In this episode, we sit down with Chris Davies, a creative strategist and the visionary behind the groundbreaking platform, AskChris.AI. Designed specifically for artists and creatives, this innovative tool acts as a personal coach, providing thoughtful advice and support around the clock. Chris shares insights from his journey in the art world, detailing how his extensive experience shaped the development of Ask Chris AI. 

We explore the practical ways this platform assists artists, from crafting the perfect artist statement to navigating the complexities of gallery outreach. Chris emphasizes that while AI can serve as a valuable thought partner, it doesn’t replace the human touch essential to true artistry. Instead, it empowers artists to brainstorm ideas and work through creative blocks more effectively.

Our conversation highlights the importance of leveraging technology to enhance creativity and streamline processes, freeing up valuable time for artists to focus on what they love most: making art. We also explore the vital role of community and collaboration in the creative process, reminding us that, even as technology evolves, the heart of creativity remains deeply human.

For more information, please visit https://notrealart.com/ask-chris-AI

The Not Real Art podcast is intended for creative audiences only.

The Not Real Art podcast celebrates creativity and creative culture worldwide.

It contains material that is fresh, fun and inspiring and is not suitable for boring old art snobs.

Now let's get started and enjoy the show.

Greetings and salutations, my creative brothers and sisters.

Welcome to Not Real Art, the podcast where we talk to the world's most creative people.

I'm your host, faithful, trusty, loyal, tireless, relentless host.

Sourdough coming at you from Crew West Studio in Los Angeles.

Thanks for being here, people, man, we do this for you.

It's all about you.

So I'm so grateful you showed up to be here with me today because we have a real VIP in the house.

Our guest today is the one and only Chris Davies, creative strategist, publisher, gallery director and coach.

And so we had a fantastic conversation about Chris's amazing new AI platform, Ask Chris AI and we're going to get into this in just a minute.

Before I do, I want to thank you for tuning in.

As I.

As I said, I want to of course thank Our Fiscal Sponsor, arterial.org Arterial Fiscal sponsorship allows you to make tax deductible donation to support our work.

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So by all means go to notrealart.com and check out all the great stuff we've got for you there.

I am just thrilled about today's guest.

You know Chris Davies.

I've known Chris for several years.

A dear colleague and friend.

He's been a judge over the years for our not rel art grant.

But Chris is just one of these sort of Swiss army knives of talent.

A real multi dimensional professional creative and he helps artists, entrepreneurs and creatives gain clarity and grow their platform.

He's the founder of Fabric Media and Fabric Projects gallery in Los Angeles and has produced major artist fairs including Photo Independent and Fabric Art Fair.

Chris works at the intersection of creativity and AI, developing tools that help people communicate and connect more effectively.

He's the creator of ask Chris AI, a 24.7digital thinking partner and seven day brand, an intensive program that helps creative professionals clarify their message and build platforms that reflect their true value.

But today, today we really focus on his new AI venture, Ask Chris AI.

I love it.

I play.

I played with it.

In preparation for our interview, he challenged me to break it.

I couldn't break it.

Tried to ask it all kinds of questions that it wouldn't be able to answer, but it answered everyone in a really smart, wise way.

But it's really like having Chris at your fingertips at all times.

So askChris AI is this exciting new platform that, that Chris has developed.

So you're going to learn all about it today when we talk.

So without further ado, let's get into this conversation I had with the one and only Chris Davies.

Here we go.

Chris Davies, welcome to the Not Relar podcast.

Thank you.

I appreciate it, Scott.

Nice to be here, man.

Well, you're classing up the joint.

You know, I was trying to remember I should know this.

We've been friends and colleagues now for a long time.

I don't think you've actually been on the podcast.

Maybe one time, a long time ago.

Have you ever been on the show?

I don't know.

I have not been on the show.

I think we've done other things together online with your exhibitions and so forth.

But not on this show.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And of course, you've been always a huge supporter of.

You've been a judge on our grant.

You're supporting our art house project.

You've always been such a great colleague and friend.

Friend.

And so it's about time that you've come on the show.

It is.

Well, you know, we're both very busy, so it's, it's, it's always difficult to schedule these things.

Yeah, it is, it is, it's.

Yeah.

Between your schedule and mine, it's a kind of a miracle that we're here today, which, you know, we need all the miracles we can get.

Right.

Well, here though, you know, I was, you know, incredibly motivated and anxious to have you come on today because it came to my attention recently that you're endeavoring to launch a very interesting new value added service for artists that I think is super timely, super powerful, just super smart and value added for artists.

And when I learned about it, you were nice enough to share with me, I just instantly said, want you to come on the show here and talk about it with me because it's a hot topic.

Because of course it's all about AI launching Ask Chris, an AI platform for artists, which is amazing.

You gave me the opportunity to play with it a little bit and you said, you challenged me, said try to break it.

I tried to break it, I couldn't break it.

And it seemed like a fantastic new kind of product service, if you will.

So with that as a bit of a setup, I guess, and for our artists sake and you know, in your own words, tell me exactly what Asks Chris is and what it's meant to do.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

So Ask Chris AI basically is a, you know, AI powered personal growth companion as I call it.

Like, think of it as a thinking partner.

So if you're stuck on something, if you're looking to get some answers on real world challenges that you might have, then you have something at your disposal 24 7, basically every day of the year.

And it's built on my experiences, not just in the art world but in my, from my previous careers in working in the music industry, working with film festivals.

My, I have a marketing and design agency for close to 30 years and so it, it brings in all those experiences as well as the things that I've been doing in the art world between the publishing of my magazine fabric and the gallery and the art fairs that I've produced and brings all those experiences into this platform alongside some of the mentors that I've, that I've learned from as well.

