Hogan Shrum & PIPPA: The AI Cartoon Factory Paying Artists & Keeping Kids Safe

Everyone says AI is coming for your job, your art, your privacy, and maybe your soul. Hogan Shrum has a different idea.

In this lively and unexpectedly optimistic episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Hogan Shrum, co-founder of PIPPA, a generative AI platform built not to replace creators, but to empower them. PIPPA lets everyday people create animated movies, custom cartoons, educational videos, branded content, and story-driven media with astonishing ease. But unlike so much of the AI world, this platform was designed with guardrails, ethics, and actual usefulness in mind.

What began as a father making bedtime stories for his children evolved into a serious creative tool with massive implications for parents, teachers, marketers, influencers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Upload your voice, type a story, choose a visual style, customize characters, tweak camera angles, add music, lip sync dialogue, and export polished animated content, and all from one interface.

Mookie digs into what makes PIPPA genuinely different: licensed artist styles with royalty payments, strict protections against abuse, safer family-friendly content controls, intuitive editing tools, and a clear lane in the market. The result is stylized animation rather than creepy fake-human AI slop.

The conversation explores how PIPPA could transform education by turning passive learning into active storytelling. They also discuss the broken public perception of AI, why most platforms ignore creators, how pricing makes professional-level output affordable, and why carving out a niche may be smarter than trying to become everything for everyone.

Give them a listen to discover how the future can feel less dystopian and a lot more fun.

The Guest

Hogan Shrum is the Co-Founder of PIPPA, the world’s first animation platform that lets anyone create animated videos, and his work sits at the intersection of storytelling, product design, and creator empowerment.  At PIPPA, he’s helped develop innovative features to support artists and combat AI art theft, collaborates with a diverse team to improve user experience and platform functionality, and helps foster a creative community where users can express their ideas through animation. Before and alongside PIPPA, Hogan’s background includes brand-building and engagement work through A Little Bird, where the focus has been forging genuine brand-consumer relationships through innovative engagement strategies. His experience in experiential marketing and marketing communications gives him a sharp point of view on what makes people connect and engage with a brand, not just notice it.

The Company

PIPPA is a story-to-animation platform that transforms imagination into living animated worlds, making it possible to create, share, and revisit stories that feel unmistakably yours without the complexity of traditional animation or current AI animation tools, all while supporting visual artists and combatting AI art theft.

https://www.gopippa.ai/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the ambition podcast. I'm your very bald host, Mookie Spitz. And the one with all the ambition today is Mr. Hogan Schrum. He is co-founder of Hip Hop. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, Mookie. Glad to be here. Glad to have you. AI. A few years ago, everyone was predicting robots, behaviors, reinforcement learning. And this generative AI stuff came as a surprise with the large language model, with OpenAI, ChatGPT, November 2022, the world changed. And out of generative AI and the large language models, we've got video as a key component, which is super exciting. It's been a little controversial to tell us about PIPA and how it takes that take on generative AI with custom video for individuals, businesses, the works.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, so it was born out of an idea that uh my co-founder and I had where we both have young children and we would tell them bedtime stories at night. And uh my co-founder, Sean, had the idea his way, his wife walked by and said, You know, you should turn those into one of those AI books. And him being an AI guru genius was like, What if I could create a cartoon instead? And so he built his own little tool to upload audio that would then convert from that audio alone, where he would just record it on his phone, into a cartoon. And he showed me this and I was blown away. And I said, he was using his kids' voices, his voice, everything was very personalized. And I was like, this is very different than what I've seen from generative video and AI. Um felt very personal. And I was like, man, if we could democratize this and give anyone the opportunity to create their own stories, regardless of skill level, that would be the ultimate home run. And then we talked immediately about the AI art theft and the controversy around a lot of these things. And thankfully, he and I were on the same page there. He actually uh several of his siblings are artists. One of them is in fact an animator for a large YouTube show. And so our idea was when we launch this thing, we're gonna fast track as quickly as possible to get artists to submit their artwork so that they can create their own styles within Pippa that can be used by the public. And in so doing, we would be paying those artists royalties anytime their styles were used as a percentage of our profits. And the ultimate goal is that all styles available on Pippa in the near future are all artist licensed.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Amen. What a great model! The big players have been ripping everyone off, right? They they started out going to used bookstores and just OCR scanning text and uploading it and just uh lawsuits flying around, New York Times, Sarah Silverman. Everyone's angry, justifiably so. If you're a content creator, your stuff has been ripped with no compensation. So it sounds like the core of your business model is to take proprietary content that that your that your bots use, but actually pay the artist.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Correct. Very much so. Um pay and promote, to be honest with you. So each artist is going to have their own profile page within this that links to their sites, how whatever they'd like us to promote for them. But yes, basically anytime someone creates a video, as soon as they select the style, that artist gets paid. Um, and moreover, while we do have AI styles on there now as we continue to grow, we are still taking that same percentage of profits and donating that to an artist pool. So artists are actually going to be paid in the off chance that someone uses an AI art style here in the near term. Um, so it's still an opportunity for them to earn by being a part of PIPA and getting their art out there.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

