Haunt Weekly - Episode 450 - 8 Uses for AI in Haunting

[0:22] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Krystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the haunted attraction entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you, and we return to you this week late. First off, thank you very much for your patience with us. We just simply ran out of time Monday. There was a lot going on.

[0:43] This is, we both have like day jobs and shit, and this unfortunately has to take a backseat. And plus, I was feeling a little bit ill, and I don't think I could have sat here comfortably for an hour, we'll just say. Yeah. We'll leave it at that. No further details are necessary. But I'm feeling much better now. Well, much might be an exaggeration, but better. And so, yes, indeed, we are back this week to talk once again about the buzz marketing word of the decade, probably, artificial intelligence. And, specifically, we're going to look back, because we did this on episodes 386 and 387. We're going to look back. It's been over a year. Look back and talk about some of the ways in which AI has evolved and some ways you may actually be able to use it in your haunt right now. But if that's not your cup of tea, definitely understand. Check out Other Haunt Weekly. There's 449 other episodes. I can't believe it. Can you? No. No, there's 449 other episodes. You can find them at HauntWeekly.com. We're also HauntWeekly on X slash Twitter, HauntWeekly on Facebook, YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly's YouTube channel. Every episode is there for easy access. And also wherever you get your podcasts from, you probably find them there as well.

[2:02] Let's see. Work we did for the haunt, none. We're in the middle of the July heat bubble. We couldn't. We're looking at possibly this weekend getting some wood for the haunt. Yeah. Making a trip and doing the truck rental and everything to get OSB, two-by-fours. Not OSB. Not OSB. Plywood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To replace the OSB. Exactly. No, but my brain was thinking to get rid of the OSB, get plywood. My brain was thinking what we're yeeting. Um and then the reason for that is as we discussed briefly last week lumber prices are at a five-year-ish low after going sky high for a bunch there during the pandemic there um so yes we're hoping to do that so we can finish some builds that we've been planning for some time uh mostly getting rid of the last of the osb yeah just upgrading everything to plywood there's no reason to give ourselves the headache and painting and maintaining that shit anymore. So we're looking forward to that. That's going to be great. But that, no, but all the heat though, we have been super careful about not exerting ourselves. Even just being outside to go to the car has been challenging enough. And some of those, cause it's been, it feels like temps in the one twenties. Yeah. Which is unusual for us. Yeah. I mean, we usually have high, it feels like temps, but that's a little cray cray.

[3:25] Let's see. See, every week we do ask a question a week. Last week we asked, what is your favorite haunt theme? And got a lot of interesting responses. Tim Fowler said, classic Halloween, pumpkins, hay bales, and scarecrows. Hey, nothing wrong with the classics. They're classics for a reason. Chris Gay, gothic horror. This was echoed by Mika Arnold, who loves a good Victoria Manchin. I'm just lumping those two together because they go together in my head. So you two need to work together and make something. Chalice and Mule Burger said anything with old world monsters?

[3:59] Don Garlic said, pun intended, I might add, I'm a sucker for vampires. Sam Farrell said, anything that brings story elements through the haunt and is immersive. Even included the Leonardo DiCaprio gif pointing at the screen going, I remember that from the queue line. And I agree with that. And Carter Carers gave us a list. So we'll go through them. Five is the abandoned slaughterhouse. Okay, I can see that being a good theme. I don't know. It seems more like a room than a theme, but I think you can make it a theme. For a realistic swamp or bayou, you say that because you don't live here. I'm guessing. I don't know where you live, actually. No, we don't. We don't have no idea where you live. Number three was 80s or 50s era styling.

[4:46] Number two was an old school no profit haunt vibe with pro level props and acting, which that's kind of what we shoot for. Yeah. No. The pro-level build and the pro-level acting, we don't do a lot of props because no budget. Yeah, but, you know, which goes into the no profit. Yeah. Dang. And the number one. Is realism, like phobias of heights, snakes, clowns, and drowning. You know, phobias are always tricky because you either got a phobia or you don't. Yeah. Like, if you have chlorophobia, which is the fear of clowns, clowns are the fucking scariest thing on the planet. Mm-hmm. But if you're like me and you grew up watching Bozo and just don't care, you're mildly annoyed by clowns at most, it's like, oh, yay, clowns.

