3209: How AI-Powered Storytelling is Redefining Museums and Theme Parks

[00:00:04] Imagine walking into a museum and seeing yourself in an exhibit or historic painting, or visiting an amusement park and actually being in the ride next to Jack Sparrow on Pirates of the Caribbean. What I'm talking about here is no longer sci-fi. It is already happening.

[00:00:24] My guest today is Jeff Thatcher. He's the creative mastermind behind Game On, an AI experience at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. And they're using AI to rewrite the future of storytelling and attractions. From museums to theme parks, AI is beginning to put you at the centre of the story.

[00:00:49] But how is it enhancing experiences? What is the role of technology and creativity and humans and how are they all converging? And what happens when every attraction is personalised just for you? What does that mean for your expectations for future experiences? These are just a few of the things we'll talk about today, but enough from me. Let's get Jeff onto the podcast now.

[00:01:17] So thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Neil, it's great to be with you and excited to talk about experiences. Long story short, I'm an experience designer. I got my start in this crazy experience business as a 14-year-old clean-up boy at an amusement park. And that literally was the title of the job. And worked all the way through high school and college at an amusement park.

[00:01:44] And then when they offered me a full-time job, I decided stupidly to take a job as a reporter and editor in the newspaper business because that was my major in college. I absolutely hated journalism. I mean, they're such grouchy people, by and large, reporters. Yeah. Not podcasters, not tech reporters like yourself. You're happy. I can see your smile. But I really, I miss the fun and the happiness of experiences.

[00:02:11] And so got a really lucky break and got a job as a creative writer working for a company that did theme parks, museums and industrial theater. That's what we called it back in the 90s, right? Industrial theater. Today we call them brand experiences. So about a third of our work is theme parks. A third of our work is museums. And a third of our work is doing brand experiences or corporate work. And we love it. It's multidisciplinary. It's a little bit of everything. Graphic design. There's media. There's film. There's, there's interactive media.

[00:02:40] There's physical scenery, set pieces, you name it. It's a, it's a blast to work in the experience industry and really be talking to you because AI is, I think, rocking our world in a good way. It really is. And I just love your origin story there. And I think for everybody listening, they start out in life and they've got all these passions and things that they love in life. And then real life seems to get in the way and say, well, forget all that. Go do this instead.

[00:03:06] And I love the fact that even now you look back fondly and that, that almost seemed like a catalyst that moment of you working in those theme parks, right? As a, as a small boy. Absolutely. And, you know, even beyond that, I grew up next to this amusement park. So from the age of five, we moved there when I was five. I mean, I would literally fall asleep to hearing ladies and gentlemen, please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times and have fun. And you'd hear that over. I mean, we live close enough that you would hear that as almost a lullaby as you went to

[00:03:36] sleep at night and you had the fireworks, you'd climb up onto your roof and watch the fireworks from the amusement park and the oohs and aahs of that. And back in those days, amusement parks were open to the public. So you can ride your bike down to the amusement park, just ride your bike right into the amusement park, park it and just hang out all day. You didn't have to have, you would get tickets, right? And that's where the phrase e-ticket. I don't know if you've heard that phrase before, like what's an e-ticket, which means it's a, like a signature attraction.

[00:04:06] And so even at Disneyland, Disneyland was open to the public. Anybody could go just walk in Disneyland, but you have to buy tickets to go on the rides. And so an e-ticket ride was the, the bomb, the best experience. And so, yeah. So back in those days, you could just, we, we just, as kids, we just ride our bikes down and we'd like just hang out. We'd go to the penny arcade, literally penny arcade. I'm not, I mean, I'm, I'm old, but not that old, but, but still we had, we had a penny arcade. And then it went to a quarter.

[00:04:36] You stick the quarter in Asteroids, Space Invaders, Super Sprint, Atari, Super Sprint, all those classic games from the eighties. I'd literally grew up there. They even had bingo on Wednesday nights. And of course, as a young child, I love the one where you get the row B and the row O, and you have to stand up and say, I've got B-O. How do you do that? How do you do that? Everybody would, of course, body odor. But, and then they had a swimming pool. Now the swimming pool was built in 1925. And so when I was a kid going there, it was like the mid seventies, early eighties.

[00:05:06] And it was a falling apart. But it was so fun. I had one of those old metal slides. This was before water parks, right? So it was old metal slides that came down. It had the, the wheel. I don't, you remember those, the wheels and the water, we'd spin the wheel and try to throw people off the wheel into the water. It had diving boards like on a platform. So it was, it was a blast. We just spent all our summer days swimming at the pool and, and getting into trouble. And it was kind of crazy. So I grew up there.