I love the mission and the model. It's inspirational. Almost retroactively. Why didn't they think of that? And that's because they're too big and too greedy. That's why they didn't think of that. Tell us about the experience. Let's back up a couple steps. What's your value prop? How does the user experience work? And uh what kind of tiers do you have? I know you can do personal videos, videos for business.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah, the use cases are pretty hard to quantify because they just keep spiraling out like a web. But as far as the user experience goes, again, our our objective here was we want to make this as accessible as possible. I don't want this to just be for an AI expert, a prompting expert, an animator, uh, a very experienced digital creator. I want it, I want an eight-year-old to be able to use this and bring their imagination to life in ways they couldn't even imagine. Um, and so the user experience is very straightforward, but it's also meant to be just that. A lot of the AI video generators out there now, it's a prompt, wait, see what you get kind of model. Uh, this kind of takes you along the way. So the the simplest and easiest we have um is that first tier, which is just essentially show me the magic, is what we call it. And you start that project, you'll open it up, uh, it gives you three options. You can upload audio, kind of harking, harkening back to how Pippa was born. Um, you can upload a document or story, um, or you can choose ask Pippa to help you write that story, where you can just create, tell it what characters, what the general idea or plot ideas for the story is. You pick the genre, you pick the tone, you pick the length. And then it will generate that for you right there on the screen. You have an opportunity to edit or tweak anything it wrote for you. And then once you're happy with the story, it takes you to pick your your style selection. Right now we have around 20 different styles you can pick from. Um, anything from you know 3D animation, classic, classic Disney style animation, uh anime, you name it, watercolor, crayon. There's just so there's a ton of options. Um, once you pick that style, it will then auto-detect the characters in your story. And that's an first opportunity for you to really personalize this outside of the story itself. You can upload a reference photo. If you're a star in the show, it will look like you and whatever that animation style is. Um, and then it will automatically generate the screenplay and all of the storyboard for you. So you will, after a few minutes, land on a page that shows you your entire storyboard. Nothing's animated yet, but it'll also then give you an opportunity to look at those individual shots. Did it do this correctly? There are a bunch of little fun editing tools. You can pick camera angles, you can honestly get pretty in the weeds if you really want to. And that's that's the sticky part. It becomes really fun seeing how you can really personalize and create this the way you want it to be created, which virtually no other AI tools and animation allow for the common user, right? Um, you're paying a whole lot of money using a bunch of different tools to do all of this, and this all happens right there within Pippa and a very easy interface. And then when you're ready, you hit animate, and within a few minutes, you've got a fully produced cartoon. It then drops you into uh what we call our composer, which then allows you to write there within the platform, add sound effects, do voiceover dialogue, music, all within the platform. Once you're happy with that, and it uses a pretty similar interface to interface to say like a descript, where it's got you know tracks of animation, audio, effects, et cetera, that you can just drag and drop however you want. Um, it will lip sync for you any of the dialogue that you want, lip sync to the characters. Uh, and then you can export, and you can export it in 1080p, 4K, and it can be exported in different formats based on say your social channels. So it'll do 16 by 9 for YouTube, it'll do Instagram, TikTok, etc. Um, but again, you're never having to leave the platform, and it's meant to be this sort of guided creative experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

So, my goal as a user, whether I'm an individual, I could even be uh a younger person, young adult, kid, uh, is to create a dynamic animated movie. That's my goal, right? Yeah, and then you have an integrated platform that uses the tools of the trade to make that as simple and as intuitive and fun as possible. And if I'm hearing you right, you could add an audio file. Now, is this me making a description of my movie? So if I'm a kid and I just record my voice, or is it using some kind of other source to inspire this creation for the audio?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