[5:32] And that's the other problem. Like, we've been in this situation. 13th Gate had a snake room. Crystal and I are like, oh, snakes, nice, you know? Yeah. It was slithery. And then we accidentally took a friend with snake phobia, fear of snakes, through. Yeah. The game changed instantly for them. Yes. Yes, we did not know that they had phobias. Their two phobias are elevators and snakes. So, if you know anything about the 13th Gate, you know you start out in a elevator, and then you walk through snakes. Well, I think they got rid of the snake room since. But, yeah, the snake room was part of it. Recently. Fairly recently, yeah. But it's like, good God, we had just tortured our friend. Yeah. And no wonder she moved a slide down. Probably a smart fucking move. Get away from us. Yeah, no, we had no idea, though. No idea at all. There was no way for us to know that. I have never been dragged like that by someone technically about half my size. Yeah. She dragged both of us whenever she heard that the snakes did not always stay in their neat little pen. Yeah. And dragged us running to the car. Yeah. Very, very strong when properly motivated. Yeah, bye. Bye. We'll see you next year.

[6:45] We leave. Okay. So this week's question of the week is related to the topic. It's what do you think the next tech revolution for haunts is? I'm going to be following the responses on this one because I do not think it is AI. I'm going to say that now. I don't think it's AI. I think it's going to be something else that really comes onto the scene. I think maybe it could be AR stuff like we saw with the phone games and all that. I'm surprised we haven't seen more haunts play with that.

[7:16] I don't think it might be VR, but I think VR is kind of on the down slope too. I don't know. So as an industry, in large part, we are behind the times with tech. Yeah, that's true. So we could just see a surgence of tech in general that just hasn't been implemented. Man, that is true. But I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to be very, very curious to see what the responses to this are, because I don't think it's going to be AI. And we'll get into why in just a minute. We've got to do conference reminders, so we'll get there in a second. But yeah, I don't know. I'm going to be curious what other people think, what other people have their eyes on, because I've, I don't know. I just don't think AI is going to be it, but I do think there are some potential uses, which is why we're doing this episode. But I think AI is not going to be a huge revolution. It might be an iteration, not a revolution. You know what I mean? I could see it being used with things. Yeah. I think, and one of the points we'll come around to, is I think Apple has the right idea that AI is a feature that you bake into things, not a product unto itself.

[8:23] So, I think that's going to be a big difference. And I think it needs a rebranding, too. Oh, God. And we'll get into that. Oh, Jesus. It needs a rebranding. Yeah. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord. It needs a rebranding. Oh, man. But, yeah. So, let us know. Let us know what you think it's going to be. Hauntweekly.com, Hauntweekly on Twitter, Hauntweekly on Facebook,

[8:43] and YouTube.com slash Hauntweekly. All right. Well, it is an even-numbered episode. That means it is time to do the conference reminders and kick us off crystal. All right. July 26th, it is Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, California at the Long Beach Convention Center.

[9:02] Midsummerscream.org for more info. All right. After that, Hauntmare Expo is August 17th through the 18th in Fresno, California at the Fresno Fairgrounds featuring five indoor haunted houses, three escape rooms, and a rage room. Various special guests and horror panels. You can learn more at HauntMareExpo.com. September 14th, it's Creep It Real Nostalgic in Santa Ana, California at the Heritage Museum of OC. Over 100 vendors at the show and CreepItReal.com for more info.

[9:39] And finally, after Haunt season concludes, November 8th and 9th is the Legendary Haunt Tour in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio but at the west end cincinnati though it's more the departure hotel than like the actual location of stuff because it is a tour of the factory of terror the dense schoolhouse the uss nightmare and haunted laboratory legendary haunt tour.com with two t's for more information and the creep it real uh address i got a little bit wrong it is creep it real oc.com yeah yeah Yeah, creepitrealoc.com. They also have a show coming up in November as well, just after our little spectrum escape. So yeah, they also have a festive event where they do festive haunting stuff, which could be cool. Yeah. All right. So here's the thing. I've been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of research on AI as part of my day job. To repeat to those who don't know, I work as a copyright and plagiarism expert slash consultant, consultant testify in trials do writing for various services write reports do white papers that type of thing and AI obviously in my field is a major topic of importance and like a lot of episodes of Haunt Weekly something we encounter in our day job we go hey we could flip that around and talk about it with context of the haunt industry so that's exactly how this topic came about.

