Feb. 16, 2026
Majestic AI - Lets Talk to Local Businesses
Send me a text message What if you could watch a city grow before your eyes? Jonathan from Majestic Studios joins us to share how he turns dusty engravings and archival photos into living, breathing histories using AI, careful research and a documentary maker’s eye. This isn’t about flashy tricks. It’s about building trust: start with a rock-solid script, choose a measured voice that sounds like a real historian, and guide the visuals so they evolve smoothly from a Roman fort to a modern skyl...
What if you could watch a city grow before your eyes? Jonathan from Majestic Studios joins us to share how he turns dusty engravings and archival photos into living, breathing histories using AI, careful research and a documentary maker’s eye. This isn’t about flashy tricks. It’s about building trust: start with a rock-solid script, choose a measured voice that sounds like a real historian, and guide the visuals so they evolve smoothly from a Roman fort to a modern skyline without losing plausibility.
We dig into the leap from quick viral shorts to 30-minute, 4K documentaries and why long-form is where real immersion happens. Jonathan breaks down the pipeline, from selecting reference images and generating motion to stitching timelines that feel cinematic on a TV. He’s candid about the challenges too: fact-checking when sources clash, hunting down AI glitches before they slip by, and tackling audience expectations when the subject is London, Paris, or soon, New York and Rome. The archive is vast, the pressure is real, and the pay-off is a clear, visual map through centuries that holds attention without noise.
Beyond technique, we talk about what survives when AI lowers the barrier to entry. Storytelling still separates signal from slop. Taste, pacing and editorial judgement turn tools into films. That stance shapes Jonathan’s vision for Majestic Studios: a go-to history channel for living rooms, not just phone feeds, expanding from cities to figures and inventions while keeping accuracy and clarity at its core. If you’re curious about where AI genuinely adds value to education, creativity and cultural memory, you’ll find a thoughtful, grounded roadmap here.
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00:00 - Welcome And Origins Of Majestic Studios
01:08 - Early AI Experiments And Viral Shorts
04:19 - From Mythology To Civilisations In Short Form
05:46 - Pivot To Long Form And City Histories
07:24 - Voiceovers, Authenticity And Finding “Frederick”
10:00 - Workflow, Research And Documentary Craft
12:12 - UK Cities, Paris Launch And Global Plans
13:40 - New York, Rome And Research Pressure
15:28 - AI Perception, Value Versus “AI Slop”
17:28 - Schools, Teaching Potential And Robotics
19:08 - Vision: A Go-To History Channel
21:05 - File Sizes, 4K Pipeline And “Modern Cartoons”
22:05 - Start-To-End Frame Transitions Explained
22:50 - Final Thoughts On AI’s Role And Hope
WEBVTT
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Hello and welcome to Let's Talk with Local Businesses, the podcast where I sit down with local businesses here in Cheltenham to chat about what they do and their story.
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I'm Reg, and today I'm really pleased to welcome Jonathan from Majestic Studios.
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Hi Jonathan, thank you so much for giving us your time and join us here on Let's Talk to Local Businesses.
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Hi Reg.
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Really good to uh really good to be here.
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Excited to chat.
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Wonderful.
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Right, Majestic Studios, would you please explain what that is?
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It sounds like you're part of Majestic Wines, but I don't think so because I can't see any wine behind you.
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Yeah, sure.
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So yeah, it's it's a name that I've sort of had and I've carried through ever since I started the YouTube channel, uh I think about a year ago.
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And I was just doing some funny shorts, some YouTube shorts.
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I was experimenting with AI and uh and I was using it to show evolutions of things.
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So it might be the beginning of uh teapot or something, or like the evolution of a specific car manufacturer, you know, just taking people through history.
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And uh they were getting quite a lot of traction.
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And uh thought, oh that I might might be onto something.
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And I just quite like the name Majestic because I knew I wanted to do a lot of like royalty things as well, because I was quite interested in the kings and queens.
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So I I I sort of sticked with Majestic.
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Um, and then the studios, I just wanted to kind of be like a bigger thing, if if you will, sort of like, you know, it's kind of like a brand, I wanted I'm I wanted to think about branding.
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So um yeah, I landed on the name Majestic Studios, and now it's uh it's doing longer videos where it's taking um sort of old engravings and historical photographs and bringing them to life using AI.
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And uh it's only in the last few weeks, really, that it's that it's really been able to do it reliably and accurately and and beautifully.
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Um and we can talk about that.
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But uh yeah, that's that's kind of how um that's kind of the evolution of Majestic Studios.