So, you know, you're going to get, you know, my coaching frameworks, all the knowledge that I've, I've put into this, like thousands and thousands of documents that I, I poured into this.

I worked with some developers to put this together over the last year.

All the, I do, as you know, I do the Intentional Artist newsletter every week and that all that content is in there as well.

So it's, it's here to help artists and creators and even entrepreneurs.

Anybody that has challenges in figuring things out can use the platform and ask it a question and think of it as just talking to somebody as opposed to, as, you know, with ChatGPT or any of the other LLMs that exist.

It's, it's, if you, if, if you connect with those.

You don't really get a specific answer dealt to you and your specific needs unless you know how to communicate with it properly.

So I've tried to make this like a companion that you can actually talk with and just say, hey, I've got this challenge, Chris, what do you think?

Or I'm trying to figure out this artist statement or this bio or this email I'm trying to send out to a gallery or an art fair or whatever the case is.

And I help you work through that.

And basically, you know, just, you just keep on answering, I answer the question and you keep on asking me questions.

So think of it as a conversation more than anything else, not necessarily, you know, a quick fix or a Google lookup kind of thing.

Well, the phrase that comes to my mind, and you, I think you said it maybe earlier, was that this idea of a thought partner, because we all need a good thought partner.

And especially if we're in a particular specialty or niche or we have, you know, sort of idiosyncratic needs or wants or issues to work out to be able to have that expert, subject matter expert or mentor or coach that you could call and say, hey, you know, I have this issue.

What do you think?

Can you help me, you know, think it through?

And of course, artists are no exception.

My God.

I mean, they, they're, they're in many ways perfect audience for something like this because so many artists work alone.

They're, you know, trained in art making, maybe not the art of business, but they need help a lot of times, or they need guidance or assistance.

They need to be able to call someone.

But also, of course, we all know artists struggle, may, may not have, you know, the finances necessarily to pay that subject matter expert or that consultant mentor for their valuable time.

But something like ask Chris, AI really seems to kind of be that really viable option for artists because.

And I don't know what your pricing structure going to be, and we'll get into that if you want to, but the way you've built it and the way I understand LLMs and how I've been using AI, it's generally very affordable to engage with.

And, and so this is just going to be a kind of wealth of knowledge, right, for artists to go and ask all manner of questions.

And the answers and the responses were incredibly thoughtful and felt very rich.

Incredible.

And coming from a true expert, I. E. Chris Davies.

And so I think you've got something here.

And I think for so many artists, I know they would jump at the opportunity to have and I built just for them.

And that's what you've done.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah.

So, you know, it did come from something that I was hearing a lot of because I, as you know, I coach artists and I work with many, many artists ongoing.

You know, I would get asked the same questions over and over and over, the exact same questions.

How do I grow my audience?

How do I find a gallery?

How do I stand out?

How do I make what I do matter?

How do I.

How do I stand out from the crowd?

You know, how do I make my work different?

You know, those kinds of questions.

And we, you know, a lot of that knowledge I already have from the hundreds of conversations I've had with artists.

So I poured all that into the system.

And.

And so, you know, you can literally ask me those questions.

And we have.

You can either ask at ad hoc from a.

A text box on the homepage, or I have prompts that you could just ask from specific categories, like, you know, the artist career strategy category.

You can just go in there.

And I have a series of questions that are already built in that most artists ask.

You know, how do I price my work?

How do I stand out as a brand?

How do I build a brand?

You know, the traditional questions that not just artists, actually creators and, you know, business people, we all have similar challenges and questions that need answering.

And so I, you know, because of that, I put it into this system.

And I love those conversations.

They're great.

But it does get monotonous to answer them over and over and over again every day, almost.

Yes.

So.

So, you know, an artist may want to understand how to reach out to galleries or how to price their work.

You know, this will answer it hands down.

And that's the difference between this and going straight to chat.

GPT.

ChatGPT doesn't have that experience.

It may know roughly what to do because it pulls from business information for the most part, but it's not going to know the nuances of how to deal with a gallery, how to deal with a museum, you know, how PR is different from traditional pr, those kinds of things.

So that's why it's tailored specifically to a creative audience, because I did want to make it different from everything else that exists out there.

And you're mentioning about the pricing at the moment, you can get.

If you don't register on the site, you can get five free questions to ask.

If you register for a free account, you get 10 free questions, and then you'll be asked to upgrade from there.

And it's really, really inexpensive.

Sickly, the way I'm structuring it right now, you can buy it in time blocks.

I have, I have a system that I set up using a tab system.

It's like putting it on the tab, so to speak.

Eventually what you'll be able to do is pay for 10 minutes of usage and only pay $2.

So it's less than a cup of coffee.

If you're stuck for something at midnight and you want to get a quick answer and you've used up your, your allotted questions, then you pay a couple of dollars and you, you know, you get that extra 10 minutes or an hour or whatever we decide to do.

It won't be any more than $20 a month, similar to ChatGPT.

But you're getting answers catered towards your specific needs if you're a creative person.

And that's the big difference.

Yeah, no, it truly is built for artists and built for creatives.

Not just in terms of the content and expertise that inform the AI, train the AI, but, but from a pricing structure that, that is huge.

That is very, very affordable.

You really have created a great value for money here.

And so hats off and kudos to you for that.

I think I even went in when I was asking a question.

I think I went into asking questions about, should I copyright.

Copyright my work.

I asked questions about what, you know, what about shipping, what about framing, what, you know, what about insurance?

I mean, it was all in there.

And yeah, because, because they're the things that I've dealt with personally.

Yes, I have first world experience with all that stuff.

I mean, and so, you know, that's the thing that I bring to this that's different from a, you know, a generic LLM like, like chat, say chatgpt as an example.

