Building AI for Creators | Luma & Phota Labs

**Matt Tancik** (0:00)
I think the creativity is building a story. The tools alone aren't a story. Someone has to direct them.

**Zach Xia** (0:05)
It's not about mastering those tools. It's about directing an agent who can use those tools to achieve your creativity. Genetic AI has become so good. You can be sort of authentic to that moment while getting a little bit creative of stuff. So I just think a lot of photographers are having more fun post capturing than before.

**Matt Tancik** (0:23)
How do you make something unique with the tools you have access to now? There has to be something more than just text. If you go to, say, a studio and you say, make me a 10 second video about a dog jumping in the grass, they're never going to take that deal. They're going to want more specific and I think AI tools are no different.

**Yoko Li** (0:41)
Something I heard from someone today earlier was they assume AI to be slop. It's up to the humans to create something out of it. What are your thoughts?

**Zach Xia** (0:51)
I feel like that's such a hard question.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:54)
Creative tools have always changed the way people make art. Photography changed painting. Digital software changed photography. And now AI is changing how images, videos and entire creative workflows come together. The technology is improving at an incredible pace, but the most important ingredient in creative work may not be the model. It may still be the person behind it.
In this episode, Yoko Li speaks with Matt Tancik of Luma and Zach Xia of Phota Labs about AI-generated imagery, creative workflows, personalization, and why they believe the future belongs not to the tools themselves, but to the people directing them.

**Yoko Li** (1:34)
Today we have Zach Xia, who is the co-founder and CTO of Phota Labs. He works on personalized AI and AI photography. We also have Matt Tancik, who is the head of applied research at Luma. He works on agentic systems, fundamental research, and he was also the co-creator of NERF.
Thanks for coming on the pod. So maybe let me start with this question, Matt, many years ago, maybe three years ago, you had this online talk about NERF, and how you started this online talk was you posed a really interesting question, which is, what is the role of the artist, and what is the role of technology? Now, fast forward three years, which is a lifetime in AI.
What is your answer then, and what's your answer now? Has it changed?

**Matt Tancik** (2:16)
Yeah, so if I recall correctly, my answer at that point was that, really, the point of this AI technology is to act as a tool for artists to better execute on the creative vision that they have. And at the time, NERF was providing an ability for people to create 3D assets in a way that didn't require tons and tons of manual effort. Because when you're creating 3D scenes, creating those assets isn't really where the creative part is. It's how do you put them all together? How do you build a story around it? And that's where those tools were helpful.
I think now there's just so many more tools that just allow you to do that, not just in 3D, but also in video, in images. And I think this thesis that these AI technologies can be used as tools is even more so than it was in the past.

**Yoko Li** (3:01)
Yeah, interesting. And Zach, I know you work at Adobe and then you did a lot of research that later went into Lightroom, which is also a creator tool creators have been using. What's your view of this?

**Zach Xia** (3:13)
Yeah, I think artists really are where their creative minds are. They have a lot of creativity and technology is sort of a way to help them express that kind of creativity.
I think maybe in the past few years, people, like artists were also spending a lot of time trying to master in the workflows, the tools. I don't think that's necessarily where their creativities are. So now their tools have become easier to use, more expressive than before. It's just so much easier for them to express the creativity. But I still think technology cannot replace the creativity minds to a bit.

**Yoko Li** (3:43)
Interesting. What would you define as creativity here? Because what the models are creating, not creativity, and is what user kind of composing together, that's what we call creativity?

**Matt Tancik** (3:53)
I think the creativity is building a story. And there's so many different ways to build a story. And you use tools to help construct that. And the tools alone aren't a story. Someone has to direct them.