AI, Authorship, and the Invisible Contract with Marco Gentile

Orlando Wood (00:00)
 Well, Marco Gentile, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Marco Gentile (00:00)
Thank you very much, Orlando. It's actually my pleasure to be here.

Orlando Wood (00:24)
Well, I'm so excited to have you because you and I got in touch where you work with Dav, who we've also had on the podcast. You're a director repped by Magna Studios. Your work is so beautiful, so well-framed. mean, everything's impeccably shot. You're a clear craftsman. yeah, so it's very unique and exciting for me to have a creator on the podcast. So I'm very excited about that. So thank you.

But secondarily, the reason that we're talking is because I'm giving a talk at the British Arrows in March, and it's about how AI and creativity is being used now. And you and I were put in touch because you've started giving this incredible talk about, it's called the invisible contract. And as I understand it, it's a wonderful talk.

that's a philosophical, anthropological, and artistic framework for anyone working in communication about the current relationship between artificial intelligence and creativity. And so we had a talk and it was fascinating to hear the way you were talking about all this. And I'm really fascinated by the way artists are struggling and understanding the way technology and AI especially is generating outputs.

And so I really wanted to have you on the podcast to talk about it. And so I'm, really appreciate you being here.

Marco Gentile (01:52)
Well, thank you so much, first of all, as I said before, Orlando, it's actually my pleasure to be here. ⁓ And yes, when ⁓ we were putting contact, actually a good friend of mine, Ian Ponce-Jewel ⁓ put me in contact with you. And ⁓ the main reason... ⁓

I developed this talk, it's because, you as you said, I'm a director, I've been working for almost 20 years, ⁓ mostly in advertising. And I see the landscape, the production landscape, that it's changing so much and so quickly around us. And I was asked actually to talk about artificial intelligence. First and foremost, as a storyteller.

as somebody who has had a long time experience in the field directing advertising, directing commercials mostly all over the world with different companies in different markets for different brands.

I thought, okay, how do we frame this new environment? How do we try to understand what's really happening in our business and not just in our business, in general, in communication and on a broader level to our society ⁓ when artificial intelligence...

Artificial Intelligence is entering our lives and how we as producers of meaning are able to use and to maintain our authorship and to take responsibility for what we are doing in relation to a big audience.

Orlando Wood (03:53)
I love what you just said where your creativity is being a producer of meaning. I think that's really lovely. But just to summarize, you've called it the invisible contract, which obviously a reworking of Rousseau's notion of the social contract that we all live in as society, but that there's this secondary invisible contract between the creator and the viewer. ⁓

And the core idea seems to be that storytelling has always been relational, that there's a sort of unspoken agreement between the creator and the audience that's about intention, it's about presence, it's about responsibility and taste. And your concern isn't really about AI capability, it's about what happens to that relationship between the creator and the audience when imagination, memory, and execution start being delegated to systems. Is that a fair summary of your framework? ⁓

Marco Gentile (04:50)
It's actually a perfect summary of my framework. Because in communication, there is... No, no, no, no. It is exactly what you say. In communication, there is something that...

Orlando Wood (04:52)
⁓ great. Well, I'm thrilled.

I was worried that you would say, absolutely, that's a complete bastardization, that's not what I said.

Marco Gentile (05:10)
I call the invisible contract, it's, when an audience, I give you an example, when an audience sits in a theater, you they're not just watching images, they're entering into a relationship, you know, they assume some, imagined this, they assume someone struggled with decisions, that there is a...

an intent, that someone stands behind it. That contrast is built on authorship and responsibility. I'm asking an audience for something very precious. I'm asking for their time. We are asking for their time. And sometimes when we ask for their time, ⁓ maybe that time...

was not ⁓ meant to be given in that moment. Why? Because especially in advertising, sometimes advertising comes unannounced, right? If I go to...

Orlando Wood (05:54)
Yeah.

Yes, you're injecting yourself into

something I am consuming and you're asking me to give you my separate attention and you're you know, that's why so many people dislike advertising. It's getting in the way of the thing I'm really consumed.

Marco Gentile (06:05)
Exactly.

Exactly, but advertising is also something that we decide that it's part of our cultural conversation in the moment when we take accountability for what we're saying.

with our messages in advertising. So when artificial intelligence enters the process, the question isn't, is this good or bad? The question is, who is accountable for the imagination behind it? So that's the main question for me.

Orlando Wood (06:50)
Yeah, and it's interesting because there are presumably different, different ⁓ invisible contracts depending on the piece of media. You know, for example, if you're in a movie, part of the invisible contract is that you explain to me what's happening and you make it reasonably clear. If you're in a social media environment, you're consuming something that somebody has created. The social contract, the invisible contract is different. It's don't waste my time.

give me the most amount of information right up front to tell me why I should not swipe away and that those invisible contracts are presumably different.

Marco Gentile (07:28)
Absolutely, they're completely different. again, but the main question, the question that is really attracting my attention, that's why I thought that I wanted to go deeper and explore.

from more from an anthropological rather than a technological point of view, the relationship between us and artificial intelligence is what happens to human imagination.

when we stop exercising it. It's not about what artificial intelligence can or cannot generate, but it's what happens to us, to humans. And this is a question that interests me very much as a creator.

⁓ what happens to human imagination because human imagination, it's symbolic and, you know, and it's, as I said before, we're producers of meaning and it's created when we ⁓ encounter some kind of friction into reality. It's created in an intersubjective space between ⁓ me and you, between a community. When people ⁓ back,

Back in the Stone Age, we're gathering around the fire and telling each other stories to navigate the world, to create an identity. If we're losing that, we're losing that sense of responsibility. We're losing that sense of consequence. If we leave our imagination, if we delegate it too much and we just leave it completely to automated systems,

Orlando Wood (08:58)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (09:12)
then what's gonna happen to the storytelling, to the symbolic storytelling. And storytelling, again, it's not just content. Storytelling, it's part of who we are. It defines us and it defines our destinies.

