𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄:

This week on 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵, Anne Murphy and Kyle Shannon sit down with Liz Miller Gershfeld to talk about what it actually means to “produce” AI-powered creative work. Spoiler: it’s not about tossing prompts into a black box and hoping for magic. It’s about protecting creative intent, building reliable workflows, and understanding what parts of the process AI can handle—without compromising what makes the work sing.

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:

• What a creative AI producer actually does

• Why fidelity to creative intent matters

• How to integrate AI into production without losing your mind (or your vision)

• The wild story of a bear that only performed to “Piano Man”

𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: 

Liz Miller Gershfeld is an AI producer, creative technologist, and the founder of Not Liz AI. After two decades producing shoots with everything from big brands to blood-slicked bowling balls, she’s now building AI workflows that don’t steamroll the creative process—they support it. Liz brings structure, taste, and just enough chaos to help creative teams do their best work with AI.

𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲, 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝗶𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲!

The AI Readiness Project airs every Wednesday at 3pm Pacific, hosted by Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of The AI Salon. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and join the conversation helping people prepare for what's next. Want to get a head start? Visit https://ruready4ai.com/ to check out the AI Readiness Training program.

Growing smarter, and leading with what makes us human.

Kyle Shannon: Fellow human.

Anne Murphy: Fellow human. Hi human.

Kyle Shannon: Hi human. What's happening? Good to see you. And Murphy. I, it's like nice. See, I haven't seen you in nearly a day, so I don't know what to do with myself.

Anne Murphy: A lot can happen in a day.

Kyle Shannon: It's true. Well, speaking of which

Anne Murphy: a lot happen.

Yeah. And so you did that for those two days and now we're here live doing this, so, and now, and we're

Anne Murphy: live. Well, it's, it's so energizing though. I, I wish you could have been there and I am gonna share some of the take homes, um, with you because the work that you and I have been talking about recently, especially since your experience being at the Ted AI and since the, the experience that people had an in-person conference in, um, salt Lake City for the Create Conference, this notion of.

Also, the conceit of the thing is that we're here to talk about ai. It's like the Trojan horse of it is, you know, came, we came in like with the idea of an AI conference and here we are talking about post-lab economics.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Well, and I listen, I mean, I. I'm so excited our first guest. So if, if everyone doesn't know, we just closed our, our first season of this show about a month ago, and we called it Season Zero.

And today is season one episode. Season

Multiple: Zero.

I'm gonna give, give the Good People a, if they wanna join the AI Salon Mastermind, you can go to that, that link that'll take you straight into the Mastermind. But tomorrow we're launching the Practice Lab, which is where anyone who's part of the mastermind that wants to join the lab, we're meeting once a a week on Thursdays and.

Everyone in the practice lab is gonna design their daily practice. And so the whole idea is sort of putting the human forward. And the, the way I think about this, Anne, and it's like you just, you just described it perfectly with create, is the tools. The tools are gonna be ubiquitous. They're gonna be everywhere.

It's like, you know, you know, having an AI conference would be like having an internet conference today. Yeah. Like, it's just like you wouldn't have an internet conference 'cause the internet is everywhere. You just kind of do your thing. Right. Um, AI is gonna get like that. We're just not there yet. But I think we're getting there early.

Yes. And so

Anne Murphy: absolutely

Kyle Shannon: makes perfect sense to me. Like it feels perfectly thematic with the show, this episode. Yeah. What's going on in the world.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. What I love about it is that we're arriving at the importance of the AI first mentality before we have to, because of a backlash of the machines taking over.

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's just that, that supports the human part of it.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, indeed. So what I know, one of the things that we wanna do in Season one more than we did last time, you know, in Season Zero, you and I talked about how ready we were for generative ai. Um, it was, it was very much about us. You know, we were, we were like, you know, a little of me.

And, and so now we're talking about other folks. So I'm just curious, you've, you've now had you had the in-person meeting, you had the, the virtual Create conference. What are some stories that stuck with you or what, you know, what are some things either people are doing or how they're impacted, things like that, that, that are really sticking with you?