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Wonderful, that's wonderful.
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Now you you mentioned the uh in some people's eyes or ears, AI, which scares the life out of some people and other people love.
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Now, I normally, as people know when they listen to this, I normally I don't look or look into the business at all.
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It's completely new to me, so I ask the normal, normal sort of public questions.
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But in your case, because I had an idea what you were doing when we spoke originally on online, I did look at a couple of your YouTube videos, and I've got to be honest, folks, you really have to check these out because it is absolutely stunning.
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I mean, I can't believe for one minute that you've learned all that in the last year.
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You must have been doing AI beforehand because if you can learn AI that quick, everyone's gonna be doing it.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So, confession, yes, you are correct.
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Um, I've actually been doing it pretty much ever since the days of Chat GPT arrived on the scene.
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And uh back then you couldn't actually produce images, you couldn't create any any visual things.
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It was just you asked if like an AI assistant and it will do tasks.
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And I was doing like stories and stuff, and I was creating funny stories.
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Oh, this is really, really interesting.
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Um, and then it it all sort of took, you know, one step forward and another step forward so you could create images.
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Then you could then take those images and make them into real uh like moving scenes.
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And I just sort of rolled with the times.
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And uh yeah, I I I just loved it.
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I loved I'm a I'm quite a visual learner.
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So if I'm gonna learn something like history, which I wouldn't say I was like a history buff when I was young, but this has made me a history buff because I can see history being brought to life and it just resonates with me.
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And I love it, it's just so fascinating.
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It's like being in a in a museum or or but but even even better, just being there.
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So um, yeah, and I I just just invested in my skills over the last three years and really wanted to learn how to create not only the technical stuff, but actually how to create an engaging video and tell a story.
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Um, so I actually started off doing Greek mythology uh social media sort of videos, and they they took off because I I had an interest in Greek mythology, very random, I know, but uh yeah, I just I hadn't seen that many channels bring it to life using AI.
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So I was like, ah, okay.
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So I started uploading on TikTok and YouTube, and it was it again, that took off.
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And then I sort of evolved into um like ancient civilizations, and um as as the AI advanced and increased in sort of visual, you know, clarity, it got more stunning, like it got more HD, it got more, it was even better, and and that exploded as well.
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So I was like, I'm really enjoying this, and um, but I I was always doing short form content.
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Uh it was it was a pain, real pain, um, to do long form content because it would take you hours and hours and hours and hours.
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But um, yeah, short form was really good.
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It was quite addictive.
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It was, you know, you could you could produce a video in a day, um, and it would get potentially millions of views.
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So um yeah, I just started and now I've realized over the last few months that I really want to take this more serious, and long form is is where you can really captivate someone.
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Like you can tell the story.
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Like I'm now I'm doing the entire history of a specific city.
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So it's starting from you know the Roman times or wherever it started all the way up until now, and just show it, not just telling you, but showing you um what it what it looked like.
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Um, so so yeah, that's that's kind of the beauty.
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Yeah, I mean, I I I watched your London video, the one that you did from the Romans right the way through to modern London.
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Yeah.
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It's absolutely well, one that's fascinating, and I kind of know the history to a certain degree, because I love history app, I love the time team digs and all things like that.
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I love all that.
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So you were going through stuff to a certain degree that I sort of knew, but it was amazing to watch it from your perspective and what you had come up with.
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And I'm assuming all the voice side is AI.
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Um it's not your voice, that's for sure.
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Um, and is is all the actual text and wording that you that they speak, is that all done by you?
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Is that is that you produce all that?
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Yeah, so I I produced the AI voiceover.
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Um, and what what a lot of these channels are doing, they're they're creating like an AI character and sort of designing a character for their profile photo and then matching a voiceover to it, which which works well.
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It just sort of adds a little bit of humanity into it, but but ultimately it is an AI voice.
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And I I spent a while trying to find a good AI voice that sounds like he could be a historian.
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Um, and that's the one I landed on.
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And uh, yeah, you might you might come across the same voice in other channels as well, because a lot of them they like they tend to like that voice.
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He's called Frederick.
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And uh yeah, it it it it just I wanted to find a voice that wasn't really oh you know, over excitable because a lot of these AI voices, they they just overdo it.
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And and I didn't want to come across as just you know, as soon as you switch it on, it's like that really annoying AI voice.
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I can't remember what it's called, but it's just the one that the go-to AI voice.
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And uh yeah, it it just sounded so robotic.
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So the voice is everything as well.