Orlando Wood (09:26)
Yeah, I mean, yeah. Mm

Yeah, I've been arguing for quite some time that that create creation is higher up Maslow's hierarchy of needs than we often give it credit for. We sort of have often thought of creativity as something that you do when you're done. When you're fat and happy and relaxed, then you can start creating. But I think it's it's much more fundamental to the human experience. We want to see our impact on the world.

And I think that that's a ⁓ fundamental principle. And I think that what you're arguing for, seems to me, is that creativity is a muscle, storytelling is a muscle, and you need to exercise it, you need to use it or lose it. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (10:09)
Absolutely. Absolutely. mean, I think the risk is really

atrophy. know, human symbolic creation does not happen in an abstract, you know. It happens inside time, gravity, ⁓ irreversibility. I make a decision and that decision cannot be changed. I'm on set and I decide that, you know.

that take is good and even when I'm in the editing room, I cannot go back and change that, you know, because that decision had some consequences and it was taken at a certain time and there was a certain budget spent for it.

Orlando Wood (10:42)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (10:55)
But if we delegate completely the creation, not just the creation from an abstract point of view, but even the execution of what we do to automated systems, we're gonna lose this friction and we're gonna lose the responsibility. Who is accountable? Who is responsible for the decisions made behind it?

Orlando Wood (11:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I guess my question is, who are you most concerned is going to be losing that? I mean, it seems to me that people who have already proven themselves to be creators, they like the friction, they want to do the hard work, they enjoy that process. Very often, I feel like so much of the slop is being created by people who weren't creating in the first place. And sure, that means that more output is happening, but are you...

Are you concerned? Who are you concerned are going to have their creative muscle atrophy?

Marco Gentile (11:54)
Yeah.

Well, look, I think the concern is on two levels. The first level is obviously for the future generations because, I mean, you know, we are me, you, you know, we're used to use that muscle in a certain way.

because we never had the option to just let it sleep and use the generative artificial intelligence for our lives. So the muscle is being trained and it's strong. But what about the future generations? We don't know that. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I think it's a legitimate question. First of all, second, ⁓ the...

Orlando Wood (12:28)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (12:47)
The fear that ⁓ big studios or big brands might start using these automated systems to try to be more efficient, let me use this word, which means cutting costs, which means being faster, can hurt this muscle. And it can hurt this muscle on two levels.

Orlando Wood (13:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (13:16)
on the muscle itself and of course having a huge impact on the society with so many people who are actually, as you said before, they're very happy to do the hard work, to be employed, to live inside that friction.

Orlando Wood (13:33)
Yeah, because I think that you make a very good point is that at the end of the day, when I was at film school, I took a class about editing on old systems and we saw a demonstration of gluing together film and running it through the old edit bay. We saw that, we understood the process. I have never once in my life, and I was an editor for

you know, a few years, that's how I started in my career. I started starting on Final Cut Pro and then avid and I have never touched, you know, physical film to edit it beyond that day. And I made my life as a professional editor. And now with things like CapCut, you know, the the next generation of editors may not have that skill. Is that the concern that you're. You're espousing.

Marco Gentile (14:31)
This

is part, yeah, is absolutely, this is part of my concern, you know. When we talk about execution, obviously, now you were mentioning editing, but when we talk about execution, execution happens at so many levels, you know, from the storyboard artist who is, you know, sketching the storyboard for a film, for a commercial, you know, to...

to the editor, to the director and the sound designer. And we're talking just about ⁓ people who are ⁓ basically working in our field, in film production. But this is something that is going to touch all creativity fields, not just film production. I'm thinking about photographers, I'm thinking about painters, I'm thinking about musicians, people actually using an instrument.

Orlando Wood (15:23)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (15:26)
And now new generations kind of being discouraged maybe to learn to play an instrument because all music can be generated.

So this is,

Orlando Wood (15:42)
I guess my question is,

you know, what do we do when we're fat and happy and work has been automated and whatever else? mean, isn't creativity the thing that people are going to want to turn to? mean, sure. You know, photography on some level could have killed painting. ⁓ you know, especially certainly it diminished the value of still life painting, but painting responded by

the impressionist movement coming, you know, coming up into the four of, ⁓ you know, and does artistry still have a place in the human experience? mean, one of things that I always say is that I see more people painting on Tik TOK or cleaning a rug or, know, I'm finding people showing their craft more and I'm fascinated by that. and

You know, on some level, that means that that creativity isn't dying. It's just taking up a different role in our lives is do does that have any merit at all in this place? Or or do you think that there's some protection? I suppose.

Marco Gentile (16:50)
I think as

I said before, think this technology, it's really different from any other technology. You were mentioning photography. Photography obviously used a very specific technology at the time, about 160 years ago. But...

This technology has something ontologically different. This technology is generating and it's kind of taking off the moment of execution in itself.

Orlando Wood (17:18)
Mm, yeah.

Marco Gentile (17:35)
because it's supposed to work by having a human being prompting a machine and basically getting an output, getting a result. Now, this is something that we've never seen before in human history. And you mentioned, you know, art is also craft. So what does it mean making something, creating something without the craft, the physical?

craft.

Orlando Wood (18:07)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (18:07)
And okay, maybe, you know, we're all fat and happy and we have plenty of time because we don't have to go to the office and we don't have to work. Well, that I don't know because actually I was reading very recently an article ⁓ talking about artificial intelligence saying that ⁓ on a corporate level, ⁓

where they're using artificial intelligence, it's not actually improving the productivity. you know, going back to our field, to the creative industry, I think that, you know, if we do not have that moment where we are into the physicality of what we do,

Orlando Wood (18:36)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (18:59)
What we're gonna lose, it's ⁓ our capability to make something that it's unique. Because generated content is, you know, it's scalable. I mean, you can produce as much as you want, but then what you lose behind it, it's the authorship. Is... ⁓

is the responsibility of the creator, the artist, the producer, whatever you want to call him, this person to have him made choices, to have an intention and to really stand behind that intention. And it's not just an intention of prompting a machine. It's an intention that encountered physical restrictions and physical limits. And those physical limits are what ⁓ created.

the piece of work.