[11:03] Now, basically, the last time we did this was a little bit over a year ago. At that time, Chat Je t'aime had just launched.

[11:14] And we were still kind of dealing with the initial fallout some. We've had another year of it. We're getting to the two-year, November 30th will mark two years of Chat Je t'aime launching. And no, I will not say it any other way. I know. Chat Je t'aime. Chat Je t'aime.

[11:32] Right i know but anyways it's been about two years since it launched now we're getting to that point and some of the hype and fear and it's sort of a good news bad news situation and it's my my first a lot of the hype slash fear has faded i think we're getting a lot more of a realistic look at what this tech is going to do because like when we did this in you know last year it was the world's on fire, everybody's job's about to be eaten up by the AI overlords, everything's ending, panic, panic. There was a lot of that going on.

[12:04] It's not that anymore. The fear and the hype seem to both have faded some. We're getting a more realistic picture, and we're kind of starting to finally figure out realistic uses for this type of tech, because it is an interesting technology, but it's not like going to replace writers and videographers and all that just out of the box yet we've got a long long long way to go before we get to that point and i i would remind people of the 90 90 rule when talking about ai it's a pithy uh tech rule quote unquote rule it's a comedy rule which says the first 90 of code takes 90 of your time and the last 10 takes the other 90 percent um the idea being that when you think you're 10 the weight of something you actually have the longest road to hoe. You've got a lot more to go. That's the hardest bit. And I think we're kind of at that 90%. We're at a point where automatic translation has been for decades.

[13:06] It's pretty impressive and can be useful for a few common things, but you don't see it at the UN. Books are still translated by humans and so forth. Which brings us to the bad news, is that all of the actual improvements of AI are more iterative than revolutionary.

[13:24] I mean, if you look at what Apple did with Apple Intelligence, and I hate to sound like an Apple fanboy, I do use Apple products, but I really did appreciate how Apple tried to make it a feature to slightly improve products rather than the revolutionary new thing that's going to replace human beings in five years that's going to be smarter than God. It's kind of, you know. Yeah. All that shit got out of hand fast. It did.

[13:54] Anytime something like this comes along that is capable of making um artistic endeavors like it's, yeah you know i i think back to when cameras came out and how portrait artists responded and then how when film went away because digital cameras came out i was i was a long time holder of the the film oh yeah yeah way past to be to put that in some degree of context we purchased a dark room door that did not fit in our fucking house i might add and ended up being completely wasted we bought that in 2007 2006 oh 2006 yeah that's right we were in the other house yeah we were in the other house we were about to move here yeah right it was 2006 but 2006 digital cameras were already well oh yeah well established and well past film in most areas of capability but anyways yeah but there was a lot of fear when they first came out that the traditional photographers.

[14:57] Or film photographers rather wouldn't um have a job anymore because everybody would be able to point and click and now everybody can point and click with their phone but there are still jobs for photographers yeah believe me there's still wedding photographers out there there's still journalist photographers out there event event photographers hunt photographers yeah basically low light specialty yeah i mean yeah you don't need to go to a professional for every little photo you want to take yeah but the reaction to it reminded me of the reaction that a lot of people had and one of the things has been one of the fine points i think has been is that every revolution you just described ended up being more iterative to photography than a complete sea change yeah Yeah. Because, yeah, digital got rid of film, but look at what it did to the actual photography industry. It was iterative. It changed it. Yeah. No doubt. But it didn't completely wipe out what was there and replace it with something totally new. Right. And there are still people who do portraits, too. Yeah. So it didn't really take that away either. No. I can guarantee you, if you were in a decent-sized population center, you will find a portrait photographer that will help you. Not even a portrait photographer or portrait painter. Oh, yeah. No, definitely. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm going back before, like the first time. Going old school, Henry VIII, man. Yeah. Divorce, beheaded, and died.

