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What if the best photo you take is just the start? The Dead Pixels Society sits down with Heath Lassiter, founder of Niche AI, to explore how volume imaging is transforming from prints and proofs into living, brand‑ready media—think fusion assets mapped to body parts, refined face replacement, and motion‑from‑stills that parents and guests can’t wait to share. Lassiter's roots at Express Digital and deep work across schools, theme parks, events, and cruises give him a rare, pragmatic lens on what actually scales: fast inference, lower COGS, consistent brand aesthetics, and real privacy compliance.
Lassiter unpacks Niche AI’s core offerings—precision cutouts, fusion scenes, and immersive face swaps—built to operate at enterprise speed and quality. The conversation gets tactical on GPU throughput, cost curves, and why off‑the‑shelf AI often produces generic looks or drifts from target demographics. Heath explains how his team blends proprietary models with in‑house design to nail placement, mood, and age‑appropriate results, and how that approach translates into higher conversions and repeat purchases across e‑commerce.
Schools get a spotlight: extend fall capture slightly and replace the operationally heavy spring shoot with AI-driven products—seasonal themes, cap‑and‑gown automation (colors, tassels, even hands and diplomas when needed), and short motion clips for social. We cover data handling, GDPR, API vs on‑prem, and why once‑reluctant enterprises are now opening the door to responsible generative and non‑generative workflows. For parks and events, the image becomes both souvenir and marketing engine, turning guest photos into shareable media that drives reach and revenue.
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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin Manning (00:01):
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the
photoimaging industry's leadingnews source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
The Dead Pixels Society Podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:17):
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels
Society Podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau, andtoday we're joined by Heath
Lassiter, who's the founder ofNiche AI, and it's in the volume
imaging business.
But we all know Heath from like17 different companies he's
been through over the years.
Hi Heath, how are you today?
Heath Lassiter (00:35):
I'm doing good, Gary.
How are you today?
Gary Pageau (00:38):
Doing great, doing great.
Always good to see you andcatch up with you.
You seem to you've been apresence in the industry for,
like I said, quite possibly athousand years.
Where did you get started inthis business?
Heath Lassiter (00:51):
Yeah, so and thank you for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Um, I began my journeybasically in the photo industry,
I would say about 23 years ago,uh, with a company called
Express Digital.
Uh, that company provided aleading ecosystem for
professional photographers, uh,labs, and e-commerce platforms.
And so my experience there,particularly working with CEO
(01:11):
Graham McFarlane and CTO, hisbrother, Kevin McFarlane, they
truly offered invaluableinsights into the industry,
which ignited my passion forphotography.
But really, throughout mycareer, I've been you know
fortunate enough to haveexceptional mentors, notably,
you know, Robert St.
Marie, whom you know very wellwith 36 picks.
Yeah.
Just a genuinely you know,smart and inspiring individual.
(01:34):
Uh, and my friend Russ Steiger,who is a highly intelligent CTO
who specialized in software fortheme parks and workflows in
the past.
And so that's where I get mydeep appreciation for the
industry.
Gary Pageau (01:45):
And so you were with Express Digital for a long
time.
What then when we moved on fromthere, what did you do?
Heath Lassiter (01:51):
Yeah, from there basically I started uh
consulting.
So I worked as a consultant inthe industry, partnering with
various companies to boostrevenue, uh, develop new
products, and create strategicvisions for the most part.
Gary Pageau (02:02):
Cool.
So, you know, technologybusiness development has sort of
been your thing, and you'vekind of focused a lot in the
volume space, it seems like.
And can you kind of define whatvolume means in your context?
With the, you know, because itcould mean a lot of things to
different people, right?
Heath Lassiter (02:18):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
You know, I've engaged invarious complex workflows over
the years, delivering softwaresoftware solutions, that is,
across diverse verticals.
So I feel truly privileged, youknow, to work alongside of some
of the innovative minds thatI've worked with.
But as far as the high volumeuh is concerned, you know, I
I've been working in the highvolume space, not only on the
school side, but on the themepark side, event side, crew
(02:40):
side.
And it just actually fits theniche uh that that I've been uh
no pun intended, of course, thatI've been working on and trying
to come up with newertechnologies to help people not
only advance generative andnon-generative AI, and we will
get into that in a second, butreally to give them something
unique and different, to behonest with you.
Gary Pageau (03:00):
So the volume space has been really interesting
because you know, back in theday, a lot of this stuff was
captured analog, right?
With film and different things,and then you had, you know,
maybe in theme parks and things,you had maybe had video capture
and video prints, which wereterrible.
And then as things gone havegone digital, uh, it's created
all kinds of new opportunitiesfor a lot of people, like
(03:23):
especially especially like yousaid, in school photography and
in the event space and cruiseships and things like that.
What do you think customers inthose segments are looking for?
Are they really looking forcapturing a memory or is it
something else?
Heath Lassiter (03:41):
You know, I think it's one for capturing a
memory, and two, it's somethingthat can they can actually share
on social media platforms.
You know, the possibilitiesthat AI offers for elevating
those sectors, in my opinion,are immense.
And I believe it's crucial forcompanies to adopt both
generative and non-generative AIto really evolve and to avoid
(04:01):
you know falling apart withstagnant content, in my opinion.
Gary Pageau (04:05):
Because I think it is a kind of changed the value
proposition of especially likeevents and theme parks, where
you know, the the the print thatthey would sell was the value,
right?
That was the transaction.
They were looking to sellprints from your picture on a
roller coaster, but now theywant that picture shared, they
(04:27):
want it sent out almost as apromotional application.
Heath Lassiter (04:30):
Yep.
No, I completely agree withthat 100%.
So, you know, what I'd like todo is introduce my company,
which is niche AI.
And what we do is, and I'll getinto that, we provide machine
learning and AI inference modelsfor enterprise businesses.
And so, going back to yourquestion, our platform is at
production scale, uh, and it'sbuilt for throughput.
So, from precision cutouts tobranded fusion to what we call
(04:55):
immersive scenes, even motionfrom stills, what we're doing
right now, which is prettyamazing.
And I'll get into that atVisual First a little bit more.
You know, we don't justpreserve accuracy, we add uh,
you know, emotion into thosestills, transforming static
images into like livable sharingmemories.
Gary Pageau (05:12):
So you talk a little bit about that, where
you're taking something andadding something to it that may
or may not have been in theoriginal photo.
That really kind of gets awayfrom just the memory keeping
aspect almost into theentertainment space.
Heath Lassiter (05:27):
Yeah, correct.
You know, from what I've seen,Gary, you know, AI has changed
the way, well, it provides forone, it uh it provides new
opportunities, but it alsoprovides new challenges.
So AI has changed the waycontent is created.
You know, the biggest thingthat I'm starting to notice in
working with AI is client andcustomer preferences evolve, and
AI unleashes a lot ofcreativity than ever before.
(05:48):
But the beautiful thing isopportunities are abound and
companies can capitalize onthat.
You know, there was an MITreport, I think that it came
out, I want to say probablyabout seven weeks ago, and it
said 95% of AI startups actuallyfail within that first year.
And we are in our first year.
We just started this company upin January of 2025, and we feel
(06:10):
very fortunate because for one,we are profitable and we are
pumping through anywhere fromabout 24 to 25 million images
and videos through our pipelinethis year alone.
So, you know, we have veryexperienced and dedicated, uh,
extremely dedicated and talentedteam.
And so I'm actually ramping upand developing new content for
(06:30):
current and future clients.
Gary Pageau (06:33):
You know, when people talk about the failure
rate in AI, right?
It kind of reminds me of kindof like the original dot-com
bubble, right?
Where all this money was beingpoured into AI or into, you
know, internet startups.
And you know, if you werebasically wanted to have a photo
site in 1999 or 2000, you know,all this VC money would be
chasing you, and then most ofthose imploded and just and
(06:56):
things like kind of get thatfeeling today with AI, where if
you just call yourself AI,someone's gonna drop about a
bucket of cash on you, uh, withthe hope that maybe one of those
investments will pay off.
How is yours different, right?
Like you, I mean, you saidyours is probable, you're making
money.
Um can you kind of describe whythat was important for you to
(07:18):
actually be a viable business asopposed to uh just another
thing that with AI in the name?
Heath Lassiter (07:23):
Sure, yeah.
Basically, leveraging AI canactually be long, expensive, and
risky when I'm talking to myclients out there.
