In this episode, real conversations from a family wedding expose the widening split between AI’s haves and have-nots, from young graduates locked out of animation and design work to sophisticated companies running six-figure revenue with zero AI workflows. The frontier lab war escalates as ChatGPT’s 5.6 model now matches or beats Claude Fable at a lower price and offers one-click import of Claude projects to poach users.
Key Takeaways:
- Animation Is Ground Zero A family member targeting animation still has zero industry traction three years after graduating, while AI-generated content now reaches viewers directly in the millions.
- AI Content Cleared “Good Enough” Viewers knowingly choose AI-produced romantasy series over human work, proving quality now overrides the human-touch preference.
- The Optimization Gap Is the Opening A multi-billion-dollar multifamily firm’s marketing arm runs a six-figure ARR mastermind with no AI workflows and no data attribution, succeeding in spite of itself.
- Two Kings Beat One ChatGPT’s 5.6 now matches Claude Fable at a lower price, and the Anthropic vs. OpenAI knife fight drives costs down for every user (per Naval’s monopoly logic).
- Switching Costs Are the New Moat ChatGPT now imports Claude projects, Cowork chats, and Claude Code history in one click, shrinking the barrier to defect from the walled garden.
Listen to the full episode to see how these real-world AI shifts could reshape your career, your content, and your competitive edge before the gap widens further.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious, where at Serious Land Capital we have successfully funded over $6.5 million worth of land deals with industry-leading 41% operating margins. and where I personally consult from practical AI implementations to companies collectively doing over $50 million in annualized revenue.
So today I wanted to tackle the AI angle again as well. I mean, that’s pretty much every episode here, but especially some more real life impacts. so I was at my brother’s wedding over the past weekend here. and first off, like those are just reminders when you can get great family and and friends event and
you know, be in touch like people would say nowadays, like touch grass and just be in touch with you know, real people, not in front of a screen all day. Like it is, I think, as healthy and comforting to the soul as probably anything. And the the research, peer reviewed research on longevity and so forth would would back that up. So, you know, I’m just mentioning even more anecdotal evidence here where
Yeah, even though it was a tiring weekend and so forth, just so rejuvenating to be in a space like that. And, you know, unfortunately, too many of us are are missing out on opportunities like that. I’d I’d consider myself to be a part of that as well, outside of, you know, my own immediate family. but some key conversations I had, you know, seeing some of my extended family were, you know.
all my my cousins and my aunt and uncles and so forth. Like I might see them once a year, if that. you know, we we we live in different places and again, you know, just general busyness and so forth. so I’m not routinely, you know, hearing about their lives and so forth and you know, he hearing from people outside my own typical bubble.
whether that’s you know professionally or you know again even just immediate family. and chatting with a couple of my cousins, both of whom are like almost 20 years older than me and you know had kids mu much earlier. what one one cousin, him and his wife had adopted a son, you know, when he was around like 10 years old and now he’s approaching 30.
and we had gone to his I believe college graduation three years ago. and you know, he was planning to enter the the workforce, you know, really wanted to get into desi design and animation. This was like the start of twenty twenty three, right? Like AI had just come out, you know, the Chat GPT, so it wasn’t like n even close to what like no no one was really thinking about like the massive
potential job impact that A AI could have at that time. At least I don’t recall that. it wasn’t a key key area of concern. But yeah, you really wanted to get an animation. Yeah, I could possibly get get over to California or what have you. Like Texas wasn’t the best option for that. So, you know, we were kind of rooting for him. I remember like giving some advice over to my cousin as well as you know, their their son on you know routes to to break into the industry and so forth.
but hadn’t really heard much after that. And when I checked in at this this wedding, you know, again, about three years later, same situation. just has not been able to find a job outside of, I think, kind of like, you know, lower paid work locally. I’m not sure exactly what what he’s doing, but you know, the animation side.
slash design just really has not worked out. And, you know, my cousins are mentioning, hey, like, you know, double hit of job market, which yeah, true for younger folks. But again, he’s like almost 30 here. this is not to be disparaging or anything. you know, it’s my family, but more just pointing out, okay, some of these numbers that we hear about in news reports and so forth, like this is actually made real. I’m sure many of you can
Report your own an anecdotes is is as well here. you know, just personalizing the the real impact that people are dealing with. so that you know, they mentioned, yeah, the dual dual impact on yeah, job market, tough plus the double whammy of yeah, just a AI really entering in full force. but yeah, that that’s that’s a real impact. So like three years later and like no traction in that direction, I I I got the sense from my cousin that they didn’t really
want to talk about that. I can’t blame them. So like I didn’t really, you know, pry in in into even though, you know, I’m curious about that you know, particular outcome and and situation, you know, I had to take the the nugget for for what it was worth. and you know, just just f file that away of like, yeah, you know, that’s unfortunate. and of course, like I everybody has to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, continue to skill build. Like you you’ll hear me pound the drum constantly.
