Why The Lion King's Studio Chief Is Bullish on AI for Creativity
Top Insights
Why The Lion King's Studio Chief Is Bullish on AI for Creativity
Jeffrey Katzenberg ran Disney's film studio through The Lion King and co-founded DreamWorks before backing tech startups. In an X essay to both Hollywood and Silicon Valley, he argues AI will widen what creatives can make, as sound and computer animation did, while taste stays human.
💡 Key Insights:
- Your taste is the one ingredient AI still can't supply...Katzenberg asked a leading AI model how reasoning differs from creating, and it said taste takes over where logic runs out.
- Whatever tool made the work, your audience only cares if it moves them...Walt Disney was a tech obsessive forever hunting new tools, and he still measured animation by whether the audience believed the character.
- Artists who learn AI will make work its engineers never imagined...Edison invented the motion picture and made terrible movies. It took Chaplin and Keaton to make audiences feel something.
How xAI's Marketing Team Hires AI Bots Like New Employees
Josh Kim of xAI's Grok Bot team showed how his marketers put AI to work. Grok Bot gives each job its own assistant that works around the clock and learns how you work. Kim built a campaign live across six bots, from competitor research to a live landing page.
💡 Key Insights:
- Your bot uses your marketing tools the way you would...with its own browser, Kim's ads bot clicked through building a Google Ads campaign.
- Your best bot can become your whole team's...turn it into a template, and anyone who copies it gets your expertise. Kim's demo team came from colleagues' best bots.
- Bots take on more once you onboard them like new hires...Kim scopes each like a job description, starts it on a low-risk task, and widens access as it proves itself. Some xAI engineers already run armies of bots that ship code.
🚀 WATCH: How These AI Copy Bots Are Producing World-Class Sales Copy 50X Faster Than Even The "BEST" Copywriters On The Market…
(Plus… They Don't Get Sick, Miss Deadlines, Or Ask For Raises Either!)
Watch the full AI Copywriting Tell-All Video Here
Prompt of the Week
This Week's Feature: The ChatGPT Photo Studio
ChatGPT can edit your photos like a professional photographer, as long as you give it a photographer's directions. Rachel Woods (@TechWith_Rachel) wrote nine prompts that handle the directing for you, each for a different kind of shoot.
One turns a casual snapshot into a polished LinkedIn headshot. Another styles you for a magazine cover, and another restores an old photo into a modern portrait.
Several drop you into a new location, from a travel destination to a golden-hour scene. Upload one picture, pick a shoot, and you'll have images ready for your website and socials.
Samples:
DSLR PHOTOGRAPHER MODE
PROMPT: Transform my uploaded photo into a professional portrait taken with a DSLR camera. Keep my face, facial structure, skin tone, hairstyle, and recognizable identity natural. Place me in [location] with realistic lighting, natural skin texture, shallow depth of field, subtle background separation, realistic lens perspective, professional composition, and authentic photographic details. Make it look like the photo was taken by a real photographer, not generated by AI.
LOOK DE LA INFLUENCER DE VIAJES
PROMPT: Transform my uploaded photo into a professional and authentic travel photograph taken in [destination]. Keep my face and identity consistent while naturally integrating me into the location. Realistically match the lighting, shadows, perspective, weather, clothing, and surroundings. Use a professional travel photography composition with realistic depth, natural colors, a detailed setting, and subtle background separation.
PROFESSIONAL PORTRAIT
PROMPT: Transform my uploaded photo into a professional portrait suitable for LinkedIn, a company website, or a personal brand. Keep my face, facial structure, skin tone, hairstyle, and recognizable identity natural. Use professional and clean lighting, realistic skin texture, natural expression, subtle background separation, sharp facial details, and a carefully composed frame. Make it look like a real portrait taken by a professional photographer with a high-end camera.
Tool to Try
Oriane is a video search engine built for the AI era. Its AI watches millions of new TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube videos every day the way a person would... what is on screen, what gets said, the logos and products in frame... and turns all of it into searchable data with the views, shares, and creator details attached.
AI Tool Highlights:
🎥 It Actually Watches the Video: Social listening tools read captions. Oriane recognizes brands, products, and people inside the footage and transcribes what is spoken... so a sneaker unboxing turns up even when the caption never names the shoe.
🔍 Search Like You Would Say It: Type "champagne showers" or "GRWM videos," describe a visual, or drop in an image... Oriane returns the matching clips with the exact moment inside each one.
🤝 Vet Creators by What They Show on Camera: Find influencers by the products they handle and the phrases they repeat... instead of a follower count and a two line bio.
📦 Pull It Into Your Own Stack: Structured JSON through the API, straight into Claude or your agents over MCP, or a plain CSV... views, transcripts, and visual tags, live.
🧰 Ten Free Tools to Start With: Video Analyzer, Influencer Finder, Creator Checker, and more... all built on the same API.
One More Need-to-Know News Story
Meta Connect 2026 Sends Muse Shopping Through Your Glasses
Meta used Connect 2026 to push Muse, its new personal AI agent, off the phone and onto people's faces. Once it reaches Meta's AI glasses in the coming months, Muse can act on whatever the wearer's looking at... say, a product on a shelf.
The Details: Muse is picking up more stores to shop, too. On top of the Shopify catalog it launched with, Meta's adding connectors (plug-ins into other companies' services) for Walmart, Sephora, and eight more retailers, with Shop Pay and PayPal settling the bill for whatever it finds.
🎯 Why You Need to Know: Put those together and a shopper could go from spotting your product in an aisle to buying it hands-free. Meta credits connectors for much of what Muse can do, so the stores it's wired into stand first in line for that sale.
⚡ Your Move: Muse already shops Shopify catalogs, so if you sell there, ask it to hunt through your category like a customer would. If it skips you or garbles your details, you've found your fix before Muse hits the glasses.
Mind Fodder
Thanks for reading.
Until next time!
The AI Marketers
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