So it could be it could be a combination of all those things. So we have the ability for you to use an AI voiceover. Another area that we're really going after soon is we just like we have artists on there for visuals, we want to have voiceover artists that can be used on there as well where they get paid instead of us using AI voices. Frankly, AI voices just don't have the tone and personality that you ever want from a lot of these, especially for the types of uh content that we're making here, but it can be a combination of things. So uh you could you could essentially have a narrated story where the whole story is told, say, by a narrator in one long audio file, and then the animation will build around that. You can have a dialogue-driven story where it will detect what characters are speaking, and you can assign different voices to them. You can record right there in the platform. So let's say I'm a character, I appear in these different scenes. On each storyboard, I can just hit voice, it'll allow me to record the dialogue right there, lip sync it right there, that shot is done, featuring my voice, kids' voices, whomever.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Okay, I was just a little confused as to whether this audio file is commanding the interface to do things, or if it's the actual VO of a dialogue or exchange within the movie, and you're saying it could be a combination of both. Yeah, we've trained it to do both. Can it interpret or intuit based just on the input what I'm intending to do? Yep. Okay, pretty, pretty impressive. So I can put in there, you know, Hogan and Mookie are having a podcast conversation about Pippa, put together a little two-minute movie, and we're all animated in the style of ex-artist, and then we'll move off to the races, or I could input our actual mimic dialogue and maybe scat the first uh few minutes of it, and then I'll interpret that. Is that what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

The fastest, easiest example of that. If we took uh the audio recording of this podcast, and let's say we did the first two minutes and we just uploaded that audio and then grabbed a picture of both of us for the character references and then sent it on its way, it would build that all out for you, storyboard it, etc.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Awesome. So it's off to the races. So it uses all the power of AI intuitively and implicitly to really interpret what the user wants based on those inputs, and then the user can tweak it as it goes along. Now, one of the problems with a lot of the AI platforms that persist to this day is iterations. So when you iterate, it's like I don't want a yellow hat, I want a blue one, and then it goes from a dinosaur to a chicken.

unknown 11:58

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Exactly. Right? It's that's been the problem with generative AI since inception, and it and it persists. So I can tweak, I can tweak PIPA as as I can change blue hats and dinosaurs to chickens, and I can do all that in an iterative process to edit as I go along. Is that right? That's right.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

We we've excitedly solved that problem for the most part. I mean, look, there's still some hallucinate hallucinations here and there when it comes to AI. That's uh uh essentially just a limit of AI right now in general. But the way we've set it up is so my biggest frustration when we were building this was man, this got 95% of the image right. And like that 5% is really annoying. And my only option is to regenerate and cross my fingers and hope it gets it 100% right this time, but it still starts over. So we actually recoded and implemented a tool that's similar to things you might see on like a Canva or say Adobe, where if you have the image and let's say, oh, this is all perfect, but why are they wearing a green coat? They're supposed to be wearing a blue coat. You can just put in AI instruction and type character should be wearing blue coat and it'll switch just the coat. You can actually use a paint tool where let's say there's a random object that shouldn't be there, and you just want that removed. You can point-click paint over it and say remove the object, remove that object, and it'll just take out what you painted, but keeping all else the same, so you're not stuck in this endless loop of regeneration and hope.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

That's novel. That's novel. The the dollies and the grocks of the world are all prompt driven, and you can't really dip in there. Yep. So that's that's pretty pretty damn cool. And it sounds like you have a post-production experience. Yep. With uh with the with the layering.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

It depends on how deep you want to go. That's the thing, you're not required to, but you have the opportunity to. So it will produce a very solid video with minimal with minimal influence by the user if that's what they choose. But what we found is that once you start getting in there, the tool itself is fun. It gives you controls that are very intuitive, like, oh, I wish the I wish it was a view over here where you just open the camera box and it allows you to just pick the perspective you wanted to take in the image, and it'll make that exact same shot just from a different angle.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