Anne Murphy: There's something that happens that surprises me every time so much that it should not not be a surprise, but there shouldn't

Kyle Shannon: be a surprise.

Anne Murphy: But there will be all the say, like, say there's like 10 women, you know, on a call. Mm-hmm. And or in a, in a session. And we're all grappling with the same. I'll give you the example of like enterprise wide AI adoption.

Multiple: Okay?

Anne Murphy: 10, 10 out of 10 of us know that it's not going great. Right? 10 out of 10 of us are sitting around scratching our heads going,

Multiple: that's hilarious.

Anne Murphy: We're all going like, well, WTF, and like at what point, like where's the breakthrough? You know, who's who, the cavalry's not coming. So those of us in this room are the ones who are going to be figuring it out. And it's like that moment,

Anne Murphy: Right. It's the moment of, oh, it's us, we're the ones, right?

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: We're gonna figure it out. And that, that feeling, you know, is, it's, it's weird. We're not used to owning that space without feeling a little bit delusional. Right? Like, well,

Kyle Shannon: yeah. It's, it's, you know, it's funny, it's like starting a business, like, you know, as an entrepreneur, if, if you've, if you've worked for companies for a long time and then you decide to start your own thing, there's always a point at which you're like, oh, someone should fix the blank copier, whatever.

Yes. Take the garbage out. Yes.

Anne Murphy: And

Kyle Shannon: then you have this moment of like, oh. There's no one to like, it's me. It's me. I have to do that. So that's kind of what you're describing, right? It's, it's,

Anne Murphy: that's what I'm describing. Yeah. Like we are the cavalry,

Kyle Shannon: right?

Anne Murphy: Which,

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Yeah. You're not wondering who's taking out the trash. It's you, you are doing the thing. So there's some relief in that, but then you're also going, well, like, certainly there are some people around here who know, who know better than us, who have already corrected the code. But because of where we are in the arc of ai, like, and in, in business in this context, um, we're fi we're just figuring it out early.

So then it's like, how do we harness one another's experiences and bring all that data together to grow faster and to dis and to communicate out to other people who don't have access to like a mastermind of 10 brilliant women who've been doing this for the last three years. Yeah. How do we get that out to them?

You know, all that sort of stuff. And so, you know, over time, over 20 years or so. Um, the, that function migrated, you know, quickly just out of the CTO's office. They had to do some of the infrastructure part, but how you actually implemented it and what you did on a website and what you said and how you engaged with customers that had nothing to do with the enabling technology.

But this generative AI thing where it's about language and empathy and connection and, and things like that, um, it's, it's gonna live across the organization and it's, it's gonna likely start with people who understand that dynamic and that that's a subtle difference. And so I think that. It makes sense to me why companies are struggling with this.

But at the same time, I think it does sort of put it on people who might not feel like, well, you know, little old me. Like, like I'm not an expert in this. Like, you know, like every, every time, you know, someone comes onto one of my lives and says, um, you know, what are your qualifications? I'm like, you know, they'll come in and ask me some technical, oh

Anne Murphy: God, I love that rant

Kyle Shannon: about mathematical weights and like, what do you recommend?

Anne Murphy: So, um, you asked me about like the AI readiness of, of other people and one of the kind of arcs I got to see yesterday was, um, we had a woman who. We were wa we, we were having a present, there was a presentation, um, that offered a framework for, can't remember what, what the framework was for, but it sounded very, like, it would only apply if you were a consultant, a consultant, kind of mapping a process onto a, you know, a project.

And the woman said, well, you know, I'm an employee, so how does this apply to me?

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

I said, after you hear from Trudy, which this is foreshadowing for the people today, there'll be an episode. In a couple of weeks featuring Trudy Armand and she is your, your, um, income resilience bestie. So when you spend time in her presence, you quickly grow to understand how important it is that all of us have a plan B and a plan C.