But, but also, you know, if, if you're curious and you're seeking some advice on even mindset, you know, I've learned from mentors like Wayne Dyer and people like that.

And so I have information in there that, that are things that I've learned from practitioners like that, from Tony Robbins, et cetera.

And so, you know, you can get information from me on specific mindset issues or, you know, creative growth, clarity and positioning, how to build your brand.

I have a specific category for that intentional practice, which I talk a lot about in my Intentional Artist newsletter.

It's catered to not just building your career as an artist, but the things that artists deal with personally, emotionally, psychologically.

I've thought all about that and wanted to create something that is Truly helpful for artists to be able to get through working in a creative environment, working on the creative career path, which we all know can be challenging depending on the path that you're on.

So I wanted to try and make it not just about the craft itself, but about the mindsets behind what you're doing.

Because in some ways, sometimes, you know, if we don't have the right clarity, we don't have the right alignment, we don't take the right actions.

And so, you know, a lot of that is what I am able to provide, depending on the questions or things that you want to work on, given.

The kind of substantial nature of it, at least for me, it was almost immediately apparent that this is something you've been working on for a very long time.

Well, a building the expertise, building your career, building your 10, you know, 10, 20, 30,000 hours of work over the last couple of decades.

So you're bringing that into it.

But where do you even start when you decide that you want to train in AI?

You know, we're hearing all these headlines about how Meta and OpenAI and all these companies are jockeying for the experts to train their AIs and they're getting these huge pay packages and the money throwing around is, is just insane.

So we know that AI is, is a very, you know, obviously powerful technology.

It's in great demand.

There's like high costs.

But I know that, that, you know, you, what you've built obviously took a lot of time, energy, effort, money as well.

But you're not a computer programmer or maybe you are, you wear a lot of hats.

So, so where did you even begin?

How did you even start when you said to yourself, you know, I'm going to train an AI to help my artists?

What was that process like for you?

Well, I mean, I've always loved technology.

I'm always at the forefront of whatever's new.

Yes, I was at the forefront of the Internet.

You know, I, I was involved with that from the very beginning.

I love technology like, you know, iPhones, etc.

You know, mobile devices.

And whenever a new technology comes out, I just read up and learn about it as much as possible.

I, I'm very consumed with that.

So I learned, you know, when ChatGPT first came out with GPT3, I think it was about three years ago, I, I, I heard about it, I was curious, and then I started reading up on it, I started working with it, I started testing it.

So I'VE been involved with this for a few years now.

And the more I got involved with it, the more my mind ticking away is like, how can I use this?

You know, what can I do with this at some point?

And then last year when I was pretty savvy with the tools, I'm really, really good at learning how to use the tools.

I was working on it every minute that I wasn't working on my traditional business and to the point where I, I haven't been going to bed till 2 or 3 in the morning, which is not a good habit to have.

I got so consumed with it and I learned so much with it that it started to dawn on me that I could use it to train my own knowledge, just like ChatGPT and Claude does to, to train itself on common knowledge or knowledge that's on the web or whatever other licensing they've done up to this point.

And so I was curious and thought about that and then I started tweaking and just communicating with, with the LLMs and figuring out, well, how can I do this?

And so it gave me a framework to work with.

Like, you know, we can do with all LLMs.

And when I say LLM, I mean ChatGPT, Claude, perplexity.

There's a number of them now that do certain things.

Gemini from Google.

And so I started playing around with the tools even heavier and started combining, using different tools together to do what I wanted to do.

And then I, I worked on the initial framework and set up the initial site for the most part on my own, just by learning how to do it, you know, just like I learned how to do HTML.

And then once I got it to a certain point where I couldn't take it any further because I'm not traditionally a coder or anything like that.

I do, I can get it to a certain point.

Yes.

And then from there I sought out some people that I found online and started working with them to take my vision to the next level.

And so that's, that's the process that I went through.

It's the process that I generally go through when I'm working on a new project, is doing the initial hard work myself so I can understand.

Yes.

What I'm getting into.

Yes.

And, and know my limitations and then work with people that are experienced and that are the best of what they do in, in that field to take it to the next level.

And honestly, you know where I learned that from?

From the music industry.

When I first moved here from Australia, I, I don't know if you Know, I used to work in the music industry, yes.

But I worked in a recording studio in Hollywood, and I worked with some of the legends, and I couldn't believe I was in the same room with these people like, you know, Bob Guardian, Frankie Valley from the Four Seasons, and, you know, Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire, and some of the best session players in the world.

I used to, I used to work with.

And that taught me a lot, and that, and a lot of that knowledge is in here as well.

But one of the things I learned in the studio was when I was recording things with them and I was in charge of certain aspects of the recording, you know, they would ask me, what do you want me to play?

And I'm like, you just do what you do best.

You know, you play what you feel is the best that feels for this part in the, in the recording.

And, and, and, you know, I've kept that my whole life is like, whenever I work with people, I give them some direction, but I'm like, but if you figure out a better way of doing something, by all means, do it.

If you can figure out a better way of playing something, do it.

You.

You do it because you're the best at what you do, whether you're a guitarist, whether you're a drummer, whether you're a keyboard player.

Just do what you can do, because that's why we're hiring you, because you're the best, you know.

And so I've done that also in other aspects of my career, whether I was working with filmmakers during the film festivals, production people, the art fairs that I've produced, et cetera.

You know, I've always worked with people that.

The best at what they do to make what I do a good product, or at least as good a product as I can get out there with the resources that I have, let's put it that way.

Yes.

Bringing in those experts when you can to elevate the project, elevate the art, elevate the program, whatever it might be.

That.