[16:19] We've had a portrait given to us of the three of us. Yeah. Yeah. It is a thing. You're absolutely correct. Sorry, I was thinking just like portrait photography. But yeah, no, painting still is a thing too. Yeah. Visual painting art is still a thing too. It didn't go away. No. It's been iterative. The changes have been iterative. Mm-hmm. Not landscapes. And that's the thing I've learned on the Internet, because I've been around with the Internet since the early to mid-'90s. Is every time someone says to you this is going to completely revolutionize and change the internet forever and everything you knew was wrong the sky is falling every time they say that they're wrong yeah they're wrong i mean i can just start ram on the list off um let's see e-commerce the way it was initially in the early 2000s bitcoin um nfts jesus christ the nft hounds, and AI. Anyways, so yeah, it's going to be iterative. There are still copyright issues with AI. Granted, right now, if you use AI in a reasonably sane way, those are issues more for the AI companies, not you. That's more for OpenAI and Google and Microsoft to deal with, not you.

[17:29] The costs are likely to skyrocket in the near future. And the reason is AI systems are not profitable. I read somewhere that if you pay $10 per month to Microsoft to use their GitHub AI coding tool, they're still losing $20 a month on you. Yeah. Which is just batshit insane. That is not practical long term. And it's finally not fully clear what is and is not AI because AI is a made-up marketing term. It has nothing to do with the term AI as we have learned it.

[18:06] Because i grew up you know isaac asimov and you know signs and frank erbert and all that stuff where the sci-fi a concept of ai this ain't it no this ain't glad also from portal which interestingly we will be mentioning again um coming up later um so yeah it's not that it's generative ai and it's generative ai with very significant limits and what is and is not ai is kind of a fuzzy thing right now. I don't consider my grammar checker AI, even if some of it has helped with a large language model. You know, it just isn't, because I've had grammar checkers before. It's an iteration of the grammar checker, not a revolution. So anyways, some rules when using AI that we've come up with. First is, with a couple of exceptions we'll get into. Nothing customer facing.

[18:59] I don't think you should be using AI to generate your ads, your websites, your marketing, your promotion, your haunt. Especially the visuals. Yeah, especially the visuals. And basically, if you need a reason why, just think back to that Willy Wonka experience that I know we all already forgot. But remember that that was hyped up with AI art. Well, and recently, or more recently, there was a haunt opening up in the New Jersey area, I think, that was promoting with, this is not an actual photo of the entrance to our haunt and had an AI entrance, an AI-generated entrance, and there was a lot of discussion about that. No, don't do that either.

[19:43] Just go back and remember the Willy Wonka experience and how disappointed and sad everyone was. Just remember that. Obviously, don't use it to infringe copyright. I mean, yeah, I'm sure you can use some A.I. To generate me a Freddy Krueger ad for my haunt or whatever. Don't do that. At that point, when you do something that stupid, the A.I. copyright problem becomes a you copyright problem very quickly. So don't do that. And finally, do be transparent. In all the areas we're going to be talking about, be transparent. Admit that the system is AI. If you don't want to use the term AI, just say that it is automatically generated. Which is accurate. And honestly, it's more accurate to say it's that than AI. Yeah. I mean, right? Yes. Intelligence is questionable right now. As one of my friends has as his email signature, AI putting the artificial in front of intelligence since forever.

[20:44] I love that quote. All right. So here are eight total things that we think you might be able to do with AI for your haunt right now. And the first one is, I'll lead in because I'm actually excited about this one. Okay. The first one is website chatbot. Chatbot. Now, okay, chatbot, once again, this is that iteration thing again. Automated chatbots have existed for a long time, but they have been shit almost across the board. Having tested a few AI chatbots, they are surprisingly good. And here's the thing, you can use a regular chatbot and say, yes, our hours are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We are located at blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, drive in whatever city and state. You can do all that already.

[21:32] You can ticket prices and all that. What an AI can add to that, and I've actually seen the modules for it, is if someone tells the chatbot, hey, can you give me directions to your haunt, they will take the address that they give and give them automated directions. Is it nothing more than a quick Google Maps lookup? Yes, but that is something automated chatbots have struggled to do in the past. And it can also help funnel people through the online checkout process, which is something that automated chatbots, which are just designed to answer with information, have struggled to do. These systems are significantly better and can probably handle like 90 plus percent of the queries. And I'm going to wager it's way more than 90 percent, because I'm pretty sure you can handle 90 percent of the queries you get on your phone line with a well-worded message.