So sure enough, the woman who's saying, well, wait, I'm an employee. What does any of this have to do with me? Well, then she hears from Truden. She's like, well, okay, I guess 'cause I'm starting a business now.

Multiple: Yeah, yeah.

Anne Murphy: Now I have to start a business. Yep. Now you have to start a business. 'cause everyone has to have two or three, four sources of income.

It's just a new reality.

Anne Murphy: You didn't tell me about the son.

Kyle Shannon: No. Are you sure? Oh

Anne Murphy: good. No, maybe you did, but tell me again.

Kyle Shannon: Well, if I, if I did tell people,

Anne Murphy: again,

Kyle Shannon: people, people may hear the story twice, but.

So Jim Ross, if you don't know, he, he runs three Mile Storage. He's out of, uh, salt Lake City. I think he's, he lives in Utah. He's a, he's a one man shop that's operating like a 10 man shop. 'cause he every day treats AI like a practice. And he just, he finds ways to apply AI in a creative way. And he's very, very focused on his business.

All of his AI is sort of focused on his business. And like many of us, you know, he's got kids that, that he, you know, he's the one, like, we're the one going, Hey kids, you should check out this AI stuff. And the kids are like, I don't care. Whatever, dad. And so, so Jim Ross sends me, send, sends me this meal or this, this, uh, this note on LinkedIn, he said, I just had to share this yesterday.

Used AI to create a pitch deck. Used AI to create the email to pitch potential clients, had chat GPT, walk them through how to utilize Bright local for fulfillment. Landed two paying clients for $500 a month. And, and, and now they're just getting started. And then he ended up with, he goes, the funny things that, the funny thing is I didn't think he knew anything about AI until he told me all this yesterday.

Anne Murphy: Wow.

Kyle Shannon: Astounding, right? And so here's what struck me about this, Anne. So when we started doing, what is this AI stuff, three years ago,

Anne Murphy: right?

And within, I guess within a week or so, they, they launch a business, build a website, have the plan, learn how to fulfill it, learn how to sell it, go pitch it land Two clients, they're, they're 17 and 18 and they've got a full on functional Wait, Google Business. I was say optimization business. Yeah, exactly.

It's, well, Google business profiles are when you search for, uh, pizza, getting your, your business to show up there. Right? Oh, and so, so it's optimizing those business profiles. But that's a very technical, complicated thing. And it's complicated to talk about. It's complicated to sell, right? Yeah. You have to have value propositions about why you would do that better than someone else.

Multiple: Yeah.

You don't need to have co-founders, you don't need to have business consultants. You don't, right. They figured out how to do their LLC, they figured out how to open their bank account. Like all of that stuff, all of the knowledge of that was not locked in consultants. It was just there for, to tap into. And that to me is, it's, it's the sort of, I guess the yin and yang of this is you need to understand the tools well enough to know what's possible.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. So at any, at any point in that journey, for example, if they didn't know lovable was a thing.

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: Which, you know, I do, and I know a couple of other ones, but if I were hard pressed to like, conjure up the name of a whole bunch of these different platforms, I wouldn't be able to, because I never committed it to memory.

Mm-hmm. But they could, as they go, there's, they're at, they're in conversation with whatever AI they're using, let's just say chat, GPT, and they're like, Hey, we need to make a website. What's the easiest, fastest way to make one that our, that our future customers would like? Yep. And it said at some point, probably said lovable,

Multiple: probably.

Anne Murphy: So I said, cool. What do I need to know in order to use lovable? Yeah. They said, here's the, here's the URL sign up, do this, do that. And then, then they have a website and then they go onto the next problem.

And then you're like, I just want the answer. And then you're, you're, you know, you, you, you just, you can't get to the starting line tra the way we did it traditionally. So the fact that they went to chat GPT versus Google, all of a sudden they're just fast tracked to make this thing happen. And I just, the thing I love best is, is like Jim's like, I assumed he didn't know anything about AI and he just kind of dumped on me this like 17 stage.

