Replacing You AI, 1.3: Jasper goes all business, Worklife doubles down on AI

Hey there, 

It’s been another wild week in AI and we’ll dive into it. But first: We are live on Product Hunt! If you’re a PH user, please head on over and give us an upvote or leave a comment. Thank you so much for the support!

And now, this week’s news:

While it’s true we have a fun little joke here about AI literally replacing us in our jobs, recent news would indicate that those in the restaurant industry shouldn’t be worried about that. As it turns out, Mcdonald's has been testing its AI-powered drive-thru ordering since 2019 and, well, hashtag fail. 

In other news, it looks like Jasper.ai is going on the offensive in the ongoing “AI writing tool wars.” With the announcement this week of its goal of making generative AI less generic, Jasper, which announced a $125 million raise in Oct., is expanding its product offering to appeal to enterprise teams with a “Business Suite.” 

Jasper for Business will offer a “Brand Voice” feature that allows businesses to customize their AI-powered content, extended collaboration tools, API connectivity, and more. We’ll be watching closely to see how competitors like WriteSonic and Copy.ai respond.

Elsewhere, Brianne Kimmel, one of our favorite investors who’s focused on building the future of work with her fund Worklife, is doubling down on AI. She’s launching a boot camp for AI startups and has pledged $20 million to invest in companies that complete it.

The boot camp will help AI founders find product-market fit and opportunities for scale by connecting them with business leaders experienced in marketing, sales, and operations. One of her quotes in this Business Insider piece hit us hard:

"Frankly, AI will exponentially lower barriers to creativity and entrepreneurship and enable a real democratization of ideas and design," Kimmel told Insider. "Now, we won't live in a world built by engineers! We'll live in a world designed by everyone, and engineered by AI."

Side note: for any engineers worried about being replaced by AI, we’re here for you. Literally. As Replacing You grows, we’ll be expanding our content offering to include courses, guides, and use cases to better educate those of us – all of us – looking to leverage AI rather than let it replace us.

Ok, now that we’ve caught up with this week’s AI news, let’s get to the three tools we think you’ll love. 

This week, we’re highlighting tools for podcasters. If you’re looking to launch or improve your podcast quality and efficiency, check out this week’s three AI tools for creatives.

Vidyo: I’ve got a bit of an admission to share. I’m a wannabe podcaster. I love to write and I love the podcast format. In fact, in a former life, I did a lot of radio. I’ve even dabbled in the podcast space here and there. But, I want to make a big run at it. That said, one large hurdle for me has been the nature of promotion. Like, who has all that time and desire to cut your show into clips and share it on the socials? Uggh.

Thanks to AI and Vidyo, that’s an easy task now. Vidyo.ai can automatically select, edit, and caption the top moments from your videos.

Use cases for this abound. Whether you’re a podcaster trying to promote your latest episode, a content creator repurposing video for use across social platforms, or a marketing team looking to get the most bang for its buck from the webinar it just ran, Vidyo can help you chunk it down at scale.

Podcastle: Podcastle is another AI-powered audio content platform offering professional and amateur podcasters studio-quality recording, AI-powered editing, and easy exporting straight from the browser. 

While Podcastle hangs its hat on being a complete platform with AI doing a bit of the work, we’re most impressed with its “Magic Dust,” and “Revoice,” features – made possible by AI.

Magic Dust removes background noise and enhances speech easily. Revoice lets you edit text while also offering text-to-speech with realistic robot voices. A disclaimer of sorts here: I haven't yet had the opportunity to try Podcastle’s “Revoice” feature. But, man, these AI voice thingies have quickly gone from “really bad,” to “pretty good” Good job, AI!

Descript: We just freaking love a product that rethinks the way an entire (well-established) category operates and Descript has done just that. For those of you who aren’t keenly familiar [or struggling with a real dose of non-linear induced trauma], back in the day we used to painstakingly bang our heads against the keyboard late at night trying to figure out to use products like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut. Well, that’s not really a concern any more thanks to Descript’s transcript-based editing tool and, well, non non-linear format. 

Throw in the AI that automagically removes “umms” and, wow, this thing slaps. You can record your own video or screen, add your own files, or pull in stock footage, stock photos, and Giphys! And it all gets timed out and synced up based on your transcript edits. 

If you’re more focused on Descript’s podcast use-cases, have no fear. Descript can also be leveraged for audio and it saves podcast creators from the technical drudgery of audio and video editing — so you can focus on making great content.

Thanks for reading. Each week, we’ll review the news and highlight three tools creatives need to know about and deliver them straight to your inbox.

If you have a product you think we should add, you can submit it here. Contact us here if you’d like to contact us about advertising, sponsorship, or partnership opportunities. Of course, you can always visit ReplacingYou.com to see the entire landscape – with tools being added daily.

Until next week,

Cheers,

-Ben