AI's Creative Frontier: Going with the Flow

Plus my op ed exploring the Middle East's $150B AI revolution, hands-on with Google's Flow filmmaking tool, and research made easier for comms teams

May 21, 2025

Greetings.

Spotlight

Spotlighting here my friend Aneesh Raman who is the Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn. He wrote great piece in the NYT on how the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder is Breaking. It’s worth a read.

Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder. In tech, advanced coding tools are creeping into the tasks of writing simple code and debugging — the ways junior developers gain experience. In law firms, junior paralegals and first-year associates who once cut their teeth on document review are handing weeks of work over to A.I. tools to complete in a matter of hours. And across retailers, A.I. chatbots and automated customer service tools are taking on duties once assigned to young associates - Aneesh

Flow

At Google I/O there were plenty of announcements. I was most interested in the intersection of AI and creativity. A new filmmaking tool called Flow stood out. Congrats Google Labs. The video experience was outstanding. High quality and fluid. Lots of different genres and techniques to observe and test out. It’s really down to the prompting game. I liked the prompt language demo’d in Flow TV. It helped me see what linguistic acrobatics generated those high quality moving images. Nice surprise: The language required was actually simple, clean, clear.

I’ve tested many videos to generate dogs (I know). They’re not great but Flow (working with the model Veo) gave me the best whippet yet! I played around with a couple of ideas . I liked how Flow TV gave me ideas to generate video with camera angles, shots and hardware. I liked the scene-builder function and will play around with it a little more. There are some film shorts you can watch on Flow TV too. I have a film in my lap top somewhere that I’ll dig out and see how this could work out! I will report back with more depth and critique after testing this tool further.

Here’s a prompt i tried: spaceship over maasai mara. night. filmed in super 8. style: surreal

Here’s the video I got:

My Op Ed in Inc. Arabia : Beyond the AI Anchor

An Op Ed I wrote was published in Inc. Arabia on “Beyond the AI Anchor.” It’s about How Middle Eastern Media Professionals Can Lead the GenAI Revolution.

The Middle Eastern Region aims to derive 9% of its GDP from AI by 2030—a $150 billion bet on artificial intelligence reshaping industries, governments, and daily life. The UAE, stands at the forefront of technology adoption. For the country’s storytellers, journalists, and brand builders, this is a major opportunity - Me

Here is the cover …

And here is the story …

I'm often asked if niche journalism will survive this transformation. Yes. It will. Journalism isn't just about reporting news anymore – it's about insight and narrative and using human skills that transcend machine capabilities. AI opens possibilities for tailored newsfeeds with narratives catering to specific segments across geography, nationality, and interests

Full magazine link is here

I loved chatting to my brother Irfan about this, as UAE AI future is his wheelhouse.

According to my brother Irfan Verjee, who advises the UAE government on GenAI strategy, the UAE "must address challenges in assimilating new technologies, ideas and tools in organizations.” He adds “while GenAI pilots are common, there's limited adoption in production with enterprise, government, or proprietary datasets.” Yet he sees the UAE positioned to become the “new Switzerland”, providing a great place to live, create and store wealth.

Core Comms - AI Masterclasses

The Rundown Studio team is working on creating a comprehensive courses for communications professionals and workflows with AI.

Core comms and AI
CEO Ethics and AI
Creatives and AI

A $8 payment a month will help us create this content that you can access and learn. We would be very grateful for financial support so we can keep this all going. Asante sana. Thank you.

This will comprise of some of the practical stuff we have been learning over the last year. Stay tuned for that. I use some tools daily, and some experimentally. There’s so many Gen AI products out there, sometimes its’s just hard to know what to use.

We are developing our own toolkit for communications teams thinking through our own workflow and what is value add, what’s efficiency only and what’s a red flag and critical human thinking is required.

The priority for newsrooms, communications leaders and countries is general education and skills building in AI. Communications professionals need a blend of formal training and hands-on experience in AI fundamentals: data privacy, model selection, prompt engineering, and critical analysis.

Pressmate is a good example of tools The Rundown Studio is building. If you’d like to beta test this please get in touch. I’ve highlighted a couple of tools out there you may want to check out.