This is terrific. And you're highlighting contrast with like Sora. Sora from OpenAI got the plug pulled fairly recently, and it was just bombarding the internet with AI slop, everything from fake news to harassment to, to your point, copyright infringement. So you're solving a lot of these problems. Number one is is you're paying the artists whose styles you're using, the other one is is is ease of use and depth of that. So I can tweak, I can adjust. It doesn't just barf out one iteration with little changes. Exactly. And I also get this post-production aspect, and I get to play with it. And it sounds like uh a neat a neat solution to a lot of the problems that are in generative AI for video. Very much so. It's fun. Can you can you can you talk us through a few examples of the different use cases and some fun videos that exemplify Pippa's capabilities? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So, one that I was working on a while through with through our testing phase, which I was like, if we can once we can get Pippa to do this, we are home. Um, I wanted to make a video that was starring my kids and and my wife, and my kids, two young boys, four and a half and two and a half. They love superheroes, of course. And so I was like, Oh, I'll have a video of them being put to bed, and and a kidnapper comes in to try and steal our cat, and they transform into their superhero ultra egos and save the day and kick the robber out, and that's the story. Um, and so I used Pippa to help me write out and flush out that story, utilize, you know, pictures of my kids as inspirations for the character, same with my wife. Um, was even able to create a bedroom that looked very similar to our own home bedroom or a house from the outside that looks just like our house. And uh set to work on that. It turned out to be about a two-minute, 15-second video, but it had all like it tested all the limits of what AI is at the bleeding edge of AI, right? Which is sort of complex actions, characters switching outfits, but then keeping them consistent throughout. Um, you know, required a lot of sound effects, different camera angles to have it, you know, go from this sort of serene bedtime to action-packed, we got to save the day to resolution at the end. Um, you know, and it's raining outside. And so I really got into the in deep on, okay, yes, this got the characters right, but one of the other challenges we had in the early stages of developing this, any AI users may be familiar with, when you're trying to recreate shots within the same room, the limit with AI is that it always produces from scratch. Whereas we figured out how to build within our tool scenes. So anything that takes place in this bedroom, the bedroom always looks the same. You can move the camera angle around.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

I mean, the furniture isn't moving around and morphing, and the drinks are changing color. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yep, everything always looks consistent. The walls don't go from blue to green to orange. Um, and so it really helps with that sort of continuity feel, right? It doesn't take you out of the experience in a way that a lot of AI content does. So we nailed that. Um, you know, was able to do the lip syncing with my kids, have them transform from one character to another, uh, sync all the dialogue, uh, the sound effects, you know, on the post-production was able to layer in beyond the dialogue itself, you know, different music that obviously is serene at the beginning, and then as the action picks up, it kind of changes into this sort of action action music. Was able, we added in sound effects like, you know, doors slamming, rain, like it's the the movie starts with an exterior shot of the house and a thunderstorm. And then, but once it goes inside, you can still hear the rain sort of trickling on the outside, and it's just very clean, more cinematic feel. And all of that was done within that that sort of composer tool at the end to layer in all of these different effects and audio pieces that brought it all together.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

How easy and intuitive is that post-production? And how easy and intuitive is uh tweaking it midstream, like altering camera angles and visuals.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, so if you hover over, let's say you're in the composer storyboard, you hover over any of the images, and there's a simple little three-wheel, a little box that says AI edit, and that will open up so you can give it an instruction if you just wanted the image tweaked and not redone. You can click voice, which allow opens the thing and allows you to upload an audio clip or record it right there in the platform for lip syncing. Um there's a camera button, you can hit camera and then it opens up the little widget that shows you all the different rotations around. You can go high, you can go low, you can go 360 around. Um, and then even within the animation uh modules themselves, there's an even longer list of camera angles you can choose from. So, say aerial shots, panoramic shots, high angle, low angle, like tight framing of face, zoom in on hands. Like all it's all kind of there in a in a very easy to understand way. And that's where the fun, playful aspect of this is you get in there and you're like, oh wow, like it gives you ideas on ways to create unique content and unique angles and visuals, etc.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, it sounds like a science fiction version of i iMovie. Remember the Apple movie app, of course. And uh, and kids would love that. They would make their own little home movie, and then they would churn through like a hundred megabytes, you know, a gig of your of your hard drive, and then you'd yell at them that they're wrecking your your your MacBook. But uh, but it was time consuming and it was relatively laborious, and it and it didn't have nearly this kind of AI-driven functionality. So I could see kids really getting into this from a learning point of view, how to how to think of storytelling, how to storyboard, how to drive action, how to show, not tell, how to compress a big idea into 30 seconds a minute. This is a great educational tool with hands-on learning. They become director, actor, producer, voiceover talent. They're really making their own movie.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Exactly right. And I'm glad you brought up education because we see that as a another major opportunity and use case for PIPA on the traditional education level. So think about you know, my kids are young. Sometimes getting them to pay pay attention to um, you know, a teacher talking for 20 minutes on a subject is more challenging. Um, but the idea that a teacher could within five minutes create a you know, two to five minute video that t teaches any lesson, whether that's your ABCs, singing songs, you know, animals, you name it, they can turn lessons into animations within minutes that they can use within their classes. And then to your point, as say kids get a little older and now they're responsible for say, oh, you need to do a one page essay on the American Revolution. Um, you could assign that, but have them make it. As a cartoon instead of writing something out so they can really go with the life.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