Orlando Wood (19:57)
Yeah, it's funny. The obesity epidemic springs to mind. You know, when you talk about the creativity being a muscle that atrophies, you know, when it comes to obesity, we are at the mercy of incredibly powerful, smart companies that have researched the exact right crunch for a chip to be. They've perfectly mixed fat and salt and sugar so that

you know, we get into fugue states with our food. And obviously this is bad for us, but we're combating very, very smart organizations that have done lots of research that are literally trying to hack us. And now, you know, from a creative standpoint, both from social media, but also the creative act, as you say, we're now dealing with a nearly infinite intelligence that's job is to kind of hook us. And so,

It's funny, I think there's this version of ourselves where we can just be automatons looking at content. And what you're saying is that we can also be automatons creating content. We can prompt something in and stand by it and go, look, I meant to do that. And as a real creator, you're going, no, you didn't mean to do that. That was not what was in your mind's eye. You saw something come out and you claimed it was what's in your mind's eye. And that is not the same thing.

That is not the creative act. The creative act is taking something in your mind's eye and trying as far as possible, as far as you can get to make that be reflected in the world in the way you saw it in your head.

Marco Gentile (21:34)
Absolutely. also, yes, but also the creative act, as I said before, and this is to me, this is like probably the most important element. The creative act always is born from the initial intention of the creator and the friction of the reality.

Orlando Wood (22:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (22:03)
If you take

one of these two out of the equation, then you don't have it. you know, AI obviously increases speed dramatically, but speed and meaning operate on different timelines, you know. Operational friction can be reduced, of course. I mean, you can produce, you can generate whatever you want, but interpretative friction, that must be preserved.

Orlando Wood (22:06)
Yes, very good point. Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (22:33)
So I'm not saying, know, I'm not saying, mean, AI is actually a really powerful tool. And, you know, if we know, if we understand, if we have a framework, if we have, if we establish some principle to use it in a certain way, it can actually amplify our creativity.

Orlando Wood (22:54)
Yeah. Well, let's get in. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

Marco Gentile (22:56)
But what moves faster is not

automatically... Yeah, mean, what I want to say is that what moves faster, it's not necessarily automatically what resonates deeper.

Orlando Wood (23:08)
Yeah. Well, I like what you said as well about, ⁓ about the physical and, and realistic friction of creation, because the problem with my analogy that I just brought up was sure. It's not in your mind's eye. It's possible to put what's in your mind's eye on a painting where you have full control. It's very difficult to do that. mean, you know, Christopher Nolan probably has the ability to say

Give me whatever budget I want to create whatever's in my mind's eye because he's, he's developed that relationship with studios. Most people who are creating are doing the best with whatever's being presented to them. The location they could get was not the exact location that was in their mind's eye and they're having to work around it on the day. Or, you know, it was storyboarded one way and you go, well, I guess this would work, could work if we frame it below so that the building looks bigger than it is, or, know, ⁓

the ability to work through the problems on the day, that friction, I often say as well that haikus as a poetry medium are only interesting because of the way you have to contort yourself around the rules. And it's that friction that gives so much of the soul to so much creativity that we enjoy and helps us enjoy the process of making it.

Marco Gentile (24:28)
Absolutely. that friction, as I said, it's real, it's physical, but we also have a psychological friction. We have a psychological friction. I'll give you another example. Let's take a poet. The poet is not working.

with physical constraints, right? Because the poet is sitting, we all imagine, we all have this image of the poet, like sitting on a beautiful mountain, you know, watching nature like an incredible landscape and coming out with poetry. Now, is there friction there? Yes, I think there is a lot of friction there. The friction in that case, it's not a physical limit, it's not a

Orlando Wood (25:00)
Hmm.

yeah.

Marco Gentile (25:13)
constraint, a physical constraint, but there is friction inside the poet. It's a psychological friction, right? So.

Orlando Wood (25:18)
Yeah. writer's block is

very real. Both of my parents were writers and I can tell you the days where they didn't write a thing, they were the most vexed they could possibly be. And theoretically, the brain is infinite. They could have written it. There were infinite possibilities, but the struggle of getting their story out, you know, won some days and it drove them crazy.

Marco Gentile (25:42)
But again, you just said something that I think it's extremely important. You just say, you know, our brain is infinite. And I argued that actually it's not. And I argued that our brain lives in the causality of time, which is the condition of human beings. We live, we are finite. We're not infinite. We are finite beings. And we have...

Orlando Wood (25:53)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (26:10)
finite possibilities and when we take one of these possibilities, when we take one of those paths, we make a very responsible choice. We show our intention and that's what is in the invisible content that I'm talking about. Whoever is on the other side knows that behind what they're watching, behind what they're experiencing, behind what they're listening, there was a person who somehow

Orlando Wood (26:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Marco Gentile (26:36)
based on their own frictions, whether they were physical, whether they were psychological, even Christopher Nolan has a lot of friction, I'm sure, although he has 250 million budget available to make his movies.

Orlando Wood (26:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Marco Gentile (26:54)
Even a $250 million film has a lot of friction for the director, for the producers, for the actors, for everybody who is involved, because every time they're making a decision, every time, they are taking responsibility for what they're doing. And your parents, the writers, the poets,

Orlando Wood (26:57)
Hmm.

yeah.

Marco Gentile (27:19)
Obviously they don't experience friction. You just need a pen to write poetry, right? But they experience a friction.

Orlando Wood (27:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (27:28)
in the soul or if you don't want to call it soul, if you want to stay more on a scientific level, you know, the neuropaths of their brains, they are influenced by their memories and they're influenced by the dialogue that they have with the culture, with the symbolic culture that is around them and they are immersed in since they were born. So there is a constant friction because there is a constant dialogue between them and their memories, between them and their

Orlando Wood (27:37)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (27:58)
writers who influence them between them and the expectations that they have about themselves. Now, do machines, do automated systems have this kind of friction? Well, so far, we can say they don't. So leaving the creation of symbolical meaning and symbolical meaning, it's what makes us human. We are human because we're able, using symbols,

Orlando Wood (28:14)
Mm.

Marco Gentile (28:28)
to understand reality and to give meaning to reality in an intersubjective space, in a dialogue between me and you, we can understand absence, we can understand future, we can understand time, because we're not just biological cells who are reacting to an impulse.