[00:05:36] And then when I was 14, I was like, okay, it's time for me to get serious and get a job. And so the problem was I had to convince the manager of the swimming pool to hire the obnoxious local 14 year old, 13 year old, 12 year old who'd been terrorizing their lifeguards for the last five years that they should give me a shot and give me a job. But fortunately Rhonda, the swim manager gave me a shot, gave me a job. And then from there, it went from cleanup boy to lifeguard, to train engineer, to rides

[00:06:04] manager, then to a stage manager, and then was literally worked in entertainment, was a stuntman, a zookeeper. The great thing about the theme park industry or the experience industry is we have something for everyone and including technology, right? Technology is a huge part of our business. And in fact, I would argue that everybody talks about, Oh, I want holograms. Aren't holograms cool. And I like, honestly, most holograms you see in experiences today were are literally just

[00:06:33] a pepper's ghost, which was invented in, in London by one of your, your British colleagues, if you will, in back in 1862, 1862 was the pepper's ghost invented. And that's still the technology they use today. So now of course, LED screens, 3d LED with the new liminal product, which is amazing. The 3d LED screens are fantastic. I mean, it's like you get 10 times greater depth, 10 times greater projection works on a curve screen works at any angle.

[00:07:01] When you're wearing glasses at a 3d LED screen, it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. It really does feel like a hologram. So yeah, we love technology. We love technology. I love that. And just listening to your story there, I'm reminiscing myself getting flashbacks of the sites, the sounds, the screams, the smells of those are amusement parks. But of course, fast forward to present day. It's all about AI.

[00:07:27] And one of the things that put you on my radar was the game on AI experience at the college football hall of fame is an innovative use of AI in storytelling. But I'm curious from, from what you're seeing, what you're working on here, how does that technology ultimately enhance guest engagement and, and what inspired its creation? Well, when you look at experiences, and again, most of us have been to a theme park or been, been to a, a, a, a tourism town.

[00:07:57] The ultimate objective is always to put the guest in the experience. That's what you want. You want to put the guest in the story. When you walk through Churchill's war rooms in London, a great museum slash experience, you want to feel like you were there. You want to, you, that's, that's your goal as an experienced designer is you want people to feel like they're part of the story. When you go on Pirates of the Caribbean, you want to feel like you're part of the story. Like you feel like you belong and you're there.

[00:08:26] That's the whole goal of experience design is to, is to take people and transport them into a story and put them into that story. Whatever the story is. I mean, we were just working on a, on a project on it. It had to do with property insurance, right? Sounds exciting, doesn't it? But it actually is super exciting because we were able to put you in the story.

[00:08:51] I mean, what is it like you're in charge of protecting a factory that's on a river from floods? Okay. How do you do that? Right? How do you protect, how do you put them in the story? Well, we used a model. So we built a model of a factory on a river and there was actually, it's a water model. So the actually water comes through the model and floods the factory in it. So you see the results, you see cars overturning, you see an oil tank floating away.

[00:09:17] All the things that you would see in a flood, you do that through building a model and flooding that model in the same way a Hollywood director would flood a model as they're filming a scene, right? Or the same way you'd go to a children's museum and see a flood table. So, or a water table. So we use these tools to put you in the story. Our ultimate objective, it's always to put you in the story. And people get scared about AI. But what we did at the call of the hall of fame is very simple.

[00:09:44] Look, I know when you talk about football, you're talking about soccer, not true American football, different subject. But in American college football, it is a spectacle. I don't know if you've ever been to a college football game in the United States. No, I haven't. No. All right. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a, it's not just the game. It's the game day experience. It's everything that happens. It's the tailgating. It's the people gather early to eat and to drink and hang out. It's the marching band.

[00:10:13] It's the cheerleaders. It's the military flyover. It's the game itself, the players, the coaches. It's, it's the spectacle of it. It's the game day experience. So at the college football hall of fame in downtown Atlanta, which is an attraction, right? It's a museum. If you will, it's an attraction. It's an experience. We wanted to put people in the game. Well, the beauty of AI is that we can put people through the power of AI in the story at

[00:10:40] a scale and a personalization that would be impossible without it. Now, traditionally in the theme park industry or the experience industry, if we want to put you in the story, you go to a Western themed town at a theme park, or you go to a pirate themed experience at an amusement park, right? And there's a photo studio and you go into the photo studio with your wife or your girlfriend or whatever it is. And you put on a costume and you pose for a picture. They take the picture. You are now a pirate.

[00:11:09] You're in the story and they give you that picture and you walk away. Every single theme park has that photo studio where they put you in the story. Every single theme park uses theming and lighting and video and other elements to put you in the story. So what we did a college football hall of fame in Atlanta is we had 764 colleges in the United States of America that have college football teams. And people are very passionate about their teams.

[00:11:37] Very passionate in the same way that they're passionate about their premier teams in the UK. We're very passionate, but we have 764 teams. So people come to the college football hall of fame. They go to a kiosk. It scans their face. They, they answer a question. What's your favorite team? Okay. For me, I went to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, but I'm also a huge Ohio State fan. And my daughter went to Auburn. So I get to pick which team is my favorite. Pick one of those. Right. And then it says, okay, pick your least favorite team.

[00:12:07] I hate the University of Utah, Michigan, the worst Alabama. I'm just telling you, Alabama fans are the worst. They actually burned down our trees in Auburn, Alabama, a fan burned. I mean, they poisoned our trees. Then LSU fans tried to burn them down. That's just, it's, they're the worst. Right? So you pick your least favorite team and then you pick what position do you want to play? You pick a little bit about like, what's your coaching style? What's your personality like? What do you want to be when you grow up? All the, you answer questions about yourself.

