GenAI in the Creator Economy: Transforming social media and food trends
Speakers: Melanie Rodriguez and Lee Brymer
Melanie Rodriguez, Product Manager at Meta, and Lee Brymer, Marketing Communications Manager for Tastewise, discuss the evolution of AI and its impact on content creation. AI-powered tools like Meta AI are making content creation more accessible, enabling creators to generate images, draft scripts, and engage with their audience more effectively. Melanie highlights the potential of AI in the food and beverage sector and discusses the future of this game-changing technology.
[00:00:00 – 00:02:00]
Lee: We have Melanie Rodriguez, who is a Product Manager at Meta. And today we’re really talking about GenAI and content creation, where they meet, where’s the intersection. And you guys are doing such cool things to push the boundaries, so really excited to dig in there. But first, before we get into all that good stuff, I want to take a minute and just hear from you a little bit about your journey, getting to where you are now at Meta and specifically what got you into the creative field.
Melanie: So, I’ve been working with creators and brands who work with creators for the last 10 or so years. I’ve seen a lot of the ups and downs and kind of the evolution of the creator economy, which has been really exciting. I think starting out, I was working with a couple platforms that connected brands with creators and I was able to really understand the value that creators drive. I mean, creative agencies are amazing and they definitely — there’s a place for them in a marketing toolkit, but really leveraging the voice of creators and elevating people who love your brand. I saw the power of creator marketing and so, I was offered the opportunity to join Instagram to build out the creator monetization portfolio and have been at Instagram now for the last four years. Obviously, AI is huge now. So really excited to be building AI tools for creators.
[00:01:00 – 00:04:00]
Lee: As you know, the discussion around AI is red hot right now. But even over the last 10 years working with creators, I’m sure you’ve seen so many changes in just the technology itself. I want to ask before we get into the specific tools in AI and how you’re using it in Meta, about when did AI start to get to be a part of the conversation for you?
Melanie: We can all agree AI is having a moment, but the truth is this moment has really been decades in the making. It’s been said that AI is poised to change the world in the same way that the Internet did, which as a millennial I’m like, wow, that’s wild. But AI has been powering Meta’s apps and services and ads for years. It’s why you probably love your feed so much. It’s why I love my feed so much. It’s why millions of people actively love and use their unique feed across our apps. I mean, when you open up Facebook or Instagram and the newest post that — as you’re scrolling, the newest post is from your best friend or from a creator that you love, like that is AI.
So, while AI isn’t new to Meta, it feels new to a lot of people that might not know that in their daily lives, they’re already benefiting from it. And especially for people who haven’t used it in this new kind of generative ways before. I think a lot of creators would fall into this camp and a lot of brands are hearing about AI. It’s everywhere and Gen AI, is all you’re hearing about right now. And so, I think it’s something that might feel a little new or intimidating, but it’s something that has been around for a long time and we’re just kind of using it in new ways. So, I think it’s definitely a new concept to some, but not really new if you know what AI powers.
[00:04:00 – 00:06:00]
Lee: That’s a great way to put it. And I think that as people watch through the sessions today and tomorrow that they are getting this same message, that this is not something new, but how we’re leveraging it now feels new. And part of that’s through the accessibility of it as well. Like you said, an algorithm, set of commands that things go through to make complex tasks happen in a very seamless and scalable way, that’s been happening on your feeds for ages now. That’s really the main juice that’s powering people’s love for their feed, right? That scroll that keeps on going. So, it’s been around for a long time, but I think what’s exciting is that generative capability. I want to focus our discussion on the generative tools. And I’d love to hear from you a little bit about some of the latest AI tools available to creators on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, and specifically how they’re using these tools to enhance the way that creators are producing content and engage with their audience.
[00:06:00 – 00:08:00]
Melanie: I personally am really proud of the way that we are developing tools for creators. I mean, creators have always been core to meta across our platforms. And so being able to leverage this really exciting, generative technology to help them grow and create content and engage with their audience, all of those capabilities and those things that are really hard for them to do manually, being able to leverage GenAI is why I get up in the morning. When you ask about specific tools, a couple come to mind. Meta AI is our AI assistant that people can access across our apps and on our devices, like Quest 3 and Ray-Ban Metas, anywhere you see that blue circle icon. I know it was all over the news a couple of weeks ago. But really bringing GenAI into people’s pockets for free at the scale of our apps is something that is really exciting.
Creators can use it for a lot of things. They can get content inspiration, they can draft scripts for their reels, they can come up with catchy captions. I don’t know if your friends are like my friends, but I’m always getting text messages like, “Here’s my video, here’s the photo. What’s the caption?” Add Meta AI and then you can kind of riff with AI. With WhatsApp it’s already in there — it’s already a part of the conversation and Instagram DMs as well. If you @ mention Meta AI, you can kind of invoke it into the group chat. So that’s something that we’re seeing creators like a lot. The other one is image generation using Imagine, which is also through Meta AI.