That's fantastic, but also fun fact about you.

I knew that you.

I remember hearing that you had worked in the music business, but I did.

I didn't really necessarily know what you.

What you were doing, what you had done.

And so I just want to clarify, you were.

You were a sound engineer recording music in these studios.

What were you doing with these amazing musicians?

So, yeah, I was an engineer in the studio in Hollywood, and I used to engineer this keyboard called a synclavier, and there were only a handful of people in the world that used to have this at the time, we're talking about the early 90s now.

Let's show you how old I am.

But, but hey, I'm 55, pal.

I, I'm not judging, but I was.

Younger then, of course, and, and so, yeah, I used to, I used to be an engineer with the Sinclair.

And this Clavio at the time was worth a quarter of a million dollars.

So only a handful of people could afford to buy them.

Frank Zappa had one, Bob Gaudio had one.

And so there, you know, and I learned how to program this.

I didn't know anything about this until I moved to the US and so I learned in that studio once again, because I love technology.

I got all in, right?

And it was a fancy keyboard that was the first keyboard of its kind to record to, to use sampled original sounds.

So symphonic sounds, real, real piano sounds.

You could even playback guitar sounds on that, you know, on the keyboard.

And it was the first of its kind before, you know, electronic keyboards really made a name for themselves, like Korg and those other companies, Yamaha, etc.

And so that's what I was doing.

And I was recording in the studio with these guys and I had fun with, with working with them.

And I learned how to use a Mac in the early late 80s, early 90s.

I used to have this little Mac se, Mac, plus these little box computers that used to exist at the time.

And I used to travel around town playing with some artists, and I would, I would do the sequencing and play a little bit of guitar in the background.

But my, my job was to handle all the electronic stuff.

So I would literally walk, you know, drive around town and carry.

Instead of carrying a key, well, I would carry a keyboard, but more so this little box computer that nobody knew what, what it was.

It was a little Mac, you know, so it was a fun time in my life and, and, you know, but once again, the things that I learned by working with these, these artists is, you know, always kept with me.

And I, and I utilized a lot of these experiences throughout my life.

You know, I've worked with a major film festival in Hollywood, the Hollywood film festival, for 12 years, and I've met just about every celebrity in town.

And you learn things from that.

You learn, you know, how they communicate, you know, who they communicate with and, and what they say and how they say things.

And.

And then from that, you know, I started getting into the art world proper through another friend of mine that I met 25 years ago.

And so, you know, I've I've had a varied career in the arts.

I've, I've basically tapped all of the, the arts mediums between music, film, writing, visual arts.

So yeah, and I, you know, it's, I love it.

I love the fact that I've been, I've been able to experience all the art forms in different ways and work with different kinds of people.

And so a lot of those learnings I use now in my day to day work, working with artists, entrepreneurs, people that I help with and support their careers from a coaching standpoint.

So I can take from what I've learned from other mediums and bring that into the visual art world.

Because once again, the challenges that most visual artists have, whether you're a photographer, painter, sculptor, videographer, whoever, you know, there's similar challenges.

It's just the discipline is different, you know, but, but a lot of it is things dealing with mindset and, and belief in what you do and finding the right clarity is, is really, really important in all this.

And that's something I really preach is, is finding is, is getting clear about who you are, what you want to do and who you want to do it for.

They're the three basic things that I work with a lot with artists, and they seem simple, but it's interesting how complicated they can be from a psychological perspective for each artist that I work with.

You know, you and I have a lot in common.

I think we've talked about this over the years and so I'm going to ask you a question that, that I get asked from time to time.

If you're curious.

I'll, I'll share, you know, my struggle with it.

But before, but before I get into all that, I want to just ask you the question.

Chris Davies, are you an artist?

I do get asked that quite a bit, actually.

You know, it's funny, being in the art world, people think automatically you're an artist.

I think we're all artists in one form or another.

It's just.

I don't think of it as being an artist.

I think of it as being creative.

I see myself as a creative person who likes to create things, produce things and work creatively.

Sorry for using over and over again, but because in a sense, art and creativity are very similar.

You know, you're, you're using a certain aspect of your mind to, to create art, you know.

And am I an artist?

You know, I guess so.

My art forms are different.

You know, they may not necessarily be a photograph or a painting, but they are a similar structure to what an artist goes through.

I don't know if that makes sense, but being an artist and being a creative person is a personal choice.

And what, how you, what you say, who you are also dictates how other people think of you.

So I'm always careful about, you know, explaining what I do in a way that doesn't automatically tell people, I know what you do without even really knowing what I do.

Yes.

So I'm just smiling as I'm listening to you talk because of course, I have wrestled with, with this question myself in many ways, the answer that I have come to in recent years, I finally got to a point where I say, well, sure, but it's artists with a lowercase A, not a capital A. I'm not supporting myself by making art objects.

And if you are an artist, a true artist, capital A, you're all in.

And you, you are making art objects to support your, your life.

And that is not what I do.

I, I feel like my art to the extent, yes, I'm a creative with you.

I make things.

What do artists do?

Artists make things that didn't exist.

I do that all the time.

My roots are in commercial art as a graphic designer working in advertising in Chicago.

I've worked with artists my whole career.

I like to think that my passion is helping artists tell their stories and promote their work.

I've curated shows, I've made art, you know, all that stuff.

Creative person, but still lowercase A, not capital A.

And by the way, there's an artist and everybody deep down, right?

We are sort of the creative expression.

And the need to express oneself creatively is, I think, a natural inclination.

It was baked in when we were kids in kindergarten and somebody asked us if we were in ours, we said yes.

Right?

So that innocent that the system that we grew up in makes us sort of, you know, decide, well, I'm this or I'm that.

You can't be both, Right?