Thing that they executed like on their own without asking him, not Dad, how do you open a bank account? They just did it all. It's amazing. Yeah,

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: That's what people are unfamiliar with. Dealing with is like, when it gets a little bit janky, does that mean that your whole thing is done, you know, dead in the water? Or does it mean you might need to look at a different tool? Mm-hmm. Or does it mean that, you know, they just released a new version of it and it's just acting janky today or what?

But, but what this won't do is it won't create motivation for you.

Kyle Shannon: No.

Anne Murphy: If those kiddos weren't, maybe they had something they wanted to buy or they just knew they wanted to get, they wanted whatever

Kyle Shannon: the motivation, they, they, they found the motivation. Right. Maybe they, they wanna be the next starter.

Anne Murphy: They found the motivation.

Kyle Shannon: here's another

Anne Murphy: ingredients.

Kyle Shannon: Here's a, here's another ingredient that I think is probably worth unpacking. If you use AI only as. A tool to make what you already do more efficient, right? So if, if what they're doing, if they're still in school and what they mostly do is homework and they just use it to make homework more efficient and they only know that it can do homework, then they don't know all of the other possibilities, all the other things it can do.

They're just seeing such a, a thin sliver of what's possible. It's just what they know. They don't necessarily, you know, they're like a horse with blinders on. They don't necessarily know they've all these other capabilities. And I think. That's part of when, when we talk in the AI salon about play first, part of that play first is playing outside of that thing, you know, so that you can have some,

Anne Murphy: yes.

So that's, that is the argument for playing with tools mm-hmm. Is you have to, you have to get the, you have to develop a curiosity around No. Around the fact that there's stuff you don't know that you can actually find out. Yeah. You can play with it and you don't, doesn't mean you have to devote your life to it.

But

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Anne Murphy: That's a cool story. That's a good

Kyle Shannon: story. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. That's a cool story.

Kyle Shannon: And land

Anne Murphy: 17-year-old

I assume they didn't know what bright local is, but it's a thing that they can fulfill their

Anne Murphy: thing they can fill, it helps them get monies. So that's probably, that's a good thing.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Do

Anne Murphy: they have the actual, dare I ask if they are skillful at doing the thing that they're selling the service, do they know how to do it or,

Kyle Shannon: I don't know.

Anne Murphy: Maybe it's, maybe it's not. I, I don't know. I mean,

Kyle Shannon: I don't, they got chat GT as their partner chat. GPT knows how to do all that stuff, so.

Anne Murphy: Well

Kyle Shannon: that's the thing. And I think that this, this idea of

Multiple: Mm.

Kyle Shannon: And the I can't do that. Is, is not that I, I am not capable of doing it. It's that I have defined for myself that that's an area that I can't do something.

I'm not smart enough mathematically, I didn't go to the right school. I didn't, whatever the thing, I don't have drawing skills, whatever is the thing that I say I can't do. It has always been the case that that limiting belief, you can get through it, but like if it's something like, I need to learn drawing, I might have to go back to art school.

I can't wait for her to talk about it. But it's like that idea I can't do it is kind of disappearing. Like writer's block is disappearing. Have you noticed that writer's block isn't a thing anymore? 'cause we now have this partner that we can just go, I don't have any ideas. Can you give me 20? And it's just like, just dumps a bunch of ideas on you.

Right?

Anne Murphy: Yeah. It's funny 'cause I was raised. To never say I can't, but all along I was like, this is such bullshit. We can all agree I can't,

Kyle Shannon: we can all agree that

Anne Murphy: I can't basketball.

Kyle Shannon: Okay, ai, AI might not help you with that, but when you get the tall, when you get the xl, um, humanoid robot that can dunk for you or can give you a little boost,

Anne Murphy: then I'll be able to dunk.

Kyle Shannon: Then I think you'll be able to dunk.

Conference events. Mm-hmm. Um, I was playing around with notebook, LM flashcards. Have you played with these yet?

Multiple: Oh yeah. Yeah. They're cool.

