Should You Clone
Yourself with AI?

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:18

Welcome to the Expert's Journey Podcast. So, what would happen if your audience could learn from you, hear your thinking, and get your help even when you're not in the room? That's the promise of building an AI version of yourself, not a robot copy, not some weird fake replacement, a trained digital extension of your ideas, your voice, and your expertise. In this episode, we're going to look at what that really means, where it can help you, where it can go wrong, and how to use it in a way that builds trust instead of damaging you. If you're in business, this is no longer actually a future question.

It's a now question. The real issue is not whether AI can sound like you, it's whether you should let it. Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 01:00

Good morning, Brad. Oh, we're into your favorite subject area at the moment, AI. And it's oh so exciting. And I'm really enthusiastic about the questions that we're going to go through today because the concept of having an AI version of yourself sounds so futuristic, and yet the future is now. So let's dive in. What does an AI version of yourself even look like?

Brad Hauck 01:25

Well, it's a good brilliant question because we have so many different AIs and AI versions of ourselves. So to give you an example, you could have an AI assistant or an AI clone or a training chatbot or a content system, all that speak in your style. So let's break that down a little bit. So you might have an AI assistant that does things for you and it answers questions for people, it works for you when you ask it to do things, but it thinks and sounds like you do. So you've trained it in your ideas, your methods, things like that.

Dixie Carlton 02:02

But is that like just when you you start using ChatGPT and you use that to be your assistant and you make it sound like yourself? Or is that where you're going to another level of because that seems to be a fairly common thing now? Are you saying that there's a way to go even further than that?

Brad Hauck 02:22

Yeah, I think that's the first step. That's where we all start out with AI. We make a tool that helps us do things the way we would do them. So that's our AI assistant. But an AI assistant can be opened up to the public as well. So you talk about my GPTs, for example, in OpenAI. That's an example where you take your AI assistant and you make it public for people. So then it's acting like you. But that's really only the first step down our journey because all we've got to do is look online. And there's so many examples now of you can have your AI clone that looks like you that does videos, and everybody's encouraging you to do those things.

But the real question, I suppose, is should you?

Dixie Carlton 03:09

Good question. And there's so many ethics in that. But before we move into ethics, what how does it actually help you to have an alternative version of yourself, like your doppelganger operating for you instead of you? Like, does it really help you? Or is it not really? Like, we all think about ourselves in our industry as speakers as being you turn up on stage and you do your thing live. Are you saying that we can go way further and just dial it in? How's it work?

Brad Hauck 03:42

Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying here. So today I'd like to focus in a little bit more and move into that the AI video of you thing. So we have our clone who speaks like us, looks like us, and talks to our audience. And when then we push that sort of stuff out through social media. One of the things that we're seeing is that if you want cut through, you need to be producing a lot of content. And people like Gary Vanderchuk, who's very famous in this digital content space, reckons he pushes out around 340 pieces of content a day.

Unidentified speaker 04:14

Wow.

Brad Hauck 04:14

And he's doing it across multiple platforms. So he has Gary V, the fisherman, Gary V the Businessman, Gary V, the tech person, and over all these different channels, he's pushing out all this different content at the same time. It's all him, but it's all sort of little themed sections. In the end, it leads you back to him as a person because he's the person at the center. So to be able to do that, obviously you can stand there and record video like many people do. But what a lot of people are doing is they're using AI clones where they videotape themselves.

Software allows you to create a version of yourself that looks exactly like you, and you train it in your voice and it sounds exactly like you. But then you can hook it up to automation tools that write posts, produce the video, and post the video for you. And so that comes into a lot of questions when you start doing that.

Dixie Carlton 05:11

Yeah. Wow. Because if it's doing it as you, then doesn't it become a matter of almost your full-time role is just setting it up to do all of the automation? Oh, I can see so many rabbit holes I could go down. But okay, let me just come back to something more basic. How do you train it without losing your own voice and branding?

Brad Hauck 05:35

Well, this is where you start to tie two things together. We talked about the AI assistant. Okay, we've trained that. So using the tools that are available, many people now are using AI to write social media posts. Now they might edit them slightly but before they put them up. But if you continue to take your edits and train your assistant on the edit so it learns better, you will eventually end up with an AI tool, be it a ChatGPT assistant or something like that, that can write your social media posts for you. The next logical step is you link that to a tool that, like AGEN, that will actually take that content that you've written, put your voice and your image on it, and then make a video that can then be posted on social media automatically.