[22:22] Hi you have reached blah blah haunted house our hours of operation are these days these hours we are yes but how many people just skip that recording and try to get to a person which is why a chat bot that plays the role of a person for a minute there might be helpful no which is why i think this might be useful instead of a recording is exactly that problem and boy have we seen that firsthand i'm tempted to add one on our site but you do need to have a quick way for people to request a human if their question cannot be answered by the chat bot and you do need to be transparent about it but yeah this can actually really take a lot of load off frontline customer service who were sick and tired of answering the same six questions every night No. Just a thought. Number two. All right. Ideas for stories and characters. Now, I know that we harped on this once already. Yeah. And AI writing isn't ready for the big ones. Like, it's not going to give you a polished story that you can just run with. No. But it can be a good place to get inspiration.

[23:32] Episode 387 is where we did the AI stories. Yeah, we just had AI crank out five different stories for us. Yeah, and we just read them. And then reviewed them and talked about them. Yeah, and those were just, give me a haunted house story. They weren't even like, give me a story based on a theme. Yeah, we literally just went in with, hey, haunt story, go. Yeah, because it was like three days after it was available to everybody.

[23:58] But yeah, the stories weren't all bad. They were a little bit samey, but you know. Well, and they all would have needed polish and rewriting. a human but the idea and the general concept in a couple that wasn't horrible and one even i recall thinking was actually pretty good and felt pretty unique you know so yeah yeah but yeah don't just trust it like whenever gps started you first came out and people just drove off into rivers and stuff don't do that with ai yeah don't do that don't just hand over it unless you know that's It's something that you're willing to risk. Yeah. Once again, see Willy Wonka event for more information because they also wrote the script using AI. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the Willy Wonka event should just be a giant warning about relying on AI. Yeah. Now, if you did want to have like a character, going back to the character idea, you could ask it to generate an image of a character that does this and this. This or a script for a character, isn't quite human, you know, because AI definitely does not talk like people. No, no. And you can use it to add, to come up with details and elements of a character that you might not have. Like, okay, I've got a character that's like this. What might their backstory be? What could be elements for their backstory? Yeah. Things like that.

[25:27] It's basically a brainstorming partner is what I'm trying to say. You can use it and have a quote-unquote conversation with it and bounce ideas around with it and then turn those ideas into the character because the character ultimately has to be yours. The theme, the story, all that ultimately has to be yours. But sometimes getting a second opinion, even a not-human one, can be helpful in expanding it. Yeah. Have you played around or is it able to do, like, the make a story by, you know, know how sometimes kids will play the game where i say a line a sentence and then you say a sentence and then eventually we have a story which is coincidentally that's how the riff tracks people wrote their nicholas cage mystery novel yeah exactly can ai do that i don't know i've not tested that i do not know i'm just curious i'm curious too now um i have no idea but that would be fun and that might just be a fun game more than actually anything productive coming out of it So, yeah, but basically the idea of using it as a brainstorming partner, I think, is pretty good. Because, once again, that's not putting you at a lot of risk of copyright. These ideas are not copyright protectable. And basically you're just using it like you would use the guy next to you at a bar talking about your character or whatever like that. You're using it the same as you would use another person.

[26:49] Okay, number three has been the AI use, and I put that in some heavy quotes, that I have found most important. Grammar and writing help.

[27:00] Let's be honest, a lot of haunters are not the best at grammar and writing in general. And basically when doing everything from writing stories to just doing the daily correspondence, we can be a bit of a mess. And so I don't use Grammarly. I've actually got a year's subscription right now. I think I'm on month two or three of it. And I've really been enjoying the help it provides with clarity, conciseness, and general cleaning up my writing. Because I tend to be rather of a boss when I write. You don't say. I don't say. You don't say. Big shock. Why did I just turn into a Homestar Runner? No clue. But no. So it's helped a lot with that. I do not use the AI generate text feature because that's my job. Yeah. I am the I that does that. I am the I. Usually I'm the a-hole, but now I'm the I-hole.