Anne Murphy: Wow. I mean,

Multiple: they're very cool.

Anne Murphy: So the deal with the flashcards, at least here's what I took my experience was that, you know, you've put your content into Notebook, lm, and it has understood it a million different ways.

Wow. Just amazing. One of the thing. Yes. One of the things that I have always said I can't do is, um, uh, memorize the states and their state capitals. Well, if someone told me one interesting detail about one, either this state or this capital, when I'm supposed to be trying to memorize it, I'm good. I can do that.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a weird, it's a weird new kind of accessibility, right?

Where, where you had this limitation, you know, sometimes you got physical limitations, sometimes you have mental limitations. These are like skills limitations, or even confidence limitations, right? Or just confidence. You just didn't gain the skills in your life to like connect those in a certain way and now all of a sudden you can.

And, and that to me, which is then again, I think it goes back to, and we're about to bring, bring Liz up here, it goes back to then, okay, if I can do anything I set out to do for the most part, then what do I want to do? How do you choose that? And I, that's I think ultimately the big question. Um, big question.

Why don't we do this? Why don't you tell the folks about she leads ai. I'll talk about the AI Salon and the Mastermind 'cause uh, Liz and I are kicking that off tomorrow. I'm super excited about that. Perfect. Tell the good folks about she leads.

I would like to hang around with some other women who are at least a little bit curious about AI and find out what's going on from 10:00 AM Pacific to noon. We will be there, we will be on that call from 10:00 AM to noon every single Saturday unless there's a No Kings March or AI Festivus. So, um, that's all like if you are sitting there wondering, A, where are my people?

B, like, my family won't speak to me anymore at all. I have worn everybody out. Where's like, even just like one person I could talk to, they're there. If you're thinking you don't know enough to like be in a conversation about AI and feel confident. Come to social Saturdays, if you wonder where all the other really, really smart, you know, like women who know a lot of stuff about ai, they're there.

And she's, uh, she's gonna be teaching exercises out of her book around AI and business, um mm-hmm. Business AI and enterprise adoption. And why, why it's not working.

Kyle Shannon: Got it. Cool. Beautiful. Um, beautiful. So, AI Salon, um. If you've not been to AI salon, if you've not been to our monthly meetings, um, if you haven't been to the community, head to the salon.ai, say, join our community.

Anne Murphy: I have a standing desk and I just had to move it down.

Kyle Shannon: Sorry. That's hilarious. That's, that's hilarious. That's really good. Um, I just looked over and you were like, it was, you were like, you're doing one these, so tomorrow, Liz, who we're about to, to talk to and I are kicking off the AI Salon Mastermind Practice Lab.

So we're lo we've, we've launched this idea of the AI Salon Mastermind practice, which is a, a structured framework for. Creating, designing a daily practice, um, using ai. And if you go to Bitly slash ai Salon Mastermind, if you're in the Mastermind, you can join us. So it's gonna be every Thursday at noon eastern 9:00 AM Pacific.

Who, you know, whose life do I wanna change? Do I wanna change someone's life? Do I just want to entertain people? Do I, you know, do I just wanna be, um, whatever that might be. Like, these practices are gonna be very, very personal, you know, to the person, but we're gonna do it in community and do it through this structured framework that I'm really excited about.

Um, so, so please go check out the AI salon. Uh, and, uh, and oh, you're muted now, Anne.

Kyle Shannon: You, you're gonna be able to get on track. We're gonna, we we're designing it in such a way where anyone can get on at any point along the journey. Um, and, uh, and I'm, I'm really excited about that. So with that, I think it is time for us to bring up, uh, Ms. Lynn, Liz Miller Feld, um, before she comes up. Um, Liz joined the salon, I don't know, two years ago, something like that, a, a while ago, and came in and just very quietly, very powerfully, um.

