Beyond the Prompt: Building Worlds with AI | Michael Gilday

Building AI Boston

Michael Gilday, founder of Deep Vibe, joins Building AI Boston to explore how generative artificial intelligence is reshaping creative storytelling and independent media production. Drawing on his

Key takeaways

• Michael Gilday worked on the pilot and first two seasons of ABC's Lost, even appearing as Gerald DeGroote in two episodes.
• Deep Vibe operates a 24/7 AI-curated radio broadcast called WRXL Noise, accessible via YouTube and an interactive website at resxl.com.

Main topics

• Generative AI in creative storytelling
• Independent media and taste networks

Notable quotes

"Great creative is discovered, not created."

Conclusion

The episode offers a forward-looking perspective on how artists can har

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) Our guest today is Michael Gilday. He is the founder, CEO, and executive creative director of Deep Vibe, a creative studio pioneering taste networks, including The District and WRXL Noise. Today, we explore what's possible when human imagination meets emerging technology. Welcome to the show, Michael. Speaker 3 (0:30) Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Appreciate it. Speaker 1 (0:32) Yeah, Chris and I are excited because you've had a really cool career across television, radio, advertising, and technology. Even some early work on the show Lost. Is that true? Speaker 3 (0:44) Yeah, I worked on the pilot in the first two seasons. My wife and I were actually in two episodes, too. Speaker 1 (0:50) Oh, you're kidding. Speaker 3 (0:51) Whoa. I played Gerald DeGroote. We were the people who started the Dharma Initiative. Speaker 1 (0:58) Oh, wow. Are you, Chris, do you know anything about Lost or am I throwing you in the deep end on that? I watched, Speaker 2 (1:05) I watched in the beginning. So I would have seen you beyond that. I, it was one of those things that I was. Speaker 2 (1:13) I wasn't as into as everybody else. And then when everybody was disappointed at the end, I was like, oh, Speaker 3 (1:17) well, I Speaker 2 (1:18) guess I didn't miss what I thought I was going to miss. Speaker 3 (1:20) It's about the journey, not the destination. Speaker 2 (1:22) Right, right. Speaker 1 (1:24) I'm just wondering. if that thread has led you to where you are now with world creation and deep vibe, I mean, it's kind of appropriate for anybody out there that knows the story of lost. I just think there's some, some parallels in maybe your philosophy. What's the thread, man. What's kept you wanting to be a creative. Is there, is there a through line for you that you can pinpoint? Speaker 3 (1:47) Well, I already was a creative before because I went to Emerson college in Boston. And I, I, I actually went to UMass Lowell first and I hated the radio station when I was there. When I got to Emerson, I spent a lot of time at ERS and was a huge fan of, mostly did audio production and then new media became a thing. So I started video editing, you know, and doing early HTML and, you know, After Effects 3 and Photoshop and all that good stuff. So out of college, I got a job in digital marketing when we were first inventing it. you know, in 1999, working on the Truth, Annie Smoking campaign. And I did that for a few years and I ran actually an in-house sort of video content, what would have been user-generated content website for youth, Speaker 1 (2:39) like Speaker 3 (2:41) early internet broadcasting. And it didn't even go live and it went nowhere, but I built a whole little Speaker 2 (2:47) community of creators Speaker 3 (2:50) in a little studio years ahead of... It's a constant thread in my life that I'm years ahead of the curve. So as I get older, I'm trying to get closer. Because by the time the thing I'm doing hits, I'm usually on to the next thing. Speaker 1 (3:04) And that's an Speaker 3 (3:06) enduring problem that I'm trying to solve. But yeah, I ended up doing that for a few years. And then I went into radio professionally and was a DJ at WFNX in Boston and then in Hawaii at Star 101.9. answer to Craigslist ad and ended up getting a job on the pilot of Lost. And then I got into the union and did that for the first two seasons. But that was, you know, I went to a film school and I did not study film. Lost was my film school. I mean, it was a masterclass every day working with these, you know, 30 plus year veterans, you know, learning just what they did in real time in very difficult conditions on location all the time. Speaker 2 (3:47) So Speaker 3 (3:48) much both from you know, the technical crew and, you know, the art department and especially some of the actors. I mean, you Speaker 1 (3:56) know, the Speaker 3 (3:57) ensemble cast that we had was amazing. So long story long, I was one of, I would say, the top three fans of the show on the show. So there was three of us who, like, really knew everything. Like, all the lore, all the details. Because I was an on-set dresser, so, you know, continuity was important. But I was also a big fan. So me, the script supervisor, and one of the wardrobe girls, we knew everything. Like, they would call from Burbank and ask us questions sometimes. Oh, Speaker 2 (4:25) that's super Speaker 3 (4:26) cool. They would ask the script supervisor, but she would talk. I didn't know who I was. Speaker 3 (4:32) Every time the script came out, people would disappear because people actually liked it. But that was how I watched the show, was reading the script for the first almost two seasons. And kind of diving into that world and that world building and sort of the mystery box opening, kind of JJ's philosophy and stuff. And Damon Lindelof is an incredible writer. So I learned so much through Osmosis. Speaker 1 (5:02) I'm just wondering if anything about your, now that there's more emerging tech, I'm wondering if your fundamental philosophy about storytelling has changed or have the tools just caught up to the ideas you want to do explore? I know you're a guy that doesn't sleep. So what do you say about the tools that we have now? Has it changed how you think about