Gen C is the generation of the new Internet. In Gen C, the C stands for crypto, but it also stands for creators, the connected consumer and collectibles, both digital and physical with on -chain provenance. It stands for culture and characters, the ones we play in games and the companion ones that AI is building alongside us. It stands for community and digital citizenship and the new set of transparent and trustless tools being built to govern them. These are the people who were raised on a different philosophy on how they look at money, how they look at identity, how they look at privacy and how they look at the hybrid, digital and physical spaces being built all around us. And finally, how they reimagine their relationships with the communities and companies they interact with. We focus on how brands large and small are building for these audiences. Welcome to Gen C. Avery, I have to play you the new intro that I just made for Gen C. So here it goes. Edge of my seat. All right. So you might've noticed that was me not speaking English, but I am going to Portugal next week. So that was me speaking Portuguese. And how did I do that? Well, both you and I have been experimenting with, Hey, Jen's video translation software that utilizes AI to speak in multiple languages. You added an amazing piece that you put up on LinkedIn the other day. If you speaking Hindi, I don't know if you actually speak Hindi or not. Very limited. Very limited. But I just want to throw this stat out before I want to get your thoughts, which our is old friend, Mr. Beast, 50 % of the people who watch his videos don't speak English. And so what he does is hire voice actors all over the world to be the Mr. Beast in their local areas, because he knows that for him to go as global and get as many views as he needs, he has to be in language. And so what do you think about, Hey, Jen, and some of these new tools that are coming that will allow for video translation that is not only only, audio but as you and I have both been playing with, it also literally changes your mouth movements to be speaking the language that you've selected. Sam, thank you for turning me on to Hey, Jen. My first thought was that I was going to use it to connect my grandparents along because we do have a language barrier. And while I was sad to see that Telugu was not a supported language, I was like, it's okay. I'll do it in Hindi. And I sent it and they actually thought it was real because, you know, not everybody is familiar with powers of AI, especially with this sort of intonation, which is amazing. And then I started playing around with it a little bit more. And I want to call out Hey, Jen, but also 11 Labs, which is the voice translation that is powering all of this. Hey, Jen is sort of bringing that video, but 11 Labs does the audio. And we've been working on a couple of little things with 11 Labs in different capacities. I'm really impressed with what they're building. And it's critical because only 14 % of the world speaks English, yet 59 % of the world's digital content is in English. So if you're a person who doesn't speak English, much less, God forbid, is not literate, then you can't access the amazing, wonderful world of the internet that we all know today. It's a massive thing. I think it's early days. And of course, everybody rightfully so has questions on where is this data going? Who owns it? Who's storing it? Hey, Jen is an LA based company. And 11 Labs has raised from a number of investors, including Andre Sinso. We've done some diligence on them, but I think it's early days. But this technology is insanely powerful for brands, but in the immediate term for content creators. If I was a content creator, I would be using this immediately for my target languages, because it'll expand your reach so much, enable you to connect. And by the way, it's not going to be long before that's happening on demand. In real time, I mean. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I did the same thing you did. I recorded a video that I translated into French and I sent it to my friend in Paris. And I said, I've been working on my accent. What do you think? And he gets back to me and goes, oh, like, you're really nailing the language, you're really nailing the accent. Like, you've come a long way. I don't speak French. Because the intonation is like you, right? Right, exactly. It's cloning your voice. It sounds like a white person speaking Hindi. Like, there's some things that are colloquialisms that a local person would never say, but it sounds like how you would speak Hindi if you were very good at it. Yes. I will also say what was fascinating to me was Angelique Vendette, who I also sent the video to, responded and say, okay, here's the problem. It's speaking French Canadian. It's not speaking Paris French. And then I had other friends who because I had put it up on Instagram and for the one in Spanish, I had tagged Mexico and I said, can't wait to get back to CDMX. And someone tagged me and said, no, this is speaking European Spanish. This is not speaking Latin American Spanish. So I do think there is like a lot of nuance that still needs to get worked out in it. But just the fact that I could record a 48 second video that people in Paris and people in Mexico didn't recognize that it was AI at first. I thought it was fascinating. I think you hit it exactly, which is, oh, yeah, if I was a content creator, if I was a brand marketer and I was doing shorts, I think this is a perfect way just to get more reach for your content at a 30 to 90 second level, which should be labeled as AI also. Agreed. Definitely. Cross -country transparency, 100 percent. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second. But I do think that anyone who hasn't played with the page and video translator or there, you can now do it just by uploading a photo and snippets of your voice powered by 11, as you mentioned. So you can actually create yourself saying anything without even having to record a video at this point. You could all do it by text. So it's pretty fascinating. I'm very excited for where this stuff is going, because this is the kind of use case that I think you and I look at this and we're like, this has a very tactical, tangible opportunity. And I think the stat that you just mentioned, only 14 percent speak English, but 60 percent of the content is in English is such a big business opportunity when you really think about that. So, so relevant. Let's pivot from there to a very related topic, which is I don't know if you saw this week, but TikTok has started using AI labeling and Reddit and Reddit. Right. Exactly. For TikTok, anytime you use one of the filters that utilizes AI, now it's going to be labeled as AI. They also are doing auto detection for people who are utilizing AI software and they want anyone who is utilizing AI for their content to have a label on it. I think this is a step in the right direction. I would love all news content also to be labeled like this, because there's a lot of stuff out there. I read an obituary that was driven by AI about a basketball player who had passed away and it said the basketball player is unliving. So that was the way that AI described him being dead, was that he was unliving. And so clearly there's a lot of stuff that needs to get worked out. But from a brand perspective, from a creator perspective, I think that the idea that we should know when things are being modified feels like the right thing. But do you think that affects the creator economy in any way? I think it's similar to how we do hashtag ad, like trust or transparency is key. We just need to be transparent about using these things. I've thought that for quite a while as it relates to Instagram and TikTok filtering because people get unrealistic like body images. I mean, yes, some of this happens in like magazines and photo shoots and all of that stuff it has for a long time. But I'm all about trust or transparency and the digital ecosystem. Agreed. And I also think there's a healthy respect for knowing when someone might be utilizing a tool. It's a productivity tool. It doesn't mean it has to be less entertaining. It doesn't mean it has to be less interesting. I think our enterprise brands, though, we're still at a place where like we can't just use 11 labs like at scale right now. It's not ready yet. It's like a proof of concept. This is how it could be going. And back to what we've talked about before, it's building the muscle for when this really hits scale, we're going to be ready. Correct. And in terms of just going back to Mr. Beast, who has these 13 actors that play him around the world, he said, our team is very actively looking because it's not cheap to do that. And he said, our team is very actively looking. He thought from his perspective and when their research that it's going to be still a couple of years before we actually see it being good enough where he's comfortable. What he said, which was interesting, is they've done some AB testing where they use the voice actor and then they'll use a cloning. And he said every time he does a cloning, people are calling out that something sounds wrong and it distracts them from the content in the video, which I think for someone like him is just really important to make sure it's landing. Totally, totally agree with that. Yeah. All right. Final story before we get to an amazing guest is Crossmint and MasterCard are going deeper together. So Crossmint powered this artist portal that MasterCard released a couple of months ago. It actually brought one hundred thousand people into blockchain. It was primarily based on music and that was also powered by Crossmint. And it seems that Crossmint and MasterCard are getting in bed together even more with an eye toward small business, which I thought was kind of interesting. Just the idea of easy ways when you think of utilizing your MasterCard to pay for something and then thinking about a reward system that can be on chain, that feels like it makes a lot of sense, right? I hit my 10th time at the coffee shop. I get a little NFT that says I'm a 10 timer and maybe that gets me a free coffee later. But this feels like a very natural, easy way for blockchain and brands to get together. And I want to know if you have any thoughts about that. Yeah, well, I love Rodry and the team and of course, Raja and his amazing team at MasterCard and everything that they've done in this space. So recently connected with Raja and he was like, I'm still very bullish on Web3. And one, I love him for saying that because there's so many mixed reactions right now. And it's amazing to hear leaders who continue to invest, continue to launch programs like their startup accelerator and continue to support these sort of Web3 native businesses, massive bands of what Crossmint is doing. And I think that a partnership between a payment processor and a minting tool makes a lot of sense because you're likely going to be paying maybe not thousands of dollars, but a couple bucks for some of these things. And having that super integrated is a great fit. And shout out to MasterCard for continuing to innovate in this space. I see them. I see Visa. I see the banks really continuing to lean in and identify these enterprise use cases that can make their customers both B2C and also B2B customers lives a little bit easier. Well, we have asked Raja to be on the podcast 27 times, so we're going to continue to ask until he shows up. So, Raja, if you're listening, we're coming for you. Avery, after the break, we are going to come back with Allison Griffin from State Farm, a big brain marketing thinker, so excited to hear her perspectives on marketing, on the metaverse, on Web3, on innovation in general, because she's such a great thinker on that. So we will talk to her after the break. Sounds great.