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And I and a lot of people think, you know, that it's actually real, but the truth, the truth is it is actually a real voice, it is a real person in the world.
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And what it is, they've they have allowed themselves to train, train, you know, have other people use their voice.
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Um, and and they just do like an hour's worth of voice, and then the AI listens to it, and then you can use that voice for whatever you want it to say.
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Um, so it is a real voice, it's just not mine.
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Yeah, well, I mean, you can train your own voice if you wanted to use your own voice.
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So actually, without realizing it, maybe Frederick is actually a historian.
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Maybe he was that's what maybe he'd done.
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You know, that would it would be brilliant if that's what he did.
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That'd be great to find out, wouldn't it?
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You'd love to know.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I didn't want to use my own voice because I I I don't really like the sound of my own voice, but I don't think it went well with history.
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So I wanted to find someone who's a little bit older um and a little bit more even you know, more well spoken.
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So um yeah, that's who I landed on.
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Yeah, it is a fascinating.
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Now, of course, the big question is you know, you say it takes you said you do shorts and they take a day.
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Yeah.
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Now they're 30 seconds, 45 seconds, maybe a minute.
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Your videos on YouTube are around about a half an hour, 40 minutes in some cases.
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Come on.
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How long does it take you to put one?
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Let's say the London one, if you can remember, because I know it's an earlier one of yours.
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How long does that take to do from sort of start to finish approximately?
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I mean, you know, it's certainly one a day.
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No, it was probably about two weeks.
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From ideation, like from scripting to like, okay, right, I need to get the script.
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I need to that that alone takes me one to two days um to compile the script because I that is ultimately the entire crux of the of the video.
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Um, and it's very important with history that you're telling, you know, an accurate picture.
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It's it's it has to be you know accurate.
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It's either right or it's wrong.
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I mean, there are some great there are some gray areas in history, but you know, especially when you go back beyond you know centuries and centuries, it all gets a bit blurred.
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But um, yeah, so you have to make some assertions, but like um, yeah, uh I'll start with the script and then I'll turn that into a voiceover.
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I'll do that section by section.
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Then I will create all the images, turn those images into videos, um, and uh basically just keep rinse and repeat until I've got my entire script, and then I need to put it all onto a timeline and edit it all together to make it an actual video.
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Because you you could, like I said earlier, you you could learn the technical skills for this, but without actually knowing how to construct a video in sort of like a documentary style, I don't think it's going to resonate with viewers because that that's that's the real skill.
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You know, anyone can learn this stuff, but you you know, you do have to be a storyteller and and you do have to be emotionally aware of you know the pacing.
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And and there is there are so many factors to what makes a good documentary, and I'm always learning, and I I have still areas to improve, and but that's that's what I want to do.
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I want to get a better documentary maker, I want to um you know learn some more technical stuff, but it's but it's all gonna come with time.
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So I'm just one person at the end of the day.
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Oh, yeah.
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I used to say people who listen to this know I used to be in show business professionally, so I've done TV, I've done I haven't done movies, but I've done TV, stage work, and so on.
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So I know a little bit about what you're saying, you know, in the sense, you know, it's all storytelling in its own way, and there's an art to it, and you have to learn it, you know, and you say you know the technical side, but if you don't know how to put it together correctly, no matter how much technical side you know, it ain't gonna work.
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Yeah, it won't work.
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Pretty much got it nailed down.
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I say I've seen a few of them and they are amazing.
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But there's one because you've done different cities around the UK, but I have one big complaint.
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Oh god.
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Where's Cheltenham?
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Oh yes.
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Come on, come on, they're all gonna want to know where Cheltenham is.
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Admittedly, uh, I know I am from Cheltenham and I've lived in Cheltenham all my life, and that will be on the radar.
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Um, it's I am starting with the very major cities around the world at the moment.
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So I uh being born and bred in the UK as well, I I find it fascinating to like just focus my efforts on the UK cities at the moment.
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I am venturing out, I just published Paris.
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Um that's literally just gone out today, and I'm gonna probably do New York next.
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And then once I've sort of got my fix of international stuff, I'm always gonna come back to the UK, and uh that's where I will I will look at my hometown and things like that.
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Um, because yeah, Cheltenham, again, rich history as well.
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Yeah, I was gonna say you've got a bit of a history here, haven't you?
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That's for sure.
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Yeah.
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Is there any particular place that you haven't done yet, or maybe you've done it already, that is like the the sort of the big one, the one that you know really is massive, or is you know, you know is going to be a big job to do.
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Is have you come have you thought about that one yet?
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Yeah, so there's kind of two.