So building in-house requires,for one, large investment, a lot
of time and a lot of money anda lot of resources to maintain.
And so it changes rapidly,requiring constant rebuilds.
You know, there's a lot ofexactly what you said, Gary,
off-the-shelf products out therethat removes, in my opinion,
(07:45):
distinct appearances.
Uh, customers become generic,outputs basically can drift,
deviating from desired agegroups and brand line
consistency.
Um, you know, and creativeteams have varying experience in
leveraging AI, and that's wheremy team comes in, to where we
can actually help leverage thatAI.
So, how big is your team?
Gary Pageau (08:04):
How what's what's what's the company like at this
point?
Heath Lassiter (08:07):
So, right now we're about nine strong, and I'm
actually building new contentbecause I'm getting ready to
onboard another customer.
So I'm hiring a lot ofengineers, uh, commute computer
vision for the most part, uh, asof right now.
And once I take this to thenext level, I'm gonna be hiring,
you know, abroad for for allverticals, or shall I say, all
positions in the company thatis.
Gary Pageau (08:28):
So when you talk about specifically the things
your company offers for let'ssay a you know, a uh a volume
photography application, you youknow, on your website, you've
got three things you mentioned.
You know, you mentionedextraction, you mentioned fusion
and headshot.
Extraction's been around for awhile, it's kind of like you
(08:48):
know, table stakes for a lot ofthis thing.
What do you mean by by fusion?
What is the fusion offeringfrom uh your company?
Heath Lassiter (08:57):
So we the only reason we have the extraction is
because we built the extractionto build our other models.
Our fusion model is basicallyan asset that is actually on a
body part.
So, you know, if we put apenguin on a shoulder or in a
hand, or we do use a HarryPotter scene, for example, or a
wizard scene that is, forexample, and I put some type of
um wand in your hand, that isconsidered a fusion type product
(09:19):
because we're associating theasset with the actual body part
itself.
The immersive is going to bemore of a face swapping
technology, but it's more of ourversion two.
So we're calling it theimmersive experience.
And what we're doing is we'rebasically putting people's heads
into people actually withpenguins and walking with
penguins, and we're changingtheir moods and changing their
(09:39):
expressions.
In my opinion, when we startedthis back in January, some of it
looked, and I hate to use theword creepy, but some of it
didn't look like my kid per se,because I was using my daughter
as an example, some of thesephotos.
And I was like, oh my gosh, Iwould actually never buy that.
However, we fine-tune that, andthe models have changed
tremendously.
And I think we have a betterunderstanding of where we're at
(10:01):
with that, creating compellingpersonalized content using
either our customers' brandingor our assets.
So we can quickly leverage newcontent and models, and we're
deploying new models prettyquickly.
And it's all about automatingthe manual processes that were
done in the past because thosewere time consuming.
You'd have to build thebackground and the foreground,
(10:22):
and then you'd have to basicallyadjust it and crop it and so on
and so forth.
Ours is at volume and at scale,so we can basically deliver
more content for the less cost.
Gary Pageau (10:31):
And that's really where I think people are hoping
to monetize the uh AIexperiences through you know
increased workflow productionand everything.
When you talk about the costside of it, I mean you're
hitting servers and doing a lotof computation on all that kind
of stuff.
Is that getting faster?
How is that going?
Heath Lassiter (10:48):
Yeah, it's getting faster.
I mean, it depends on whatprocesses that you guys that
we're currently using out there.
Uh we're using the NVIDIAprocessors that are currently
out there.
Sometimes our cogs, dependingon how many servers we have spun
up, our cogs could go up ordown unless we're running those
at 24-7.
Um, but for the most part,we're trying to bring our cogs
down.
The more we can actually pumpthrough our volume, the better
(11:10):
we're gonna do as far asbringing costs down for our
customers and for ourselves, asfar as the cost of goods are
concerned.
So, really going back to ourfusion technology, really it's
about transforming guest photosand basically with our advanced
fusion technology.
And again, I keep saying this,but at enterprise level speeds
and quality, that's what we'retrying to get across.
Gary Pageau (11:30):
Now, for the the event market, that kind of is
interesting.
Like you said, you know, ifyou've got you know a you know,
a wizarding environment and youwant to have a you know
integrate some some elementsthat you know are not visible,
like you know, uh, you know, uhcreatures or you know, wands,
(11:50):
props, whatever.
So you can basically takesomeone's face and put them into
a scene in a movie, forexample, and it would look
pretty uh realistic.
How can you take that idea andtransform it into other segments
of the volume industry?
Heath Lassiter (12:04):
You know, so I'm I'm looking at the sports
industry specifically, thefashion industry, you know,
hyper-personalized seamimmersion product.
So what we do is we blendsubject with custom on-brand
assets for the most part, uh,face extraction, which is done
through our face swappingtechnology, which is now the
immersion.
We do have an age and genderidentification model that we
(12:26):
actually have to build in.
So it says, okay, is this achild?
Is this a teen?
Is this a is this a kid?
Is this an infant?
Is this an adult?
And then basically we have thatservice to where we actually
have an upscaling service aswell built into our technology
because one of our customers issending us such low res images
and our output is such highquality that we had to
specifically upscale that andwe're actually pumping out what
(12:50):
we're calling motion right nowas well.
So we're taking a still imageand we can have their face
actually moving.
And I've got a scene that I'mgonna be showing at visual first
with a tiger and how thetiger's yawning and how the kids
looking at the tiger just froma still image alone.
So, going back to your questionthough, you know, we're really
targeting industries that canuse that type of technology and
(13:10):
going back to the event space.
So we're trying to come up withsomething new, something
creative, but we're also tryingto bring that price down for
people.
And it does take away, youknow, in my opinion, from some
editing jobs, but at the sametime, it's going to create new
jobs because you're gonna haveto, you know, do some quality
control on the back end, butthat gets those companies to
focus in on different areas oftheir business of growth, and
(13:32):
that's what we're trying to helpcompanies do right now.
Gary Pageau (13:35):
Do you get much pushback from customers who
think, you know, well, this isnot really what the customer is
experiencing in the park.
You know, they weren't theyweren't actually encountering a
tiger, if you will.
And right, you know, is thereor are people's expectations
changing that they want thissort of thing?
(13:55):
I guess where I'm I'm gettinggetting back to is the idea that
the the original photo and anevent was a memento, right?
It was capturing that memory orthat image, and now it's
evolving into an entertainmentexperience, right?
Heath Lassiter (14:12):
You know, I guess what I'm seeing really is
I'm starting to see an adoptionrate from the younger generation
for one, uh, for bothgenerative and non-generative
AI.
And I think it's rapidly, asyou see across all social media
platforms, you know, it'srapidly increasing, you know,
due to massive changes we'veseen in the past 12 months.
So, in my opinion, it'sessential for businesses to
adapt and integrate AIresponsibly, of course, to not
(14:34):
only stay ahead of the curve,but to not get left behind
because of how things are youknow moving and and really
evolving out there.
Gary Pageau (14:41):
You spun this up pretty quickly, right?
You know, you've only been uhyou start finding the company
January.
I know you've been working onit longer than that because
we've talked for a while.
But correct.
But how much of this stuff,like you said, much was off the
shelf, but how much of it iscustom?
How much of this is proprietarytechnology that you've
developed?
Heath Lassiter (15:00):
Some of it when we started was off the shelf,
but some of it's going to beproprietary moving forward.
So we're using a little bit offthe shelf, but we're basically
we have our own in-house designteam.
So we're basically designingeverything uh from our
perspective.
Uh, we do have uh companiesthat we're working with that
like to use their brandedassets, as I was saying a little
bit earlier.
Yep, absolutely.
You know, and that's and that'sperfectly fine, but we also
(15:21):
have an in-house where I thinkour products look a little bit
nicer, in my opinion, because weknow exactly where to place
exactly where to placeeverything for the most part.
So, yeah, for the most part,it's uh it's it again, it's at
volume and it's at scale for themost part.
Gary Pageau (15:35):
And you've got experience in the space, so you
kind of know what the customerswant.
Heath Lassiter (15:39):
No, absolutely.
And we try to do that, but somecompanies they don't want to
pay for the models because we docharge per model right now, but
if we use their assets, wedon't charge them as much.
The thing is, is when we usetheir assets, you know,
sometimes it goes back andforth, and then they need
approval, and then they needapproval for the assets, and
then it has to come over to us,and then we have to build it
versus hey, I can actually buildthis pretty quickly as long as
(16:02):
you give me the assets.