So you're no longer actually in the loop. You're actually using AI to write this stuff for you. And it's really possible right now to have an AI that sounds exactly like you, the way you write, and then feed it into a tool like HeyGen to make it sound like you sound and look.

Dixie Carlton 06:47

Two questions. For people who feel that they are being bombarded by AI and are turned off by the idea of using AI or being educated by AI, does there pose a risk that if you join this, that you're going to turn off large segments of your market or your audience?

Brad Hauck 07:09

It's getting to the stage where your audience won't be able to tell. Remember, most content that we're using for social media is very small chunks of information. And as such, a lot of people watch them without even having the sound on. So they're actually reading the captions on there. So people are scrolling through without sound on because they're in public or they're on a train or whatever, and they're reading the captions. So they see you, but they're reading. So they're not even really looking at you half the time, they're just reading the information you're pushing out.

So you're moving into a little bit of different thinking territory here, and that is that it if you shoot a video yourself, many people shoot video, and it's not that good a quality. So it doesn't make a great deal of difference if your AI looks slightly off. And to be honest with you, okay, I have a problem with doing this because of the way my mouth works. But people who have a normal mouth, obviously, I've got muscular problems on one side of my mouth, it's very easy to clone yourself. It really only takes a matter of putting a couple of minutes of video up to be able to do it.

In fact, you can actually do it from a still image. Wow. So when you look at this and you break it down, you go, okay, I need to produce content regularly on an ongoing basis. How do I do that? Well, I can stand there and I can batch shoot 10 videos, and then I've got to edit them, and then they've got to go up. Or I can give my AI assistant the job of writing 10 posts, feed it into HeyGen, have HeyGen automatically produce 10 videos and then post them straight to social media. So there's a lot of advantages to doing this.

It's not meant to replace you, for example, on stage, but for short chunks of information, you can do this. Now you don't even need to use AI to actually write the content. You could take one of your articles and just select sections and feed it into HeyGen and have it produce the videos. So it's actually your writing, your thinking, and it's just the AI producing the video itself.

Dixie Carlton 09:26

What if you've got older videos that you would like to many from four or five years ago that you would like to regenerate? Can you do that with that same system as well? Like just feed them into HeyGen?

Brad Hauck 09:39

No, AGEN's for actually creating like clones. So specifically for that. But if you were to just transcribe what's on that video and feed it in, yes, absolutely. And the way I can transcribe videos these days very easily. So it's just a matter of feeding all of them in and getting the transcriptions and then dropping the transcriptions into Heygen. And look at there is other tools, just HeyGen is the most popular that I know that many people would be familiar with. And it is a reliable tool too, if you want to play with this.

Dixie Carlton 10:09

So is it HeyGen or A-Gen? Just spell it out pro listening.

Brad Hauck 10:12

HeyGen is in H-E-Y.

Unidentified speaker 10:15

Right.

Dixie Carlton 10:17

Hey Gen. Just in that just in case some of us don't understand the Australian accent. Okay. Obviously, this raises the biggest question of all. It's the ethical issues and trust. We're all talking about our brand being something that we have to establish as a trustworthy brand. If we are passing it off with AI too much, does this result in brand brand trust issues? And are there ethics that we really need to think about in terms of other people stealing our stuff?

Brad Hauck 10:53

Look, it's a really good question. And I walk a fine line on this one. There's some things that I think are going too far and some things I don't. I don't think it's an issue when you're doing short little videos to use a tool like an AI production tool to produce short videos of yourself. I don't think that's an issue. I think if you were to do a whole speech and do it that way, I think that's different because people are expecting more of you. They want to see how you think and how you move and all those sorts of things.

On the other hand, when the AI is writing the content, the AI is pushing it out. We are heading into AI slop, aren't we? And then that's a huge problem. We're actually seeing now that something like 66% of the web is just garbage. And we're getting to the point where AI slop is becoming a problem because people are producing so much of it. But it's a vicious circle. And this is the point I would put forward. You need to be seen to get traffic, to get traction, all those sorts of things. But to be able to produce the amount of content you need for all the different platforms, you almost can't physically do it.

