Before I get started, a little self-promo: I released episode #25 of the pod yesterday, which is a big milestone for me. Completing 25 episodes, at min, was my goal when I started the pod the week after the election. Have a listen if you haven’t!👂 It’s a supersized episode focusing on game theory and how Trump doesn’t understand what game he’s playing, and in the second half, on how the AI tidal wave is probably nigh.

In today’s newsletter, I want to just show you concrete examples of how rapidly video AI is improving as that’s not something I can do on the pod.

Generative Video AI’s Progress

The recent release of Google’s Veo3 video AI generator has really shaken some people in the film/tv business up. It’s not just a step forward, it’s a couple steps forward, at least, all at once.

Let me show you a simple example of what I mean.

About six weeks ago, I made this as an experiment in what the current state of the art in video AI could do. If you replicated that with traditional CGI, it’d be at least $1m, likely more, due to the sheer variety of characters, fx, and environments.

Now, it’s not a very good trailer for anything. No consistent characters, the very barest of nebulous stories, inconsistent visual style, no sound effects, the only dialog is that one bit in the first scene, etc. But it is really nice to look at, relatively speaking.

The process for me to make each individual scene here was:

1. Generate the starting image for a scene in an image generator like ChatGPT or Midjourney.

2. Edit it until I get what I want.

3. Take that image into a video generator (90% of this was Kling AI) and tell it what I want to see. Try over and over until I get something close to what I envision - and close is all you can hope for. It was possible to have Kling or another one I used in about 10% of the video called Runway ML to generate some soundfx to go along with the video, but they were mostly unusable.

4. For the dialog at the beginning, I recorded myself on webcam saying that, took the audio and ran it through an AI voice changer at ElevenLabs, then used the video recording of me saying it to have Runway ML map the lipsyncing for me and generate video based on the initial image of the goat-man I fed it. Then I added the voice-changed audio in. As you can see, huge pain in the ass.

5. Generated music with AI.

6. I then edited all the scenes together, added time cuts to the music, etc, adjusted lighting and colors on some of them etc manually.

Now let’s look at the state of the art using Veo3. I didn’t make these, to be clear:

Absolutely mind-blowing. Veo3 is, clearly, good enough for real projects, not just tech demos!

I don’t know their exact workflow for each scene, but roughly it probably is:

1. Type a prompt into VEO3 describing what you want to see and hear. Keep doing it until you get more or less what you want.

2. Create or generate music.

3. Edit it all together.

So not only is the result miles better but the process is simpler too. A few of the scenes in the first video have a kind of ‘AI-look’ to them, but for many of them, at first glance at least, they look and sound completely real to me. I’m sure some of them can be detected as AI if you really stare at them long enough and find incongruous details, but most viewers won’t notice.

A 1:1 Comparison

I tried the same prompt in both Google’s Veo3 and OpenAI’s Sora, which was cutting edge when it was released. Now? Not so much compared to Veo3.

Here are examples from each. Sora first, for the previous generation of video gen, and Veo3 for this generation.

I used the same prompt for each one:

“Gandalf, Frodo, Elrond, Gimli, Galadriel, and Sauron are part of an acapella group of singers. They are performing a beautiful acapella rendition of "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain", and they are harmonizing beautifully while singing it. They're standing in a piazza in Venice, Italy just before sunset.”

Sora’s output:

I would say this is…meh. 6 months ago it would have been impressive. Now though… I don’t know who some of the characters are, anda there are, in fact, seven characters rather than six, and of course it doesn’t have audio of any kind. It did get the time of day and location right.

Veo3’s output:

Wow, right?! Nailed the location, the time of day, the characters, the song, the harmonizing, etc! The lipsyncing isn’t perfect by any means, but it struggles the more characters you add, and six is quite a lot at this point. What’s extra-impressive to me here is that it didn’t spit out the Peter Jackson movie versions of the characters. It look what it knows of the characters and made its own versions of them (presumably partly to avoid copyright issues). They look like Renn Faire versions, granted, but still!

And remember, this is the very worst that cutting edge AI video is ever going to be going forward.

I’m signing off now in an effort to start with short newsletters to see if people enjoy them, and will likely expand to longer ones down the road to see if people prefer those.

For now, stay strong and stay SPICY! 🌶️🌶️

Since you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to tell you that I’m starting a newsletter—but there you have it. My well-honed talent for stating the obvious is clearly in full effect!

This newsletter will go out once a week(ish). It won’t just be a rehash of my podcast—though it’ll likely touch on some of the same subjects. I can’t share things like graphs and images on the pod (I don’t do video pods—yet?), so I’ll be doing some of that here.