[28:03] But I do definitely use the grammar and spell checking, and I do think it has been improved because I used Grammarly prior to these updates where they were using LLMs, and the grammar checking just sucked. It didn't work properly. In fact, I canceled the subscription in such a pissy way that I'm kind of surprised they let me back. I'm a little bit surprised that my account still worked. So, yeah, I would say this is a potentially good use. And it's not just obviously for haunters. It's for everyone. But I think this would be a use I would be seriously thinking about if you're struggling with correspondence respondents, and all the writing that you have to do as part of just running a business.

[28:49] All right, next up. All right, graphic design help. Like we said earlier, avoid AI-generated images because people are going to be looking for the things from your marketing in your haunt. I don't know how many times I have to say that. And to be clear, we say avoid AI-generated images, but I would also say in this situation, avoid stock photos.

[29:13] Yeah. Just the same, for the same reasons. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, that's just proving that this isn't us beating up on AI here. No. And we're trying to find some uses for it, goddammit. But I would say the same about stock photos. If you need to touch up your photos, if there's something in the background you don't want there, if there's, you know, the lighting flickered or something like that, there's a lot of tools in Canva, Photoshop, and other photo editors that can help remove backgrounds.

[29:43] Animate, erase. Race and move objects i have not played around with their ai suggested like you type in a suggestion for an image and they put out a picture yeah canva canva does like you type in i need a graphic design for a flyer that's blah blah blah blah blah blah that features that it tries to generate it for you yeah i have not played around with that that much either um i haven't had need need to but that is a thing that they do um and it may be a source for inspiration once again inspiration i would not take anything generated at face value the main thing is all of this stuff we just described or you just described rather um canvas had for some time yeah but now they're slightly improved like they've had a background remover tool for as long as i've used canva and difference between the background remover and the ai background remover is they seem to work about the same amount to me but whatever it's the marketing i think it automates it a little bit more because i have used it um i've used the the remove background tool and it is much easier just to push the remove background button than it is to sit there and try to get all the pixels well yeah i mean obviously you're doing by hand but they've had an automated background remover for a while, I just don't know how the AI version enhances it.

[31:12] But they say it does, and they do have definitely some features, like the AI resizing. Like, Canva has always had a resize feature.

[31:21] I can tell you how the AI resizer is better than the old resizer because the old resizer would put things in the correct place and kind of the correct size, but it would look like dog shit. And so, yeah, it might save you a few steps in doing the resize, but you really weren't saving that much time. Now you'll save more significant time. I think the way it's been integrated into these graphic design workflows takes a lot of the grunt work off. Like you talked about having to go and snick the outline and do the mask for the background. Oh, Jesus. Some of us old fuckers raise hands. Remember doing that. And remember contemplating self-harm because it was terrible. Yeah. And occasionally in my new job, I still have to do that. Yeah. Because the background is so complex or part of something else. Yeah. That it can't be removed. Yeah. It's not perfect either. Yeah. That's a definite point.

[32:16] But if you've got like a photo of a character from your haunt with a background that isn't appropriate or is not relevant anymore, it's easier than ever to pull that out. Or if like you had a photo of your character in your gore room, but now you want to put it on a Facebook ad. Facebook doesn't allow gore. So pull the character out and change the background. Or you got rid of the gore room. It's not part of the haunt anymore. Now it's got to be in the gothic church scene or whatever, right? Yeah, exactly. It's much, much easier to do that. It allows you to reuse photos that you've already taken but might otherwise have to completely redo. Yeah. And as someone who recently had to put on his full haunt costume for a video shoot, it's a big ask. Yeah. Also, I could see it. I don't know if it is used, but I could see it being used for the automation of sizing of images and, you know, balancing. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's used for that, too.

[33:18] Basically, there's a lot of grunt work in graphic design that's been taken up. Yeah. But trust me, generated AI is not replaced graphic designers at all. No. I don't think we're in any real danger there anytime soon, either. Because I think Canva and Adobe probably have the best systems right now. I think... Go ahead. No, go ahead. And those have a long way to go. Yeah. And I think it would be really fun to take photos of your haunt and say, take this picture and make it a Christmas-themed picture. And see what it does with your haunt picture. Yeah. To make it a Christmas and see if it's doable. And that brings us to number five, actually.

