Laura Burkhauser: preference

Transcript context

…This connects also to the idea of training your own models versus going out and getting models. It sounds like, if I interpret your previous statement correctly, you're kind of neutral on whether it's your own model or somebody else's model and really just focused on what's going to deliver the best, maybe cost-adjusted user experience. How do you think about, first of all, choosing between build versus buy when it comes to models? So we have sort of like a strategic bullseye of where we would, where we aspire to have the best models. And I'd say that where Descript aspires to have the best models is when you start with recorded media and you're editing recorded media. We want to have amazing, we want to be like the world's best at that job. So that's like I was telling you before, something we call Regenerate, where we can go into this recording that we're in and a few questions back, I may be like, oh, I really didn't like my answer. Can you actually make me say this instead? And you can change my voice and my lips to say the thing that I wish I had said in the 1st place. That's a great example of 98% recorded media, but oh, we need to update all of our branding to say this, or we need to update the dates, or California just added a new law and we need to change some of the language from the way that Laura explained to this concept 2 years ago. So can we just regenerate that without having to re-record the whole video? That's the kind of job Descript wants to be really good at. We're about to launch smoothing jump cuts. So if you do have some crazy jump cuts, you can use Descript, and we'll just make it look like you naturally moved over there and you never made the edit in the 1st place. So those are the kinds of things where it's like, we have Descript models to do that, and we want to own that space. For purely generative stuff, we've sort of said like, we don't want to own that space. It's very expensive to build those models. And I think most of the companies that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build those models are still going to lose to Google. So I don't want to set money on fire that way. So I think it's about like kind of deciding where you want to win and then deciding where you can borrow. And so we are very friendly to buy, to borrowing around, especially around like pure generation kind of stuff. I think like, I'm really excited about, but think this is where you kind of get into a blurry line, heavily augmented recorded media. So for what it's worth, you didn't ask, but like, I will say that like, there is a part of me, maybe like a stodgy part of me that just feels possessive about human expression, human face, facial expression, and feels a little bit unsettled by AI clones or something that purports to be me but isn't. At the same time, I'm very sympathetic to the idea of like, I had to turn a whole bunch of lights in this studio. I had to make sure that like my makeup was like decent before I came on to record with you. And wouldn't it just be nice if mostly we could have this conversation in an authentic and human way that we don't type on a piece of paper and then add my voice to and then add my robot face to? you. And wouldn't it just be nice if mostly we could have this conversation in an authentic and human way that we don't type on a piece of paper and then add my voice to and then add my robot face to? We can mostly just talk as humans, but then in post, we could do all kinds of magic to just make it look like I was wearing makeup and looked amazing and had a great outfit on and the light was perfect and I didn't say anything stupid. And so that's kind of like the, that's the vision, that's the vision that I have for Descript is sort of really making the killer use case that we're better than anyone at augmented human recorded media. So that's where we really like to build.…

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