I could build this within threedays and I could deploy it
within seven days versus itgoing on for 14 or 21 days
because of all the internalpolitics for the most part.
Gary Pageau (16:11):
Yeah, because I imagine when you're dealing with
you know licensing and brandingand all of these things,
there's layers of legalitiesthat you've got to deal with.
Heath Lassiter (16:22):
Absolutely, 100%.
We always have to deal withthat, you know.
And and something I I didn't, Iwasn't gonna bring this up at
first, but you know, this reallybrings I wanted to talk about,
you know, an approach that I'vebeen working on specifically for
the school industry.
And and really it, I think thiscould possibly enhance product
offerings and generatesubstantial cost savings.
(16:42):
So my proposal really using thetechnology is optimizing fall
photography sessions really toeliminate the need for spring
shoots.
And what I mean by that isleveraging the power of AI to
create diverse and engagingproducts.
So, you know, what if, and I'vetalked to a lot of school,
high-volume school photographersout there.
(17:03):
I asked them how long theytypically spend with their kids,
and they said, uh, we spendabout 30 seconds per kid.
And I was like, that's prettyquick.
And they're like, well, we haveto get them through the
sessions.
And I said, Well, what if?
What if we just did 60 secondsinstead of 30 seconds?
It's a slight increase forallowing greater variety of
poses, uh, expressions,resulting maybe in a richer
(17:23):
collection of images perstudent.
And in my opinion, the keybenefit of this approach is the
ability to capture enoughhigh-quality photos in the fall,
making spring photographysessions and scheduling
unnecessary.
And what I mean by that is, youknow, with expanded library of
fall photos, we can utilize bothgenerative and non-generative
(17:45):
AI models to create new andexisting product lines.
So traditional themes likeChristmas, the cap and gown
stuff that I showed you, whichis basically getting ready to be
piloted, by the way, and I'lltalk about that later, you know,
and offer fun and imaginativebackgrounds with scenarios like
Star Wars or whimsical imageswith penguins or, you know,
(18:06):
lions, basically providing, youknow, unique keepsakes for
students and families.
So what I'm thinking right nowis by implementing implementing
our technology or any other AItechnology, you know, for
fall-centric AI-poweredstrategy, I think companies out
there might realize thesignificant bottom line savings
(18:28):
by eliminating, I would say,substantial overhead associated
with spring photographyoperations, including
photographer fees, travel props,scheduling, logistics.
I mean, that is a nightmare forsome of these companies, and
the turnover rate's so high thatthey have to train them every
year.
So, just in my opinion, thisefficiency gain also creates an
(18:52):
incredible opportunity tointegrate any new products that
are going to be into theire-commerce platform, hopefully
leading to an increased ASP,which is an average sales price,
and a more robust profitmargin.
So could you use?
Gary Pageau (19:06):
I'm just thinking trying to learn search on the
capture side.
Could you use even like youknow, because I know you're
saying, hey, you know, go from30 seconds to 60 seconds, but
that's double the time.
And I think some people mightgive you pushback on that, but
could you almost use like avideo to capture and pull stills
from that to get what you needwithin that 30 seconds?
(19:26):
Because I know different peoplehave played with that
technology where you know, Iknow Panasonic's been pushing
that for a while as hey, youknow, just capture a video and
you can get the 4K off thevideo, and it's great.
Heath Lassiter (19:37):
Yeah.
Um, is that a possibility?
That is definitely apossibility.
Now we're not doing it rightnow, but in my opinion, with
everything that we're doing,that is not far off, and I could
easily do that.
So I haven't thought about itthat way, but absolutely that is
something we could definitelydeliver on.
Gary Pageau (19:51):
And and for those who aren't familiar with the
difference between the fallshoot and the spring shoot,
because you know, I mean, backwhen I was a kid, you just did
the fall shoot, right?
And now the spring shoot is athing.
What is the difference in theoffering for the parents for the
spring shoot versus a fallshoot?
Heath Lassiter (20:08):
You know, the fall shoot is their is is school
photographers' main shoot.
It's gonna be that traditionalthree-quarter pose, right?
It's the it's the maintraditional pose that parents
actually want to see versus thespring is gonna be more
whimsical, like I was talkingabout a little bit earlier.
Something that's a little bitmore playful, especially when I
when I when I'm talking aboutthis, this is not gonna be for
(20:30):
your seniors, this is not gonnabe for your high schools, it's
mostly gonna be K through fiveor potentially K through eight.
And and we believe that thispotential strategic shift will
not only save customers or,shall I say, photographers on
operational costs, but alsodrive a new revenue streams.
And I have specifically talkedto a couple of companies that
are potentially interested inpiloting this with a couple of
(20:52):
schools to see how it works outbecause it is a headache for
them to basically have toretrain every single year.
And that's one of their main uhpain points.
And I'm trying to see if I cancover this.
Gary Pageau (21:03):
Yeah, and the and the other thing is is you know,
it's it's I imagine the buy ratefor spring shoots is lower than
than the fall shoot.
Heath Lassiter (21:13):
Correct.
And so if we can get creative,and again, whimsical, I hate to
keep using the same word, usingsomething a little bit different
and using our motion technologyto deliver it through their
pipeline.
So everybody wants to sharethings on TikTok and Facebook
and LinkedIn and Instagram andso on and so forth, right?
And that's the opportunity tocreate something new and
basically increase that package,whether it's only by five or
(21:36):
ten dollars, it will increase itbecause that's what we're
seeing with our currentcustomers, by the way.
Gary Pageau (21:40):
And the other thing is, is it's kind of expanding
that idea of you knowre-monetizing that image from
even the fall shoot.
Because I know, like someschool photographers are doing
very well with hey, I'm justgonna remarket the fall shoot in
November and tell mom that sheneeds to order a Christmas
ornament for grandma andgrandpa, right?
(22:00):
And just doing that remarketinghas people are seeing a lot of
success.
So if you can expand that in adigital idea to the spring, I
think you're gonna get some uhgood uptick on that.
Heath Lassiter (22:12):
You know, I'm hoping to.
And you know, I'm not trying totake anything away from what
you know, customers or shall Isay, what companies have done in
the past with school, but I'mtrying to just do something
maybe a little bit differently,not to necessarily
revolutionize, but come up withsomething different and
innovative.
Because as you know, Gary,sometimes it's a little
stagnant, it goes slow for alittle bit while a little while,
(22:32):
and then you've got new contentthat comes out and it opens
people's minds to new ideas.
Because last year, you know,when I was showing you my
technology, I was talking to avery large company out there,
and I just talked to themrecently.
And when I talked to them lastyear, they specifically said
that they could not use an APIcall because they could not
share their data both ways.
And I was like, okay, that'sinteresting.
(22:54):
So we need to come up with anon-premise type solution.
And then they also stated thatthey could not use generative AI
in their solutions.
Well, I had a discussion withthem uh about I'd say about a
month and a half ago, and thathas completely changed because
AI is revolutionizing the waythat people are dealing with
photos and videos, and sothey're open to that now,
they're open to API calls.
(23:15):
So we don't have to go in thereand put an on-prem solution and
monitor the hardware and takethe capex hit and so on and so
forth.
We're basically doing things,and I just think generative AI,
generative and non-generative AIis really opening the door for
a lot of companies out there,including it.
Gary Pageau (23:32):
So, but but their first question was regarding the
privacy aspect, right?
Because about student imagesgoing back and forth.
Do you think that's not goingto be a concern, or are you able
to comply with those securityrequirements?
Heath Lassiter (23:44):
I mean, we're going to be complying with those
uh security, definitely 100%,you know, and that's that's
important, right?
You can't misuse you there'sprivacy implications, like you
were saying.
While AI can be misused, italso provides opportunities if
you're doing it in the rightway.
So I think the adoption ratefor both, in my opinion, both
for generative andnon-generative AI, I just think
(24:04):
it's gonna completely change.
And and basically people aregonna have to adopt or they're
gonna get left behind, in myopinion.
Gary Pageau (24:10):
Well, I think one of the things obviously, you
know, that you got to be verycareful of is you know,
appropriate use of a child'simage, right?
Because there are people whoare, of course, very concerned
about images being shared onlineof the children.