[00:12:36] Then as you go through the experience, we added to the exhibits. We did not redesign the museum. The hall of fame was not redesigned in any way. We simply added to the experience, AI touch points. So when I go to the Heisman trophy exhibit, it's a very fancy trophy for your listeners that don't know about it. It's a trophy for the best college football player of the year. When I go to that Heisman trophy and I look at it, it's a very important artifact.

[00:13:02] Next to that, I see a video screen and I see me posing with, with the Heisman trophy in my team's colors. I'm wearing colors and I go to the national championship trophy. And this was fantastic. If your team had won a national championship trophy, you posed celebrating in your team colors. If your team has not won a national championship with the vast majority of the 764 teams never won a national championship.

[00:13:27] You look sad and depressed and just very forlorn because your team never won, but you're still in your team colors. Then you go to the exhibits about the history of fans, right? The, so you see there's a fan in a fur coat next to a 1920s model T Ford, right? And you see people tailgating. Well, next then you see yourself as a 1920s fan in a fur coat, right? Uh, at the foot all dressed up fancy at the game.

[00:13:53] And then you see yourself as a 1980s fan, either a rocker or a preppy and you're cooking, you're grilling out at the, at the tailgate. When you go to the cheerleader exhibit, you become a 1950s cheerleader. When you go to the marching band, you're in a 1970s marching band outfit. Every single one of these uniforms, you're in your team's colors. Then you go to the coaches exhibit all about the best coaches of college football. And there we produce a one minute video called the best coaches that never were.

[00:14:21] And it's a mockumentary and it tells your story. And it's again produced. It takes about 10 minutes or so to process up in the cloud. Once you go through the, once you put your information into that kiosk, but that's plenty of time for you to go through the experience and get up there. Uh, but it's a 11 labs stable diffusion blender uses all the technology that's out there and puts this video together for you.

[00:14:45] So on the day of the national championship in January, 3,189 guests went through the hall of fame in one day. Every single one of those guests had a custom produced video designed for them, produce for them, voiceover delivered to them. They got to watch it in the exhibits about coaching. And then of course, if they wanted to buy the video, not a big deal. You can buy the video, download it, take it home with you.

[00:15:13] That's what a I does when it comes to experiences is it allows us to personalize and scale that story experience by putting you in the story. It allows us to do that personalization and a scale that would have never before been possible because if I had to buy all of the uniforms and costumes for 764 different teams, I'd have a warehouse, the size of the, that last warehouse and Raiders, the last arc.

[00:15:40] It's just not even possible, but I can turn you into a flyover military pilot. I can put you into a historic painting with AI. We can put you into the story and guests love to see. I mean, the feedback and the reaction has been great. Guests love to see them out itself in the stories. I know there's, there's pushback on AI in the creative fields, because I think people feel it, it, it loses. We're losing our humanity, right?

[00:16:08] I mean, that Coca-Cola did that AI ad at Christmas and it got backlash and criticized. I mean, they got, I think the London Telegraph call it said basically Coca-Cola killed Santa Claus. Right now, honestly, the irony of that, first of all, Santa Claus fake. He's a fictitious character. He's not real. Okay. I don't want to like, you know, spoiler alert. Right. But he's fake. The polar bears, the drink Coke. They're fake, right?

[00:16:38] They're fictitious. They're not real. Why anybody would care that you use AI to create a video about a fake, completely fictitious character is beyond me. But what they're really mad about is AI making us feel less human. And the wonderful thing about using AI to put people into a story and using AI to put people into an experience is it does the exact opposite.

[00:17:05] It makes us feel more human because you see a family step up to one of these touch points. They scan their RFID badge and it shows the dad in a 1980s mullet, right? Tailgating. And the children laugh. The mom laughs. They're having a great time. They're connecting as human beings, right? Then the mom comes up and she scans her badge, right? Or RFID badge. Then you see her as a 1980s preppy at a tailgate.

[00:17:34] And she laughs about, oh my gosh, that's how my hair looked when I was, when I was a teenager. And the, and the, her daughter's laughing and the son's laughing and the son comes up. Who's like six years old scans the badge and he sees himself as a rocker, right? And they laugh and they have fun. It's connecting people. The true power of AI from my perspective is the power to connect people because you're not doom scrolling. You're not going through this.

[00:18:01] You're not having totally inappropriate and soul sucking and destroying conversations with chat bots, right? What you're doing is you're using AI to actually connect people and create an experience that connects them emotionally. And so when I look at the future of AI, I get so excited about it because I believe, and I do believe this, that 10 years from now, when you go to a theme park and you go on the dark ride, right?

[00:18:30] Like Pirates of the Caribbean or Spider-Man the ride, or there's great pirate ride as well it's a Europa park, right? When you go on any dark ride, that's basically a ride that's in the dark, right? Where you go through either on a boat or on a, on a, on a ride vehicle, you go through a dark ride. Guests are going to want to be part, not just ride the story. They're going to want to be part of the story. They're going to want to see themselves there. And again, this isn't anything that's that groundbreaking.

