, do more with less and, you know, direct or produce that body of work. And I thought that was pretty interesting because something that I’ve always been thinking about is what is the future of apprenticeship? When AI levels everything out, whether you’re a lawyer, an accountant, a creative, a teacher, anything. What? What is that internship look like? What does that apprenticeship look like? How do you on board yourself? Because usually, right, when you’re a developer, you’re looking at like you’re running through code, you’re doing these different tasks or doing all these things. And if AI can do all that work for you, then how are you learning how to you then otherwise learn? Or if you’re a lawyer, right, you’re going through case law and you’re trying to find that smoking gun and you’re spending all night, you know, in late night Chinese food orders right at the office looking through that case law to find the smoking gun or whatever you’re doing. But if an AI can basically do all that work for you. Then again, how are you learning? And so I feel like I don’t have I have more questions than answers when it comes to what does the next ten years look like when it comes to like an AI driven creative? If I think there’s a more creative direction where you’re going to be focusing on the vibe checks, if you will, and you’re going to be having to have tastes because hopefully, Right, these AI’s are your tastes will always matter. So I feel like someone that’s very culturally, someone that maybe studies more of the humanities, understands more of the arts and the history of arts and like and anthropology and, and philosophy and psychology. I think those people that go into those fields, I think are actually going to have more of a better outcome utilizing these technologies maybe in the future. I don’t know. I that’s just my crazy guess. But it’s interesting to think about when you level the playing field across all industries with AI, then you’re pretty much just kind of looking at a world where it’s like Wall-E or, you know, Universal Basic Income really will have to be prevalent this in order to survive because I think seamless. I was at a party like last two years ago and a friend of mine was saw Sam Altman with Oppenheimer. They were in the same room interviewing each other and I think Sam’s each, she told me, said that pretty much any child that is born after November 20th 2022 or November, whatever in the last few years is say. We’ll never feel intelligent.

John Gauntt [00:22:55] Wow. Yeah, that’s a scary thought because.

Todd Terrazas [00:22:59] Right. But there always will be an AI smarter than them. So it’s interesting to think he said that. I’m obviously butchering what someone told me. It’s like playing telephone right now. But the think about what does the future children, the children of the future, what does it look like when everyone has the best doctor, best teacher, best everything in their pocket? How do you learn, retain information, have hope, have inspiration to do anything in life?

John Gauntt [00:23:29] So let’s turn to 2025. What are some of the things that we can expect from both things like Cerebral Beach and Culver Cup and AlLA and FBRC?

Todd Terrazas [00:23:41] Yeah, well, for AlLA or that we’re going to be doing a lot more events. We did about over 100 events this year in 2024. And so we’ll see how many events will definitely be doing probably up to 100 events next year as well. And AI on the Lot will be back May 28th or 30th. Or are we taking over music?

John Gauntt [00:24:00] And can you talk a little bit about AI on the Lot? I know what it is, but it’s a new term.

Todd Terrazas [00:24:06] Yeah. So two years ago we started AI on the Lot to help educate Hollywood and entertainment industries at large about AI. And what was interesting was that it happened to be two weeks when we were playing it for months and months. And of course, the strike started two weeks before it. So we had this one panel this two year, two years ago. Right. And so we had this one panel about the writers, you know, writers room and how they would use AI and all these writers, all these showrunners are very excited about show it, telling people how they use it. And we’re, you know, where it lacks, and don’t worry like we all have our job still basically wasn’t to be the story. But the president of WGA, the SAG sorry, the president of the WGA told them all, you can’t do it. So we scrapped that panel. But still, it was a sold out event of 500 people at Will.i.am’s campus in Hollywood last year. So successful that we brought it back this year. And it was other sold out of over 850 people at the L.A. Center studios. And so we cover all the right topics from, again, writing to you pre-production all the way to visual effects and virtual production and distribution and marketing and how it’s used in advertising and across the board, Right. We try to cover everything and give something for everybody that walks up as a great opportunity, obviously, for education and, you know, and building awareness of how these tools work, where they what they don’t do yet, what they do, what what’s on the horizon kind of thing. So a little bit of good discussion and conversation like this, right, about how we see these technologies evolving over the future. And so it’s really enlightening conversations, a lot of networking like any of these events. Right? Really helping build a community and bring people and cultures together and hopefully find jobs and new collaborations and new partnerships. And then also this year, for the first time, we did a competition, which was kind of the genesis of like our experience doing a Culver Cup, which was called Cinema Synthetica, where it was a competition where we took nine filmmakers, we hand-selected nine filmmakers, randomly paired them, actually Chat GPT randomly paired them. The three teams of three. It was all in person are living lab at the FBRC’s Living lab in Playa del Rey. And we documented it’s actually a documentary be coming out very shortly The Cinema Synthetica thing will come out in like hopefully a couple weeks. But we were able to do this and the lot here in Los Angeles bureau to take it to TIFF, Toronto’s International Film Festival this year. So we did a special pop up at TIFF, or we did a showcase of films. That documentary was premiered there. We had a panel discussion and then we had a little mixer with our friends over at Machine Cinema and Hatra, and it was really enlightening, like enlightening experience because we got to bring internationally to Canada, which was cool. And so for next year we’re going to be doing multiday events in May. Taking over Culver City is the plan making it more of a South by Southwest vibe and growing with the city and again doing what we did last year, but do it across multiple days where it’s about upskilling, it’s about discussion, it’s about showcasing. The work is about maybe having another competition. We don’t know yet, but stay tuned. There’ll probably be another competition involved. And then of course, having great networking and great, you know, just amazing people that show up to these things every year.

John Gauntt [00:27:22] Okay, outstanding. So how do people find out more about AILA and FBRC? And then how do people find you?

Todd Terrazas [00:27:31] So there’s AIonthelot.com. For AI on the Lot. There’s joinai.la For everything that we do here in Los Angeles around AI. For FBRC, it’s F-B-R-C.ai And then for me it’s Todd Terrazas on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, on Twitter. It’s all the same. But yeah, we’re a lot of exciting things are happening in 2025. I can talk more about AILA than I can about FBRC, but you’ll be hearing a lot of big things coming out of FBRC next year. And hopefully we’ll be seeing you in Los Angeles. If not, we’ll see you at NAB. We’ll be doing a lot of events over at NAB in April, which is in Vegas next year.

John Gauntt [00:28:09] Wonderful. Okay. So, Todd Terrazas thank you so much for speaking with the Culture & Code podcast.

Todd Terrazas [00:28:14] Thanks for having me.

John Gauntt [00:28:17] You’ve been listening to the Culture & Code podcast, Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. You can find us on all major podcasting platforms and our website Culture & Code.io. That’s one word CultureandCode.io To support this podcast, subscribe to our email newsletter for a weekly round up of analysis, news, plus AI training and growth opportunities for creative professionals. It’s all there at Cultureandcode.io Culture & Code is a creative studio and professional education provider that’s part of The Augmented City LLC. I’m John Gauntt inviting you to the next episode of the Culture & Code Podcast. Thanks for listening.