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I think the New York one is gonna be massive because everyone knows New York, it's like one of those cities that is just like well, it it's it's the city of the world almost, you know.
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And it again, that's got a really rich history, and that's so different to Europe as well.
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It'll be a completely different story to any that I've told already.
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Um, and there's more pressure on me to get it right because I'm not from the US.
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So that would take me a longer time to research um and compile and and produce.
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And but the great thing about New York is that there is so much material online for his like the the the archives for New York is just I looked at the library, it was like 150,000 pages worth of stuff.
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And I was like, wow, okay.
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So um I'll I'll have my work cut out, but um yeah, so it was New York, and what was the other one?
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I I just thought of another one.
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Um oh I can't remember, but oh yeah, that was it.
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Rome.
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Yeah, Rome I want to do.
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Oh yeah, yeah, because obviously the the the Romans, I and and I love the Romans, like ancient stuff, it's just everyone loves the bit of Romans.
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Um actually quite interesting how so many of our cities have started with the Romans.
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Um, so yeah, that I do want to do Rome again, like not being from that country, it's the same issue that I have with the New York.
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So um being from the UK, the ones I'm doing from the UK, it's easier for me when I'm going through what the AI has produced to see if that's actually accurate because I'm from the from that country.
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Um, but yeah, I am thinking about whether I need to maybe get a few more people on and just you know, um start building a team.
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Uh, because I I I I take this very seriously.
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I actually see a future in it.
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Um, and yeah, I j I don't want to be bogged down just by myself, you know, like doing all that all this stuff.
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It's like a huge, huge thing on my plate.
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Yeah, well God, trust me, I know.
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Been there.
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I I am there.
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You've actually partly you partly mentioned about the future.
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We'll come back to that in a minute, the future of the company.
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Yeah.
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So I wasn't saying what inspired you to start the business, but I mean you partly sort of said that yourself.
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It was you love history and so on, and that sort of grew into playing around and then moving on to what you're doing now.
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So you kind of beat me to it on that one, you're rotter.
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Yeah, I just I loved being able to see stuff like it was so easy, like just put in a prompt and see something come alive, and it just I don't know, it just resonated with me.
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And uh, yeah, like I said, I was a visual learner and I I knew that I would like to see those sorts of videos being made, so it was pretty much just an experiment to see if other people might as well, and it turns out they do, so yeah, it is it is um it honestly, folks.
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If you haven't looked at his YouTube channel, and I will I will put a link to his YouTube channel, obviously, in the podcast page, because you've genuinely honestly got to see it to believe it, because no matter how much we try and describe it, it doesn't do it any on it any good.
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It's you've got to really see it.
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But my my fascination is you say you create the the you know the the the text, the storyline, you know.
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Now obviously, I know I've seen it where you have a 17th-century image, you know, whatever, and then that sort of changes into a three-dimensional real life footage.
00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:35.919
That's okay.
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:43.840
Those ones, there might be four or five of them during the program, might be two or three, but the rest of it, how do you create that?
00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:45.919
Is it a drawing you do yourself?
00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.440
I mean, or do you ask AI, I mean, how on earth do you create that?
00:15:49.759 --> 00:15:57.120
All I need is one image of like so if, for example, the London one, we'll take that one when it was a Roman civilization.
00:15:57.279 --> 00:16:02.480
All I need is one royalty-free image to base it on of the Roman civilization.
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:11.360
And obviously, as we know, it's not gonna be, it is just an interpretation, it, but though those interpretations are based on texts, uh, ancient texts.
00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:14.240
So it's kind of like a visualized, and it's as close as we can get.
00:16:14.559 --> 00:16:24.720
So, you know, like we're not I'm not saying that that's gonna be 100% accurate, but it's it's as accurate as we possibly could get it based on all the knowledge we have.
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:28.559
So we're not taking those images as gospel.
00:16:29.759 --> 00:16:41.519
But certainly when you get to about, I would say, the 1500s, 1600s, um, you know, it it starts to get a bit more accurate as as they are more artistic impressions from the people that lived at the time.
00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:49.679
So you you have to sort of trust that oh, you know, their artistic impression is about you know, they're going to be painting what they see.
00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:53.919
So uh, you know, that's and they're all in the public domain.
00:16:54.159 --> 00:17:03.120
So, you know, it's it's like, yeah, a lot of a lot of people say, well, you know, and there are some glitches that happen occasionally.
00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:10.240
I mean, uh, you know, it we can't because in a 32-minute video, it's we're dealing with AI at the end of the day.