And you know, there's alwaysthose stories, it seems like
where you know, images werehacked or shared, and the moms
were very free, you know, upsetabout the fact that Sally or
(24:33):
Bobby's image may be on the darkweb somewhere.
So you've certainly got to makesure that that piece is taken
care of, and I'm sure you'vetaken care of that.
Heath Lassiter (24:41):
100%, absolutely, and that's something
that we have to deal with, youknow, on the European side, we
got to deal with GDPR as well.
So, you know, those are thingswe have looked into, and that we
we will continue to uh lookinto and comply with whatever
needs we have are necessary forthe most part.
Gary Pageau (24:56):
And that comes from your experience in the volume
space, where I think, you know,sometimes you know, there's a
lot of people looking at usingAI to, you know, quote,
revolutionize unquotephotography, but they don't have
the industry experience tounderstand what those concerns
are, right?
I mean, I've I've seen a fewpeople trying to pop up who, you
(25:17):
know, yeah, we can do all thisstuff, but they don't have any
experience in the volumeindustry, understanding the
privacy concerns, the securityconcerns, you know, those kind
of things, which are you knowparamount to that business.
Heath Lassiter (25:29):
Yeah, a lot of those companies are just
throwing things out there to seewhat sticks, versus my product
actually has well, not onlycustomers, but it has a very
sticky um ecosystem for the mostpart.
And once we've actually provenout our concept and increased
the average sales for thecompanies that we're working
with, and we do have statisticson that, that it's gonna take
them, it's basically taking themto another level, and they can
(25:51):
go out and get new customers andbasically work with new
products and basically driveinnovation forward.
Gary Pageau (25:58):
Now, you mentioned earlier a graduation product.
Did you want to talkspecifically about that?
That was something that waskind of unusual, I thought, with
how you were kind of usingthat.
Heath Lassiter (26:07):
Yeah, so I mean, one of the examples was the
images that I showed you.
So we can take a traditionalschool image, right?
Somebody lookingstraightforward or somebody
turned a little bit.
Um, and what we can do is weput a cap and gown on this
person.
So when you graduatekindergarten or fifth grade or
eighth grade, instead ofphotographers actually taking
(26:27):
the prop off somebody, puttingit on somebody else, the time
that it actually takes to dothat, then they have to fix
their hair and maybe put the haton and change the tassel over
where our software can actuallyautomate that.
And I've talked to a lot ofphotographers that say that
takes them a lot of time, andthat is a major pain point for
them.
So, what we do is we'veactually through scale and
(26:48):
through basically adjustingthings, we we have done what we
call a cap and gown.
So we can change the color ofthe cap and gown, we can change
the side of the tassel.
We can basically, if the kidhas no hands, we could do a
generative where we're basicallycreating the hands from the
skin tone of that kid andcreating a diploma in his hand
to create an entirely newproduct, for example.
(27:09):
That would be a generative AIexample, right?
A non-generative AI examplewould be okay, we still take
that kid, we put the cappingdown, but we don't create the
hands and we just leave themdown to the side.
That's not creating anythinggenerative, right?
So that would be ournon-generative product.
So we could offer either or inthat fashion.
And so again, we're gettingready to do a proof of concept
and a pilot with a couplecompanies out there for that
(27:32):
specific model.
Um, but for the school industryas a whole, I mean, it could be
really whatever you think of.
And I think more of, and youtell me what you think, Gary,
but I think more of like yourHalloween, your Christmas, your
Easter, your spring, the funstuff, and basically providing
content and you know, ourvideos, which are basically MP4s
(27:52):
for the most part, that theycan share through the pipeline.
Gary Pageau (27:55):
Well, even then, you like you know, you can do
like school mascot, like yousaid, you got sports pictures,
you got things like that thatyou could do that's additional
content that they're capturingthat they could, you know, use
generated value in some way to,you know, hooray for Team Spirit
or School Spirit or whatnot.
I mean, those are alladditional applications because
I know, especially in the schoolphotography space, you know, a
(28:16):
lot of photographers areobligated to take pictures for
the yearbook at different eventsand do other things, and that
might be an opportunity for thistype of application.
Heath Lassiter (28:26):
Absolutely, 100%.
So, no, I agree with thatassessment.
And again, I wasn't thinkingabout schools the whole time.
I have gotten a little bit ofpushback from the school
industry, uh, but I've also hada lot of people open up and say,
wow, these are some pretty goodideas.
I think I think we need topivot and change to something
different.
So, people wanting to see thisdemo in person.
Gary Pageau (28:46):
Perhaps if they were in San Francisco, where
would they be and where wouldcould they see you?
Heath Lassiter (28:52):
Absolutely.
So uh October 28th and 29th,um, I will actually be at Visual
First in San Francisco.
Uh, our good friend HansHartman actually runs the uh the
event.
Uh, fantastic event, a lot ofC-level executives in the photo
and video industry.
I've you know learned so muchthrough not only attending
(29:13):
these, but just having thebasically the ability to attend
these and and talk to a lot ofhigh-level people out there that
truly understand and love thephoto industry as you and I do.
Gary Pageau (29:24):
And what are you gonna be showing?
I mean, you're doing an actualon-stage demo, right?
Heath Lassiter (29:28):
So, you know, I was gonna do an on-stage demo,
but what I decided to do is kindof flip it a little bit.
A lot of people told me thatthis was a probably not a great
idea, but instead I'm gonna goahead and run with it.
And what I'm gonna do is I'mgonna do an introduction because
it's about a four minute timeframe that I've got to actually
push through this.
Right.
I know the moderator of that,so I've got to be, you know,
spot on.
Gary Pageau (29:48):
And he will be quite stringent on the time,
trust me.
Heath Lassiter (29:51):
Oh, I know, I know.
I if I'm one minute over, I'mdead in the water.
Gary Pageau (29:55):
One second over, you're over.
Heath Lassiter (29:57):
That's what I meant.
But no, I'm gonna behighlighting our technical.
Technology.
I'm going to talk a little bitabout who I am and uh what the
company does.
And then I'm going to jump intoan explainer video because
instead of me talking about mycontent, my content is
completely visual.
So I want everybody in theindustry to see what I actually
do from the video side, fromwhat we do as far as our fusion
(30:20):
product to our immersionproduct, and then where we're
going to the next level.
So I've created an explainervideo that's going to highlight
our technologies through that.
And then afterwards, I'mactually working on a web app
right now.
And if I can get it finalized,and you will know this very
well, as long as I have a goodinternet connection, right?
Right.
(30:40):
And have good cell phoneservice, I might kill it.
But hopefully, I'm going to atthe very end put a QR code, tell
people to pull out theirphones.
They're going to scan the QRcode.
It's going to open up theircamera, they're going to take a
selfie of themselves, and thenthey can put themselves in our
tiger immersion or a wizard onthe fly.
But again, I might kill thatdepending on the technology once
(31:02):
I get there.
Gary Pageau (31:03):
So well, from what I understand, the brand new
venue, which is public TV uh TVstation, apparently the internet
is very good there, from whatI've been told.
Heath Lassiter (31:11):
So excellent.
Gary Pageau (31:12):
So hopefully the part of the infrastructure
upgrade for the 2025 visualfirst is include hopefully
reliable internet, which ofcourse is the bane of every tech
conference is getting reliableinternet.
So hopefully that'll happen forus.
Heath Lassiter (31:27):
But we could test it out, right?
But there might not be thethree to four hundred people
there waiting as well that areon the internet.
Gary Pageau (31:32):
Exactly.
Exactly.
I sure would hate to say, hey,scan the QR code and it doesn't
work just because of that.
Well, hopefully it'll be agreat demo.
So you're going to be uhlaunching this more or less
publicly at Visual First.
Anything else you're going tobe uh talking about at Visual
First or looking forward toseeing while you're there?
Heath Lassiter (31:50):
Well, the coming out party actually starts today
with you, Gary.
So thank you for having me forone.
So so this is this is me comingout with the company.
Um, Visual First is when I'mgoing to be doing my first big
big presentation.
We are doing our website aswell.
So that will be launching herewithin the next two weeks.
And yeah, I'm going to beshowing all the current products
that we currently have in ourpipeline and talking to
(32:11):
individuals that we can actuallyhelp and create new content
for.
Because again, I can createcontent fairly quickly from my
perspective because of ourin-house design teams.
And I can pump out somethingspecifically for e-commerce
platforms or whatever people areactually needing out there.
Because again, my technologyisn't really geared only for the
theme park cruise line schoolmarkets.
