Why brands are scared of AI-generated content

Turns out not everyone is excited about generative AI: Brands are hesitant to use AI-generated images in their marketing material, according to AugX Labs CEO Jeremy Toeman, who joined me on the inaugural Lowpass Filter Talk last week.

Toeman’s company is building Augie, an automated video creation tool that combines images and videos from a variety of sources, including user-uploaded material, licensed images from Getty, Gifs, and AI-generated images. Toeman got the idea for Augie after he tried to make a video trailer for his podcast and got frustrated with the level of knowledge required by existing video editing tools.

Augie’s development also coincided with the generative AI boom, and the company has been gradually adding a bunch of different AI-based features to the product. For instance, you can ask it to write a script for your video based on some simple prompts, and then select an AI-generated narrator voice to read that script.

Augie’s target audience are small to medium-sized businesses who have yet to embrace video, and Toeman has been seeing some interest from that world — but he also told me that many of the company’s commercial clients are hesitant to add AI-generated media to their marketing videos for the fear of getting sued. In one instance, AugX Labs even built a custom installation of Augie that doesn’t allow users to add any AI images to make it work for a brand.

Toeman also had some interesting insights to share about the costs of licensing media vs generating it (turn out licensing is often cheaper), his take on AI and the writers’ strike and more. You can watch the entire conversation below:

Apologies for the bad video quality on my side, turns out switching to an external webcam at the last minute may not have been the best idea. And stay tuned for future Filter Talks!

This article was first published as part of Lowpass, a weekly newsletter about AR, VR, streaming and more. Sign up now for free.

Photo by Anh Tuan To on Unsplash