Orlando Wood (28:51)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (28:51)
we have a pause between the impulse and what we think and how we react. And in that pause, it's where imagination is born. And that space is freedom. It's the only freedom we have. There is no other freedom. So when I say that an infinite amount of generated content

can risk to create atrophy in our brains, you can take it as an image of what can happen to the society, or you can take it even as something that can really happen to an individual. It means kind of sliding slowly into a sort of comfort.

that it's not allowing you to create. And when I say create, I do not mean, I think we all create. It's not just artists or creators or people who do it for work. Obviously for us, it has an even bigger impact, you know, because it's our job. But we all create meaning all the time. Because we use symbols. We use symbols all the time. Language is a symbol.

Orlando Wood (30:10)
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean,

But also, you know, I mean, when we were coming up in the industry, there was no other way to be a creator, really. I mean, you had what a Sony handy cam, like, OK, you shoot home movies. There was no way to distribute it. There was only one game in town, and that game was either you got into an advertising agency that allowed you to shoot commercials or you got into a film studio that allowed you to make films or you privately finance some sort of film. Now.

Marco Gentile (30:41)
Absolutely.

Orlando Wood (30:45)
there are more in terms of creativity at large, there are more people making a living off their own creativity and storytelling than there has ever been in the history of the world. And now we're giving even more people access to seeming creativity. ⁓ But yeah, it's happening at large. And we're also seeing a lot of people, think that at the moment we're seeing a lot of people who are technological leaders.

make these stories. We're not seeing a lot of storytellers. A lot of the storytellers who are already proven themselves to be good as storytellers are still operating in, you know, largely without making end to end fully AI films. And I think that that's one of the other reasons that they're not very good at the both.

Marco Gentile (31:34)
Yeah, definitely it's a trend.

Orlando Wood (31:36)
But I think they'll get better. mean, I think, like you said, it's a muscle.

Yeah. I think that the other thing is like you said, they're flexing a muscle as well. You know, every time they create a piece of AI slop and it's no good and it doesn't get any views, they'll iterate and iterate and iterate until they hit something that works. And then they'll try to figure out why that works. And then they'll get better at making more of that. And they'll, know, and, and so

They'll get better in flexing their muscle too in the new medium of, you know, AI content distribution and content creation.

Marco Gentile (32:12)
Yeah, absolutely. But you know, that is a matter of aesthetic. What I'm talking about here is ethic. It's not aesthetic. It's something a little bit different because I'm sure the AI probably in three, four, five, 10 years, I don't know, maybe even sooner than that, will be able to create, they can actually do it now already, you know.

some of the softwares out there, you know, we all know them and they can definitely create a really high level polished aesthetic. But that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is what we keep human.

how we preserve the human space. Because as I said before, I'm sure the generative artificial intelligence will reach a level that will be probably indistinguishable from what we can do. But the problem is, we stopping to negotiate in meaning as human beings? Because that's the main question we need to answer, you know?

Orlando Wood (33:12)
Yeah, mean, so, yeah.

Within art

or in general.

Marco Gentile (33:25)
in general, in genera.

Orlando Wood (33:27)
Well, I mean,

I would argue that so many of the tech companies try to remove as much meaning as humanly possible. You know, they see their user base. They see the way that people use them as numbers on a screen and data points to be assessed. you know, and so a lot of that meaning, you know, I often find that when tech companies talk to Hollywood,

Marco Gentile (33:45)
Exactly.

Orlando Wood (33:53)
They and Hollywood talks tech companies, they they're very often are are talking a completely cross purposes because tech companies tend to go, well, if you just do everything like this, everything will be done for you. Won't that be great? And Hollywood goes, no, that won't be great. We like our jobs. We felt a calling to do these jobs. We were inspired by movies we watched as a kid and saw Gladiator and when I want to be a part of that. And that is again, like I said,

the creation of that as a human need, the ability to be around a group of people. We are social primates as a society. We care about our relationship to others, working with others. I've always been best friends with the people I work with, where we've worked hard next to each other and developed a rapport of a mutual respect. I've usually had better friendships born out of my work than I have just meeting down the pub. ⁓ And so, yeah, I think that

There's a huge argument that from a technological standpoint, those companies, especially the big ones are very often run by people who they over index and being on the spectrum. So they are much more apt to reduce a lot of human experience down to quantifiable things ⁓ rather than speaking the language of

poetry and meaning and art and creativity.

Marco Gentile (35:25)
Absolutely. you know, and what you say, obviously, it's, ⁓ it's extremely important to understand the strategies of these big companies and why they're doing what they're doing, you know, and obviously, we know that it's business, but, you know,

Orlando Wood (35:44)
Addiction is a moneymaker.

Marco Gentile (35:46)
Addiction is a huge moneymaker, when you say that they reduce everything to numbers and computational, well, artificial intelligence, as it's been developed in the last 15 years, it is statistical computation. It's not symbolic. Now, we are symbolic beings. We are... ⁓

Orlando Wood (36:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (36:13)
we interpret our reality not based on computations, not based on statistic predictability. We based it. So when we, you know, when we leave also the creation of our symbolic spaces, and when I say symbolic, I mean art, but I mean even language. I mean even, you know, just basic communication. When we leave it,

Orlando Wood (36:22)
Hmm.

Marco Gentile (36:42)
to machines who are generating based on a principle that it's completely different from the human way of producing meaning and generating meaning. ⁓

That's my question, what's going to happen to us as human beings? So that's why I'm saying it's an anthropological question and it's way broader than just Hollywood or me being an advertising director or advertising agencies. It's something that touches a human faculty that it's ⁓ fundamental to who we are.

Orlando Wood (37:12)
Sure. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (37:27)
Are we really ready and people are really aware of this? That's my question. Are people aware of the way automated systems work and create?

Orlando Wood (37:32)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (37:43)
is artificial intelligence really intelligence? But again, that's not my question and my concern. There is a lot of debate about what is artificial intelligence, if general artificial intelligence will ever be achieved. But that's not my concern. My concern is what is natural intelligence and how do we preserve it? Because obviously, artificial intelligence, it's here to stay and we will have to...

you know, to leave with this. There is no going back. But how do we establish, especially now, especially in this moment, a sort of governance so that that invisible contract still matters?

