TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Steph Smith, a16z Podcast host and internet creator. We dive into how AI is reshaping the world that internet creators live in. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Steph Smith is the ultimate internet explorer.
I spent an hour talking to her about the future of creating on the internet in the age of AI. We had a wide-ranging discussion about:
- How AI changes what humans perceive as valuable in art and creativity
- The type of AI tools that are poised for success
- How AI narrows the gap between ideas and execution
Steph Smith is the host of the a16z Podcast, and the prolific internet creator behind Internet Pipes, a toolkit to surface useful insights on the internet; Doing Content Right, a book about building a successful blog; and many other interesting projects. She is also the first-ever repeat guest on AI & I, and I was thrilled to have her back on the show.
As we talk, we try out four underrated AI products, go through a list of Steph’s favorite niche internet creators, and follow her creative process in Midjourney in granular detail.
This is a must-watch if you make things on the internet and are interested in how AI is changing what it means to be a creator—and how creator businesses work. Here’s a taste:
- The unexplored creative frontiers of AI. Steph is intrigued by how we answer the question of “what can be newly created with AI that doesn't exist today?” She says that the “make it more” trend—where people prompted AI to progressively amplify a visual trend, creating a series of iterations with each one more over-the-top than the last—is an “example of art that could not have been created without AI.”
- The perks of being authentic in the AI age. On the other end of the spectrum, Steph is interested in the art that we enjoy, in large part, because of the personality of the human being that has created it, citing niche creators with sizeable followings as examples, including a 2.6 million-strong Instagram account that depicts the life of knitted frog figurines. “[W]hat benefits from a human doing it in terms of the reception from another human?” she wonders.
- Find what fuels your brain. While articulating why she is interested in quirky creators, Steph compares her brain to an LLM, aiming to train it on “better data” by exposing herself to things that “surprise” her, like creators with unexpectedly large followings for their niche passions. “I'm especially paying attention when I see creations that surprise me in terms of how many people like them,” she explains, believing that this gives her “signal” of valuable insights.
How Steph visualizes the world around her with AI
Steph created nearly all the illustrations for Internet Pipes using ChatGPT and Midjourney. Here are insights from her process:
- Bring your ideas to life. Internet Pipes can help you incubate an idea until it is a valuable proposition, a concept Steph illustrated by using ChatGPT to visualize a potato’s baking process in the style of the “make it more” trend. “AI was helpful in creating imagery where I honestly couldn’t have even imagined this myself, but also showing the evolution of something,” she says.
- Discover your aesthetic with AI. While finding inspiration for the illustrations for Internet Pipes, Steph scrolled through Midjourney’s homepage and clicked on images that she liked to see the prompt that generated them—a process that taught her about different styles of art and helped her articulate her preferences. “I don't know if there was as much intentionality [while creating the illustrations] other than when I scrolled Midjourney, I saw an image that I liked, that I felt like aligned with the kind of product that I was trying to create, and now I just have a prompt that I adjust for anything,” she says.
The future of AI tools—and a couple of Steph’s top picks
Steph believes that AI tools of the future will focus on fulfilling increasingly specific use cases for consumers. She says it’s “interesting to see more of these tools be verticalized,” which is useful when “you’re looking for a specific thing that ChatGPT is not optimized for.” She shares a few handy AI tools that she uses:
- Consensus is an AI-powered search engine that answers scientific queries by sifting through research papers. Steph finds it especially useful because the tool generates a “snapshot” that gives you “a quick pulse” on the topic by summarizing the predominant opinion, in addition to surfacing the relevant papers.
- Globe Explorer is a search engine that creates a table of contents for each of your queries, visualizing each section with a suitable image or diagram. Steph appreciates its ability to “interpret your query” and, based on its understanding, “groups things for you”— for example, her search for weird websites generated categorized results like “unconventional databases, niche interests, and experimental websites.”
I introduce Steph to websim.ai, a tool you can use to generate and render web pages, essentially enabling you to create a simulation of the internet. We experiment with it to create a website about rubber ducks. We also use note-taking app Granola to generate a summary of our conversation, and Suno to make a song about it live on the show.
You can check out the episode on X, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Links and timestamps are below:
- Watch on X
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Spotify (make sure to follow to help us rank!)
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
Timestamps:
- Introduction: 00:00:46
- How Steph uses Midjourney to find her aesthetic: 00:09:08
- Steph predicts how creating on the internet will evolve with AI: 00:20:45
- Rapid-fire rundown of Steph’s favorite niche creators: 00:32:51
- How Steph trains her brain on better data: 00:42:58
- The AI research tool Steph uses for health information: 00:48:19
- The future of AI tools—and one of Steph’s top picks: 00:56:25
- Dan and Steph use AI to create a simulation of the internet: 01:01:20
- How LLM hallucinations can be useful: 01:05:09
- Dan and Steph make a song about what they learned on the show: 01:12:06
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Miss an episode? Catch up on my recent conversations with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, economist Tyler Cowen, writer and entrepreneur David Perell, founder and newsletter operator Ben Tossell, and others, and learn how they use AI to think, create, and relate.
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The transcript of this episode is for paying subscribers.
Thanks to Rhea Purohit for editorial support.
Dan Shipper is the cofounder and CEO of Every, where he writes the Chain of Thought column and hosts the podcast AI & I. You can follow him on X at @danshipper and on LinkedIn, and Every on X at @every and on LinkedIn.