[33:58] Which is memes and jokes. Basically, the idea of... Because here's one of the few uses of AI that has genuinely brought me joy over the past few years. Is seeing people punch wackadoodle bullshit. Like, I'm still haunted by Cheez-It Christ. Someone punched in Cheez-It Christ. and made Christ out of cheese. It was subjectively hilarious. I'm sorry.

[34:26] No intent to offend, but it was funny. So ideas like that, you can do that as a way to get social media engagement. Obviously, be transparent, but if you do this right, everyone's going to know it was AI without really having to think about it too much. Have you ever wanted to see your haunt character being smothered with 100 kittens? Yeah. Ever wanted to see your haunt character in Christmas garb like she just mentioned?

[34:50] There's an idea. And just say, hey, we asked an AI to put blah, blah, blah, you know, working at a donut shop or something. And here's what it did. Yeah. And these are things that you maybe in some cases could take a photo of, but it'd be really difficult.

[35:07] It's kind of just the whole fun of it is to see how AI both, quote unquote, gets it right and blatantly fucks it up, too. Yeah. That's the whole fun of it. And those get really good engagement on social media. You um so yeah do mashups be mindful of copyright once again use your characters your haunt your stuff don't use freddy krueger don't use the other people's haunts and other people's ip.

[35:30] But man you can have a lot of fun with us and like i said if it you know you could even do like a fun thing might be let's say you have a swamp scene and the um that'd be a totally different seem like a clown room or something like that we asked ai to create us a mash-up of the church and the gothic church scene in the clown room and do something like that and even give ai the photos to help make the mash-up better and see what it comes up with and it'd be obnoxious as fuck but it'd be hilarious yeah and if you have one of those if you do one of the ones with your character you know where they're in a different place have your have a reaction video oh yeah Make a reaction video to you watching what your character is doing as you're in costume, obviously. Yeah. You know. Or you could just, like, create a bunch of images and say, okay, here's you smothered by kittens. I don't know why I'm smothered by kittens, right? I don't know either. Just it sounds really funny. I'm thinking that the character's going on a walk or, like, a journey around the world and different places. But if it's smothered by kittens... Oh, man. Your character's in front of the Eiffel Tower dressed like a Frenchman. Yeah.

[36:43] Suddenly, you know, the hammer or whatever your character has is replaced by a baguette.

[36:49] That could be funny. It could be. That could get some really good engagement. And so, yeah, I see a lot of potential here. Once again, being transparent. Once again, doing it in fun and doing it purely for like engagement and laughs rather than direct promotion. Yeah. And I'm sorry, but I'm going to make you take this one because you put it in here. Okay.

[37:09] That's fine. Okay. This was an idea I had. And I really wanted, I really, I should have, if I had known we were going to be late, I would have reached out to Japes and used that time. But we didn't make the decision to not post until too late. But I think AI could be a useful tool in actor training. Because one of the big problems a lot of actors have is, okay, you say, do this in a room. Well, okay, they do that. Customer responds. Actor may need to respond again. and customers i don't know if you've noticed this they don't tend to act as predictably as we think they will no not at all i mean we literally one time put a line down for the path so people would know definitively which way to go and even though we also had decent haunt design and they didn't need the line people still ran into the wrong fucking walls all the time so yeah i don't know what more i can do to help you people because i mean if birds can fly in a perfect formation in the sky and you can't follow a glow-in-the-dark line on the ground, we're screwed as a species.

[38:16] Yeah, but I mean... I think that whenever we were discussing this yesterday, we mentioned that it would be like getting improv suggestions. Yeah, exactly. Basically, type in what the actor says in the scenario, and the AI responds, and the AI is going to come up with responses you can't think of because you're not an idiot AI. And the result of that is now the actors have some challenge to respond to. They're not responding to the same old thing. Exactly. And this can be useful for mixing up the improv or mixing up kind of the back and forth your training. I could see that being quite useful in that category. Once again, nothing customer facing here, but a way to keep your actors on their toes. Because AI, if nothing, is unpredictable.