Orlando Wood (38:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (38:31)
that the communication between two human beings still matters and there is still trust and there is still hope because you know that on the other side there is a human being and there is an intention.

Orlando Wood (38:43)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's, mean, one of the ways it's easy to look through is very soon. Apple will do an update that will allow you to have AI text your friend. And then, so if you are texting with your friend and you're using AI to text with your friend and they're using AI to text with you, you are no longer communicating with another human being. you are communicating through and

as separate intelligence, and it will likely have the impact of making us feel more disconnected from one another. Maybe there's some argument that, you know, if I get overwhelmed by my friend texting too much and so I don't text, this will help me get back in then. And maybe we meet up. I don't know. That's I'm sure the argument that the AI companies will make. But I think that what you're saying is that's a very simple and real connection problem.

the two humans being separated now by something artificial in between. And what you're saying is art historically has been a way that human beings have connected and found meeting and that there is something incredibly valuable and fundamental about the relationship between an artist and the person, not just a consumer, not just an audience member, but a person who is benefiting the most

from that artistic expression. Undeniably, there are pieces painted by Van Gogh and things that he's written that move me and have changed the way I think about things. If I see a Jackson Pollock, if I see, very Banksy is a good example, there is an impact there that does impact you in general and change the way you see the world. And if we remove that, that is

worse for society? Is that a good summation of how important the relationship is between artist and audience?

Marco Gentile (40:49)
It is a very good summation. And again, it's very good because it comes from your personal experience, from something that you physically felt inside yourself when you were exposed to a Jackson Pollock or to a Van Gogh. But you know...

Orlando Wood (41:00)
Hmm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Hmm. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (41:15)
you know that behind that there was a person, an artist who was very happy, who was very sad, who lived probably something very similar, very similar to what other millions of human beings have lived.

Orlando Wood (41:28)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (41:35)
It's just that their way to express it was extraordinarily beautiful and it's able to become a universal message and to capture your attention, your heart, your emotions. So that is the invisible contract. You know that Vincent van Gogh cut his ear off and went to...

Orlando Wood (41:41)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Marco Gentile (42:02)
to a lot of trouble and a lot of pain in order to produce what he produced. And probably you knowing that, it's also creating a connection between you and the artist. You might just like what he paints even without knowing it. But when you get to know his biography, when you get to know the type of friction he went through, that might even connect you even on a stronger level.

Orlando Wood (42:04)
Yeah.

yeah.

Hmm.

yeah.

Marco Gentile (42:33)
Now we're talking about like obviously like high level sophistication art, but this is true for every type of communication. The example that you were mentioning about this new AI agent that is going to message your friend, that's a perfect example. Because when I am not

messaging my friend, myself, because I feel overwhelmed, I'm refusing to be responsible, to face. There is no authorship there anymore.

Orlando Wood (43:08)
Yeah. You're not being authentic. Yeah. Your pain is authentic.

You may not want to express your pain or you may not want to express that you're anxious or whatever else, but at least that's authentic. The lack of message is a message about something.

Marco Gentile (43:16)
David?

What? But

at that point, at that point I choose silence. I choose silence.

Orlando Wood (43:28)
Yeah, exactly. And so,

somebody might then reach out to you and go, Marco, are you okay? Because you've, you've been silent. now if we're already commute, always communicating on our fakest level of what we want to be projecting into the world, we're not letting people into the reality.

Marco Gentile (43:34)
Absolutely, absolutely.

We're not people letting into the reality. And that is the risk. The risk that I see when I talk about atrophy, because when I talk about imagination, don't think that I'm talking about an artist or only or a writer only. Imagination is not a prerogative of creative people or special people. We all are imagining.

Orlando Wood (43:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (44:14)
our

lives. We all are imagining our futures. We all are imagining our moments. You are imagining yourself in 10 minutes. You're imagining yourself in two minutes. You're imagining yourself. Imagination is the way we inhabit time. And it's the way that we inhabit time by being free.

Orlando Wood (44:25)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Marco Gentile (44:39)
because we're not just reacting to an impulse immediately, but as I said before, there is a pause in the middle. And in that pause, we're able to imagine different possibilities, different alternatives, and then we make a conscious choice, and we take one of those possibilities. And when we take one of these possibilities, we take responsibility.

Orlando Wood (44:39)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (45:07)
And that possibility can be, I'm not gonna answer my friend or I'm gonna answer my friend. I'm gonna say something wrong. I'm gonna say something right, but I'm taking, I'm accountable for it.

Orlando Wood (45:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Where?

Marco Gentile (45:19)
Even

not responding, it's a choice. Even silence is a choice.

Orlando Wood (45:23)
Yeah.

So what's the prescription then? So, okay, we've recognized that, you know, that creativity is a muscle. It should be worked out ⁓ that these tools create a propensity for that muscle to die on the vine and atrophy. What is an okay way to, you you're a director. How are you using these tools? How are you refusing to use these tools in your pipelines right now?

Marco Gentile (45:53)
Well, as I said, right now I'm still navigating. This is all new for everybody. We're in a very new, unknown territory, unknown environment. And it's hard right now to know what's gonna be right or what's gonna be wrong. But this is why I think it's important ⁓

Orlando Wood (46:17)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (46:22)
to have a cultural framework. And inside that cultural framework, people are responsible, people are knowledgeable, and people understand what we're talking about, the things that me and you, we just talked about for the last 60 minutes. And then they can make their conscious and free choices. Now, my suggestions, my suggestions are

Definitely to protect the human moment. know, not every stage of creation, there are some parts that can be automated, but not every stage of it. And definitely not the moments where meaning is decided, where the concept, the narrative intention, the symbolic direction of what I want to say or what we want to say, that has to be human led.

Orlando Wood (47:10)
Right.