You're gamifying education and you're integrating storytelling and you're making the whole thing very, very engaging and exciting and interactive. So instead of sitting there in a classroom bored out of your mind, yeah. I I grew up with the opaque projector. You know what I mean? Get out of here with that. And now they're they're making their own stories and they're integrating all these ideas and bringing history to life, math to life, science to life. That's very uh very intriguing, fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah, and uh, you you may have heard this too, and this is not meant to be a tangent. I do think it's related, right? There's there's a there was a big reveal about, what was it, six months ago, that they said this gener this new generation is the first generation in history that's not as smart as their parents. And the main factor associated with that in research is that they introduce computers and computing into education so early that a lot of these platforms do a lot of the thinking for them. And so the creativity, the problem solving that came from a more analog style of education is a real thing. And we actually see this as a way to bring back that sort of tangible, less do it for me and more help me along, but it does, but it encourages input. It encourages you to give it what it needs to create your vision, uh, but in a fun way, right? So who's gonna hold up their paper to your point and say, look at the essay I wrote? Instead, they're gonna say, look at this 30-second cartoon I just made on the American Revolution. And the act of doing it wasn't just to say, here's the story of the American Revolution. They still have to make conscious decisions and be engaged in the creation of that piece of content.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah, I love it. I love it, love it, love it. And as we all know, whether you're a marketer, an educator, multimedia has a hundred X the engagement and interest of just text. Yep, exactly. And at least 10 times just an uninflected image. So by making it dynamic, turning it into little movies, kids are all excited and you get you got them. And you make learning fun, and you make this kind of uh experience and communication fun. So you're giving kids the power to create these things, they're using their own images. What about other people potentially using their images? What about the generation of inappropriate content? What kind of guardrails have you set up? Because you are appealing to it's cartoonish, it's a younger audience, and you've got a broad range of users. So assuage the fear of the parent.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, of course. Obviously, so first and foremost, it goes without saying, as far as security goes, privacy, any images uploaded are owned and protected entirely by that user. Not even we as administrators have access to that, those files. Um, so all of that is strictly regulated and protected and secure for every user. Um, it's also trained that once that image is uploaded and is tied to you, if a duplicate image were uploaded by someone else, it would flag it and say, this is an image, it's owned by another user, it cannot be utilized. It does the same thing for all copyrighted characters. So obviously, one of my biggest fears in launching this was we can't have someone out there making a Mickey Mouse adult film. You know what I mean? We don't want Disney knocking for something crazy like that. Or even an adult film of one of your artists. Of course, anything. Yeah, so it has strict regulations there where um, and you know, it's interesting, sometimes we have to almost flag it for being too restrictive. So, for example, in that video where the the robber or the kidnapper was trying to steal our cat, you know, the one of my sons throws a book and it bonks him on the head, and then he shoots a little toy arrow that sticks to his chest, and it wouldn't re wouldn't generate those things because it was too violent. Um, so it's like even toy violence like that gets flagged. So we're kind we're we're always being monitoring that, but anything regarding, say, nudity, violence, um, basically anything that could be flagged as inappropriate, we err on the side of caution in that it will not allow that. We'll take specific inquiries, and if we're learning that, you know, hey, it's just it's trying to do a toy gun, we're gonna train it to do something that will work for that. But it you would be it would be impossible for you to create anything R-rated.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

You guys are like an anti-grok. Yeah, yeah. You guys are the grok alternative. So that that that is also refreshing. You know, I'm sure it can be a little bit frustrating at times, but it's worth it to protect the children's, which is necessary and responsible.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And that's not to say you can't create, say, adult-oriented content, right? Like you can still be clever with your sense of humor in the way that Pixar is, you can still tell stories that aren't for kids by any by any stretch. It's just if you push the limits on on specifically around things like violence, gore, or sexual content, it will absolutely not allow those things. Um, but other than that, it's it's pretty flexible from a content creation standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Talking about content, and I'm I'm sure I'm leading the witness here. You guys are starting with young adult and kids, cartoons, this this generative AI idea generated from you thinking about using it with your kids and you know, your your your co-founder. This has limitless potential for other types of generative AI. You have a lot of capabilities that you rattled off, which to me sound unique and not really available from the other video generating platforms, especially from the big frontier models. Sure. So are you are you setting your sites in in a broader context as well, or are you comfortable now in this more cartoon world for young adults, kids, education, that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 28:18