[00:18:57] I mean, ET the ride, which was created like 20 some odd years ago at the end of it. I don't know if you've been on ET the ride. I have. Yeah. At the end of it, it says, it says your name. Cause you, you give it its name. And at the end of the ride, it says goodbye meal. You know what I mean? It's like this computerized voice that says goodbye to you. And you're like, Oh, I'm in the ride. That's great. Well, AI is going to allow you to literally be in the ride. I mean, you can use it's deep fakes for fun, right?

[00:19:26] Where it basically is going to put you in the experience. And it's frustrating to me that everybody's focused on all the stupid stuff about AI. I mean, I was just at CES, right? Yeah. I went to the LG booth and LG had some really cool technology. I'm not trying to pick on LG, but they, their theme was AI for everyone or something like that. I can't remember. It was like AI everywhere. I mean, it literally at CES was AI everywhere.

[00:19:52] But one of the examples they gave was, Oh, with AI, you'll be able to know if your parents had a good night's sleep and maybe if they're feeling sick, you can check on them in the morning. And I was like, wait a second. If my parents had a restless night and the AI is telling me to check on them, the AI is stupid because like, it's like, maybe they weren't sick. If your parents are having a restless night, right? That's a good thing. Right. I mean, it was like, it was, it was such a stupid example of like how AI is going to

[00:20:22] help you. Uh, there's so many just stupid, stupid things that people talk about with AI. And because of all this stupidity out there and the hype that's out there with AI, when something truly comes along, that's groundbreaking, like using AI to transform how we tell stories, it gets lost in the hyperbole of AI. It's just, it's one of the frustrating things about everything around AI is that there's so

[00:20:49] much hype and so many stupid examples of how AI is going to change the world, that the really meaningful things that happen where it shows how AI can actually make life better. I mean, I loved JD Vance's talk to the European, I don't know where it was, but he went to Paris at an AI conference, a technology conference and talked about with optimism about what AI can do. And yes, as with any technologies, there's limitless perils and untold possibilities.

[00:21:19] No doubt that there are perils to AI. But what we showed at the College of Football Hall of Fame is you can use AI to connect people. You can use AI to see a little girl, we have a video of a little five-year-old girl who scans her badge and sees herself as a 1950s cheerleader. And then she immediately goes into the cheerleading pose that she learned as a little kid. And she sees herself in this story. She sees herself in her team's colors.

[00:21:48] And she loved it. And her mom loved it. And the dad loved it. And they took a picture of her and it connected the family together in a way that you want experience to connect people together. And so that's what gets me really excited. I'm going on and on and on. I should shut up and let you ask the next question. No problem at all. And just listening to your conversation, listening about the examples that you provided, it reminds me of an old saying, which is the last best experience that any of us have anywhere

[00:22:17] becomes that minimum expectation for future experiences that we expect to see everywhere. So if we take that young girl or any of the examples of somebody that's been to that college football hall of fame, that is now their minimum and standard expectation. So how do you see this evolving in museums, theme parks and other attractions? And will simply being a spectator no longer be enough? Well, we've already seen examples of people using AI to let you talk with historical characters.

[00:22:46] You can go to the Dolly Museum, the Salvador Dolly Museum in St. Petersburg, and you can pick up the lobster phone and you can talk to Salvador Dolly. You can use AI to, as we showed at the College of the Volume, to put you in the story. Now, where I think it's going and what's exciting is that it's the video that gets me really excited, where you see yourself not just in a painting or not.

[00:23:14] You see yourself not just as a historical character, but you become part of a video, part of an experience. So, give you a Hollywood example that's related to college football. There's a famous movie called Rudy in the United States about Notre Dame football, right? And there's a great scene in it where you're in the locker room and the coach is giving a pep talk. And Rudy's kneeling there with all of his players, right?

[00:23:40] Now, in the future, whether it's Hollywood or a museum or whatever, well, we can actually put you in the locker room. You can be an extra. You can be a player kneeling next to Rudy. Well, heck, you could even be Rudy if you want. You can be the coach. You can be any of those characters. Again, I'm telling anyone who will listen, I believe the future is you're going to go out to dinner. As part of that dinner experience, you're going to have your face scanned in, in 3D, right? You're going to get your voice recorded.

[00:24:10] And then you're going to pay an upcharge. And then when you go watch the movie, you're going to be in the movie. You're going to be an extra. You're not going to replace Leonardo DiCaprio because again, we love our Hollywood stars, but you'll be an extra. And the thing is people are like, oh, that's stupid. I'm like, really? Is it stupid right now?

[00:24:30] If you want to be in the chosen, which is a popular miniseries, if you will, series in the United States and I think around the world about the life of Jesus, you can actually pay money to go on the set and to be an extra. You can pay money to be an extra. In the film, right? So is it, is it that crazy to imagine that people would pay money to be in a film? Why wouldn't they? Yeah. That would, that would be a great date, right?

[00:24:59] Take your date and you both scan your face in, you have dinner, and then you go to the sit in the film and then you're both in the same movie you're watching. I mean, that would be awesome. Yeah. That would be so cool. And I go, no, I was like, oh my gosh, rights and this and actors and I eventually will get figured out eventually get figured out. But it just allows us to tell stories in ways that were never before, never, never before possible. I mean, you take any museum. I mean, what's your favorite museum in, in London?