So anyway, thank you for sharing that.

Just a little small thing.

So I don't know if you know who Neville Goddard is.

Have you, have you heard of him?

I don't.

No.

Tell me.

Look, look, look him up.

He's.

He was a.

You know who Alan Watts was?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So similar.

But Neville was decades and decades before that, right?

And Neville Goddard had this saying that you are who you are, you are who you say you are.

So if you want to believe certain things in your life, you say, there's a principle that he uses called I am.

So I am an artist.

Now, if you believe that with your Whole heart, and you pour, then you would pour.

You will believe that from a psychological perspective, you know, and you use that as a tool to push you moving forward.

So if you can believe that you are an artist, or you say, I am an artist or I am, then you make more of an effort in your belief system to make that happen, you know, And I think from a psychological perspective, you know, having an intentional practice, you have to believe in what you are, you know, and your mind tells you what to do, and your actions are based on the feelings that you have.

So if you say to yourself that I am an artist, and you wholeheartedly believe that, then during the course of your day, your week, your year, you know, there are certain things that will happen that will come to the fore that will help you be an artist or that will help you be a business person or whatever that you want to be, basically.

And so I'm a firm believer in those kinds of things where, you know, you think about it and you take it in and you allow, then you let it go, and then things will come into you, into your life, the right way.

You don't want to force things, but, you know, it's.

It's something that you need to believe in for yourself.

Because a lot.

What I find is a lot of artists, they say they want to be an artist, but they don't really want to put all the work that goes into it to being what.

What it is to be an artist, if that makes sense.

Yes.

You know, and I'm sure that you've come across that yourself, you know, and as well for you, you're like, you know, you're similar to me, and like, you have an idea, you have this passion for that idea, and you make it happen.

You know, this whole art house project just came out of nothing, but you had this idea and you had this passion for it, and you're going to make it happen, you know, and it's not a simple thing.

It's a lot of work.

It's a lot of effort, a lot of resources involved, but you always find a way to make it happen, you know, but you have that belief in you because you've done it so many times.

Yes.

And when you.

When you do things so many times and you're successful at it, there's a confidence level there that you have, you know, and that confidence is what drives you.

And.

And that drives the belief that you have that you can make something happen.

For sure, it's being for myself, and I suspect you're similar.

It's like, I really love the struggle.

Like, some people, things get tough, they get going, whatever, or they run the opposite direction.

You know, for me, anytime there's a challenge or struggle or something that, you know, like, I love that.

I love trying to make something exist that doesn't exist.

It's very hard.

It's challenging.

The world is against you.

And that just makes me more determined from a very stubborn, you know, and you have to.

Right, you have to have that level of commitment, dedication, because the struggle is real.

And, you know, if you don't like that, then, okay, do something else.

But I do love that creative.

The creative challenge and the challenge of making.

Being creative and making something that doesn't exist and.

But this show isn't about me, Chris.

The show is about you.

And I am.

I can imagine that building.

Ask Chris.

AI was.

Was at times very difficult, and you struggled with this at various times.

What was the biggest struggle?

The biggest struggle for me, I think, was trying to figure out how to get all the content into the system.

Like, you know, I had to go through, you know, we're talking about 20 to 30 years of digital data, you know, and I'm talking about client briefs that I've had with agencies and corporate companies that I've worked with.

And going through all that content was so time consuming and, you know, taking things out that I didn't want to be in the.

In my knowledge that could potentially be put out there that, you know, might equate to something that I worked on for a specific client.

So I had to kind of go through a lot of stuff and going through.

Even with any project that I've worked with in the agency, the biggest challenge was getting all the assets together.

You know, that's.

That's always the biggest challenge.

The actuality of doing the work was never the.

The.

The biggest challenge is, is getting the information from the client, getting the.

The stuff that they wanted to get, you know, done in a way that made sense, and actually getting those assets from the client, because it wasn't just up to us.

You know, as, you know, when you're working on a brief for the client, they have to provide you with certain assets to actually continue on with that project.

And so that was the biggest challenge from that perspective.

And so it was similar in this way because I had to go through all the, you know, hard drives that I've had over the years, and some of them I had to use different connections to the computer because in those days you had different connections with, you know, SiteQuest drives and Bernoulli drives and things like that.

That, you know, it's much more complicated.

Oh yeah, I had them all.

I've had, I've had all those.

Yeah.

And just connecting them to modern technology wasn't that simple, you know, and so I had to do that and then copy that data over to new hard drives.

So then it would make it easier to actually work with and opening up, you know, Quark Express documents that I haven't used in years, you know, and.

Let'S hope you didn't have any Page Maker documents.

No, I did.

That's how far back I go.

So this is, this is my trajectory in the, in the, in design and marketing world was, you know, I worked with the early Adobe products because that was all that existed in those days.

Yes.

You know, PageMaker and Photoshop and, and yes.

And then I went from pagemaker to Quark Express for many years and then I went back from quark express to InDesign.

Yes.

Many years after that.

So I had this, yeah.

Circuitous journey through those technologies.

But yeah, so I think that the toughest part for me was going through all the content because there was so much of it.

And then all the notes that I had from my mentors like Tony Robbins and, and Wayne Dyer that I took, you know, lots of copious notes from those seminars and, and things like that that I had written down that made sense to me.

And so I put a lot of that stuff in there and literally, you know, all the content that I've written for the newsletters that I've, I've written over the last few years, my magazine content, you know, I had to also go through all that content and put that in a form that.

Because you can't just upload InDesign documents and things like that, you have to actually, not to get too technical here, but you have to actually reformat that content in a different way that's easier for the programs to understand in a simplified way, you know, because you don't need all the formatting, you just need the content.