Marco Gentile (47:21)
Automation can support execution, but again, execution also, in my opinion, should stay and should remain human. And when I say should remain, I don't mean like 10%. Mostly should remain, mostly should remain human. ⁓

Orlando Wood (47:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Marco Gentile (47:43)
definitely separating speed from meaning. know, what I was saying before, ⁓ speed and meaning, definitely operate on different levels. Operational friction can be reduced. know, if there are ways, like with every technology. remember when, you know, when...

when 3D artists, flame artists appeared and started to work, but their work, they're using a tool. They are real artists. They're just using a tool that before was not available. Like a photographer is using

the camera and the camera was not available before like a director, I'm using a camera as well. And the camera was not available before. So before was theater, before there were other ways of ⁓ interpret and represent and share reality with other human beings. But a tool is a tool. And this technology

Orlando Wood (48:33)
Right, right.

Marco Gentile (48:55)
is not just a tool because if the technology can mediate your imagination so much then where is the boundary? Where is the boundary? And also we need to design a visible altarship. We must have checkpoints, moments where we...

Orlando Wood (49:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think that like, you know, yeah.

Marco Gentile (49:21)
we know that, okay, this is the direction, this is the meaning, and who is behind it? Who is taking responsibility for this? Because if the responsibility dilutes so much,

Orlando Wood (49:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (49:35)
That's very dangerous.

Orlando Wood (49:37)
Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that like for the most part, I feel like on a professional level, these tools are very bad at iteration and specific iteration. And when you look at modern post-production workflows, they're using these tools, but they're using them in very, if it's a thousand step process, they're using them at key points within that thousand step process. I think that, yes, we're seeing a lot of end to end creation, but I don't think it's yet happening at the...

the professional level. think that at the professional level, they're still being used as tools. They're generative tools and they're being used in pre-viz, pre-production, storyboarding, you know, and all along that line. And I see that there's a trajectory happening where these tools can take over more things. But I don't think on a professional level, they're being used as full generation and to get out of doing the

the work. mean, if I don't know if you disagree with that. Maybe you're seeing something I'm not.

Marco Gentile (50:39)
⁓ I think that,

well, what I think is that the landscape is changing very quickly, very quickly. So it's really hard to say, okay, today we can just use artificial intelligence for pre-visualization or.

Orlando Wood (50:49)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (51:02)
but we don't know what's gonna be in three, four months. for me, main point, to me the main point it's not, okay, it's not gonna be that good. People are still gonna want to use human labor, human work, because again, this is not just about the artist. This is about... ⁓

Orlando Wood (51:16)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (51:30)
us as a society and the way we create our symbolic spaces. So

Orlando Wood (51:39)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (51:40)
So yes, can tell me, yeah, in our line of work, yeah, probably right now, it's a very small percentage of our work that can be done by artificial intelligence. But what's gonna be like in one year, in two years? And what about the people, you know, who are going to lose their jobs in the first place? Maybe before me, before you, before...

But again, it's not about me and it's not about you. It's about us collectively as a society and what direction are we taking? Are we aware of the spaces that we're compressing? Because if we are, and we make a deliberate choice and we say, okay, we wanna do that, we wanna go full automated and we wanna reduce our...

our imagination and our freedom, ⁓ okay, it's a choice, you know, but I don't think people want that. And I don't think we want to give up our freedom. ⁓ I don't think, because imagination is freedom, art is freedom, creation is freedom. And to be able to create anything that you want, that's not freedom.

Orlando Wood (52:46)
Right.

Mm-mm.

Marco Gentile (53:04)
Freedom is born in that space that I was talking about before and that space is lived and it can be beautiful. You don't have to suffer to create. You can make incredible things.

Orlando Wood (53:19)
I think, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the thing I draw against to be able to create anything you want is not freedom. That seems to me the ultimate freedom. You know, I mean, I think that what you but I think what you're saying is it may be freedom, but it's not art, you know, and it's not culture. It doesn't have it's like it's like a dinner of white bread. You're full, but you're not nourished. You haven't had anything that actually nourishes you. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (53:24)
But you need to face reality. You need to face reality.

It's not cut.

Exactly. Yeah, of course. when I talk about

freedom, I talk about the value of freedom. You can understand the value of freedom only if it's within some limits. If you had total freedom, 100%, you wouldn't even understand that you're free.

Orlando Wood (54:03)
Right. It would be without physics without. Yeah, I understand. What's so so let's let's talk about implementing this then, you know. So if you've got a cultural framework, how do you implement it and how should artists and creators be? Interacting with their work in this new world, is there a framework you're espousing or a checklist or a you know what?

How should they be acting and how do you institute an artistic cultural framework?

Marco Gentile (54:40)
Yeah, I think we should have like creative governance, know, like human, a human authority. Well, you know, I think this is something that needs to be negotiated and discussed between professionals, people working in the industry first and foremost, and then also politics.

Orlando Wood (54:46)
By whom? Yeah, but by whom and then instituted by whom?

Marco Gentile (55:09)
because some political choices will have an impact on how these resources are allocated and how people can have some sort of protection for their authorship. Just take now all the lawsuits that a lot of artists, actors,

Orlando Wood (55:28)
Right.

Mm-mm.

Marco Gentile (55:37)
painters, designers have filed against some of these big corporations because they trained on their work. So we need that.

Orlando Wood (55:49)
And what role, mean, so yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, the copyright question I think

is well-worn ground and I don't think we need to get into it. guess what I'm trying to, you've proposed a cultural framework. You've said what is at risk if we don't ensure that artists and creators ⁓ have some responsibility in their art to using these tools. ⁓ And that then,

Marco Gentile (56:15)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (56:17)
Is the idea that it is a panel of guidelines led by, you know, this generations or the previous generations creators and artists to provide guardrails or rules for for the new generation?

Marco Gentile (56:31)
I think

anybody can give their own contributions with ideas and opening up.

the discussion and the dialogue, the more we talk about it, the better it is. And the sooner we're gonna find a way to have these guardrails, to put them in place, I would say more than having them, to put them in place. But...

Orlando Wood (56:55)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (57:01)
I think again, it's up to each person. From my side, I'm actually working with some other artists right now to create a space and ⁓ to have this space open, hopefully very soon, to whoever is interested in entering in it and giving them ⁓ voice and also... ⁓

Orlando Wood (57:08)
Shit. Shoo shoo is the internet down?

