Pro Website Creators AI Discussion Week 7: Images, Videos, and Smarter Content Creation

What we tried this week

Turning Photos into Personal Branding Videos (02:30–17:00)
The team explored Google’s new VEO 3.1 model, which turns static photos into short videos. Dave demoed how to upload headshots generated from Gemini and combine them inside Google Flow to produce a short professional-style clip.

• They discovered that VEO now supports audio and can blend up to three reference images for consistent character appearance across frames.

• The key lesson: your input photos and prompts matter. For best results, describe the environment (“modern office, city view, minimalist desk”) and character actions (“looking slightly right, smiling, professional”).

Prompt Testing in Google Flow (07:00–17:00)
Dave walked through trial-and-error prompts like “add scene, then plus” while showing how small phrasing changes shift the outcome. The takeaway? VEO 3.1 still takes patience, but even imperfect clips show strong potential for branding, product demos, and explainer content.

News and experiments that stood out

Anthropic Claude + Microsoft 365 Integration (09:00)
Claude AI now connects directly to Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive—no manual uploads. It can analyze email threads, summarize meetings, or extract action items automatically.

Kayak Adds Conversational Trip Planning (10:50)
Kayak’s new AI mode lets travelers search for trips with natural questions like “What are 10-day cruises to the Panama Canal?” The group found it clunky for now and recommended using ChatGPT or Perplexity for better trip summaries and planning.

Claude Custom Skills (17:00–20:00)
Anthropic launched Skills, a way to train Claude using your own company workflows and brand guides. Dave suggested using this for PWC’s SOPs and checklists, so Claude could act as an internal guide—“What do we do next when building a website?”

Human Creativity with AI: Vicki’s Dog Books (20:00–22:00)
The team loved this story: a volunteer in Ohio uses AI to co-write and illustrate children’s books about rescue dogs—prompting for breed, traits, and personality, then compiling final pages in Canva for publishing.

AI Moderated Research (25:00)
Amazon and Chobani now use Stellas AI for focus groups, where AI moderators interview users. The surprising result: people give more honest feedback to AI than humans.

Claude Haiku 4.5 (28:00)
A smaller, cheaper version of Anthropic’s top model—nearly the same performance but faster and lighter.

AI-Generated Workplace Twins (29:00–32:00)
A company called Vivin is building digital “employee twins” that respond to Slack or email queries when teammates are unavailable. It raised questions about privacy, access, and the ethics of replication.

AI-Generated Internet Content (33:00–34:30)
Common Crawl reports that AI now produces more web content than humans. The discussion turned to YouTube’s response: rewarding creators who show their faces to stay “visibly human.”

What We Learned

• Add your face to client update videos. Viewers trust humans. Even a small webcam circle in your Loom or walkthrough makes a difference.

• Don’t over-polish AI content. Imperfect human touches—minor typos, ums, or pauses—make communication more authentic.

• AI should assist, not replace. Learn to use tools like Gemini, Flow, and Claude as extensions of your creativity, not shortcuts to skip it.

Final Thought

AI tools that save time and look good doing it. In Week 7, we turned headshots into personal videos, explored Claude’s custom skills, and shared a smart multi-tool image workflow using Ideogram and Nano Banana. Watch the replay and try it yourself.

Catch the replay to see these examples in action:

• VEO 3.1 Branding Video Demo 02:30

• Claude Skills Discussion 17:00

• Rescue Dog Children’s Books Example 20:00

• AI Market Research (Stellas) 25:00

• Claude Haiku 4.5 Update 28:00

• AI Workplace Twins 29:00

• AI-Generated Internet Talk 33:00

• Staying Human in AI Era 34:00

• Ideogram + Nano Workflow Tip 43:00