Yeah.

You know, so, you know, going through all my print magazine issues and, and all the digital stuff that we've done with the magazine.

And so, yeah, that to me was the most complicated part, was gathering all that content.

The actuality of building Ask Chris AI was not that as complicated as, as I would have thought because in this day and age, things are a lot easier with AI, but also working with developers makes it easier because I didn't have to do the heavy lifting.

So, you know, you just use them.

They do it.

They, you know, we go back and forth and say, I want this here and that here.

And, you know, and there'll be.

Where I'm at right now with Ask Chris is not even close to where I'm going to be in a year's time.

You know, right now we're at the very precipice of this technology, and where I'm going to be moving forward is going to be a lot more substantial.

This is just the first step in this journey.

But to answer your question, you know, the toughest part was getting all the content together in a form that made.

That was easy to put into the system.

Yeah, no, that resonates on a lot of levels, least of which is I too, have so many disks, so many drives from years past, and I want to consolidate.

I want to be able to, like, get back into them and see what it is.

And, and, and just.

I don't even.

I might have the disc, but I don't have the drive to, to mount the zip or whatever it is.

It's like, okay, how do I.

Right.

And, yeah, so, yeah, that was that painful, almost archeological dig of a process that you had to embark upon just to get to the.

The content.

And I'm not even done yet.

I haven't put all the content in there yet because I still have, sure, gigabytes and gigabytes and terabytes of stuff that I still have to, you know, put in there.

But I'm doing it piecemeal.

Yes.

You know, as we speak.

But, you know, you know, eventually all of it will be in there.

Yeah.

And.

And so, yeah, it's a daunting task dealing with data, for sure.

You know, that's interesting question you have, because I was working with a Magnum photographer a few years ago, Constantine Manos, fabulous photographer for Magnum Photos, and he did a workshop for me for Photo Independent, you know, the outfit that you're familiar with.

Yes.

And we were having a, you know, honest conversation, and he was asking me, chris, I have all these images on disk.

And, you know, because Magnum only licenses and works with a certain amount of images from each photographer, they don't handle the whole catalog from the photographer.

They only manage a certain portion of it.

Right.

And so, but he was asking me, you know, how do I manage all this data?

How do I manage all these archives?

How do I catal.

Catalog it?

You know, it's so much work.

And he, or.

And because he was involved from the, you know, the days of film, he has, you know, probably hundreds of boxes of film that have.

Has never been digitized.

Right.

So photographers have an interesting challenge to deal with as well when it comes to data.

How do you digitize some of that stuff?

You know, all.

A lot of that stuff.

You know, how do you.

How do you catalog it?

How do you inventory it?

You know, we all go through it now, and the more, the, the more information that we gather, the more challenging that will get.

But that's where I think AI is going to help us, you know, because AI, once you have it digitized, can manage all that for you in its own way if you.

If you use the right tools to do that or build the right tools to do that, you know, so.

Yeah, so I think the use of AI to me is going to be an important aspect of what I do moving forward to make my life easier.

But for everybody out there, listen, you know, if you're afraid of it, don't be afraid of it.

Use it as a tool.

You know, it's just going to be that it's never going to go away.

And so I would encourage you to use it, Use it every day, because the more you use it, the more you understand how it works and the more you understand how to communicate with it.

Because in the end, it's just a communication tool.

And to me, that's an important part of the use of AI, not to be afraid of it.

Well, that's a good kind of setup and segue, because I did want to get into that part of the conversation, right, because clearly there's a lot of hype around AI both for good.

Oh, it's going to cure cancer and change the world and solve all of our problems.

And by the way, I hope it does cure cancer, you know, and that's, you know, the techno optimists, right?

You know, selling their wares and putting a very positive spin on things.

That's great.

But then you have, of course, the opposite argument.

The sky's falling, it's going to destroy mankind.

It's going to be the thing that eats us.

In my experience, usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle of two extreme arguments.

There's like, so many things, good and bad, good and not so good.

But of course, there's been some very interesting new kind of arguments or issues that, that this technology has.

Has raised up.

You know, one of the really amazing cool things about some of these new AI tools is, you know, image generation, artwork generation.

And you can say, oh, I want a Santa Claus driving a lowrider down Sunset Boulevard and boom.

There's the image, and it'll spit out 20 different iterations of that image.

Maybe that's amazing.

You'll have it in a matter of seconds or a couple of minutes maybe.

And of course, that AI, that capability was trained on the millions, if not billions, or even trillions of images that are on the Internet.

And many artists, of course, look at that and say, wait a minute, that image, I can see my esthetic in there.

They crawled the Internet, they took my images, they've trained the AI based on my artwork, on the artwork of so many other artists.

I didn't get paid.

There's no, you know, they're ripping me off, that kind of thing.

So you have that argument, which is a very interesting one.

I mean, how do you protect copyright?

How do you.

What does it mean?

It's raising all these kinds of interesting issues.

So you have like that argument.

And then, of course, you have artists and creatives that are worried about existential threat, you know, who's going to hire me to make that image if they could just go to AI and make that image.

So it's a.

It's a, obviously an exciting technology that will change the world in so many positive ways.

It raises some very interesting issues and debates and concerns.

And artists, as you very well know, are not a monolithic community.

I mean, there's going to be all kinds of artists that embrace it and love it and use it as a tool and as a thought partner and as they should.

And then there are going to be artists that say, hell, no, I won't go and resist it and fight it.

And so what's.

What are your thoughts and what say you to those artists who are afraid of it and are concerned about AI taking their value?

Yeah, it's a common question I get asked all the time as well.

And, you know, I'm not an attorney, I'm not a legal person, but the viewpoint that I have on it is that it's not going to go away.