[39:10] Ain't that the truth? All right. You can go and take number seven. All right. Number seven. as a theme. And we're probably too soon to really do this. I think some of the fear is too strong, basically. Yeah. But if you wanted to theme your haunt around it, you could. There's not a lot of sci-fi haunts out there. No. And I think a lot of that is just the sheer difficulty of doing it. And also the fact that it's not a believable thing. It takes some of the believability out of it. But I do think sci-fi haunts could be a cool thing. And I really think an AI one, where an AI goes mad in an environment. And I deliberately mentioned in the notes, Glad Awesome Portal, is what I was thinking. Now you have the freedom to generate all the AI audio, text, and lines that you can want because it's an AI theme. Yeah, I wonder if eventually we could do something like have someone say their name as they're going into the haunt. and then have the AI generate it throughout the haunt in saying different things. Yeah, I mean, you probably could. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do here. And I think an AI theme for a haunt, once again, probably not yet. Give it a few more years. Let some of the hype die away.

[40:36] Because right now, if you say it's an AI-generated haunt, people are going to think of the Willy Wonka experience. Exactly. They're not going to think that your theme is about AI and how bad it is. Yeah, exactly. Or an evil AI that's doing bad things or whatever. Yeah, they're going to think the wrong, they're going to get the wrong idea. And once again, it goes with the, your theme is meant to be an escape. And right now, AI is one of the things a lot of people are trying to escape from. I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm trying to escape from it and all my Google searches and Facebook Facebook, and Instagram queries, and I'm failing. Yeah, no kidding. Quit trying to cram AI in shit that don't need it. Jesus Christ. But yeah, I do think as a theme it could be a lot of fun, and this would be a great excuse to play around with AI to generate audio, video, you know, lines, and so forth.

[41:27] And finally, this was your suggestion. Yeah. No, you take it.

[41:30] You take the last two. That's fine. All right. I doubled up. You double up now. AI to generate code to control your Raspberry Pis and your prop panels. Because I think that it would be useful. And there's time to test it to make sure that it's correct or at least get you on the right track. And I actually saw our friend Chris Matthew playing around with this on LinkedIn, that he's actually already making AI do, Raspberry Pis do things using AI. Yeah. There's a lot of open source AI code out there that's free just to copy and use. Yeah. And that stuff probably should be your first destination just because a lot less testing has to go into that. because the humans did it for you, hopefully. But if you're trying to do something that's different, that there isn't off-the-shelf code ready for it, and you're either not much of a coder or you want to do it in a hurry, this might be. And the only reason I think it might work here is because Raspberry Pi code tends to be fairly simple.

[42:36] I have no worry of AI replacing human programmers, especially for complicated projects. But for Raspberry Pi, simple controller-based stuff, I think you got a point here. It could probably generate something reasonably useful and help non-coders or burnt-out coders working in the haunt industry get started. Yeah. Oh, and one thing that I forgot to mention in some other section would be that I recently had a project where I had to read a lot of script. And I did look into several services for AI voices to do the voiceovers. And I think that those are getting close to being able to sound close to human. It still doesn't have the breaths or the ums or that kind of thing, but it sounded not bad. I haven't spent much time in that space. I can't really offer any comment. Yeah, but I could see that being used eventually in some kind of advertising way. Or in a haunt as extra voices to distract. I think I know where I want it, though. I want it to read the rules banner as people are coming up in the queue line. Yeah, that would work, too. I think that that could have some implications for the haunt industry as well.

[44:02] Yeah, good point. All right. Well, on that note, everyone, that's about all we have this week. That's our 45 or so minutes. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you found it interesting. Maybe an idea came to you that you can use AI for. I'll be very curious to find out. Well, anyways, thank you once again for spending the time. Please do check out all the places we exist. Once again, HauntandWeekly.com, HauntandWeekly on Twitter, HauntandWeekly on Facebook, YouTube.com slash HauntandWeekly, and wherever you get your podcasts from. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Krystal. And we will see you all next week, assuming the fact we have not been replaced by AI clones of ourselves at that time. Thank you all. See you then.