Got herself up to speed on the community first, like what we were doing, what we were about, made sure that that vibed with her and then started running down these tracks, you know, using a daily practice of getting herself up to speed on AI and has done some remarkable things with it. So, um, I am so excited.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Hi. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Kyle Shannon: I know. So excited to have you.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Thank you. Thank you. You guys are doing such good things, so I just appreciate, uh, being a part of this endeavor that you have going on, helping people. I have, we have a few

Kyle Shannon: projects going on, don't we?

But

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: But, but do me a favor, catch, catch the folks up on, you know, who you are, a little bit about your journey, and then, you know, I, I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you just about, you know, your. Just practice in general, but, but then what we're putting together for the Mastermind.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah. Okay. Well, um, my, I guess it, it's, it's important to set the context of the journey in where I was, is that really informed where I am now.

Creative discernment because one of my roles was finding artists to, um, to bring onto campaigns of all kinds. And so I have seen thousands and thousands of portfolios. I used to, back in the old days, I, I had a light box and a loop in my office. I had stacks of portfolios. And then of course everything became, uh, web-based.

And, um, I have to say that there, there came a point where as a human, um, and this was pre COVID and then into COVID, it was, it got really rough and I have two kids. And, um, you know, so being a parent and then having [00:36:00] a season of. Of loss people in my, you know, people who are close to in our family. Um, getting sick and dying and needing to like really step up a lot of care really created a, a, a great deal of burnout.

Um, and it really, I would say the crescendo was, I was on my way to a, a photo shoot and I, you know, I was, it, it was, it started to rain and I was lost and I had a map and I got into a car accident and I totaled my car and I called a cab. The tow truck came and I took the cab to the chute and I got to the chute and people are like, you're late.

Multiple: You're like, I'm alive. No.

Kyle Shannon: Was that, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Was that, was that out of necessity? Was it, was it like you were stressed out about all this stuff?

Like what?

Liz Miller Gershfeld: It was just, it was a swirl. I mean, it's like any, there's no one thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Amazing.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: But at the same time, on the other side of that, I have to say that I was exposed to a number of artists who really started to open my mind. There's a woman in Chicago who just won the MacArthur Genius Grant.

Multiple: Ah. Um,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: and I recognized and like my, and, and then, you know, uh, alpha Go beat Lisa Doll. And I started reading about this, this AI stuff going on and this black box problem. And I read a book about, um, something called Style Transfer. And that this was a technology that was coming in the future. And I was like, we're done.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Right. So, so this is just kind of setting the stage.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

I had, I decided I, I really, I need to take a step back. I'm about to become an empty nester. And my younger brother at the time was, who is no longer with us, was very sick and he had cerebral palsy and I saw that I could really, um, be an advocate and, and be with him and spend time with he and my mom. So I decided it's, this is, this is, this is my time.

Kyle Shannon: Wow. Amazing. So,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: so it's amazing.

Kyle Shannon: It's really

Kyle Shannon: Wow.

You know, two young adult kids, college tuition. I was like very transactional with myself. I'm like, okay, I'll figure this out in a week. Yeah. I'm not this out. It's like, this isn't coming together in a week. Like I was getting nowhere, but I was, I was really drinking from a fire hose.

Yeah.

And even though it felt like I was getting nowhere, I was getting somewhere.

Yeah.

I just didn't see it yet.

Mm-hmm.

I'm like, vibe coding. Well, that's for me, whatever. It's, I've gotta try. And, and I, you know, and I used Claude, uh, to, to, to vibe code, uh, uh, a very simple tool that transformed video. And really I was like, let's just see what it does and what I can do and, oh, how do I deploy it? And I used a large language model to figure out how, oh, I have to set up a code terminal on my computer.

I just learned and I learned and all of the, and I started to realize that these things that I thought I couldn't do, I could learn to do.

Yeah.

And, you know, having had a, a professional background, I had some ideas about what sort of, what sort of framework I would apply to. You know, because you're starting at an intersection. I am starting at an intersection of where I was, where I am, and where I'm going. And I'm all of those at once. Yeah. Which always makes you feel behind, to be perfectly honest.