And my, my suggestion is to embrace it similarly, in a way that you've embraced tools like Photoshop, the computer.

You know, there was this outcry in the, you know, when Photoshop first came out that it was going to destroy, you know, artists.

And, you know, it's a similar conversation, actually, that was going to destroy artists and photographers, going to go out of business and this, that and the other, and none of that happened.

It just, it just changed the way we did things, you know, and that's what AI is going to do.

It's not going to in many ways destroy what you do as an artist.

It's going to allow you to be potentially a better artist.

If you use the technology correctly, it will allow you to come up with some concepts that you may not have thought of before that could change the trajectory of what you're creating.

It will allow you to reduce the work potentially quicker and easier because you may not need to hire somebody to do it.

Certain things for you, you know, and most artists are always challenged with trying to find the right, you know, have the right resources in place to get certain things done.

Well, I can support that, you know, in some ways, not all the ways, especially if you're creating something physical that's a little more challenging.

Obviously I can't do that right now, although I have seen some interesting artwork that was created by robots.

But that's, you know, very few and far between.

But, you know, AI still doesn't have your thoughts about who you are.

And that's the biggest differentiation point here is AI doesn't know your internal thought process, so it can't create something that you're going to create.

You can use the tool to make it easier for you to create it or allow you to come up with some concepts that you may not have thought of.

But I wouldn't be afraid of it.

You know, I think it's, it's here.

It's not going to go away.

You just have to understand that the more you learn about, the more you use it.

I feel you as an artist or as a creative person will benefit from it.

And the creativity may not necessarily be the mid journey or the Runway for videos and Leonardo for images and videos and all these, all these tools that are out there right now, the creativity from your end as an artist might come from.

I'm trying to figure this out.

I'm going to just Type something into ChatGPT or ask Chris and say, hey, Chris, how would, how now what can I do with this?

I'm stuck, you know, and you'll be surprised that the response that you'll get that could give you something that might make your idea even better or give you ideas to do something else.

You know, use it as a thought tool.

You know, don't, don't be afraid of it.

You know, use as a thought partner rather.

And, and that's my take on it.

I've never been afraid of technology.

I've always embraced it.

And I think because of that, it's made my life easier in many ways throughout my life, my career and so forth.

I've Always been at the forefront of computers, software, the web, you name it.

And look, don't get me wrong, there is an outcry obviously in certain creative fields like film and music and some form of visual art as well.

And I get that.

But eventually those legal things, I feel the copyright issues that people are talking about, you know, they will get resolved much in the same way as they did when computers came out.

When software came out, you know, there was a cry that, you know, computers now were able to do whenever you see a car commercial.

Now, nine times out of 10, that backdrop of the, of the car commercial where the car is riding on is not even a real landscape.

It's all done on computers.

It's all done with, what do you call it, cgi.

And so, you know, that's been going on for years and.

But nobody's known about it because it's not, it hasn't been mainstream.

Right.

It's been in the industry.

And industry people initially were crying about it, but they evolved into something else, you know, and so there, there's always this transition that has to go on whenever a new technology comes out.

And the people I feel that are unafraid and just go with the flow and learn about it are the ones that generally are ahead of the game all the time.

You know, and just my whole thing with this is don't be afraid of it.

Use it to make your life better.

That's the real key here.

If it can take, it can take time away from doing what you have to do, to give you a few hours a week or an hour a day or two hours a day back then you've won because you can use that time for other things.

You know, family, hanging out with friends, you know, things like that.

That's where we're going with this.

It's more of a, think of it more as a tool that you can use as a partner.

You know, AI agents are here right now.

I'm developing some projects that will make, you know, artists lives easier moving forward as well.

You know, these tools are not going away.

They're just going to make your life easier.

Yes, well, and thank you for that because I agree with you on all of that.

You know, I sort of have said to folks, well, call me when the AI grows thumbs.

And I can't unplug it.

Like, let's keep, let's keep it in perspective here.

The best, best way of dealing with fear is to face it.

Yep.

I have, I have this saying, fear is your friend.

Yes.

You know, I wrote a Whole blog post about it on my Intentional Artist newsletter.

It's just, you know, there's this notion that, you know, the way I see it is if you're afraid of something, it means you're getting close to something that's important to you, you know, but you see it as fear.

But it's just you're afraid because you want it to succeed or you're afraid because you may not know exactly how to deal with something.

Right.

Fear and failure to me are important aspects of being creative.

And they're definitely.

I wrote another piece recently on, on John Dyson, the guy who did the Dyson vacuum.

Right.

I wrote it for LinkedIn and for my Intentional Artist newsletter.

The Great.

He did 5,126 iterations of the vacuum.

5,126 in four years.

That's dedication, you know, obsession.

So that goes to show you that, you know, if you have, if you have dedication and passion for something, things can happen.

He wasn't afraid, you know, he didn't care about failure.

We've all heard about Thomas Edison and 10,000, you know, one, whatever it was, 10,000 tries of, you know, doing the light.

And so, you know, I think that fear is always going to be around.

Yes, failure is always going to be around.

It's not whether it will be there, it's when.

And it's how you handle it.

That's the key.

You know, how you deal with that fear and failure.

To me, yes, we all have fear.

Don't get me wrong, I get fear and failure all the time.

But, but it's how we handle it.

And that's, that's the important part of it now, how you're going to deal with that fear.

How are you going to deal with that failure?

What does it tell you about what you have to do moving forward?

You know, there's, there's information there, you know, so that's where in some ways AI can help you because it'll, it'll bridge that information gap for you much quicker these days because of the knowledge that's there.

Well, just the time saving aspect alone, I mean, I, I've saved I don't even know how many hours using some of these tools.