But like we also know that not everybody will will do that. and you know, the job mark is a job market, and this technology is just moving forward at such an insane rate. and I’ll connect this back to animation as well here shortly. And then my other set of of cousins, their kids, they have two boys, one is now 21 and one’s 19. Like e even, you know, 15 ish year a age difference a little bit more than that, between
My brother and I and the those cousins, like forever we just kind of think of them as, you know, like b baby cousins here. So it’s hard hard to imagine them as like college age kids. but the older one wants to go into animation a as well here. something with within design, but you know, so far like he’s still in college. from from what I recall this. This was like a little bit of a longer conversation. but
you hasn’t been able to find anything that’s like, ooh, really leading to a great placement. And then the younger son is more interested in like coding engineering and you know, paired with AI, which again, like I think pretty much every job needs to be paired with going forward. and
You know, he th the or my my cousin also mentioned, yeah, like he he’s part of a program that has like ninety percent plus job placement rate. again, you know, i is that gonna be the future of where jobs are heading is like just expecting, you know, W twos or is it gonna have to be more freelance entrepreneurial work. I think the jury’s out on that. But nevertheless, you know, I think probably the second son might be set up a little bit better. but again, like both of them are
impacted by hey ai is just part of the job market now and like you have to be building a moat around your skill set and incorporating that in in into your daily life again being an AI architect like Callum always talks about like the the lingo that I’ll I’ll I’ll throw around routinely here. so you know that that’s just sharing like real impacts on
you know, within my own extended family that, you know, got the gears turning a bit. And, you know, again, I was kind of filing away. And I also asked, like, hey, you know, cousins getting a little bit old older here. You know, my you know, the the the the kids of of my cousins, I guess it still makes them cousins of mine. to be overly confusing with the language, but like, hey, are they, you know, starting to date around anything anything? They’re like, no, not really. And, you know, also like COVID impact and during high school, the social regression that happened, like
Yeah, again, we hear about this, we did hear all about that in the in the news. hard hard to avoid, but like, yeah, hearing about it in you know, closer, closer to home circumstances. like it it all makes it more more real here. so we’re keeping all that to the side, which again, I think continues to be a bigger and bigger concern. And as these models like just
continue to increase in capability like literally by the week. I I honestly could spend e each and every show just going over the new developments and AI. Like plenty of shows do that anyway. So you can find them. but it is just so insane with with how capable the these things are. and you know plenty of the times where I think I’m I’m actually correct in the AI models they’re actually pushing back and they were more accurate than I was. anyway here. So
she she was kind of on the other foot to some degree. but some other things I’m noticing as well here too, and we always talk about like the AAI content production. I mean it’s all over the social channels, any, you know, media site out there. but you know, I I know there was a bigger argument and you know thought of like, you know, us as humans, even if people really start producing like AI books or AI TV shows or movies or what have you,
Are we going to value those as much or are we going to kind of decrease the interest that we might have from something that we know is like generated from from AI? and I think gen like most people would believe that to be the case. Like I’d include myself in in that camp generally, you know.
I I I I guess there there’s gonna be a point where like AI produced content versus human-produced, like might just be completely indistinguishable and we just might not matter. But I think there are still like telling signs at this point. and and most people would prefer, okay, yeah, I want the human, human touch on this. or honestly, like even if it isn’t indistinguishable, but like you’re told later, like, are you gonna have the resonant connection to the human produced content versus the AI produced?
I I I don’t know. but that that’s an open question here. but I did notice like even over the past week or two again, as these models are just becoming more and more powerful. Like my wife started watching these I I don’t think they’re YouTube shorts, but they’re they’re YouTube videos that are you know, I think short episodic content, especially within like the fantasy.
space here and like seem to be animated like decently well but I mean they they don’t try to hide anything like that this is AI produced content targeting what what what is that subgenre like the court of thorns type stuff where it’s all romanticy I want to say like romance plus fantasy I mean it’s a lot a lot of female readers my my wife is definitely one of them and she like
knows, hey, yeah, this is AI, like I shouldn’t really like this, but she’s just finding herself drawn more and more into consuming this because it’s like right up her alley. and, you know, just finding ways to to hook more deeply in. And so it’s like this is a real test case where, all right, I, you know, we’re we have A AI produced content that is now reaching a threshold where even if people know it is and they think, yeah, I really shouldn’t like this as much, it’s becoming good enough.