So you need to use AI to some extent to do that. Now, whether you jump into using AI video and doing it that way or not really becomes a question of the platform and who you're targeting. So, for example, if you were targeting mining companies and you wanted to work with them as an expert, maybe AI slot is not the way to go. But if you're targeting the general audience around the world who do not know who you are and you're just trying to get some cut through to sell a book or a course or something like that, then maybe producing some AI content actually is useful to you.

Dixie Carlton 12:48

Do you think that there is a time where either we're all going to go one of two ways? We're going to say, I'm just over it. I don't want to even click onto my computer anymore because I am distrusting of 90% of what I see on there anyway. So I'm just not even going to look at it anymore. And I'll just go back to reading paper books. Or do you think that we're getting to the stage where we are being so well conditioned by all of these technologies that we just become far more accepting of everything we see and not even question whether it's AI?

Brad Hauck 13:23

I think we're always going to question whether it's AI. I think that's definitely part of it. So the one thing I've noticed is that a lot of the stuff that I'm seeing, for example, on reels on Instagram, are cuts of people talking or something like that. So you and I talking here, cut up as a reel for people to watch. And that's very realistic. It's very hard to copy from an AI perspective. So I see a lot of that sort of content out there. But then you see a lot of the other stuff where you've got the picture and a bit of music and quotes coming over the top.

Well, all of that is AI produced. Now I enjoy some of those. Good morning, you're doing wonderful today type videos. I know it's AI slot, but I actually enjoy it. So the trick is understanding who you're targeting and what you want to do. I think there's a place for both, but think very carefully about how you're doing it.

Dixie Carlton 14:22

Yeah, good point. And I think this comes into your branding as well, and what audiences expect from you and what they think they're going to get from you. And so if they know you and they start to see that obvious difference, and maybe it's not even going to be so obvious, but there are ways that you can differentiate yourself as being this is definitely not an AI. And if that's the way you want to be perceived, is that you are totally against doing AI versus someone who is really comfortable with that. There's a thing that I follow, which I love this couple doing jokes every day.

And she's literally folding the washing or walking around and doing things or unstacking them or cooking something on the bench while he's relaying jokes to her. And it's brilliant. Mike and Joelle, just brilliant. They've got millions of followers now. And there's no way AI could replicate that. But that's their brand. And it's so obvious that is done live and normal. And I think if you want to be 100% perceived as this is not AI, you have to get creative. And sometimes that means going back to the simple things that say, hey, I'm just going to be walking along the beach or the pathway and recording this live, and here's my message.

Belinda Shaw does a great version of that with her Wisdom Warrior Wednesdays. But if you are really interested in adopting this whole new level of technology to make your brand go further or to make your messages go further, then obviously this is a really good way of doing that. But so here's the question when does an AI version of you become a real asset to your business? Like when should you start thinking this is where I've got to make the shift, or this is the path I need to go down?

Brad Hauck 16:15

I think when you analyze it and actually look at how it's doing, is it saving you time? Are you using it to qualify leads? Is it being used to support clients? So an AI chatbot, for example, can be used to support your clients or your membership or whatever. I think there's places where it becomes an asset. The other thing is too, when we come back to the Gary V example early on, multiple channels. Now you've obviously got your main channel, but what if you want to set up a second one? What if you want to create an AI one that you can test and see how well it goes?

Those options are there having multiple channels. Many people feel they're locked into one channel, but most of the experts are running multiple Instagram accounts, multiple TikTok accounts, things like that. But it comes down to leverage, I think, more than anything else. You're just doing something for the gimmick. Oh, I can make an AI of myself and that makes me look cool. Here's my AI talking. I get that because like I'm geeky. So I think it's hilarious. But on the other hand, is it actually giving you leverage or is it not? Is it just producing content?

And it really is something you're going to agonize over. I think everybody does. I think in content development these days, almost no one develops content without touching AI somewhere along the process. Whether it's just like, give me some starter ideas, and then you come up with a topic. Like it might say, how does AI change how you breathe? So you go, oh, that's my topic. You hold your camera up and you speak about the topic. The AI has given you the prompt on what's popular or things like that, and then you are speaking off the cuff.