Well,

Kyle Shannon: I, I'm sure because the, the, the, where you were, you had 23 years of knowing how to get impeccable results from those technologies and those artists using those workflows. Right?

Multiple: Right.

Because the, the del, the fidelity of the work with traditional stuff is, you know, where it was. It's you, you can control every pixel. And with ai, it's not that, how do you, like

Liz Miller Gershfeld: what's your relationship with

Kyle Shannon: that imperfection?

Liz Miller Gershfeld: You know, the fidelity before it's still, you know, it's like, oh. The things that I've learned from my years and that I continue to grow in my depth of understanding of is, number one, creative work is not a soft skill.

And people think it is.

We're

Um, there's that piece. Um, and then there's the good creative work. Has to have fidelity to an idea. Yeah. And even in the past, that's not always the case. Even if the tools, even if the approaches and the execution are, um, known quantities and are highly predictable in what you get out mm-hmm. That doesn't guarantee fidelity to an idea.

Kyle Shannon: I see.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah,

yeah,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: so much.

Kyle Shannon: Right.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: And one last execution matters. And that's where you're, that's where it's always, always pushing. And that's where hybrid. Workflows, um, come into play. That's also where, um, you know, the technology's getting better and better.

But for me personally, you know, this sort of frictionless space feels like I'm slipping on a banana peel. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, creativity for me, I, I have my own pace and it's not super fast. It's not, it's, it requires a long gestation. The, the time between having an idea and having an execution that I share is not usually, uh.

Yeah.

Um, but I do think that that's where a lot of the tension, you know, being a part of a long term creative community mm-hmm. I am swimming in that water of the tension and I hold that tension where people are scared, where people are angry, where people's feeds are filled with, you know, what it seems like, uh, an endless scroll of, um, work that doesn't necessarily have a great deal of thought behind it.

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. That's such a nice way to say it. Yeah.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah. And you know, it doesn't have it, it's. It's, it's the useful, it's the useful friction Yeah. That any, any disciplined, creative, um, brings into their, their work.

Multiple: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: funny, it's funny and funny,

Multiple: but you,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: but not

Multiple: you.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah. It's, it's not me. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a nod to, um, radical transparency, but it also is a place that it, it a place where I work through my own hesitation to make creative work and share it. So in that space, there's no creative brief. I try everything, you know, I do stills, I do video, I do looping video.

We wanna remove all towels, but I'm sort of leaning into that right. With that character.

Kyle Shannon: It's a style.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: It's a style, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's, it's, it's just, it's an experiment.

Kyle Shannon: Well, that, I was just gonna bring up that term. You've, you've used that term before and I, I really like it. Can you just talk a bit about that?

Does, does, does framing the work you do in that space as a, as an experiment, does that give you the freedom to share it? Do does it, does it take off the pressure to have it be perfect?

Um, and, and, and they really are experiments because they're, they're like snapshots of technology at a time. At a time. Yeah. Yeah. Thinking at a time, you know, I, I, I mentioned yesterday, um, at the wonderful Create conference that, um, AI put on and that the AI Salon, um, was a sponsor of, I, I mentioned, um, a series that I was working on, and it, I, I vibe coded it and it was like I fell in love with infographics and I was really struck by, you know, how much people create these false correlations, uh, to, to, [00:51:00] um.

Put false narratives out into the inner webs. And it, you know, it's like things that be, just because they move together, it doesn't mean that they have anything to do with each other. Right. But a lot of, um, also a lot of lazy journalism relies on false correlation. So, and, and I have a degree in journalism, so it sort of informs this, like this, this, this thing.

But having a 20 and 22-year-old sons, um, I was really curious about meme culture and how much they're used as a shorthand. There's lots of political memes. There's lots of ugly memes out there, but they, there are also a lot of memes that are shorthand for. Collective emotional states, and I find them fascinating.

And the most, the ones that hit me the most. 'cause they're more the introvert names that I think are interesting. And then I use that as a creative, um, exercise to, can I take this meme that exists as a still image with words? Can I turn it into a very short video that conveys the same idea without just ripping off the idea?