Whether it was Claude or ChatGPT or Perplexity.

The time saving is incredible.

And I would say, you know, one of the things that I've, you know, said to artists or said to people, it's like, look, I really believe that AI Puts a premium on the handmade, on the human made.

And you know, art as we know it and love it is human made, it's handmade.

And does it mean that AI and robotics and CAD machines or 3D printers or whatever, like, of course, all these are tools that can be used.

But to your point, you know, the artist mind is a very unique thing and that is a very human thing.

And the AI can't.

Doesn't know what you're thinking, doesn't know what you're seeing in your, in your heart or in your soul or in your mind's eye.

And, and so I believe on a certain level that technology and AI and robotics will ultimately shine a light on our humanity.

That puts a premium on it in a way.

And so don't run away, stick around because you're, you know, it's your, your time is now.

Yeah.

And the other factor, Scott, is that, you know, I think some of the things that people are afraid of, like if you're an artist, creative person, wanting to work on something using AI, all the tools that you're going to use, yes, you have to upgrade for this ability.

But all the tools that you want to use, you can use them in private.

You don't even have to put all that information out to the public, you know, so that way you're in an enclosed environment without other people having access to your data.

Yes.

And that's the, that's the best way to do what you want to do with AI is if, you know, obviously everybody has a concern, even me.

I don't want my stuff that I'm doing out to the world.

So I work in these closed environments.

I set up my own servers and on Discord and Mid Journey and do all that so I can work in an enclosed environment so nobody else has access to that.

And that's the same with the large agencies now are doing the same thing.

They're using AI for campaigns and so forth, but they're doing it in private.

Right.

And so artists can do the same thing.

And that way if you're afraid that somebody's going to take your work, don't be afraid.

Just, you know, do everything in private.

There's an ability to do that and you won't be, you won't have to worry about, you know, somebody taking your work.

And to me, that's the best way to do it anyway is, is to do everything in your own echo chamber, in your own little box, so to speak, and have it be closed so nobody has access to that.

So if that's the biggest fear that people have is they're going to take my stuff.

Actually, they won't because you just pay for the upgrade, whatever it is, 10, $20 a month and you can have your own private box to work in and create and nobody else will see it.

It's that simple, actually.

Well, it's sort of what you're describing is almost, you know, a virtual studio.

Like I can create a virtual studio as an artist online.

It's a private, protected walled garden where I get to create and make my stuff.

The world doesn't get to see it until I want to show it.

And that's how we make art already anyway, right?

We go to our studio, we go to our office, we go, you know, to our, you know, space, whatever that is.

And actually that's a great analogy.

That's a really good analogy.

Like, you know, every artist, not every artist, but many artists have their own studios.

And, you know, and the biggest challenge I have with artists is like, you know, let's see some of that progress online.

You know, just don't show me the, the final product.

Right.

You know, show me some of that behind the scenes stuff, because people love that, right?

Yes, but most artists are, I shouldn't say most, but a lot of artists are afraid to show their work until it's completely finished, right?

So what they, what do they do?

They go into their studio.

Nobody goes into the studio with them.

It's a hidden, you know, studio, wherever it is, in a warehouse or in a garage and they work there until it's completed.

That's the exact same thing.

But virtually with AI, you can do the same thing.

You know, obviously the work is different.

And another point on that, last year in Miami at Basel, there was this artist at Untitled where she created the work inspirationally using, I think Mid Journey.

Then she moved that to a 3D rendering program outside of mid journey to get a 3D perspective of the work.

And then she crafted that in the physical world as a sculpture piece by, by hand.

So that's, that's an interesting way.

And a great way to use AI is like come up with concepts online, you know, and use the different tools that are accessible to you to, to get to a final product that's in the real world, you know, and so there's, there's an example of someone who did it the right way.

You know, as far as she probably, you know, did it in her own virtual private room, she created it there, she exported it into a 3D program, you know, did the Extrusion there.

And then she came up with the models that she needed to create it in the real world.

And so they were made of.

I can't remember what medium it was.

I think it was either clay or something like that.

But there were these gigantic, you know, Florida, probably anywhere from 3 to 4ft high.

And she had like half a dozen of these pieces of the show and they were fabulous, you know, so there's an example of utilizing AI in a non traditional way to give you ideas, you know?

Yeah.

Well, this idea that we.

We all need thought partners, we all need mentors, coaches, just people to talk to.

A springboard, right?

Hey, can I spitball something with you?

Can I bounce something off of you?

Well, that's what Ask Chris AI is it, is that thought partner, that subject matter expert.

And many of these tools.

Right.

Can also play different roles.

I love Perplexity because it's like what Google promised me but did not become like.

I can research things on perplexity and gives me exactly answers.

And so it's a thought partner in a different way.

But Ask Chris AI is such a fantastic tool for artists.

Chris, I'm so glad that you did this, man.

I'm so happy for you.

Congratulations, man.

It was clear to me when I played with it, tried to break it, didn't break it.

Damn, I want to break it.

No offense.

No, I wanted you to break it.

But it was apparent the amount of love and energy that you put into it because it really seems to be a very sort of dense capsule repository of all the work you've done over these years, all of the expertise you've gleaned.

And hats off, my friend, kudos.

You've really created something special here and I'm so grateful that you came on the show today to talk about it.

Well, thank you so much, Scott.

I really appreciate giving me the space to do this and explaining it to people.

And the platform that you have is just as important as well.

And I really appreciate the fact that you're able to.

You allowed me to share this with you, your audience.

Well, my friend, you should know you have an open door policy.

Anytime you want to come back on and talk about anything that's going on, just text me and we'll make it happen.

Because you are a dear colleague and friend and you're welcome here anytime.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

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