(32:31):
It's it could be anything withphotos, events that are out
there, anything dealing withvideos.
We really want to disrupt thismarket with our technology.
Gary Pageau (32:39):
Awesome.
Well, thank you, Heath, fortaking time.
And I hope people when the whenthe website does launch, people
will be able to get there.
And I look forward to seeingyou in a very short time at
Visual First.
Heath Lassiter (32:50):
Absolutely.
Look forward to it.
And uh yeah, I'll see you heresoon, Gary.
Thank you.
Erin Manning (32:55):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society Podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
www.the dead pixels society dotcom.
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the
photoimaging industry's leadingnews source.
Here's your host, Gary Pageau.
The Dead Pixels Society Podcastis brought to you by Mediaclip,
Advertek Printing, andIndependent Photo Imagers.
Gary Pageau (00:17):
Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels
Society Podcast.
I'm your host, Gary Pageau, andtoday we're joined by Heath
Lassiter, who's the founder ofNiche AI, and it's in the volume
imaging business.
But we all know Heath from like17 different companies he's
been through over the years.
Hi Heath, how are you today?
Heath Lassiter (00:35):
I'm doing good, Gary.
How are you today?
Gary Pageau (00:38):
Doing great, doing great.
Always good to see you andcatch up with you.
You seem to you've been apresence in the industry for,
like I said, quite possibly athousand years.
Where did you get started inthis business?
Heath Lassiter (00:51):
Yeah, so and thank you for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Um, I began my journeybasically in the photo industry,
I would say about 23 years ago,uh, with a company called
Express Digital.
Uh, that company provided aleading ecosystem for
professional photographers, uh,labs, and e-commerce platforms.
And so my experience there,particularly working with CEO
(01:11):
Graham McFarlane and CTO, hisbrother, Kevin McFarlane, they
truly offered invaluableinsights into the industry,
which ignited my passion forphotography.
But really, throughout mycareer, I've been you know
fortunate enough to haveexceptional mentors, notably,
you know, Robert St.
Marie, whom you know very wellwith 36 picks.
Yeah.
Just a genuinely you know,smart and inspiring individual.
(01:34):
Uh, and my friend Russ Steiger,who is a highly intelligent CTO
who specialized in software fortheme parks and workflows in
the past.
And so that's where I get mydeep appreciation for the
industry.
Gary Pageau (01:45):
And so you were with Express Digital for a long
time.
What then when we moved on fromthere, what did you do?
Heath Lassiter (01:51):
Yeah, from there basically I started uh
consulting.
So I worked as a consultant inthe industry, partnering with
various companies to boostrevenue, uh, develop new
products, and create strategicvisions for the most part.
Gary Pageau (02:02):
Cool.
So, you know, technologybusiness development has sort of
been your thing, and you'vekind of focused a lot in the
volume space, it seems like.
And can you kind of define whatvolume means in your context?
With the, you know, because itcould mean a lot of things to
different people, right?
Heath Lassiter (02:18):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
You know, I've engaged invarious complex workflows over
the years, delivering softwaresoftware solutions, that is,
across diverse verticals.
So I feel truly privileged, youknow, to work alongside of some
of the innovative minds thatI've worked with.
But as far as the high volumeuh is concerned, you know, I
I've been working in the highvolume space, not only on the
school side, but on the themepark side, event side, crew
(02:40):
side.
And it just actually fits theniche uh that that I've been uh
no pun intended, of course, thatI've been working on and trying
to come up with newertechnologies to help people not
only advance generative andnon-generative AI, and we will
get into that in a second, butreally to give them something
unique and different, to behonest with you.
Gary Pageau (03:00):
So the volume space has been really interesting
because you know, back in theday, a lot of this stuff was
captured analog, right?
With film and different things,and then you had, you know,
maybe in theme parks and things,you had maybe had video capture
and video prints, which wereterrible.
And then as things gone havegone digital, uh, it's created
all kinds of new opportunitiesfor a lot of people, like
(03:23):
especially especially like yousaid, in school photography and
in the event space and cruiseships and things like that.
What do you think customers inthose segments are looking for?
Are they really looking forcapturing a memory or is it
something else?
Heath Lassiter (03:41):
You know, I think it's one for capturing a
memory, and two, it's somethingthat can they can actually share
on social media platforms.
You know, the possibilitiesthat AI offers for elevating
those sectors, in my opinion,are immense.
And I believe it's crucial forcompanies to adopt both
generative and non-generative AIto really evolve and to avoid
(04:01):
you know falling apart withstagnant content, in my opinion.
Gary Pageau (04:05):
Because I think it is a kind of changed the value
proposition of especially likeevents and theme parks, where
you know, the the the print thatthey would sell was the value,
right?
That was the transaction.
They were looking to sellprints from your picture on a
roller coaster, but now theywant that picture shared, they
(04:27):
want it sent out almost as apromotional application.
Heath Lassiter (04:30):
Yep.
No, I completely agree withthat 100%.
So, you know, what I'd like todo is introduce my company,
which is niche AI.
And what we do is, and I'll getinto that, we provide machine
learning and AI inference modelsfor enterprise businesses.
And so, going back to yourquestion, our platform is at
production scale, uh, and it'sbuilt for throughput.
So, from precision cutouts tobranded fusion to what we call
(04:55):
immersive scenes, even motionfrom stills, what we're doing
right now, which is prettyamazing.
And I'll get into that atVisual First a little bit more.
You know, we don't justpreserve accuracy, we add uh,
you know, emotion into thosestills, transforming static
images into like livable sharingmemories.
Gary Pageau (05:12):
So you talk a little bit about that, where
you're taking something andadding something to it that may
or may not have been in theoriginal photo.
That really kind of gets awayfrom just the memory keeping
aspect almost into theentertainment space.
Heath Lassiter (05:27):
Yeah, correct.
You know, from what I've seen,Gary, you know, AI has changed
the way, well, it provides forone, it uh it provides new
opportunities, but it alsoprovides new challenges.
So AI has changed the waycontent is created.
You know, the biggest thingthat I'm starting to notice in
working with AI is client andcustomer preferences evolve, and
AI unleashes a lot ofcreativity than ever before.
(05:48):
But the beautiful thing isopportunities are abound and
companies can capitalize onthat.
You know, there was an MITreport, I think that it came
out, I want to say probablyabout seven weeks ago, and it
said 95% of AI startups actuallyfail within that first year.
And we are in our first year.
We just started this company upin January of 2025, and we feel
(06:10):
very fortunate because for one,we are profitable and we are
pumping through anywhere fromabout 24 to 25 million images
and videos through our pipelinethis year alone.
So, you know, we have veryexperienced and dedicated, uh,
extremely dedicated and talentedteam.
And so I'm actually ramping upand developing new content for
(06:30):
current and future clients.
Gary Pageau (06:33):
You know, when people talk about the failure
rate in AI, right?
It kind of reminds me of kindof like the original dot-com
bubble, right?
Where all this money was beingpoured into AI or into, you
know, internet startups.
And you know, if you werebasically wanted to have a photo
site in 1999 or 2000, you know,all this VC money would be
chasing you, and then most ofthose imploded and just and
(06:56):
things like kind of get thatfeeling today with AI, where if
you just call yourself AI,someone's gonna drop about a
bucket of cash on you, uh, withthe hope that maybe one of those
investments will pay off.
How is yours different, right?
Like you, I mean, you saidyours is probable, you're making
money.
Um can you kind of describe whythat was important for you to
(07:18):
actually be a viable business asopposed to uh just another
thing that with AI in the name?
Heath Lassiter (07:23):
Sure, yeah.
Basically, leveraging AI canactually be long, expensive, and
risky when I'm talking to myclients out there.
So building in-house requires,for one, large investment, a lot
of time and a lot of money anda lot of resources to maintain.
And so it changes rapidly,requiring constant rebuilds.
You know, there's a lot ofexactly what you said, Gary,
off-the-shelf products out therethat removes, in my opinion,
(07:45):
distinct appearances.
Uh, customers become generic,outputs basically can drift,
deviating from desired agegroups and brand line
consistency.
Um, you know, and creativeteams have varying experience in
leveraging AI, and that's wheremy team comes in, to where we
can actually help leverage thatAI.
So, how big is your team?
Gary Pageau (08:04):
How what's what's what's the company like at this
point?