[00:25:27] Oh man, I would say, I'd have to say the national history museum, especially the, the dinosaur section around there as well. All right. The dinosaur section. Great. I'd have to give you a massive video about you at you as a dinosaur time traveling dinosaur explorer, right? Kind of like so many movies or have been Jurassic Park, right? Okay. So that you're, you're a paleontologist going back in time to study dinosaurs and you, but you, you see yourself in the movie. Yeah.

[00:25:56] Right now you can go, you can go do that right now. Right now you can go to the, go to, go to a museum and you can watch a film about dinosaurs. It's just so much cooler. It's just so much cooler. If you're in the movie, if you're part of the experience or you can take an animatronic dinosaur and you can have that animatronic dinosaur, which is totally doable right now. By the way, there's a great company called animX in Nashville, Tennessee that did all of the dinosaurs for the Jurassic World tour. They're amazing. They did the Velociraptor for the universal studios, Velocicoaster ride in Orlando.

[00:26:26] So these guys create amazing animatronics and that dinosaur can talk to you if you want. Like, or you can do an animated dinosaur. And that there's actually at the field museum in Chicago, they use AI to let a skeleton of a dinosaur, right? The skeleton of the dinosaur talk to you. It just, it talks to you like, Hey Neil, how's it going? Again, this is, this stuff has been done for a long time.

[00:26:51] You can go to turtle talk at Epcot at Disney world and crush from the movie finding Nemo talks to you. Now it's an actor backstage, right? Yeah. With all these script talking points and ad lib points, you know what I mean? And he's looking at a video camera of the, all the children sitting around and he talks to you. Now that requires a lot of money and Disney has the money to do that.

[00:27:15] AI is going to allow smaller attractions, smaller museums to do the same type of experience and AI can talk to them. And it's, it's really quite amazing. And when you talk about what's possible with it, it's, you know, everybody's always scared. I mean, like for example, we have at the cultural hall of fame, one of the experiences you pose with your mascot, your team's mascot. So like BYU was a cougar, Ohio state's a bucket, a buckeye tree, which is basically a nut.

[00:27:44] And then Auburn's an eagle. And so you're, well, technically it's a tiger, but we use the eagle because they have a second mascot. That's, that's more emotional. But anyway, so you, you pose with the mascot and it gives you a tagline based on what you put into that kiosk. And we tested it with AI countless times to make sure that people couldn't write something nasty and inappropriate.

[00:28:07] My favorite was if you put in that your name was fart face, your regular name, right? Your mascot tagline, the tagline turned out to be clear the field. A little bit. So AI can, can do that. You know what I mean? I mean, where, you know, sure. A great comedian, you know what I mean? A great performer, a great actor could do that live and in person.

[00:28:36] But for smaller museums, smaller attractions that can't afford that kind of budget that Disney has to hire those actors and train those actors and do all that and have them staffed throughout the day and have, when you have a 12 hour shift at the theme park, that's like at least three or four actors just to cover that one shift. And that's like, you know, I mean, you have to do that.

[00:28:55] And that's like, you know, I mean, you have to do that with AI. You have to do that with AI.

[00:29:24] You have to do that with AI. The AI experience at a museum was 2017 when IBM Watson went to Brazil and allowed guests to talk with a painting, like literally ask a painting questions. And then Watson would respond.

[00:29:47] The Shoah Foundation did an AI experience in 2019 where you could talk to Holocaust survivors, like and ask them just normal questions that a, that a human, just a normal human being visitor would ask. But this was the first time where we actually put the guest in the story. We're like, no, you're in the painting. No, you're, you're starring as the coach in the video. We actually, we, we've no, no, of no other example where we've used AI to actually put you in the story to make you the star of the exhibit at a museum.

[00:30:13] And so when we came to the challenges that we had, I'll just share a couple of quick stories with you. First was colors. The colors of a team is whether it's American college football or premier league. Or rugby or whatever it is. The colors are hugely important. And if you get those colors wrong, you're going to hear about it from the fans. So we had 764 different teams, which means each team has two colors.

[00:30:40] So that's over 1500 colors that have to be perfect. And by, by the way, stable diffusion and AI and mid journey and all the tools we use to output this stuff. You, you have to describe the color in English. You can't put a hex code in. You can't, at least not yet. I'm sure they're going to get there, but you can't put a PMS code or a hex code number in there and get the color you want. Oh my gosh.

[00:31:06] We were trying to describe the difference between Clemson's orange, Texas orange, Tennessee orange, Florida orange, and Auburn orange. And they're different. And we were trying to use it with English. And we were getting weird hallucinations where if you did, if you described it as pumpkin orange, which is perfect and would generate the perfect color. Or every 10th output, we'd show the person in the marching band carrying a pumpkin instead of carrying an instrument. Or, you know what I mean? Or they'd have a pumpkin head instead of a helmet head. You know what I mean? On their head.

[00:31:36] So we were just, or you try to describe it as burnt orange. You get a charred uniform instead of actually burnt orange. So what we ended up doing is to create a color wheel. And then the color wheel allowed us to start matching. So we didn't have to get 764 different colors. We were able to do about 40 colors. And then that got us close enough that no one complained, which was great. But that color was a huge challenge. Color was a huge challenge. And again, the other thing is just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.