Kyle Shannon: Brilliant.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: And so I've had a whole series of those. And so is that, do those,

Kyle Shannon: do those exist at your website?

Liz Miller Gershfeld: No, I haven't put them on my website yet. I know.

Anne Murphy: I'm like, gay, don't gatekeep. We want the, we want

Liz Miller Gershfeld: now I have a lot of new things I haven't put on. I mean, I just finished a film, a short, not a film, I, I hate to call them films, a short motion piece.

Just all the things, but trying to see the whole of it and take in the beauty. And I created this piece and it has 11 channels of audio, and so it's really more of a sonic tapestry. Um, and I'm going to put it up on my website, but, um Okay, good. Yeah, but I have shared it on my social media. Wait, yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Share it there.

I'll, I'll share something with you, Liz. When I, when I was in San Francisco. So I like street photography. I love getting out too. Right. And

Liz Miller Gershfeld: yeah,

And like the minute you drop it in and instantly turns it into a video and like I had taken a picture of this building that had a sign on it. And what Grock turned it into was like the signs just fell in slow motion off the building. And it, I sort of stumbled into a new kind of street photography where it was like these warped memories of things that didn't happen.

But, but you know, there's something about this sort of merging of the AI with the analog world and. I don't know, nimbly going back and forth between them. There's something there. It just felt, it was very experimenting, what, what you just described reminded

me

Kyle Shannon: of that.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Or the how's the resistance right now from, from the creative community and you

Liz Miller Gershfeld: just.

Kyle Shannon: In your circles,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: the creative community is overwhelmed and fearful and I, I don't think that there's anything that is like, um, so, so there, under those circumstances, uh, resistance emerges.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Under, under the fear thing.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: Yeah, so it, it means several things. It means having a great deal of openness, um, and developing a tolerance for discomfort of not knowing where it's going and not knowing where your own. Experiments may lead. It doesn't have to be like an immediate, this applies to the work I'm doing. Um, get curious about it and kind of lose the subject matter expert mentality.

Kyle Shannon: you would've stopped.

Yeah,

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Beautiful. That's

Liz Miller Gershfeld: it. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: I love it. I love it. Well, so, so we're wrapping up the, I can't believe how fast these,

Anne Murphy: I know I have, I have 20 million thousand questions and I know points of connection. The one that I, I, 'cause I have to go, 'cause my hair, I have to be at my hairdressers in a minute. I forgot.

Um, is I want to talk to you and compare notes on being empty nesters. Your timeline and mine are very, very similar. You did a whole bunch of different things since November 22. Like, but like literally you're leaving your job. I left my job then Chet, GPT, family stuff, health stuff, kids leaving and now here we are.

So I think it's time for us to compare notes,

Liz Miller Gershfeld: order disorder, reorder. We shall

Kyle Shannon: text. Yeah, great.

Anne Murphy: Exactly.

Join the Mastermind and join us tomorrow. So this is gonna be a weekly lab and it's not just us hanging out and talking, it's gonna be an active lab where on a weekly basis we're designing and refining our daily practices, putting ourselves forward, and really asking a lot of the questions that you've discovered organically.

It sounds like since you, you know, had these, the way, how did you call it, the swirl, these swirl of things. And you said, I gotta start meditating in the middle of this swirl and it has led you down this really beautiful path. So we all, we're all gonna get to design those in this AI centric kind of way, which is, is super exciting.

So I'm so excited to have the, have you there anything you wanna share about Mastermind?

Kyle Shannon: That's great.

Liz Miller Gershfeld: That's it.

Kyle Shannon: It's absolutely awesome. Well, thank you so

Liz Miller Gershfeld: much for having me.

Oh,

Anne Murphy: thank you for being here. What a delight. Oh my gosh.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Thank you both. Okay,

Kyle Shannon: take care. See you

Anne Murphy: tomorrow.

Bye.