And it's well, and look, I think I think create call it your social media creators of all ages and types can use this. Uh, for example, um, one of our earliest customers was um a guy who's a major influencer in foster parenting. He's fostered over 60 plus children. He's a huge advocate online for the not just the benefits to foster parents and parenting and the benefits one gets from that, but of course the benefit to foster children. And he wanted to utilize PIPA to tell the story of one of the kids that he adopted from Uganda. Um, and he shared the story, and and we helped him produce the background story of how he grew up in Uganda, his life, and then how he how he was found by the foster parent and all the benefits that came from it. And he uses that as call it a PSA of source to promote the benefits of foster parenting. Um, and again, there's a lot of different types of stories you can tell. You can we've worked with uh a couple partners on creating like a cooking show cartoon where we're working with, say, a chef or or a couple of guys that that work on on grilling and they want to create a cartoon version of their themselves doing a cooking show. So, like, think about this way uh, you know, you're grilling, and their whole concept is about, you know, grilling recipes and things like that. But you know, they're basically limited to what they can film in their backyard or on a set. But if they wanted to talk about, say, the history of barbecue and you wanted to go back to caveman times and show when the first person threw a ribeye on a hot rock, you can do that now. We can tell what the rock is cooking with Pimpa. Yeah. Well played. Um, so it when you think about start thinking about it that way, any site sort of creator we we are already going after. So it's definitely not just limited to parents and kids. Um on the on the flip side of your question, though, one thing we're not interested in pursuing is going after anything in generative AI that mimics real life. So we're not out there trying to do movies and uh sort of anything that's going to mimic an a non-animated piece of content. Uh, one, it's it's much harder to regulate uh AI theft in that in those particular instances. And we would argue, you know, that takes away even more work from different types of creators, um, say in traditional film um mediums. But what we and and the other reason for that, frankly, is because we feel that that type of content screams AI from the very beginning. The human eye notices, the human eye picks up on something that's attempting to be real. Whereas with animation, we don't have that problem because it already looks fake. It's a cartoon. Um and we've even implemented it to where you can export in the traditional frame rates that animated cartoons are animated in. So it's like, you know, when HD TVs first came out and it was almost that too good picture where it looked like you were looking to, it's like it was the frame rates were too high. It was almost jarring. You could tell it wasn't real. Um, so it will actually produce these in a way that feels more like an authentic piece of content that you had when you grew up.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

I think that's brilliant on a number of different levels. So you you create a box for yourselves that's safer, it's compliant, it doesn't enter the muck of AI slop and it can't be misused. And it also makes a hell of a lot of sense from a positioning and marketing point of view.

unknown 31:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Because you guys have your niche in this world of generative AI, everything for everybody. You guys have carved your place as cartoon stylized video. And I think that's bang on point. That's really, really smart to focus that way.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Yeah, again, the idea is that we want to we want to be a creativity platform, something where someone can tell any story in the way that they want, but you know, also have it be clear that we're not trying to replicate reality here. We're we're kind of taking this in one way or another into a fantasy world. It gets you off the hook for a lot of these problems. But it yeah, and and I think it's more of a like right now, especially we know, like AI in general is kind of a bad word. Everybody associates it with taking away. And that was our focus on artists, too, is we we don't believe that AI has to take away from people. It can actually support artists with a new opportunity for income, for example. It can support, even think about a um like a children's book author who's always wanted to have the animated version of their books. They can easily take the illustrations and work that they've already done and create it into a cartoon for themselves that they can then sell if they'd like or use as a way to promote their children's books. We talked about educators. There's just there's businesses, right? Like how expensive it's been in the past to create an educational video or a walkthrough or things like that that utilize animation. These were in the thousands of dollars. You know, we also built this to be access accessible from a cost perspective. You know, you can create a three to five-minute cartoon fully produced for under$20. And so that changes the game too, um, to ensure that everybody can do this and not be pinched financially in order to get their creativity out in the world.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