Kaleigh.

Marco Gentile (57:31)
to create, to have some outputs in order to talk to the society. it's a...

in its whole and find ⁓ new ways to ⁓ face this issue. Because right now, what we see and what we hear is just a lot of hype or a lot of fear. And I think we need somehow a counter narrative where we can establish some principles, know, creative governance. ⁓

the production level governance, data governance, the cultural governance, and it's just a matter of copyright. It's also like clarity on... ⁓

how you don't replace an entire department, or not hiding AI-generated elements as purely human work, or clearly crediting structures, being transparent in communication with clients. The checklist goes on and on, ⁓ and I think it's up to...

Orlando Wood (58:34)
Hello.

Marco Gentile (58:49)
to us as creators and individuals, as people who have been working in the industry for so many years, to talk about this, to open this space and at one point to negotiate whatever the outcomes are with other authorities, with other spaces, whether it's politicians, whether it's corporations.

But definitely all these points that I was mentioning, these are part of that checklist that it's crucial, it's essential. I mean, without it, think a lot of, especially for the young generations, there will be a lot of uncertainty and...

and a lot of hope will be lost. And that's very sad. That's very sad. So, you know, if we don't find a way to have these guardrails in place, maybe you're not going to have a lot of kids who want to go to ⁓ film school or to learn and play violin or piano or any other instrument.

Orlando Wood (59:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (1:00:15)
You know what I'm saying?

Because it's not a viable option. You can make a living out of it.

Orlando Wood (1:00:22)
Mm-hmm.

Isn't there an argument that I mean, like, you know, right now there are arguably more people making a living out of their art there has ever been before in history. Is there some level on which

Marco Gentile (1:00:35)
Where?

Orlando Wood (1:00:39)
Well, I mean more people.

Marco Gentile (1:00:39)
In the Western world. In the Western world.

Orlando Wood (1:00:43)
Well, I can't, I mean, I can't speak to the East. I don't live there, but, you know, I like certainly, you know, they, they also have YouTube. They also YouTube monetizes, TikTok monetizes, you know, ⁓ I, I had somebody work for me who was a creator when they met me, they were helping produce this podcast. And then she left cause she was like, I'm making $10,000 a month from TikTok and Substack. I don't need this job anymore. And she was.

editing and producing the podcast. are creative. I know that they're not the same level of creativity and I'm not arguing that they are, but she is now making a living based on doing something creative, filming herself doing things. That is a creative act. It's not a high-minded creative act. It's certainly not filmmaking, but she is filming something and building and paying her rent with that. That's something.

Marco Gentile (1:01:13)
But that's, but that's.

Absolutely.

And yeah, and absolutely. And definitely I will never, I will never think that there is a level of creation that is better and one that is worse. mean, but, okay, when I say the Western world, didn't mean in relation to the East China or no, I meant to the, the.

Orlando Wood (1:01:49)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Marco Gentile (1:02:01)
to the four billions people, four or five billions people who live on this planet and they do not live out of what they create. I'm talking about the south of the world, which is actually very badly exploited at many other levels. anyway, now going back to what you were saying, I think that...

Orlando Wood (1:02:20)
Mm-hmm.

Marco Gentile (1:02:29)
these people that you're mentioning, the influencers, the people who are using social media and TikTok, that's not the use of art or generative artificial intelligence yet. That is not. That is not. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is LLM, Large Language Models, who are, you know, or...

Orlando Wood (1:02:41)
Yes. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:02:55)
who are or will be very soon able to generate, to create what we call art, what we call content, whatever you want to call it, entertainment, whatever you want to call it, at a level that it's...

Orlando Wood (1:03:08)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I would make the same argument.

Yeah. Yeah. I would make the same argument there. mean, you know, loads of people are making money off their sub stacks. Most of those are being written, I presume, by language models. And the same creator conversation happens with, you know, I was seeing, ⁓ you know, somebody who was generating cat

dance videos on YouTube that are getting 2 million, 2 million full watches each time they upload a video. And that person paid for their Christmas for their whole family based on those videos. That is full end to end generation. Granted, she's creating 5 second and 8 second clips, and then she's cutting them together. So she's doing, end to end.

There's not a single thing shot and not a single thing she's created. Everything's generated in some way, and she's earning real actual money. And this is somebody who is 70 years old and has never created a thing in their life before and now is doing this. yeah, I think that something's happening there. I don't know. And is it a creative act? Is it not?

You know, but it's definitely having a real world impact on that person's life in the terms of, you know, she is now making money as a creator and that option never would have been available to her, you know, before two years ago.

Marco Gentile (1:04:47)
yeah, absolutely. I I'm sure it has a real impact on their lives. But you know, at the same time...

Again, is not just about making money or efficiency or speed. This is about what kind of society we want. Do we want a world where everybody is just making cat videos and producing slop?

Orlando Wood (1:05:04)
Of course.

Marco Gentile (1:05:22)
and not leaving space for our brains to create meaning because everything is...

Orlando Wood (1:05:31)
Yeah, but I guess that's my problem.

My question is like, haven't we decided the society we want? And again, I'm just playing devil's advocate, but we've created this cap. We've created this capitalist society that cares so much about money and attention and everything else sort of be damned. We've created that as our North star. And so haven't we decided and aren't we now just reaping the negative reality of

Marco Gentile (1:05:41)
Of course you have to.

Orlando Wood (1:05:59)
making that decision, you know, all, you know, and, consistently orienting ourselves towards money and attention, you know, and yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:06:08)
I

totally agree with you. And this is why I think it's even more important to be aware of what we are talking about. be aware that money and speed and efficiency, it's not necessarily everything. It doesn't have to be necessarily our North Star. And to remind ourselves

Orlando Wood (1:06:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:06:36)
that human history is ⁓ much longer than the last 150 years of ⁓ very fast ⁓ technological ⁓ evolution and improvement. And again, I'm not against it. I'm not nostalgic. mean, I'm super happy that there are, I think, artificial intelligence, and I know it because I've studied it.

Orlando Wood (1:06:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, of course.