Repurposing Content: FeedHive

FeedHive helps manage and optimize your social media presence with AI-powered features for content creation, repurposing, scheduling, and analysis.

One of FeedHive's standout features is how it transforms content repurposing. Rather than constantly creating new posts from scratch, it helps you breathe new life into your existing content. The platform's AI can analyze your best-performing posts and suggest ways to refresh them with new angles, updated information, or different formats. This solves a major challenge for communications teams who often have valuable content that gets buried in their archives.

Content repurposing is essential for social media success, and FeedHive makes this process intuitive. Its AI Writing Assistant works similarly to ChatGPT but is specifically trained for social media content. You can generate posts based on prompts, get performance predictions, recycle high-performing content, and even set up conditional posting that automates engagement-based actions.

Key Features:

AI-powered performance predictions for posts
Content recycling assistance
Conditional posting based on engagement metrics

Pros & Cons: FeedHive scores points for its user-friendly design that doesn't sacrifice power features. The cross-posting capabilities across different platforms from a single dashboard save considerable time, and the visual planning tools make it easy to maintain a balanced content calendar. The AI assistant is genuinely helpful for brainstorming when you're facing creator's block. However, many of the most useful AI features are locked behind higher-tier plans, and the lack of a mobile app is frustrating when you need to make quick adjustments on the go. Some users have also noted that the AI hashtag suggestions can be hit-or-miss depending on your industry.

Why it's valuable for comms professionals: For communications teams juggling multiple client accounts or campaigns, FeedHive essentially functions as an AI-powered social media assistant. The ability to categorize and schedule different types of content (educational posts on Mondays, case studies on Wednesdays, etc.) creates a systematic approach to what's often a chaotic process. The performance prediction and analytics features also help demonstrate ROI to stakeholders or clients, showing how strategy adjustments improve engagement over time.

Pricing: The Creator plan starts at $15/month (billed annually) for 4 social accounts with basic AI writing features included. Just note that the more advanced AI tools like performance prediction are only available on higher-tier plans.

You can find out more info here.

Research Team: Ottogrid AI

Ottogrid AI automates research tasks that would normally take humans hours or days to complete.

Think of Ottogrid as having a team of AI researchers that work simultaneously on different parts of your research project. It presents as a familiar spreadsheet interface, but with superpowers, each cell can run its own independent research task.

Features:

Document processing: Ottogrid can analyze hundreds of documents simultaneously. Instead of reading through each report manually, you simply upload your documents and ask specific questions like "What are the key statistics on AI adoption in Africa?" or "Extract the main predictions for 2026." The AI reads everything and pulls out exactly what you need.
Research agent: This feature essentially automates the entire research process. If you're trying to find companies matching specific criteria, you'd normally spend hours Googling and compiling information. With Ottogrid, you describe what you're looking for, and the AI independently searches, evaluates sources, and compiles findings across multiple websites and sources.
List enrichment: This takes basic information you already have and automatically adds valuable details. For example, give it a list of company names, and it can add their industries, founding dates, funding rounds, key executives, and social media presence – all without you having to look up each piece of information manually.

Pros & Cons: The time savings with Ottogrid are dramatic - what might take days of manual research can often be completed in an hour. The system handles large volumes of information efficiently and the interface is surprisingly easy to use even if you're not tech-savvy. However, you'll need to invest some time in learning how to structure your research questions for best results, and the quality depends on having clear parameters. Some specialized research tasks still need human judgment, but for routine information gathering, it's remarkably effective.

Why it's valuable for comms professionals: For PR and communications teams, research often consumes countless hours. Ottogrid transforms how you prepare campaigns by automating competitive analysis, media monitoring, audience research, and trend identification. When preparing client reports or planning strategies, being able to quickly process hundreds of sources means you can base your work on comprehensive insights rather than just a few examples. It also helps identify patterns and connections across large datasets that might be missed with manual research.

Pricing: Free tier includes 500 credits (enough to test capabilities) Starter plan at $99/month provides 12,500 credits Pro plan at $299/month offers 50,000 credits

I”ll leave you with an image I generated from Flow. I know. I also love Cavaliers.

The Rundown Studio: AI & Comms Insights for Emerging Markets

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