I love it. It's the democ democratization of AI, generative AI. You're paying the artists, you're protecting the kids, you've delineated a swim lane, which is fantasy and and this kind of stylized comic-y kind of universe. And you led you led the witness, namely me, which is I think a poll just came out that that twin only 21% of people are in favor of AI, which means that 79% hate it. So AI is more hated than uh, you know, than a bunch of other things we could think of in this hateful kind of culture that we're forced to live in. And you're turning that narrative around, which is it's an amazing tool, it's an amazing technology, and if done in a smart, strategic way, could really add tremendous value to people's lives. Exactly. Instead of taking jobs away, it could actually pay artists who otherwise wouldn't be paid. And instead of sitting in a boring classroom, you become a participant in your education, learn storytelling and layout and all that good stuff. And uh, and people have fun with it instead of complaining about it and wondering if it's gonna take your job and take over the world.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Yeah, and I was even uh talking to someone today. I'm like, this turns screen time into something that's far more engaging than just doom scrolling and and junk and junk content. Zombieing out, you're actively engaged with actively engaged and creating and seeing it come to life right before your eyes in a way that feels very interactive and rewarding, but also again in a way that's creatively stimulating. And I think many would argue that you know telling stories and and using your create the creative side of your brain is the best mental exercise you can give yourself. Hogan, you are my hero.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

I'm sure you've heard that a few times. I think this is really terrific on all the levels that we're describing. Can you give us a peek under the hood? Uh without giving up too much proprietary information, but just um but just what's public domain and what you're comfortable talking about. What powers your engine and what's what's going on behind the scenes?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah, so at first, when we were testing this, we were essentially plugging in a bunch of different existing tools to see what would work. And really what that turned into was us figuring out what each of them does very well, and then taking those specific pieces and building it into our own platform. Now, that doesn't mean so for video generation models, um, and this is where we can get into the weeds a little bit, when you're generating your images, you can choose different image generation models based on how premium you want it to look. Um, so for example, for like wide hero shots of a landscape or things like that, you can typically use a slightly cheaper model for generating because it's not getting into heavy details. There aren't multiple characters, multiple actions. But let's say you want to have three characters on screen at the same time, and we always need them to look the same across each shot that they're on the screen at the same time. There are more premium models that you can use to ensure the accuracy of those images. And when you're going through, it will actually auto-recomend those for you based on what is in that particular shot and the direction it's been given. You can opt out because obviously it's a little more expensive to use the more premium models. But anything from hot Hilo is probably our cheapest version. Um, and then we're actually upgrading every day. So they just launched GPT 2.0 image generation that's been really successful for us. Um and so you have these various AI models for image generation. The same applies for both animation and lip sync. It will always give you the option to choose what model you want to use for your animation or lip syncing, and it will give you a description of what it's recommended for. So you're not flying blind, you're not trying anything. It will say, you know, cling version this is best for lip syncing characters when there are more than one character on screen versus others. So it's built to optimize the use of these various image generation and video generation models for the user so that they're not flying blind and/or paying more than they need to for each of these images.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

But it's all through your user interface. Yep. Right? So it's not like you know, you're making recommendations and then go over to Grok or go over to uh to Claude. You it's all plugged in. Correct. It's all plugged in. And is there like a pick list? So you could you could go small, medium, large when it comes to uh power?

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah, so the it when you're using the what we call the show me the magic version, um, and that's sort of the quickest. You don't need to have you, you're not a type of person that's gonna get in the weeds on each shot and things like that. It will tend to automatically default to the most economical option, unless there are specific shots that demand a specific model for it to work. Because in the end, we we still want the product to deliver what you're expecting. Um, and there are just gonna be certain shots and things that aren't capable that other certain models aren't capable of. Um that said, when you get into like again, you can be as production hand-on as you want. When you start opening up individual modules and you click animate, it will give you a list of options and it tells you the different benefits of each one and where they're going to be the most applicable. It will tell you the associated token cost for each of those. So it's very transparent on here's what each of these does well, here's what they cost. You can select your model if you'd like, but it'll always actually tell you a recommended version based on what's in that job.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

And can you give us a flavor for range? Like how expensive it is it? Let's say if I'm a parent, I got my kids just like you, and they want to play around. How does it compare to some of the other Frontier models and the other things that might be available to me and my kids, or to me and my class, or to me and whomever?

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Uh, they are so our pricing tends to be a little cheaper than most of the models out there, while at the same time really being the only one that has all of this functionality within one tool. So the I the main takeaway is you get about four to six minutes, depending on how in the weed you get, right? Like if you really want to start making a lot of edits and tweaks to things, of course, that's gonna start running up the token cost. But um, even if let's say you do an average amount of editing, you can get about five to six minutes uh on our$20 a month plan. And that's fully produced. So it's not just, oh, I just got all my animations, but there's no audio, there's no nothing. No, that's like that's a completed project. Um, and truth be told, the better you get at using the tool, the more you'll be able to get out of it for that that price. And truth be told, with the speed with which AI is going now, it's very likely that within three months that that minutes number is gonna double for the same price.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Yeah, with data centers and uh just the models themselves are getting better and better to do the to do the crunching.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Yep. And so our highest tier model, which we call our studio tier, um, is 250 a month, but that gets you about 35 to 40 minutes of full animation. So theoretically speaking, you could make a feature-length animated film for under a thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