[00:32:06] We learned very quickly, for example, with the cheerleading outfit, that it would be completely inappropriate to put a 11-year-old child in a cheerleading outfit from college football. Just wrong. You know what I mean? Because you turn them into an adult, right? Yeah, yeah. And it just, we knew immediately like, okay, that's wrong. Okay, how do we fix this? Let's go to 1950s, more modest dress, still a cheerleading uniform, still in your team's color.

[00:32:35] But that was appropriate. So these are some of the questions that we dealt with. We also had some historic paintings from the depicting the early days of college football when there were no, no black players. And okay, when we redesign it for a modern audience, should we, should we change that? Should we update the picture and make it reflect the diversity of college football today? And so we did.

[00:32:57] And then the other thing is just probably the weirdest, two very strange hallucinations that we got was we programmed negative prompted not to have any words, any images, anything at all. So when you're in the, in the stands cheering for your team, it's just a blank red shirt. It's a blank orange shirt. It's a blank yellow shirt, right? It's just, you're just wearing a very blank. You're wearing your team's colors, but there's no logos. There's no, cause AI just doesn't do that well yet. Right.

[00:33:26] In fact, just this little side story here. We originally tried to do face painting and body painting because that's a big thing in American college football. The fans will, will body paint themselves in their team colors. And I'll tell you this right now. AI cannot at this point in time do body painting and face painting. It just cannot. The outputs we got were quite frankly, scary and horrendous. So we just no body painting. Don't try it.

[00:33:55] It's was really bad, but we had a guest come through again, negative prompting. So there's no, no icon icons, iconography, no logos, nothing on the shirts, the blank shirt. She, she came from Japan. A guest came through Kyoto, Japan. Her team was Oregon, which is yellow and green. And she is cheering up on the, she shows up cheering on the screen. And there was a Japanese temple on her shirt.

[00:34:25] And you're like, where did that come from? Yeah. Why would the AI do that? Why would it put a Japanese temple on her shirt? When we negative prompt, negative prompt, negative prompt, negative prompt. It was like just weird. Right. Kind of scary. It makes you wonder like, okay, I hope the people that are using AI for military applications are paying close attention because if it, but if it does that in an attraction, it's not the end of the world. Right. Yeah. You know what I mean?

[00:34:51] And then the other time it was very, we had a reporter coming through and when the reporter scanned his face, he held his microphone because he was talking while he was getting his face scanned. And then a couple of the examples, not all of them, but a couple of them showed him holding a microphone, which was just really weird. We just thought really, really weird that it just, the AI picked that up somehow. So anyway, those are some of the challenges that we had.

[00:35:19] And as AI will inevitably continue to transform the entire experience economy, what kind of impact do you think it will have on the business side of entertainment and attractions? Do you think it will drive revenue growth, increase costs or, or just shift the way that companies design those experiences as those expectation levels continues to rise? Well, I'll give you one at one example of how AI is already impacting how we design the experiences.

[00:35:46] When we plan a new theme park or plan a new museum or attraction, there's feasibility experts who come in and tell us, well, this is how many people we think are going to come to it. And these are some of the business, the economics of it. Well, now when you have a plan or a space, you can quickly render that in unreal as a 3d model, and then you can put AI chat bots into it and you can operate your attraction for two years.

[00:36:13] And you can find where the issues are, where people, where you might have pinch points, you can then re redesign it and make some changes to the design and the plan of the attraction or the plan of the park solely based on what you learned from that AI model.

[00:36:29] Which is still in its infancy, but I've seen it used on a couple of attractions and it's pretty, pretty nifty and pretty cool to be able to basically operate a digital twin of your attraction and, and look at how it's going to change.

[00:36:46] Of course, I'm, I'm more on the creative side, so I'm not looking at how AI is going to change the business side of, of the theme park, but the purely the economics of it is the big debate that we're having is probably everybody's having is do you do it on prem or do you do it in the cloud? And if you do it in the cloud, in my opinion, I don't think the big tech companies yet are pricing things for attractions because if you're an operator, you need consistency.

[00:37:12] You need to know, okay, every guest who comes in, if I give them an AI and experience, I'm not going to pay more than $2 per guest or $1 per guest or 50 cents per guest. And that's not how AI works. That's not how the cloud works. The cloud, the bots scale up or the, when there's a rush of people, it scales up. It becomes more expensive and then it gets slower and it gets less expensive. Well, if you're an operator, you need consistency.

[00:37:37] You need to know what the price per guest is going to be, regardless of whether it's at the peak hour or the, you need to have some type of price guarantees or your business model shot. And so hopefully the tech companies will get there someday in helping us with that pricing model. Certainly I see a lot of people in talking about AI traction, AI with new attractions where, Hey, can we just do this on prem? Can we just figure out a way to do this on prem and not have to go to the cloud? So I know what my cost is. I have control over it. And so these are kind of the issues that we were having.

[00:38:07] Now, if I had five minutes with Mark Zuckerberg, what I would say to him is, listen, meta has an open platform. You want to connect the world. That's your mission is to connect the world. I would do everything possible to let your technology get into the hands of experienced designers. So every single small museum in the world can put their guests in the story using meta's tech, meta's technology. And then of course they're going to share that online. Of course they're going to share that on Instagram.