00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:16.000
And it the funny the funny thing is when I did the uh York one, I w I always watched them back.
00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:23.119
I always watch them back, and I and obviously I I I look for sort of AI glitches, and I can't, I can't, you know, some go under the radar.
00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:23.519
Yeah.
00:17:23.839 --> 00:17:35.599
There was one that was a four-legged chicken, and uh it was sort of like uh the AI could not decide if it was a dog or a chicken, so it just sort of made it into a weird uh four-legged chicken.
00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:37.359
A dog chicken.
00:17:37.519 --> 00:17:38.000
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:39.359 --> 00:17:43.119
Well, if you if you if you like chicken legs, you're laughing.
00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:44.079
What's the problem?
00:17:45.200 --> 00:17:48.400
Maybe you maybe the AI come up with something that no one ever thought of.
00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:52.400
If you if you like the legs of chicken, I mean KSV would love it.
00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:54.880
KFC would love that chicken.
00:17:55.359 --> 00:17:56.480
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:58.400
I mean, you know, to save them money.
00:17:58.480 --> 00:18:00.559
I mean, one chicken with four legs, thank you very much.
00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:14.480
Yeah, you know, but it's like it's things like I say when I watched it, you got the rats, like when there was plague or whatever you mentioned, you know, you've got the rats running around and you got the images of the people walking about and doing it's absolutely amazing.
00:18:15.200 --> 00:18:18.480
I sat there watching it, how on earth did he do this?
00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:30.559
You know, I mean I know AI is good, but either he's extremely good at telling it what he's looking for, or he's got a very special program that does this because that's fascinating.
00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:35.920
The thing is, a lot of these as a as a viewer of YouTube, I've been I live on YouTube, right?
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:53.279
And and I I I have my fair share of history content that I watch, but to date, I haven't really come across many channels, certainly in the last few months, uh uh sorry before the last few months, sorry, that have produced historical documentaries uh in this way.
00:18:53.440 --> 00:19:00.319
They've all compiled sort of historical archival footage or images and sort of put a narrate a narrator over the top.
00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:01.359
And that's totally fine.
00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:06.799
And that and I I respect them for that because you know that is a lot of people actually prefer to see it that way.
00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.079
It's uh it's not for everybody, my channel, certainly.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:18.000
And you can see from the comments that some people say AI is slot, just because it's AI, for the sheer fact that it's AI, they will switch off.
00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:18.880
And that's fine.
00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:20.400
I totally respect that.
00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:30.240
Um, but for me, like I wanted to see, though, I thought how amazing would it be if we could take that image and make it give it like an artist, like an AI impression of that.
00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:43.200
Um, and it's only until uh sort of up until the end of last year that we were actually able to do that reliably, because it could take an image and actually make that photo realistic.
00:19:43.279 --> 00:19:52.720
Uh, instead of previously, you'd you'd take an image, upload that as a reference image, and say, right, AI, go and create a version of it, but it'll be totally different.
00:19:52.799 --> 00:19:56.480
It'll be like a style reference rather than the actual image reference.
00:19:56.640 --> 00:19:56.960
Yeah.
00:19:57.200 --> 00:20:00.960
So you can get the feeling of like medieval London, but it wouldn't be that image.
00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:08.480
And yeah, as I said, only a few weeks ago, really, uh we're looking at the end of 2025, that it was um possible to do this.
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:12.559
And that's why we've seen channels like myself and a few others sprout up.
00:20:13.039 --> 00:20:25.359
I would imagine being you sort of playing around with it since Chat GPT started, I would imagine the first time you sort of said there's an image to AI, create whatever, you know, that and you saw it change it into what you wanted.
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:28.000
You must have sat there and gone, thank you.
00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:30.640
You must have screened or something, I imagine.
00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:32.319
You're like, ah, I've got it.
00:20:32.559 --> 00:20:37.279
Yeah, that's the thing about AI is that every week there's just something new that blows my mind.
00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:40.240
It's it's like, you know, it's moving so fast.
00:20:40.400 --> 00:20:48.799
I it's it's like the the golden age of the internet all over again, but the but but AI version, and it's like I I just cannot believe.
00:20:49.039 --> 00:21:03.119
And they always use this um reference to see the um the progress of AI, where Will Smith is eating spaghetti, and there's like a viral, there's a viral video of him eating spaghetti, and there's an AI version of him two years ago, and it's all over the place.
00:21:03.200 --> 00:21:07.759
It look it doesn't even look like him, it's just like, oh, it's so pixelated and awful.
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