Heath Lassiter (08:07):
So, right now we're about nine strong, and I'm
actually building new contentbecause I'm getting ready to
onboard another customer.
So I'm hiring a lot ofengineers, uh, commute computer
vision for the most part, uh, asof right now.
And once I take this to thenext level, I'm gonna be hiring,
you know, abroad for for allverticals, or shall I say, all
positions in the company thatis.
Gary Pageau (08:28):
So when you talk about specifically the things
your company offers for let'ssay a you know, a uh a volume
photography application, you youknow, on your website, you've
got three things you mentioned.
You know, you mentionedextraction, you mentioned fusion
and headshot.
Extraction's been around for awhile, it's kind of like you
(08:48):
know, table stakes for a lot ofthis thing.
What do you mean by by fusion?
What is the fusion offeringfrom uh your company?
Heath Lassiter (08:57):
So we the only reason we have the extraction is
because we built the extractionto build our other models.
Our fusion model is basicallyan asset that is actually on a
body part.
So, you know, if we put apenguin on a shoulder or in a
hand, or we do use a HarryPotter scene, for example, or a
wizard scene that is, forexample, and I put some type of
um wand in your hand, that isconsidered a fusion type product
(09:19):
because we're associating theasset with the actual body part
itself.
The immersive is going to bemore of a face swapping
technology, but it's more of ourversion two.
So we're calling it theimmersive experience.
And what we're doing is we'rebasically putting people's heads
into people actually withpenguins and walking with
penguins, and we're changingtheir moods and changing their
(09:39):
expressions.
In my opinion, when we startedthis back in January, some of it
looked, and I hate to use theword creepy, but some of it
didn't look like my kid per se,because I was using my daughter
as an example, some of thesephotos.
And I was like, oh my gosh, Iwould actually never buy that.
However, we fine-tune that, andthe models have changed
tremendously.
And I think we have a betterunderstanding of where we're at
(10:01):
with that, creating compellingpersonalized content using
either our customers' brandingor our assets.
So we can quickly leverage newcontent and models, and we're
deploying new models prettyquickly.
And it's all about automatingthe manual processes that were
done in the past because thosewere time consuming.
You'd have to build thebackground and the foreground,
(10:22):
and then you'd have to basicallyadjust it and crop it and so on
and so forth.
Ours is at volume and at scale,so we can basically deliver
more content for the less cost.
Gary Pageau (10:31):
And that's really where I think people are hoping
to monetize the uh AIexperiences through you know
increased workflow productionand everything.
When you talk about the costside of it, I mean you're
hitting servers and doing a lotof computation on all that kind
of stuff.
Is that getting faster?
How is that going?
Heath Lassiter (10:48):
Yeah, it's getting faster.
I mean, it depends on whatprocesses that you guys that
we're currently using out there.
Uh we're using the NVIDIAprocessors that are currently
out there.
Sometimes our cogs, dependingon how many servers we have spun
up, our cogs could go up ordown unless we're running those
at 24-7.
Um, but for the most part,we're trying to bring our cogs
down.
The more we can actually pumpthrough our volume, the better
(11:10):
we're gonna do as far asbringing costs down for our
customers and for ourselves, asfar as the cost of goods are
concerned.
So, really going back to ourfusion technology, really it's
about transforming guest photosand basically with our advanced
fusion technology.
And again, I keep saying this,but at enterprise level speeds
and quality, that's what we'retrying to get across.
Gary Pageau (11:30):
Now, for the the event market, that kind of is
interesting.
Like you said, you know, ifyou've got you know a you know,
a wizarding environment and youwant to have a you know
integrate some some elementsthat you know are not visible,
like you know, uh, you know, uhcreatures or you know, wands,
(11:50):
props, whatever.
So you can basically takesomeone's face and put them into
a scene in a movie, forexample, and it would look
pretty uh realistic.
How can you take that idea andtransform it into other segments
of the volume industry?
Heath Lassiter (12:04):
You know, so I'm I'm looking at the sports
industry specifically, thefashion industry, you know,
hyper-personalized seamimmersion product.
So what we do is we blendsubject with custom on-brand
assets for the most part, uh,face extraction, which is done
through our face swappingtechnology, which is now the
immersion.
We do have an age and genderidentification model that we
(12:26):
actually have to build in.
So it says, okay, is this achild?
Is this a teen?
Is this a is this a kid?
Is this an infant?
Is this an adult?
And then basically we have thatservice to where we actually
have an upscaling service aswell built into our technology
because one of our customers issending us such low res images
and our output is such highquality that we had to
specifically upscale that andwe're actually pumping out what
(12:50):
we're calling motion right nowas well.
So we're taking a still imageand we can have their face
actually moving.
And I've got a scene that I'mgonna be showing at visual first
with a tiger and how thetiger's yawning and how the kids
looking at the tiger just froma still image alone.
So, going back to your questionthough, you know, we're really
targeting industries that canuse that type of technology and
(13:10):
going back to the event space.
So we're trying to come up withsomething new, something
creative, but we're also tryingto bring that price down for
people.
And it does take away, youknow, in my opinion, from some
editing jobs, but at the sametime, it's going to create new
jobs because you're gonna haveto, you know, do some quality
control on the back end, butthat gets those companies to
focus in on different areas oftheir business of growth, and
(13:32):
that's what we're trying to helpcompanies do right now.
Gary Pageau (13:35):
Do you get much pushback from customers who
think, you know, well, this isnot really what the customer is
experiencing in the park.
You know, they weren't theyweren't actually encountering a
tiger, if you will.
And right, you know, is thereor are people's expectations
changing that they want thissort of thing?
(13:55):
I guess where I'm I'm gettinggetting back to is the idea that
the the original photo and anevent was a memento, right?
It was capturing that memory orthat image, and now it's
evolving into an entertainmentexperience, right?
Heath Lassiter (14:12):
You know, I guess what I'm seeing really is
I'm starting to see an adoptionrate from the younger generation
for one, uh, for bothgenerative and non-generative
AI.
And I think it's rapidly, asyou see across all social media
platforms, you know, it'srapidly increasing, you know,
due to massive changes we'veseen in the past 12 months.
So, in my opinion, it'sessential for businesses to
adapt and integrate AIresponsibly, of course, to not
(14:34):
only stay ahead of the curve,but to not get left behind
because of how things are youknow moving and and really
evolving out there.
Gary Pageau (14:41):
You spun this up pretty quickly, right?
You know, you've only been uhyou start finding the company
January.
I know you've been working onit longer than that because
we've talked for a while.
But correct.
But how much of this stuff,like you said, much was off the
shelf, but how much of it iscustom?
How much of this is proprietarytechnology that you've
developed?
Heath Lassiter (15:00):
Some of it when we started was off the shelf,
but some of it's going to beproprietary moving forward.
So we're using a little bit offthe shelf, but we're basically
we have our own in-house designteam.
So we're basically designingeverything uh from our
perspective.
Uh, we do have uh companiesthat we're working with that
like to use their brandedassets, as I was saying a little
bit earlier.
Yep, absolutely.
You know, and that's and that'sperfectly fine, but we also
(15:21):
have an in-house where I thinkour products look a little bit
nicer, in my opinion, because weknow exactly where to place
exactly where to placeeverything for the most part.
So, yeah, for the most part,it's uh it's it again, it's at
volume and it's at scale for themost part.
Gary Pageau (15:35):
And you've got experience in the space, so you
kind of know what the customerswant.
Heath Lassiter (15:39):
No, absolutely.
And we try to do that, but somecompanies they don't want to
pay for the models because we docharge per model right now, but
if we use their assets, wedon't charge them as much.
The thing is, is when we usetheir assets, you know,
sometimes it goes back andforth, and then they need
approval, and then they needapproval for the assets, and
then it has to come over to us,and then we have to build it
versus hey, I can actually buildthis pretty quickly as long as
(16:02):
you give me the assets.
I could build this within threedays and I could deploy it
within seven days versus itgoing on for 14 or 21 days
because of all the internalpolitics for the most part.
Gary Pageau (16:11):
Yeah, because I imagine when you're dealing with
you know licensing and brandingand all of these things,
there's layers of legalitiesthat you've got to deal with.
Heath Lassiter (16:22):
Absolutely, 100%.
We always have to deal withthat, you know.
And and something I I didn't, Iwasn't gonna bring this up at
first, but you know, this reallybrings I wanted to talk about,
you know, an approach that I'vebeen working on specifically for
the school industry.