[00:38:36] Of course they're going to share that on Facebook. Because if I go to, and I love small museums, but they can't afford big AI. They just can't. Right. But some of my favorite, like the submarine museum in St. Mary's, Georgia, tiny little museum. And they're all over the UK as well. These tiny little museums that you go to that they can't afford. I worked on Colbrookdale and some small museums at Iron Bridge in that area. And even those are larger museums or medium sized museums. But even they would have a hard time, I think, affording some of this.

[00:39:06] So I would love the idea of big tech companies. Listen, Mark Zuckerberg, if you're listening, I doubt you are. But if your mission truly is to connect the world, design your technology in such a way that small design firms, small museums can use it to put people in the story. And it can be as simple as, oh, I'm at the submarine museum in St. Mary's, Georgia. And because I have an AI experience, I can see myself in the museum, in the submarine.

[00:39:34] I can see myself looking at the periscope. I can see myself on the con tower as we are cruising across the beautiful ocean at sunset. I can see a video of that. Meta has all that technology that's in the works. I just want it to get down to the little people, if you will, and connect the world. Because I do believe that by putting people in stories through AI, what we're doing is really connecting people to stories and connecting people to each other. Beautiful.

[00:40:00] And hopefully through the act of six degrees of separation, there will be a friend of a friend of a friend that knows Mark Zuckerberg. Let's see what we can manifest together there. And, of course, looking towards the future, it could be almost impossible to predict the future. Now, the world has changed so much in the last three to five years. In the next couple of years, we've got this race towards artificial general intelligence as well, AGI. We've got so much to look forward to there.

[00:40:27] But if you could look through a virtual crystal ball, you've got unlimited technological resources at your disposal combined with your own unique creativity. What do you think the ultimate AI-powered experience would look like in, I don't know, 10 or 20 years from now? Do you think there'll be limits to how much personalization people actually want or where we're heading? What do you think that experience would look like? Or what would you like it to look like? If you look at the future, you could go...

[00:40:57] So, for example, the Disney's Hollywood Studios, the Mickey and Minnie railroad experience is 100% projection and projection mapping. It's completely digital, right? The whole thing. It's, in my mind, not out of the realm of possibility that you could go to a theme park. And part of the experience of the theme park is you designing your own story and your own ride.

[00:41:25] And then when you and your friends go through that ride, because it's 100% projection, 100% digital, you are writing your own creation and your own story that you designed and that you created. And so, I know the founder of Mid Journey talks about where he wants the technology to go, where it's basically your dreams can become a movie.

[00:41:50] And that's pretty exciting to think that you could put a few prompts into a computer and then completely take a... I don't know how much they spent on a $200 million ride and customize it to your own personal storytelling experience. That could be amazing.

[00:42:11] I mean, you could, ahead of time, right now, before you go to Disney, you usually tell them about yourself and you get your RFID banned, you get all that stuff set up. I mean, in the future, you could upload family pictures to Disney and you could... Or Facebook could... Meta could scrub your Facebook profile and create a dark ride experience just about you and your family. The possibilities are pretty exciting to dream about. Again, I think I'd go back to the basic principles.

[00:42:40] We talked about holograms at the beginning of this. That technology was invented in 1862. Why do we want to do holograms? Why are they important? Why do we care about ABBA Voyager, which is not technically a hologram, but it kind of feels like a hologram experience up there, right? Why do we care about these things? Well, because it creates more immersive storytelling. It creates experiences where we feel like we're part of the story.

[00:43:06] And so my hope for AI is that on the bright side, that we'll use AI to connect people through storytelling. That we'll use AI to tell more immersive storytelling. And if there's one thing that's constant about human civilization, it's that we love storytelling. We love stories. And it's just so fun to be able to tell a story.

[00:43:35] I mean, I was teaching a class to some college students just two nights ago. And just for fun, we created a quick song on Suno about one of the students. And we told the student's story, right? And through song. And it was fun. And everybody laughed. Everybody had a good time. Everybody smiled. Why? Because we told a story through music.

[00:44:00] And so to me, the technology will keep getting crazier and crazier. That's true. But I think the constant is let's stay true to our human instincts and use AI to tell stories that bring people together. Let's not use AI to take away our humanity. Let's not use AI to turn ourselves into objects, right? As Prince said in 1999 at the Yahoo Online Music Awards, right?

[00:44:30] You can get on the computer, but don't let the computer get on you, right? We have to be very careful not to let AI take our humanity away. But if we do this right, and I think we can, we can use AI to tell stories that connect people together. And that should be our ambition. That should be our goal. That is beautiful. I always say at the end of every episode that technology works best when it brings people together. So your words in particular really resonated there.

[00:44:58] And we started the podcast today talking about your origin story, that young boy soaking up the sights and the sounds and the entire experience of the theme parks and amusement parks back in the day and how it would eventually fuel your creativity and inspire you to create new experiences both now and indeed the future. But if we look back now at your career, none of us are able to achieve any degree of success without a little help along the way.