and you know, interesting enough to further grip attention and take take away from hey, finding some other human generated content, even if you might have like reviewed it before. So, you know, just mentioning that, I I haven’t reviewed those like the AI produced content that my what wife’s watching like as in in as much detail. I could probably go into a lot more depth about that, but I’m just like noticing what what she’s telling me, kind of watching over her shoulder sometimes. So
You know, maybe you have some other stories to share about that as well too in your own life. but like again, we’re we’re we’re seeing that continue to grow here. AI produce content, like again, this is within the animation space. that is even more telling. that hey, we we don’t even need like a human designer who knows how to manipulate AI. Now, this is just like AI producing it and still finding human watchers, probably in the millions.
so that that’s going to make it even more difficult for certain jobs within those space. You know, again, for whatever you can kind of like consider a job to me is like just an evolving l list of tasks that that anybody is is doing. and yeah, also within that AI content space, like you know, again, what what is like AI slop or not? Like am I a three-year-old daughter.
most of the time, like if if we’re having an her in front of a screen, some like YouTube has become the default, which again, like YouTube gets more hour hours of content than any other streamer or any source of content. like all almost combined. Like it’s just crazy how many hours goes to that. and a a ton of kids content as well too and like not
like terrible either. Like a lot of like fully produced shows are are on that as well. And it’s, you know, free with our YouTube premium at least. fairly cheap subscription. but there there’s, you know, with with the algorithm, some stuff will pop up that’s like semi related to what my daughter is watching. but I’m looking at it, I’m like, is this AI slop or not? And and it sometimes is like hard to tell sometimes like this just seems so, so bad like the animation just
seems so basic is just repetitive sounds that come up again and again. or like, you know, one simple is like the these different type of cars that are just like being dropped down, slides and doing jumps and then they, you know, they go from like a fire truck to a police car. So like really basic, but it’s just it it will grip my daughter’s like, yeah, I just want to watch this. And I like, even though it’s not like bad, there’s no bad words or anything like that. I I I have a
you know, reaction to us. Like, this is this is AI slop here. Like, we shouldn’t be consuming this. I don’t feel this is appropriate to you to re you know, for you to be watching compared to like, I guess, human-based stuff that might even be somewhat similar here. But yeah, I I just again sharing, I don’t really have a firm answer on this, but like this AI-produced content is just increasing by the day, gripping our attention in real ways here. and it’s
Becoming harder to to parse it out like on a daily basis. And again, taking away real attention, the the most valuable commodity in in the world, even more so than time, away from you know any anything human produced here. So noting that as well. and you know, again, j just mentioning some of the additional progress as well as like still the gap in skills here. So again, like I’m offering more.
AI consulting services nowadays here and you know, started doing a diagnostic for a company that really serves as the marketing arm for you know, a multi-billion dollar multifamily firm. And, you know, I had al already asked some prelim questions before I got on with their their main marketing person. and then I was going through like their tech stack and
you know, set up and all that. Like they’re making a lot of problem. Like they’re earning, you know, six six figures, you know, annual recurring revenue from a a mastermind group that they just started earlier this year, really from, you know, solid brand building and so forth. but they’re not using like any AI workflows or you know, almost any type of systematic process.
in in in with and and like no data attribution at all. And I’m like, man, that some of these systems, like to me, that it’s the most exciting because they’re succeeding in spite of having like no optimization done at all here. But it is also a reminder of where I’m like, you know, again part of like Kellen’s community and you know, even within our own business, like we are just AI forward everything, just trying to apply, apply, apply. And there’s
still like even in sophisticated companies, just a huge swath of people that aren’t like even applying this in the most basic ways. And so like, you know, the route for us that are able to apply these skills, first off, great, because you can, you know, build a moat around businesses that or you know to to more competitively advantage your business against others by by utilizing these AI workflows. But
Again, there’s like plenty of people who are maybe just gonna be years behind learning some of these these workflows. So like you can just i implement for them. like I I’m I’m less of the opinion, and again, I’m gonna be biased here given that I’m you know, selling services here, that like everybody is just going to be be ready to use a AI to the the best degree possible, full optimizations. that
you know, you won’t need out outside help anymore. Like I just don’t see that. or even if that does happen, that’s probably still a year’s away. because so so many people are gonna be like fighting it every step of the way. They’re gonna be or not even fighting it, but it’s like they’re they’re not that there’s not a forcing function for the for them to really adapt. I mean, there might be because like, and we can see I I I think this incoming hit to to jobs here.
is still going to be really significant. that that we still don’t know the full implications of. and it’s gonna be changing like almost on a month by month basis. Again, giving you anecdotal evidence here, I’m seeing these other teams that you know, are naturally gonna be performing below what they could because they’re not using AI workflows here. So are they gonna be outcompeted by somebody else? Like, I think it’s just a matter of time. no no matter what your brand recognition is. But like to me, it was yeah, perfect opportunity. Hey.