And and really it, I think thiscould possibly enhance product
offerings and generatesubstantial cost savings.
(16:42):
So my proposal really using thetechnology is optimizing fall
photography sessions really toeliminate the need for spring
shoots.
And what I mean by that isleveraging the power of AI to
create diverse and engagingproducts.
So, you know, what if, and I'vetalked to a lot of school,
high-volume school photographersout there.
(17:03):
I asked them how long theytypically spend with their kids,
and they said, uh, we spendabout 30 seconds per kid.
And I was like, that's prettyquick.
And they're like, well, we haveto get them through the
sessions.
And I said, Well, what if?
What if we just did 60 secondsinstead of 30 seconds?
It's a slight increase forallowing greater variety of
poses, uh, expressions,resulting maybe in a richer
(17:23):
collection of images perstudent.
And in my opinion, the keybenefit of this approach is the
ability to capture enoughhigh-quality photos in the fall,
making spring photographysessions and scheduling
unnecessary.
And what I mean by that is, youknow, with expanded library of
fall photos, we can utilize bothgenerative and non-generative
(17:45):
AI models to create new andexisting product lines.
So traditional themes likeChristmas, the cap and gown
stuff that I showed you, whichis basically getting ready to be
piloted, by the way, and I'lltalk about that later, you know,
and offer fun and imaginativebackgrounds with scenarios like
Star Wars or whimsical imageswith penguins or, you know,
(18:06):
lions, basically providing, youknow, unique keepsakes for
students and families.
So what I'm thinking right nowis by implementing implementing
our technology or any other AItechnology, you know, for
fall-centric AI-poweredstrategy, I think companies out
there might realize thesignificant bottom line savings
(18:28):
by eliminating, I would say,substantial overhead associated
with spring photographyoperations, including
photographer fees, travel props,scheduling, logistics.
I mean, that is a nightmare forsome of these companies, and
the turnover rate's so high thatthey have to train them every
year.
So, just in my opinion, thisefficiency gain also creates an
(18:52):
incredible opportunity tointegrate any new products that
are going to be into theire-commerce platform, hopefully
leading to an increased ASP,which is an average sales price,
and a more robust profitmargin.
So could you use?
Gary Pageau (19:06):
I'm just thinking trying to learn search on the
capture side.
Could you use even like youknow, because I know you're
saying, hey, you know, go from30 seconds to 60 seconds, but
that's double the time.
And I think some people mightgive you pushback on that, but
could you almost use like avideo to capture and pull stills
from that to get what you needwithin that 30 seconds?
(19:26):
Because I know different peoplehave played with that
technology where you know, Iknow Panasonic's been pushing
that for a while as hey, youknow, just capture a video and
you can get the 4K off thevideo, and it's great.
Heath Lassiter (19:37):
Yeah.
Um, is that a possibility?
That is definitely apossibility.
Now we're not doing it rightnow, but in my opinion, with
everything that we're doing,that is not far off, and I could
easily do that.
So I haven't thought about itthat way, but absolutely that is
something we could definitelydeliver on.
Gary Pageau (19:51):
And and for those who aren't familiar with the
difference between the fallshoot and the spring shoot,
because you know, I mean, backwhen I was a kid, you just did
the fall shoot, right?
And now the spring shoot is athing.
What is the difference in theoffering for the parents for the
spring shoot versus a fallshoot?
Heath Lassiter (20:08):
You know, the fall shoot is their is is school
photographers' main shoot.
It's gonna be that traditionalthree-quarter pose, right?
It's the it's the maintraditional pose that parents
actually want to see versus thespring is gonna be more
whimsical, like I was talkingabout a little bit earlier.
Something that's a little bitmore playful, especially when I
when I when I'm talking aboutthis, this is not gonna be for
(20:30):
your seniors, this is not gonnabe for your high schools, it's
mostly gonna be K through fiveor potentially K through eight.
And and we believe that thispotential strategic shift will
not only save customers or,shall I say, photographers on
operational costs, but alsodrive a new revenue streams.
And I have specifically talkedto a couple of companies that
are potentially interested inpiloting this with a couple of
(20:52):
schools to see how it works outbecause it is a headache for
them to basically have toretrain every single year.
And that's one of their main uhpain points.
And I'm trying to see if I cancover this.
Gary Pageau (21:03):
Yeah, and the and the other thing is is you know,
it's it's I imagine the buy ratefor spring shoots is lower than
than the fall shoot.
Heath Lassiter (21:13):
Correct.
And so if we can get creative,and again, whimsical, I hate to
keep using the same word, usingsomething a little bit different
and using our motion technologyto deliver it through their
pipeline.
So everybody wants to sharethings on TikTok and Facebook
and LinkedIn and Instagram andso on and so forth, right?
And that's the opportunity tocreate something new and
basically increase that package,whether it's only by five or
(21:36):
ten dollars, it will increase itbecause that's what we're
seeing with our currentcustomers, by the way.
Gary Pageau (21:40):
And the other thing is, is it's kind of expanding
that idea of you knowre-monetizing that image from
even the fall shoot.
Because I know, like someschool photographers are doing
very well with hey, I'm justgonna remarket the fall shoot in
November and tell mom that sheneeds to order a Christmas
ornament for grandma andgrandpa, right?
(22:00):
And just doing that remarketinghas people are seeing a lot of
success.
So if you can expand that in adigital idea to the spring, I
think you're gonna get some uhgood uptick on that.
Heath Lassiter (22:12):
You know, I'm hoping to.
And you know, I'm not trying totake anything away from what
you know, customers or shall Isay, what companies have done in
the past with school, but I'mtrying to just do something
maybe a little bit differently,not to necessarily
revolutionize, but come up withsomething different and
innovative.
Because as you know, Gary,sometimes it's a little
stagnant, it goes slow for alittle bit while a little while,
(22:32):
and then you've got new contentthat comes out and it opens
people's minds to new ideas.
Because last year, you know,when I was showing you my
technology, I was talking to avery large company out there,
and I just talked to themrecently.
And when I talked to them lastyear, they specifically said
that they could not use an APIcall because they could not
share their data both ways.
And I was like, okay, that'sinteresting.
(22:54):
So we need to come up with anon-premise type solution.
And then they also stated thatthey could not use generative AI
in their solutions.
Well, I had a discussion withthem uh about I'd say about a
month and a half ago, and thathas completely changed because
AI is revolutionizing the waythat people are dealing with
photos and videos, and sothey're open to that now,
they're open to API calls.
(23:15):
So we don't have to go in thereand put an on-prem solution and
monitor the hardware and takethe capex hit and so on and so
forth.
We're basically doing things,and I just think generative AI,
generative and non-generative AIis really opening the door for
a lot of companies out there,including it.
Gary Pageau (23:32):
So, but but their first question was regarding the
privacy aspect, right?
Because about student imagesgoing back and forth.
Do you think that's not goingto be a concern, or are you able
to comply with those securityrequirements?
Heath Lassiter (23:44):
I mean, we're going to be complying with those
uh security, definitely 100%,you know, and that's that's
important, right?
You can't misuse you there'sprivacy implications, like you
were saying.
While AI can be misused, italso provides opportunities if
you're doing it in the rightway.
So I think the adoption ratefor both, in my opinion, both
for generative andnon-generative AI, I just think
(24:04):
it's gonna completely change.
And and basically people aregonna have to adopt or they're
gonna get left behind, in myopinion.
Gary Pageau (24:10):
Well, I think one of the things obviously, you
know, that you got to be verycareful of is you know,
appropriate use of a child'simage, right?
Because there are people whoare, of course, very concerned
about images being shared onlineof the children.
And you know, there's alwaysthose stories, it seems like
where you know, images werehacked or shared, and the moms
were very free, you know, upsetabout the fact that Sally or
(24:33):
Bobby's image may be on the darkweb somewhere.
So you've certainly got to makesure that that piece is taken
care of, and I'm sure you'vetaken care of that.
Heath Lassiter (24:41):
100%, absolutely, and that's something
that we have to deal with, youknow, on the European side, we
got to deal with GDPR as well.
So, you know, those are thingswe have looked into, and that we
we will continue to uh lookinto and comply with whatever
needs we have are necessary forthe most part.
Gary Pageau (24:56):
And that comes from your experience in the volume
space, where I think, you know,sometimes you know, there's a
lot of people looking at usingAI to, you know, quote,
revolutionize unquotephotography, but they don't have
the industry experience tounderstand what those concerns
are, right?