[00:45:26] And very often there is a person that sees something in us, invests a little time in us to help us get us where we are today. So if you were to look back at your career, is there anyone in particular you're grateful towards who maybe helped you get you where you are or encouraged you? And maybe we give a little shout out to today. That one's easy. That's my wife, Tanya. So everything I have is because of her. And I'm lucky enough that she travels with us now early on when we kick off projects.

[00:45:56] She just very gratefully spent a week in Washington, D.C. with a new client last week with us. But she's the one that when I got fired was there to lift me up. She's the one that when we talked about starting our own company, she's the one that said, go for it. She's the one that when I said, oh, boy, I have this client in Dubai who wants me to come over for a month. She looked at me and she said, go, I'll take care of things here at home. You go, go, go build the business, go take care of things.

[00:46:27] She's the one that has been for us and for me for 32 years. And most importantly, when it comes to experiences, people sometimes like, why do you bring your wife to the kickoff charrettes? Why do you bring your wife to the first meetings? I always tell them, I say, you know what? Mothers make most of the decisions around what experiences people go to.

[00:46:49] It's the mothers that decide whether they're going to Blackpool Pleasure Beach or the Warner Brothers Studio and Harry Potter. It's the mother that decides that, generally speaking. And so why do I want my wife standing with me in all of our kickoff charrettes and all of our brainstorming? Because she's the only mother on our team. I'm not a mother. She's a mother. And she gives us a perspective that we can't get anywhere else. And just give you one quick example.

[00:47:19] We were working for a Formula One team to be unnamed and a major automotive brand on an experience. And as part of our research, we went to the Porsche driving experience in Atlanta, here in the United States. And my wife came out and she said, boy, they missed it. And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, they missed it. It's designed by men for men. I said, what do you mean? And she said, here's the thing. She goes, if we come out of this experience and you turn to me and say, I want a Porsche.

[00:47:47] I'm going to pat you on the head and I say, that's nice, dear, but no. Right? She goes, but if I come out of the experience and I turn to you as the mother, as the wife, and I say, boy, I think I want one of those. I know you'll go out tomorrow and you'll buy one, even if we can't afford it. Right? So design it for the mother. Design it for the woman in that respect. And again, it's little things, right? Yeah.

[00:48:17] In an experience. I'll give you just one quick example. When we went out to get the car, my wife was like, ooh, I like the green one. Can I drive the green one? No, you can't drive the green one. Why not? Well, because it's a Turbo X 2955, whatever. She doesn't care about the specs. She wanted to drive the green one. Right? Or when you're out on the track, what she cares about is how acceleration is going to help her get rid of a jerk on the road or how acceleration is going to help her get rid of a jerk who's pulled up next to her and is making googly eyes at her or whatever.

[00:48:47] You know what I mean? Women have a different perspective than men when it comes to driving. And we need to make sure we embrace that perspective. And so to answer your question, I did it like everything else in a very long-winded fashion. I give all credit to my wife, Tanya. Oh, absolutely beautiful. A big shout out to your wife there.

[00:49:06] And I think it's so important to recognize and broadcast this across the world, just how special she is and the impact that she's had on you and indeed your life and your entire world. So big shout out there. Much deserved. And for anyone listening wanting to find out more information about any of the topics we talked about today and how you're bringing these experiences to life through technology all around the world, where would you like to point everyone listening? You can reach me online.

[00:49:34] Probably the fastest way is just to Google my name, Jeff Thatcher, spelled with a G. I know. G-E-O-F-F Thatcher. I'm on Instagram. I'm on X. I'm on LinkedIn. Our company is called Creative Principles. So you can reach us at Creative Principles. So you can reach us on any of those platforms online. But if you Google Jeff Thatcher, you'll find me. Awesome. Well, I will add links to everything, the website, the socials and your LinkedIn page as well. Make it easier for people to get hold of you.

[00:50:03] And I do hope anybody listening in the experience business wondering how they're going to continue to rise to those expectations of their customers to check you out. Some of the work you're doing is just absolutely phenomenal. But thank you for talking about this today, how AI is impacting storytelling and experiences. Just phenomenal. Thanks again. Thanks, Neil. Appreciate it. Wow. I think AI isn't just changing how we experience stories. It's making us the main character.

[00:50:33] But will that enhance creativity or will it kill it? Is there enough main character syndrome out there already without us being the main character in every museum exhibit or painting? But seriously, big thanks to Jeff Thatcher for blowing my mind today and talking about how AI-powered attractions could transform experiences in everything from museums and theme parks.

[00:50:57] But what I love most of all is the convergence of storytelling, human authentic messages and technology. Love to hear your thoughts on everything we heard about. I'd love to hear your thoughts on everything you heard about today. Remember, if you go over to my website, techblogwriter.co.uk, there will be a website associated with this episode. I'm going to attach the video that Jeff was talking about there inside the College Football Hall of Fame Museum and just to bring to life what we're talking about. Check it out.

[00:51:28] Love to hear your thoughts. But as always, hit me up. Tag me. Drop your thoughts in the comments. You can get me on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, just at Neil C. Hughes. Would you want to be in a ride next to Jack Sparrow? Well, I hope you like ghost stories because you're in one. Let's talk some more about this. I'll return again tomorrow with another guest. Thank you for listening as always. And I'll speak with you tomorrow.

[00:51:57] Bye for now. Bye.