Why No Tacos For Tyrants?

Simple: Tacos 🌮—I’m sure we can all agree—represent some kind of Platonic ideal of perfection. They’re delicious, versatile, full of diverse flavors, and require no cutlery. They are, simply put, fantastic. Not just among the world’s great foods, but among the world’s best things, period.

Tyrants, on the other hand, are filthy, power-swollen maggots we’d all be better off without. 🤮 The very least we can do is deny them tacos.

So say it with me: No Tacos For Tyrants!

I started the NTFT podcast the week after last fall’s horrendous election because it was either channel my rage or check out entirely. And I’m not a checking-out kind of guy. So here you are, reading this.

If you’re here without knowing me, I’m Matt Mihaly: long-time game entrepreneur, traveler and adventurer, investor, and a voracious consumer of news and politics.

Until I was about 21, I was a Republican—probably because I was born in Ripon, WI (where the GOP was founded) and had Republican parents. But let’s be real: today’s GOP has no real connection to the one of 1854—or even 1984. (Same goes for the Dems, to be fair.)

While studying for a degree in government, I interned for a Republican Congressman in D.C. one summer. It was... an experience. So much so that I left the GOP that fall and started drifting toward more reasonable positions.

Bush’s absurd invasion of Iraq in 2001 🤬 cemented my new and continuing identity as a solid liberal—and I’m not afraid to use that word. I’m proudly liberal. I think the liberal tradition—especially in its global sense—is worth upholding.

I’m also a capitalist. Not a proud one—capitalism has a long trail of externalities that too many capitalists refuse to own up to (environmental, social, etc.). But I do think capitalism has been a net positive force for lifting much of humanity, even if the benefits are wildly uneven and often come with violence and suffering. Of course, the colossal environmental bill for that "progress" is only just starting to come due… But, regardless, it’d be hypocritical of me, having started multiple companies and run my first one for almost 30 years now, to pretend I’m not a capitalist.

However, capitalism is like salt: you want some, but too much and it’s a disaster—for the body or, in this case, the body politic. (And yes, capitalism requires real income redistribution. Trickle-down economics is mostly nonsense.) And we have got to somehow rescue our American politics from the scourge of unlimited money.

Anyway. After college, I became a stockbroker, hated it with every fiber of my being, quit, taught myself to code (badly), and started an online games company at 23. Started another one a decade later. Sold that one. Still have the first.

I’ve been married to an amazing woman for 13 years, have three tiny chihuahua mutts (they total less than 20 pounds combined), and I love to travel and play in the outdoors—skiing, mountain biking, surfing, whitewater rafting, scuba diving, hiking, photography, you name it.

I also read and listen to a ton of podcasts, and I’m really pissed off about the malevolent idiot steering our country into banana republic authoritarianism while treating the executive branch like a license to grift. 😡

But enough about me.

This newsletter—and the podcast—aren’t about me, though I’ll occasionally share personal experiences.

Now, let’s talk about something I can’t show you on the podcast: a graphic from today’s New York Times showing just how thoroughly the aforementioned malevolent idiot has captured much of America.

The red lines at the top show how places across the country have moved toward Trump over the last three elections. The blue lines at the bottom show movement toward Democrats.

It’s... stark.

In my last episode, I talked about some of the wounds the Dems have inflicted on themselves:

• Their gerontocracy—governance by the old, actively suppressing younger leaders.

• Corruption (much smaller than Trump’s, but still real), which feeds the “they’re all crooks” both-sides narrative.

• Biden’s catastrophic delay in dropping out, or running at all for a 2nd term.

Back in January, I predicted a new political party would form in response to MAGA madness and the Democrats’ ruined brand. That hasn’t happened yet, but these things take time.

However, what Democrats—and America—need is a revolution from within, led by younger leaders. We need a coalition to form within the bloated husk of the Democratic party and eat it alive from within, until it is effectively a new party, but one capable of using the machinery and money of the old.

Pelosi and Schumer? They’ve got to go. Not because they’re incompetent legislators—they’re not—but because under Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer, the Democratic brand has hit rock bottom. It’s polling around 27% approval.

That’s not a one-cycle problem. That’s a structural crisis for the party.

I’ll be exploring efforts to revitalize the party here in this newsletter and on the pod. Because as much fun as it is dunking on the tangerine tyrant, I won’t spare the Dems legitimate criticism either—though yes, I’m absolutely biased in their direction.

That’s enough for now. I won’t fill your inbox with too many words (today).

I’ll just leave you with the meme that made me laugh the hardest recently.

Stay spicy, friends! 🌶️