That's one way of doing it. The next level is to use, say, Big View, which is a teleprompter for your phone, and you get AI to write a short script, and then you hold it up and you read the script and record it. So now you're using AI a little bit further, but it's you talking, but it's not really you thinking. Right. So there's all these little tiny levels that is buried in this stuff.

Dixie Carlton 18:24

Yeah, there are. So if you wanted to get started and just even try creating a simple video of yourself doing a short script, where do you start? And you just go into HeyGen and put something in like just walk me through the first steps.

Brad Hauck 18:42

If anyone's listening and they just want to give it away, for anybody who just wants to try it, go to HeyGen.com, I think it is, but just do a search for HeyGen and sign up for a free account. And basically they will either ask you for a piece of content, voice content, and a picture, and then it will actually make from the picture a like a static outline of you, but the hands will move and the mouth will move and the eyes will move. So it looks like you, but it's like our background we see here.

And it takes the little bit of voice that you've recorded and it creates a voice based on that. And that's the first step. It will actually say, here's your demonstration, and you can see it. Then you log in and you have a certain amount of free credits that you can try. And you can take it a little bit further, train it further on your voice, or you can pay the $20 to $30 for a month's subscription so you can play with it properly. And that's what I recommend is actually don't go and buy a year subscription.

Like this is that's not the way to do it. Go and play with the free version until you run out of credits. Then if you think, okay, I'd like to go a little bit further with this, the tools will guide you. They're very understandable now. There's plenty of videos to watch on how to do it. And maybe try making your first AI video and see how it looks. I run them past my daughter. That's my way of testing. If she gets chills because it looks weird, because she says it doesn't look like you, but it's you, then I can't use that tool.

Dixie Carlton 20:16

Right.

Brad Hauck 20:17

So that's what I do. So I would say to someone, make one up and send it out to a couple of friends and say, What do you reckon? Does it does it look like me? Does it sound like me? Have a bit of fun with it. You don't have to do a video and send it out to the whole world. You're only playing, you're learning. But I think the key thing here is I want people to go and actually try this and see what is actually able to be done. You'll be blown away with what can be done now.

Dixie Carlton 20:48

Now, so you just said send it to a couple of friends. And we have talked a little bit about the ethics of this. But I just want to touch on the fact that a couple of years ago, there was a lot of talk about the fact that families should have special words, passwords with each other to make sure that if someone was using their voice, for example, to claim that they were being held hostage and needed a ransom paid and horrible things like that. It sounds extreme, but obviously that sort of thing does happen. But where does the line get drawn between you being able to do your own version of yourself for this versus enabling or having it that someone else can take a photo of yourself?

Take it, and obviously for speakers, we have recorded content that's out there in the world. Taking the ability to, for nefarious reasons, create a video of yourself. Is there a means of ensuring that someone can't do that? The cynic in me is gonna think, oh, great, but oh well, what happens if?

Brad Hauck 21:54

Look, we already know deepfakes are taking over the internet. We've seen it with presidents of the United States all the way down to TV stars everywhere selling products that they never endorsed. And the videos are very real. And that's just happening all the time. It's not new. And there's nothing, realistically, there's nothing. You can do to stop it. If people like Twiggy Forrester, who's a billionaire, cannot get it pulled from Meta and places like that, then what hope have you got? I can literally, for example, take a photo I have of you now and go and get some video of audio of you talking on one of your videos on YouTube and clone you if I want to.

I can do that. Hey Gen doesn't check to see if I'm the real person, it doesn't know and doesn't care. And neither do any of the other deepfake tools, like if you go into using like some of the high-end video tools like Google's VO and things like that, there's no stopping doing it. So yeah, there's nowhere around that. That horse has bolted, it's never to be put back in the stable. How you get around it, I'm not sure. I'd think for most people it wouldn't be a problem. Where it becomes a problem, and I've seen it lately, is where people are actually using live cloning.