What that does is it takes simple written prompts of anything you can think of, and it turns it into images. So think artwork for a food label or a visual of a recipe that you’re creating but maybe you’re not quite sure how to plate it. Maybe you want custom GIFs for a restaurant. I’m sure there’s a bunch that I’m not even thinking of. But really kind of unleashing that capability and putting it in everyone’s pockets is something that we’re seeing creators start to get more and more comfortable with. And it’s really unleashing kind of this new era of content creation, which I’m excited to see.
[00:08:00 – 00:11:00]
Lee: I’m personally loving playing with some of the image tools myself. Both the text image like you talked about, also image editing too, the amount of time that people can save doing this. Like let’s make a differentiation, if someone in a restaurant has plated a beautiful dish and you’re out with your friends and you’re taking a beautiful image, you want to capture it really in the light that the creator of that dish, let’s say the chef in that case. But let’s say you’re a content creator online and you’re the one who’s producing and creating the food itself then the ability to create engaging imagery and videos at scale, it’s such a time saver and I know it’s also really exciting and engaging. I want to hear too on the other side, the engagement. We talked about these tools that creators are using to create content, what about some of the ways that creators are using this content to better engage with their audiences?
Melanie: That’s one thing that we hear from creators all the time, which is when they’re smaller, we used to call them micro influencers or nano influencers. They have a couple thousand followers so it’s really easy for them to engage in their DMs and comments. They’re really responsive and they’re great community builders and that’s why we see their engagement be sky high. I think that becomes harder and harder at scale. When you have to respond to tens of messages a day, that’s doable, right?
But when it’s hundreds or thousands of messages a day, it’s just impossible to respond to everyone. So, we are working on solutions that are GenAI enabled that help creators with that. Today, AI is helping creators respond to fans in their DMs. So, Meta AI will actually work in the background and draft relevant replies for the creator to consider. And all of those replies are based on their previous content and their tone, how they normally talk. So from there, the creator can choose to edit the suggestion or ask for a new suggestion or send it as is. It’s really not hard for me to imagine how these things are going to evolve and really become an impactful tool in a creator’s toolkit to engage with their fans.
[00:11:00 – 00:13:00]
Lee: That’s a great example. And I think that some of the ways that I’m using AI, not as an influencer at all myself, is to kind of have that team that’s already working for me drafting those messages for me, drafting those responses, reading, summarizing. So it’s like so many creators have a team that work behind them. This is just another team member that’s going to really help skyrocket their potential engagement. So here at Tastewise, we’re all about food and beverage, right? So, I have to shift the conversation to the food sphere and specifically how creators are leveraging AI to innovate in the food space. And I’d love to hear generally, or if you do have any specific examples or case studies, I’d love to hear that too.
Melanie: Yes. I always love name dropping my favorite creators. As someone who literally builds products for creators, like, anytime I can elevate someone who’s doing really innovative things, I’m like, yes, give me a mic. The first person that came to mind was Chef Priyanka. She’s amazing. Her story is really interesting, actually. So, she got laid off from her job a few years ago and turned to her love of food, vegan food specifically and content creation. And she became a food blogger. Today, she has 200,000 followers.
She just released a book. She’s creating content full-time. She’s got these iconic red glasses that she’s always wearing and she’s doing some really cool stuff. She’s got a new series that’s coming out with celebrity chefs and food influencers where they make well-known recipes vegan. But as she’s grown, her DMs have become impossible to manage as we were saying. The suggested replies are really helpful. She’s taking the next step and she’s actually testing an AI that can respond to fans on her behalf. So, it shares recipes and past content. And it’s like her always-on community engagement tool like you were saying. It’s like an extra kind of person on her team.
So, I expect we’ll see these become more mainstream soon. And Mark Zuckerberg last year at Connect announced that we really have this goal of making AI creation and engagement accessible to everyone and I expect that this is more kind of future-looking, but definitely on the horizon.
[00:13:00 – 00:15:00]
Lee: And that’s a great way to put it. It’s future-looking, it’s not too distant in the future. But even this technology, we’re trying it out now, in the next year, two years, five years, it’ll not only be so adopted but it’ll be completely morphed how we use it, how we can leverage and put it into play. So, I also love Chef Priyanka. And personally, I’m plant-based myself so I think she’s really great.