storytelling? Speaker 3 (5:21) I wouldn't say changed it, but it's continually re-emphasized. What I love about technology when it works right is when it can reduce the distance between the story and the storyteller, which is really the interesting place that we're getting to right now, Speaker 1 (5:37) where Speaker 3 (5:38) you can pressure test an idea faster. You can see if it has legs, if it turns people the right way. Speaker 3 (5:49) I'm a dreamer. I mean, I do a lot, but I also dream way, way more. I have 10,000 dreams a day, and traditionally I've discarded 9,999 of them just immediately. Now I'm able to... actually use six, eight, ten a day, you know, like, and I'm clearing out the RAM. And that's an amazing feeling. It's very freeing, but it's also allowing me to hone my craft, I think, a lot better, you know, when I can do quality stuff at scale. Speaker 2 (6:25) And Speaker 3 (6:25) when an idea comes up, a lot of times in my gut, the judgment is, is it good? Not... Can I convince other people? Is it going to take six years? You know, will it take too much money? You know, is it too much coordination and effort? And is the idea good enough? Like I can just try stuff. And that's, I mean, that's why I have a whole 24 seven, you know, pirate radio vision broadcast on YouTube. So I can just make ideas and put them out into the world, you know, along with my team. Speaker 1 (6:55) You want to share some work with us so we can kind of take a look and, and you can. at will describe your work. I mean, I know there's the district. I know there's this, what is it called? A pirate radio station. Do you want to talk about your work in those two areas? Speaker 3 (7:11) Yeah. I mean, the broadcast is WRXL Noise. The station in the world, the world is the district. The station in the world is just called WRXL. But WRXL Noise is how we access it on YouTube. So it airs 24 seven. You're over my shoulder right now. And what we've built, you know, a headless YouTube in a VM in the cloud through OBS, you know, broadcasting station is, I think, really cool. You know, I think the infrastructure underneath that we've built and the tools in the ecosystem are awesome. And we've built tools for, you know, sort of concepting and pre-production creation through production into promotion. Speaker 3 (7:56) What we have on air is just kind of the front face of it, you know, and how it comes into the world. And we also have resxl.com, which is the website, which is interactive. We're building a Fortnite island right now in UEFN. We're going to be on radio. We have, you can call in, we have a phone line where you can call in and speak to train our DJ host. Speaker 3 (8:22) So there's a lot of different touch points in this world, but it's all essentially world building, you know, and I think it's a really kind of new idea, you know, of. Speaker 3 (8:34) of things that you really couldn't do before, you know, and potentially a rebirth of independent, you know, broadcasting and media, something that's really kind of died, you know, in all this giant consolidation, you know, and watering down, you know, the tastemaker has really been sidelined, I think, in the last, I don't know, since the rise of social media, like we call them influencers, but really it's... It's just kind of a wash of blah. Speaker 3 (9:08) So I think there's an opportunity for people to create more sort of collectives and communities around, you know, shared interests or values and, you know, or more counterculture focused things. So that's something that we've been thinking about is, you know, being able to build taste networks, you know, and not just put up videos like influencers do, but actually have, you know, a whole entire, you know, broadcast. whether it's on traditional sources like YouTube or Twitch, or whether it's independent on the internet. I mean, the really interesting thing about this time is that... Well, to be frank, I think the megacorps want to automate us all the way. Speaker 1 (9:53) I think AI Speaker 3 (9:55) is their big play for that. I don't think their intentions are great. Having said that, you know, I think they may have unintentionally placed the tools in our hands to allow us to automate them away, you know, or, you know, there's a lot of traditional, you know, economics that made a dependence on giant companies for exhibition, production, distribution, whatever that actually isn't even there anymore. Like if you hate Spotify, you can make a Spotify right now. Obviously audience acquisition is a hard thing, but all the underlying technologies, you used to need access to CDNs and all these things that could actually support your ambition if you were to get popular in terms of reaching the audience now with all the microservices that exist at an affordable price. If you can make something cool and you can get people there. Speaker 3 (10:56) You don't need the algorithms. You don't need the social media companies. You don't need the traditional media companies. You can produce and share at scale. And then what we're trying to do, which I think is different, is we want to create a collective. We want eventually this world having people contributing to it. Initially, because my company, Deep Vibe, we've got about... 10 folks or so, we're all making things for it and putting stuff on air. Plus the machines are also creating things. Everything goes through, you know, human taste filters and gates. You know, we don't have anything autonomously going on air, but it is a collaboration. You know, I think there's a lot of justifiable AI hate right now, but because, you know, the motivations behind the people financing it are not good. Yeah. I'm not going to hedge on that. Speaker 1 (11:53) We know what you're talking about, man. We do. Why do you think that is, Michael? I think I have a theory on it, but when you said it like that, Chris, I was like, yeah, you know, splitting the atom, it's just a tool. Michael, do you think that a lot of what's happening is just a matter of speed and us having tools we shouldn't have or tools that some people are just using for nefarious