So they're actually doing streaming. So I might zoom you to sell you a product, and I look like you. So it's actually Dixie calling whoever to sell a product. And I'm talking like you, I sound like you, and I look like you, but it's me sitting here, it's live cloning, and exactly, and it's happening all the time, it is very common. And one of the things that I was saying the other day in one video I was watching, he was it was recording of a conversation with this person, supposedly. He asked them to hold up fingers, three fingers.

Now I can hold up three fingers, four fingers, five fingers. It's really me. AI, for some reason, seems to be faulty when it comes to holding up three fingers. He tested this person, this person could not hold up three fingers, which was really interesting because the person in the call was sus that this was not the person that they were supposed to be. So yeah, cloning is there, it's live, it's being used in scam call centers, it's all around us. Which, yeah, it's very unethical, obviously, but it proves that it's actually working and that people are using it all the time.

So that's probably slightly off our topic. It's something to consider. Yes, you can be cloned. And then people can link to their own links and take money using your face. Yes, exactly.

Dixie Carlton 24:40

So perhaps one of the ways that we in the speaker community can make sure we have management over that sort of thing to some degree, is that if we decide to go down this path to let people know that this is the fake version of me, and these are, you know, like for example, politicians who have the real Donald Trump account or the real Brad Houck account. And maybe that's a matter of actually being ahead off the curve, which is what you're all about, making sure that if you are going to embrace some of this technology, that you stay ahead of it enough to make sure that you are the least.

It's like the burglars will target the house with the windows open. All right. So if we don't have our windows open and we've got a good security system in place and video security, then we are less likely to be burgled by the robbers in the street. And it's the same, I think, with this technology is that if we are ahead of it, then we are less likely to be targeted for nefarious reasons because we're just that little bit harder, maybe, to do that. And that's maybe a good potentially the best reason to actually sit and really get ahead of this and understand what you've been talking about this morning.

And I think this is a really good thing for us to all be aware of is just what is possible and to either make decisions about embracing that technology or not. And that's part of our brand planning going forward.

Brad Hauck 26:08

So yeah, I think there's one more thing you can do too, and that is that when you set up your accounts on LinkedIn, you have the option to verify your account. I think that's one thing that you can do to help protect your name is that I have a verified account. These are my verified Twitter, my verified Facebook, my verified LinkedIn, etc., so that at least you do have somewhere where people can always come back to and know that is the real you. Yeah. As far as using AI clones, look, it's really up to the person.

I think it's a very exciting technology. I think there's going to be some really good uses for it as we go forward. And I think the opportunity's there to use it in a big way. But we're all going to have to make our own way down that street and work out where does it fit with our brand or does it not fit with our brand at all? I currently, yes, I played with the tools, but I do not use AI video of myself. I use AI and helping me plan things and brainstorm and all that, but I do not use AI in that way.

I actually shoot the video myself. And you can tell because it's horrible. I'm too close to the camera, but it's me and it's real, and authenticity is such a key word in what we do. So you can make decisions about this yourself. The key thing is you need to understand that these technologies are available. You should go and play with them and see what they can do. You only have to spend an hour there. But think about the way I look at it is if you rule it out now and then you don't waste time thinking about it, going, I wonder if, or whatever, get rid of it out of your brand.

If it's not going to work for you, for some people it's fantastic. For others, if you're just selling randomly on the internet, it's probably fantastic. But if you're a professional speaker or an author and your face and your writing and your expertise is your brand, then it may not be the way to go. But you need to know about it.

Dixie Carlton 28:06

Absolutely. What a great conversation. I'm so enlightened. I feel a little bit scared, a little bit excited, and keen to see what kind of comments we get out of this conversation this morning. So if you have some feedback on our podcasts, especially today, please feel free to send it to us or review our podcast and keep us informed about what it's inspiring you to think about.

Brad Hauck 28:29

Well, if this episode has you thinking about writing a book, but you're not sure how to shape your ideas, reach out to Dixie via indiexpertspublishing.com. She'll help you turn what's in your head into a clear, compelling book that builds your authority. And if you're doing the work but not getting enough clients, if you want to sharpen your positioning and build marketing with AI that actually converts, please join me in my authority multiplier coaching community at bradhauck.com. Take the step that fits with your business, and we'll see you in the next episode.

Dixie Carlton 29:00

Talk soon. Thanks, Brad.