Melanie: I picked a good one. Yeah, she’s so great. And honestly, I think this concept of building AIs that extend your virtual presence will become even more prevalent. I think it’s going to be much more normalized. But it’s going to give creators a new way to interact with their community. If you think of a trained GenAI tool that can manage DMs for you or your fans can interact with, and especially for things like frequently asked questions.
Lee: That’s exactly what I was thinking. Imagine you have a huge celebrity and you have people freaking out. They’re fanning over them like crazy and then you have the opportunity to ask questions. Chances are 9 out of 10 of them are going to ask the same question.
[00:15:00 – 00:17:00]
Melanie: I definitely see opportunities for that. And I think particularly for food and beverage, it really is going to provide a unique way for chefs and food bloggers or even food and beverage marketing teams to bring their brands to the next level. I mean, you could imagine an AI that can add an ingredient to any recipe in a cool way or can add a specific brand’s beverage to any photo. Like anytime you message, it does this thing, it’s trained to do this thing. And I think that’s going to become the next step of really engaging in innovative brand marketing. It’s going to be how do you harness AI to engage your community and give them something to do with your brand — interact with your brand, interact with you as a person through these AI experiences. I think it’s going to be pretty cool.
Lee: Personalization is so key, not just for brands in general, but as a use case for AI, right? We want people to have that feeling like they are — they have that moment. They have that moment with that creator, they have the moment with that brand, with that restaurant, and it’s really theirs. And when you’re training an AI model on your specific brand guidelines it can be that representative for you and create those moments like millions at a time. What an amazing way to elevate a brand and a platform.
Melanie: And the thing about developing AI that is based on a brand or on a person it’s really important that people always know that they’re engaging with an AI. The point is never to confuse someone, right? It’s always transparent. The other thing is it’s really important to us that the person or the brand or the business on which the AI is based, they need to sanction that.
And so, Chef Priyanka should be able to develop and refine her own AI, but I shouldn’t be able to make one of her, right? So that’s something that Mark from the very beginning, and he even mentioned at Connect, these AI’s that are representative of creators, businesses, even characters, they’re going to be sanctioned by the people that they’re based on. And that’s something that for me is really important. It just feels like the right thing to do.
[00:17:00 – 00:19:00]
Lee: So, what is important for us as we move forward with all of these tools is that we’re really critical of what we’re seeing out there, that we know that when things are presented to us as AI, and also just being aware of what is potentially real or not real. And not being afraid of that, but being really aware and making sure that you’re asking those questions and looking for those answers. I also want to share something I think personally is very fascinating is hearing about some of the tools that Meta is using to push the boundaries of GenAI as we’ve talked about content creation and engagement, and from the creator perspective.
From the other side of the food and beverage, let’s say, the brand perspective who are using and turn to Meta tools to better understand the market, right, they’re the ones who are looking to your platform to see the latest trends, to see the latest followers, and influencers that platforms like Tastewise as an example, we’re using AI to help them better understand what’s happening on the market at scale.
So there’s kind of this bidirectional flow of AI used for analysis from the creator perspective to grow their brand and from the food and beverage industry to better capture what’s happening on this massive sphere of social media to better create products that meet their consumers. So I don’t know if you want to comment on that, but I just think it’s really interesting on that the bidirectional flow there.
00:19:00 – 00:20:00
Melanie: I think it’s something that I have seen as the industry has evolved over the last decade or so. You look at something like branded content and it used to be the brand knows what it wants and it’s hiring creators to make the content. And here’s the brief, and it’s very strict, and then there was kind of this switch where it was actually the creator who knows their audience and the creator has good instincts that’s why they are where they are. That’s why they built this community.
And so again, it becomes this kind of bidirectional communication and trust of like, “Hey, I know that you think that that catchphrase needs to be said on every creator’s video, but I’m telling you it doesn’t land.” And when brands are really harnessing that intuition of creators, we see their branded content performs better. It definitely resonates, but it is also been years in the making, right?
00:20:00 – 00:22:00
Lee: I want to focus actually on creators and content creation in general. I think that there’s so much that’s changed in the landscape of content creation on social media. And so, I want to take a moment and ask, in what ways has AI-driven tools specifically changed that landscape? Let’s say GenAI for content creation and we can use the Metaverse as an example.
Melanie: AI broadly is just really making content creation more accessible. You know, it becomes easier to create more content. I mean, if you think back to a few years ago, you needed to have fancy equipment and lighting and a PhD in photo editing software, just like make something compelling that you wanted to publish. And it took forever for it to get to a place where you wanted to post it on your account. And I can’t tell you how many creators I’ve spoken to that have hours of footage that never saw the light of day because they never had time to edit it, or they didn’t just feel quite right.
