Newsletter #16: "Fake Drake" + 4 basic but super important AI Center of Excellence considerations

Generative AI burst onto the scene at the end of last year and then in mid-April, the Music Industry’s GAI alarm bells went off when “Fake Drake” showed up…

“Heart on My Sleeve,” a track featuring AI-generated vocals from Drake and The Weeknd, garnered approximately 15 million views on TikTok in just under 48 hours.?

Because the music industry had been through Napster 1.0 before and is therefore, as well equipped as any other vertical to navigate Generative AI, it was the lead for Newsletter #2: What would Steve Jobs do about Generative AI? because of the intrigue around how the industry would respond.

Interestingly, Ryan Hoover 's take at the time - “free startup idea that will likely get you sued…AI Spotify ” - seems to be something that Universal Music Group and 谷歌 are exploring 4 months later...

??

Last week during their Q3 earnings call, Universal Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl took an evolved stance on AI than the one the company appeared to represent back in April and the Fake Drake days:

“As we turn to AI, I'd like to point out we have a long history of working together with distribution platforms to establish licensing models that drive growth and innovation. For the past 15 years, music companies and distribution platforms have partnered to grow user-generated content as a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for artists and songwriters.”

“Today there are obvious similarities with AI. Working with our artists and songwriters. We're leaning in, moving fast and working with a network of partners including both generative AI engines and distribution platforms. Many Warner artists are already exploring impactful ways to use generative AI to create, augment and remix their music.”

“With the right framework in place, I will enable fans to pay their heroes the ultimate compliment through a new level of user-driven content including new cover versions and mashups, AI is unquestionably one of the most transformative forces in human history. Nonetheless, this technology shift is more familiar terrain than first meets the eye like many technologies before it presents massive opportunities for human creativity and innovation…”

“We continue to invest in our expertise and infrastructure both creative and technological in order to create long-term success.” (“Warner Music Group (WMG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript”)

As a massive consumer of music, clearly I couldn’t be more stoked about this collaboration…and in an effort to channel my inner Rick Rubin, I thought a Jack Harlow + Fleetwood Mac collaboration would be a phenomenal idea...

Still waiting to hear back from Jack...maybe he's busy being one of the best artists I've discovered in the last 10+ years, easy...IYKYK.

华特迪士尼公司 AI Center of Excellence is making an already nervous Hollywood more nervous.

Last week, Krystal Hu , a rockstar journalist at Reuters , reported that Disney is effectively putting together a centralized AI Center of Excellence (COE) to sort out how the technology fits into Bob Iger’s transformation game plan.

“Walt Disney has created a task force to study artificial intelligence and how it can be applied across the entertainment conglomerate, even as Hollywood writers and actors battle to limit the industry's exploitation of the technology.”

“As evidence of its interest, Disney has 11 current job openings seeking candidates with expertise in artificial intelligence or machine learning."

"The positions touch virtually every corner of the company - from Walt Disney Studios to the company's theme parks and engineering group, Walt Disney Imagineering, to Disney-branded television and the advertising team, which is looking to build a "next-generation" AI-powered ad system, according to the job ad descriptions.”?

“This supporter sees AI as one tool to help control the soaring costs of movie and television production, which can swell to $300 million for a major film release like 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' or 'The Little Mermaid.' Such budgets require equally massive box office returns simply to break even. Cost savings would be realized over time, the person said.”

“For its parks business, AI could enhance customer support or create novel interactions, said the second source as well as a former Disney Imagineer, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.” (“Disney creates task force to explore AI and cut costs - sources”)

What does an AI Center of Excellence look like?

Last week, I dug into this topic mostly from a leadership perspective - “Newsletter #15: The rise of the Chief AI Officer - competitive or complementary to the Chief Digital Officer?” - but now let’s go a bit deeper into the AI COE itself and some of the more nuanced, tactical considerations.

Creating a centralized unit dedicated to understanding, evaluating and recommending AI enabled initiatives makes a ton sense for a large company.?

But like anything, the devil is in the details.

Within the People, Process + Technology framework, instead of focusing on Technology, I’m going to focus on the People + Process bit as it’s arguably as important as the Technology part of the equation.?

Generally speaking, the larger the company, the more complex the human element is, especially with driving emerging technology driven innovation.

Not as glamorous as talking about all the vision, strategy, ideas, art of the possible etc (which of course is a whole lot of fun), this is a list of top 4 tactical challenges / opportunities I’d recommend leaders focus on to maximize the probability of success in the near-term.

1: Maximize Win vs Effort Ratio

Don’t make people think. Don’t make them put another task on their to do list. Don’t ask them to do anything outside of what is absolutely necessary for you and your team to put points on the board. Cold hard truth is that there’s a very high probability that the thing that you and I are so excited about is just “one more thing they’re going to have to deal with…”

Understand that, have empathy for that and see what you can do to make it happen.

2: Use Case Definition AND Success Criteria?

There’s no such thing as being too specific when it comes defining your initial Use Cases. I’m talking about the kind of specifics that would enable someone to explain the Use Cases to their 10-year old cousin, without you in the room, where the cousin would be on the same page afterwards.

And please, please, please don’t forget the “as measured by” bit for each Use Case. What gets measured gets managed, what doesn’t…

3: Incentive Alignment?

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” - Charlie Munger

This can be said in so many different ways but if you need cross-functional collaboration, you need cross-functional incentives. If you don’t have them, revisit #1 and then go to #2 and see if you can pick an alternative Use Case that does have incentive alignment.?

4: Shared AI Language

The more firsthand experience you can encourage across the organization by embedding Generative AI directly into people’s day-to-day workflow, the better. Once you experience the magic (i.e. ChatGPT), it’s hard not to see the world differently and generate a deeper understanding of the moving parts.

Most of that is a good thing but then comes the fear which tends to be encouraged by a lot of the recent narrative within traditional media that tends to drive engagement, clicks etc…

So to reinforce clarity, it’s never a bad idea to create a simple list of the top 100 most important AI words / terms / concepts supported by a content repository so folks can go deeper.

Check out what 埃森哲 has pulled together in their Applied Intelligence Glossary (link). Great jumping off point.

Any-who, I didn’t say this was going to be a glamorous list…but this stuff goes a long, long, long way towards cultivating the type of People + Process that can maximize the impact of the Technology bit and therefore the COE.

If you’ve come this far, last but certainly not least, I wanted to share a post that I came across last week that really drives the point home around the importance of focusing on the People + Process bit to make the COE successful.

Allie K. Miller provides some of the most insightful and valuable AI content on Linkedin and her post about radiologists + AI, not radiologists vs AI crystallizes both the challenges and opportunities.

That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed it and talk to you next week!

Alec