Marco Gentile (1:07:03)
and I read a lot of articles about it, and I know that it will help humans on so many levels, you know, when it comes to science, when it comes to new, mapping new proteins to fight cancers, but at the same time, if we let...

Orlando Wood (1:07:14)
But again, yeah, only economically. Yeah, exactly. In these very clear ways. Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:07:31)
large language models or in general, ⁓ automated system, enter our symbolic spaces, our meaningful spaces, which is, and when I say symbolic, I mean just me and you talking, know, any conversation. If we let that happen, ⁓

Orlando Wood (1:07:46)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:07:52)
Of course, we're going to have millions of TikTok generated videos with cats and they're going to be funny. And there is a goat jumping and there is a horse singing, you know, and I'm not saying it's not funny and I'm not saying it's not enriching somebody. Somebody will make money out of it, you know, but is it good? That's my question. mean, is it good? Is it good to eat McDonald's every day? That's my question. I'm sure there are people making a lot of money with McDonald's.

Orlando Wood (1:08:07)
Yeah, no, of course. Yeah.

No, of course.

Marco Gentile (1:08:22)
There are people working at McDonald and, you know, employees and I'm sure they make a decent salary every day, but is it good for us humans to eat McDonald every day? That's my question. And, you know, when it comes to something so fundamental, which is, again, and it's not about art, because what I'm talking about is brother.

Orlando Wood (1:08:34)
Of course.

Marco Gentile (1:08:48)
It's about the relationship between humans and that relationship, it's based on an invisible contract that it's always there. I believe that you're telling me the truth and I hope that you are telling me the truth, but I know that there is an intention there. That's a contract between us already. It's invisible, you know?

Orlando Wood (1:09:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. But I guess,

yeah, yeah. So I guess my question is what, what is a powerful enough way to, if, the ideas for this framework to be able to fight back somehow against, you know, or, not against, but fight for, let's frame it positively, you know, fight for the artistic act, the creative act.

Marco Gentile (1:09:27)
Yes.

Orlando Wood (1:09:31)
and to inspire people, just like the fitness industry inspires people not to eat McDonald's, get up off their ass, flex your muscles, get out there, live a life, go on a hike, whatever those things are. What's a powerful enough institution system if there are these guardrails or these principles? How does one package them in such a way beyond your talk, I suppose? Like obviously,

Marco Gentile (1:09:56)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (1:09:57)
I'd love for this to go viral

Marco Gentile (1:09:58)
We need to...

Orlando Wood (1:09:59)
and everybody goes to look at your talk. You become the face of this whole thing. Like, that's awesome. But what is that step? And what is that institution or that group look like? Is it the greatest artists in the world leading us? Is it an institution? What's powerful enough to fight back against all of the pressure that's pushing us towards AI being in between all of us rather than helping us connect?

Marco Gentile (1:10:09)
It still does.

Absolutely. I think it doesn't exist yet. I think it's, you know, we're in the early stages of this new big, huge wave. And I think a lot of people are kind of disoriented or they're not really understanding what's really happening and how this technology works. So I think we need to create it. And again,

I don't know if it's gonna be made of just people working in ⁓ cinema or advertising or art in general or music, but I think it's time now to talk more and more about it and...

to have our brains coming together and definitely find a form, find a way to have a sort of creative governance and creative, clear human authority on this. in my opinion, this will have, we'll have to go through ⁓ policymakers as well.

Orlando Wood (1:11:24)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, Marco, mean, sorry. Go ahead. No, no, please.

Marco Gentile (1:11:46)
Because, because, no, I say,

yeah, because, you know, we're talking about something that it's really big, and it's going to involve millions and millions of people. You know, we're not trying to solve here ⁓ the problems of a small company. And, you know, we can say,

Obviously, I think there are so many different ways to preserve the space of human imagination. As I said before, like in production, for example, conscious production level governance. What does it mean? It means, okay, we're not gonna replace entire departments without disclosure. We're not hiding AI generated elements as purely human work. We're crediting the structures

Orlando Wood (1:12:14)
Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:12:36)
in the way they have to be credited. There is gonna be a transparent communication with clients. But this is, you know, there is no, there is no guide at the moment. Right now it's all happening. It's all happening because as I say, we are in the early stages. So none of that has been formalized. None of that has found a form, a shape.

Orlando Wood (1:12:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Marco Gentile (1:13:04)
I believe it's our responsibility as creators, ⁓ as producers, as filmmakers, as artists to come together, talk about this and act.

Orlando Wood (1:13:04)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, that's wonderful. mean, Marco, thank you so much for chatting with me about this. I mean, it's a wonderful talk, and I know you're going to be giving it a lot more. I know you're also writing a book on this, so we'd love to have you back when your book launches. I'd love to talk to you more about this again. I it's terrific what you're doing. think you're absolutely right. This is a conversation that needs to be happening so much more because

There are real things at stake for the future. And so I just want to thank you for coming on and thank you for having this chat with me. I so appreciate it. And we'll be putting links to ⁓ your work. as you put more of your talks and stuff online, we'll be putting it in the show notes. And I'd love for people to come and see it and see you do it a lot more.

Marco Gentile (1:14:12)
Orlando, I have to thank you very much actually, because having these kind of spaces, it's actually the answer to your question, is how do we build this awareness? How do we put in place these guardrails? These conversations need to happen and need to have a platform, need to have spaces.

and people who are willing to listen and ⁓ to debate and to have a conversation about this. is very important. Again, it's about us, but it's not just about us. It's about our kids. It's about the future. I think it's about society as a whole. So I really, I really thank you for this conversation and.

Orlando Wood (1:14:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Marco Gentile (1:15:05)
and it was a pleasure to be your guest.

Orlando Wood (1:15:07)
well, it's been so fun talking to you. I've really enjoyed this and thank you for coming on. And again, I really would. The moment your book is out, let me know. We'd love to have you back. This has been this has been a total blast. So thank you.

Marco Gentile (1:15:19)
I will. Thank you very much Orlando. Have a good day.

Orlando Wood (1:15:21)
Alright,

you too. Thanks so much Marco. And if you just hang on there, I'm going to stop it and then.