Today being able to just describe the image you want or the edits that you want, Meta AI does this as well, it quickly returns the results as you’re describing them. And I think the kind of creativity that that unleashes is going to be really impactful for the creator industry. Especially because it can be iterative. You can tell Meta AI to imagine something and you’ve probably done this where you’ve seen it and you’re like, it’s not quite right. You can continue to iterate on it until it’s right. So, I think just the ability to make really high-quality content as quickly as you can imagine it and type a few words for the prompt — the fact that that now lives in your pocket, I just think it’s going to really expand the ability to create.
00:22:00 – 00:27:00
Melanie: One of my favorite tools is backdrop, it lets you take whatever photo you’ve taken and just change the backdrop. So my son was an astronaut for Halloween, and I was able to put him on a spaceship in a few taps. You gave the example earlier about the plate when you’re making food — maybe you don’t want it to be in your Chicago apartment. Maybe you want it to be on a table in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. You could literally do that now and you don’t need to know any complex editing tools.
Lee: And it’s not a new technology but it’s new in the way that it’s happening so quickly now. In the next year, we’re going to be able to do it in an even faster way, which is incredible to think about —
Melanie: A fun stat on speed. On average, it’s less than three seconds for the result to come back. And it used to be like you’re sending it to space and these complex servers, and it’s coming back. It went on an odyssey before it came back to you, and now it’s like less than three seconds. We all joke that we have the attention spans of a goldfish, but even a goldfish would think it was fast.
Lee: Meeting the moment is so important for creators. Being able to have and catch and build that trend right from the moment it’s relevant is so important. So this is definitely enabling them. I also want to share from the food and beverage company side of things, a lot of ways that people are using text to image generation is for inspiration. Let’s say I’m developing a new cocktail. I know what ingredients I have. I know what my liquor is. I know what I’m working with.
But maybe I can just type in something like “Fun rooftop for millennials, and I’m getting a list of cocktails.” and what they look like, why they were chosen, and that’s one of the features we developed on Tastewise’s Content Agency, where companies can, without any AI training at all, just type in a couple words.
So, a dish, even an ingredient. Let’s say I just want to use “basil cocktail” and that’s enough. I’ll get 10 examples of finished, ready to go content that they’re not necessarily using the same way as a creator would to post or share, but they’re using to get those creative juices flowing and say, “OK, how do I want to take the next step of innovation.” I love this conversation because you’re showing the creator perspective of how can we create this content and actually share it right away. But so much of that content that’s created and shared provides inspiration for people to then create a new product or create a new campaign themselves. I think that it’s a really cool intersection.
00:27:00 – 00:30:00
Lee: Now, I know that we’re all about the future and forward-looking, so I want to come to a close here, but ask you specifically, what are your predictions for the future of AI in the creator economy? And if there’s anything, particularly in the food and beverage sector that’s exciting you.ambition that we do elevate our portfolio at a very rapid time in a relevant manner. So, the pressure is ongoing in a positive sense.
Melanie: GenAI is being put in the hands of people like there’s so many things that can be done. I see so many innovative things where I’m like, “I would not have ever considered doing that.” I mentioned like building AIs to extend your virtual presence, I think that’s going to be huge. And the other thing we’re seeing people love, and I think will grow in popularity are the cooking experiences in Meta Quest 3. I used a cooking simulator the other day, and honestly, it was so entertaining. You’re basically set up in a kitchen, in a commercial kitchen, with all the gear you’re wearing, your headset, you have your hand controllers, and you have everything around you that you would need.
You’ve got griddles and ovens and pots, pans, knives — all of the tools. Everything is controlled by your VR hands, so you could cook a whole meal and all the ingredients are responsive to your actions. If you’re cutting a strawberry, it feels really soft. If you’re cutting a potato, you have to really kind of get into it. There’s tactic responsiveness. And then when you’re cooking it, it changes in color. Like, if you’re cooking shrimp, you can see it change. I predict that kind of experience will continue to just open doors for all sorts of brand building. Think of experiences where people are practicing recipes before they use it in real food product placements.
Lee: I’m thinking about like even having recipes put in there that are also AI-generated. You can type in and say, “I want to cook pad Thai” or “Fun Thai dish noodles” and it comes up with an AI-generated recipe.
Melanie: And you can practice it because how many times have you tried making a recipe, and it just was like, you bought — it bombed, and you’re like, I wasted all these ingredients. Now I feel guilty, I have to eat it. But maybe you do a practice run first for fun.
Lee: Maybe I’ll do that for my partner. He’s not the best cook, so he can do it in the metaverse. He can practice, I’ll do it in the kitchen. Well, thank you so much again. I really had a great time chatting with you, and I thank you for sharing all of the exciting stuff that’s going on at Meta.