I mean, I've I've seen a fewpeople trying to pop up who, you
(25:17):
know, yeah, we can do all thisstuff, but they don't have any
experience in the volumeindustry, understanding the
privacy concerns, the securityconcerns, you know, those kind
of things, which are you knowparamount to that business.
Heath Lassiter (25:29):
Yeah, a lot of those companies are just
throwing things out there to seewhat sticks, versus my product
actually has well, not onlycustomers, but it has a very
sticky um ecosystem for the mostpart.
And once we've actually provenout our concept and increased
the average sales for thecompanies that we're working
with, and we do have statisticson that, that it's gonna take
them, it's basically taking themto another level, and they can
(25:51):
go out and get new customers andbasically work with new
products and basically driveinnovation forward.
Gary Pageau (25:58):
Now, you mentioned earlier a graduation product.
Did you want to talkspecifically about that?
That was something that waskind of unusual, I thought, with
how you were kind of usingthat.
Heath Lassiter (26:07):
Yeah, so I mean, one of the examples was the
images that I showed you.
So we can take a traditionalschool image, right?
Somebody lookingstraightforward or somebody
turned a little bit.
Um, and what we can do is weput a cap and gown on this
person.
So when you graduatekindergarten or fifth grade or
eighth grade, instead ofphotographers actually taking
(26:27):
the prop off somebody, puttingit on somebody else, the time
that it actually takes to dothat, then they have to fix
their hair and maybe put the haton and change the tassel over
where our software can actuallyautomate that.
And I've talked to a lot ofphotographers that say that
takes them a lot of time, andthat is a major pain point for
them.
So, what we do is we'veactually through scale and
(26:48):
through basically adjustingthings, we we have done what we
call a cap and gown.
So we can change the color ofthe cap and gown, we can change
the side of the tassel.
We can basically, if the kidhas no hands, we could do a
generative where we're basicallycreating the hands from the
skin tone of that kid andcreating a diploma in his hand
to create an entirely newproduct, for example.
(27:09):
That would be a generative AIexample, right?
A non-generative AI examplewould be okay, we still take
that kid, we put the cappingdown, but we don't create the
hands and we just leave themdown to the side.
That's not creating anythinggenerative, right?
So that would be ournon-generative product.
So we could offer either or inthat fashion.
And so again, we're gettingready to do a proof of concept
and a pilot with a couplecompanies out there for that
(27:32):
specific model.
Um, but for the school industryas a whole, I mean, it could be
really whatever you think of.
And I think more of, and youtell me what you think, Gary,
but I think more of like yourHalloween, your Christmas, your
Easter, your spring, the funstuff, and basically providing
content and you know, ourvideos, which are basically MP4s
(27:52):
for the most part, that theycan share through the pipeline.
Gary Pageau (27:55):
Well, even then, you like you know, you can do
like school mascot, like yousaid, you got sports pictures,
you got things like that thatyou could do that's additional
content that they're capturingthat they could, you know, use
generated value in some way to,you know, hooray for Team Spirit
or School Spirit or whatnot.
I mean, those are alladditional applications because
I know, especially in the schoolphotography space, you know, a
(28:16):
lot of photographers areobligated to take pictures for
the yearbook at different eventsand do other things, and that
might be an opportunity for thistype of application.
Heath Lassiter (28:26):
Absolutely, 100%.
So, no, I agree with thatassessment.
And again, I wasn't thinkingabout schools the whole time.
I have gotten a little bit ofpushback from the school
industry, uh, but I've also hada lot of people open up and say,
wow, these are some pretty goodideas.
I think I think we need topivot and change to something
different.
So, people wanting to see thisdemo in person.
Gary Pageau (28:46):
Perhaps if they were in San Francisco, where
would they be and where wouldcould they see you?
Heath Lassiter (28:52):
Absolutely.
So uh October 28th and 29th,um, I will actually be at Visual
First in San Francisco.
Uh, our good friend HansHartman actually runs the uh the
event.
Uh, fantastic event, a lot ofC-level executives in the photo
and video industry.
I've you know learned so muchthrough not only attending
(29:13):
these, but just having thebasically the ability to attend
these and and talk to a lot ofhigh-level people out there that
truly understand and love thephoto industry as you and I do.
Gary Pageau (29:24):
And what are you gonna be showing?
I mean, you're doing an actualon-stage demo, right?
Heath Lassiter (29:28):
So, you know, I was gonna do an on-stage demo,
but what I decided to do is kindof flip it a little bit.
A lot of people told me thatthis was a probably not a great
idea, but instead I'm gonna goahead and run with it.
And what I'm gonna do is I'mgonna do an introduction because
it's about a four minute timeframe that I've got to actually
push through this.
Right.
I know the moderator of that,so I've got to be, you know,
spot on.
Gary Pageau (29:48):
And he will be quite stringent on the time,
trust me.
Heath Lassiter (29:51):
Oh, I know, I know.
I if I'm one minute over, I'mdead in the water.
Gary Pageau (29:55):
One second over, you're over.
Heath Lassiter (29:57):
That's what I meant.
But no, I'm gonna behighlighting our technical.
Technology.
I'm going to talk a little bitabout who I am and uh what the
company does.
And then I'm going to jump intoan explainer video because
instead of me talking about mycontent, my content is
completely visual.
So I want everybody in theindustry to see what I actually
do from the video side, fromwhat we do as far as our fusion
(30:20):
product to our immersionproduct, and then where we're
going to the next level.
So I've created an explainervideo that's going to highlight
our technologies through that.
And then afterwards, I'mactually working on a web app
right now.
And if I can get it finalized,and you will know this very
well, as long as I have a goodinternet connection, right?
Right.
(30:40):
And have good cell phoneservice, I might kill it.
But hopefully, I'm going to atthe very end put a QR code, tell
people to pull out theirphones.
They're going to scan the QRcode.
It's going to open up theircamera, they're going to take a
selfie of themselves, and thenthey can put themselves in our
tiger immersion or a wizard onthe fly.
But again, I might kill thatdepending on the technology once
(31:02):
I get there.
Gary Pageau (31:03):
So well, from what I understand, the brand new
venue, which is public TV uh TVstation, apparently the internet
is very good there, from whatI've been told.
Heath Lassiter (31:11):
So excellent.
Gary Pageau (31:12):
So hopefully the part of the infrastructure
upgrade for the 2025 visualfirst is include hopefully
reliable internet, which ofcourse is the bane of every tech
conference is getting reliableinternet.
So hopefully that'll happen forus.
Heath Lassiter (31:27):
But we could test it out, right?
But there might not be thethree to four hundred people
there waiting as well that areon the internet.
Gary Pageau (31:32):
Exactly.
Exactly.
I sure would hate to say, hey,scan the QR code and it doesn't
work just because of that.
Well, hopefully it'll be agreat demo.
So you're going to be uhlaunching this more or less
publicly at Visual First.
Anything else you're going tobe uh talking about at Visual
First or looking forward toseeing while you're there?
Heath Lassiter (31:50):
Well, the coming out party actually starts today
with you, Gary.
So thank you for having me forone.
So so this is this is me comingout with the company.
Um, Visual First is when I'mgoing to be doing my first big
big presentation.
We are doing our website aswell.
So that will be launching herewithin the next two weeks.
And yeah, I'm going to beshowing all the current products
that we currently have in ourpipeline and talking to
(32:11):
individuals that we can actuallyhelp and create new content
for.
Because again, I can createcontent fairly quickly from my
perspective because of ourin-house design teams.
And I can pump out somethingspecifically for e-commerce
platforms or whatever people areactually needing out there.
Because again, my technologyisn't really geared only for the
theme park cruise line schoolmarkets.
(32:31):
It's it could be anything withphotos, events that are out
there, anything dealing withvideos.
We really want to disrupt thismarket with our technology.
Gary Pageau (32:39):
Awesome.
Well, thank you, Heath, fortaking time.
And I hope people when the whenthe website does launch, people
will be able to get there.
And I look forward to seeingyou in a very short time at
Visual First.
Heath Lassiter (32:50):
Absolutely.
Look forward to it.
And uh yeah, I'll see you heresoon, Gary.
Thank you.
Erin Manning (32:55):
Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixels
Society Podcast.
Read more great stories andsign up for the newsletter at
www.the dead pixels society dotcom.
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