That's impressive, and then so just in general, I have it. Sounds like there's two options, it's just I pick a tier and I go for it. And if I over overshoot the tokens, then I pay extra based on that.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Yeah, so we have a free option that gives you enough to basically see what an animation can look like. You can't export or get the final video without the pay. The teaser. Yeah, but we want to make sure people right now, a lot of these models, you can't get it even get in there and play without paying. And we want people to see no wow, this is actually producing something cool that I will use before they have to make that purchase. Um, and then that starter tier is 20. We've got a creator tier at 50, we've got a professional tier at 150, and then or at a at 100, sorry, and then our studio tier is the 250. And the studio tier is you know, got all the bells and whistles, and that's for creators that are gonna get in there, like I do at this point, because I'm picky, where I'm gonna pick every camera angle, I'm gonna make sure every shot's perfect, I'm gonna use every feature available.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Can you can you give me hair? Can I have hair? All right. It won't look like a toupee or anything, yeah. Or at least a hat, right? Exactly. Now, this is this is uh amazing stuff. Uh, can can you share maybe a few examples of super cool videos that pop to mind that users have created or that you use as case studies or examples just to get get people excited about the potential of Pippa?

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Yeah, and uh I'd say a good portion of them have been on the uh obviously with me and Sean as as our as the founders have been, you know, how do we bring our kids to life in cool ways? But then um there's another project I haven't published yet, but I will shortly uh is a uh me and my friends, this is dating back about 15 years. We've always been pretty creative, and we we actually started an email storytelling chain where I'd write a chapter, my buddy would write a chapter, and then we would just back and forth it. And we ended up with like a hundred and fifty page book. And it's it's ridiculous. You know, it's boys being boys and living in a fantasy world and all of we're all heroes and in an action-packed environment. But uh one of the projects that I'm finishing up for them is I actually turned, I took that story and turned it into a movie trailer that now is a movie trailer for that story. If it were made into a movie featuring all of our characters, they don't know it's coming. It's gonna be a surprise and be like, look at it. Um and that one's like this, you know, apocalyptic apocalyptic desert landscape action type film, if you will. Um, but done as a movie trailer with all the quick cuts and the action scenes and things like that. So that's a really fun one.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Thanks for taking us through Pippa, Hogan. I've got another podcast show, the science fiction and fantasy podcast, too. I almost feel like doubling this up because uh it's intriguing. As a writer, as a creator, you want to see your stuff come to life. Everyone's waiting for that Netflix deal and adaptation, but it would be neat to do what you just mentioned, create a little trailer for your book. That kind of stuff is is super exciting. So, how does how does one go about connecting? We're gonna put links below to the Pippa website and registering, and and it's it's just the usual, which is create a profile and go for it.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, so uh if you go to gopippa.ai, you can sign up for free there. Um, we are also about a day or two away from having the Pippa app on the App Store for Apple with Android soon to follow. So hopefully by the time this episode airs, that's available to everyone. We're just waiting on the final approval Apple approval. Um, I will say that the app is designed to give you the seamless, simplest walkthrough. The the experience for those that really want to get into the weeds on editing is much better if you hop onto a computer. But you can start a project on your app and then hop over uh to do any of the other deep dive stuff. Um, but I would also say we can offer your listeners uh 25% off the first month.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

This is this is the first deal from a guest. Happy to do it. I think I think this might be podcast 300 of what I've done so far. And you are the first guest to offer a bald ambition discount code. All right. Let's have it be uh Mookie 25th. Nice. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

Enter that code, and you will get 25% off whatever.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Um that's super fun. That way, everybody can get chance to try. I wish you and your co-founder the best of luck. Um, it would be fun to maybe follow up in six months a year, given the amazing rate of change of the technology. And I have to just reiterate that you're turning the AI doom scenario on its head. You're empowering creators, you're protecting the kids, you're accentuating everything positive about generative AI, and you're focusing on a way that that's fun, easy to use, and and affordable. So more power to you.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

AI can be used for good, and that's our mission.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Yeah, dunda, add that to your superhero uh trailer. Yes. The good guys of AI. Thanks so much, Hogan. Like, comment, share, subscribe, everybody. Check the discount code. It's a it's a podcast first for the Mookie universe. And start with Tippah. Give it give it a whirl. Thank you so much, Hogan. Thank you for having me.