Here’s what you can do here. If if you want me to come in, great. if not, no worries. But like there’s gonna be no shortage of opportunities like this. if you can really stay ahead of the curve. And part of this is just benefited from the frontier labs you know, just fighting each other to tooth and nail here. Like right now, you know, mid-2026, like it’s really between anthropic and open AI.
Like they have the two best models. that they’re the most frontier labs in in the world. and you know, it used to be Chat GPT’s game, OpenAI’s game, for you know, really most of the past few years. Anthropic now has, you know, by by most accounts, like become the
Team to beat, the the model to beat. and most like enterprise users are gonna be headed towards Claude here. but like again, it’s just constant competition, right? And it it’s all to to the benefit of of us users. I mean, it it would not be good if there’s only gonna be one king, like Naval points us out, because then you get like a monopoly situation, they can charge whatever they want. But even if there’s two, that they can continue to just
fight each other and drive down costs more and try to win more customers. that to me like bet benefits all of us as as end users here. And so like I noted that, you know, ChatGPT recently, first they they launched that 5.6 model, which is you know, by most measures as good, if not better, than Quad Fable, which had like just come out last month. And I thought it was, you know, just a mind blowing model here.
And now 5.6 on ChatGPT is here available, even cheap, cheaper than Fable. and and so that that’s going to put pressure on Enthropic to also make f Fable, you know, cheaper and more widely available to retain users. but also when I was opening up ChatGPT on the desktop over the past week, you know, I have so much data within quite like it it’s become almost like what what they call like the Apple Garden. Like once you enter the Mac ecosystem, you’re you’re
you you’re kind of stuck within it because everything connects together and like trying to exit out of it’s just a big pain. So similar with with claude, we have so many projects and data built within it that even if some of these models are a little bit better, it’s like, am I gonna shift over? But ChatGPT was like, hey, if you’ve been using Claude here, we can import all of your projects, all of your cowork existing chats, your Claude code, existing chats.
And just bring that in so then you can start working on 5.6 right away and it’s just a seamless transition. so I noted that like very recently, but it’s just it’s like it’s a brilliant play to be able to to do that. I’m sure Anthropic hates that as well. that but you know it it also will will force them to to evolve and and adapt here. I don’t think the import is quite perfect when when I looked at it. I don’t think it was like capturing all.
my chats that I had, but the fact that they’re even trying to do that and imported, you know, most i i if not all of them, like yeah, makes the threshold for me to go back to chat GPT for anything, just that that that much smaller since like, yeah, I can just have all my work basically like synced across both of these devices. And I would say like from an image perspective, like everybody was using nanopanana.
for a while, the Gemini, like Google’s just kind of kind of fallen off. Apparently, the people in the know behind the scenes think yeah, Google’s gonna have some big splashes soon, but right now they’re like clearly behind open AI and anthropic. but the image generation with 5.6 from opening up, like it it it’s just it’s just incredible. again, that that goes back to the AI slop conversation or AI produced content here. you know.
full circle like an animation jobs. like you you’ll see within my newsletter, I’ll you know, try to experiment and build images and you know cartoons within open AI and they’ve like been increasing in quality week over week because the models keep getting better here and my prompts keep getting better. but like just looking super sharp. I’m like, man, this is just amazing how far we’ve come in you know the past year, let alone the past few years with with image generation.
like it it it really is tremendous. So all of this is to say like this is just a constant topic we have to stay on on top of, you know, professionally, personally, with within society, looking within our family, where where where there really is going to be more of the haves and the have nots. like I don’t see how we’re going to avoid that unless we we get like significantly more governance or
I don’t even know what to say, like interference in in some form or fashion of like trying to upskill or at least provide safety nets for most of society here. because again, I’m seeing this within my own family. which is more fortunate than than most. so maybe it won’t be like felt quite as acutely down the line here. But you know, nevertheless, so many millions of people are gonna be dealing with.
I mean, billions of people when we consider worldwide here, and and how that’s gonna shape what we’re working with to come. But again, these technologies are becoming so much better by the week. I gave you some other examples on exactly what what they’re doing and and how the the the two kings are are fighting each other for the benefit of us all, in my my opinion, at least that those of us using AI. So
I want you to keep that in mind. And I I’d love to hear from you. Like if you have other examples on what you’re seeing within your own family, your own usage, how you feel about you know, AI produced content ver versus not here. like that this is such a fascinating conversation. Like we are living in an experiment in in real time. So with all of that in mind, would love if you subscribe and share. Plus, if you have any land deals for us to look at, you can send them over at seriousland.capital.
And if you’re interested in potentially working with me, I’m taking a very limited number of engagements for AI implementations in particular businesses. Again, currently I’m I’m working with a set of businesses that are collectively doing over $50 million in annualized revenue and growing that number by the month. So with all that in mind, take care, everybody. Talk to you next time. Bye.
