AI Came for Her Headshot Business, So She Built Her Own App

About this episode.

Kristina Sherk has spent two decades shooting headshots in Washington, DC. When AI generators improved, she built her own app with zero coding experience. If you lead a team that has AI and isn't getting much back from it, start at 32:05, where she explains how a rollout can sound to the people in it: "You cannot incentivize an employee to use AI to make their job obsolete." By her own account she has never had a corporate job, so she comes at it from outside. Her app, GenerAItion Headshots, runs on an 800-word prompt that holds what she knows about lighting, posing and expression. She also talks with Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD about the six-month build contest she would run inside a company and what people still pay for in a studio. Matt and Rob are the co-founders of Average Robot and authors of the book The Elephant in the Algorithm.

Chapters

1. 00:00Cold open
2. 00:34Meet Kristina Sherk
3. 01:51Why the first AI headshots looked like a joke
4. 04:29The friction in a corporate headshot day
5. 06:48The one question she asks every studio client
6. 07:1320 years of headshots in an 800-word prompt
7. 08:25Where is creative work heading?
8. 10:58Commodity or commemorative photography
9. 11:55Building an AI headshot app with zero coding experience
10. 13:53It is coming for me: what photographers fear losing
11. 15:23Film vs digital, all over again
12. 17:19Good photos come from your brain
13. 18:49Who should choose your AI headshot?
14. 21:01How she built the app with Claude
15. 23:42Do we need a thousand AI headshot generators?
16. 25:53Her own model, and businesses built in basements
17. 27:07Mindset, and what enterprises can take from it
18. 29:28A six-month AI build contest for employees
19. 32:05Why nobody uses AI to make their own job obsolete
20. 32:51What building with AI feels like
21. 36:23Make the first AI build personal
22. 37:44Complexity, risk and guardrails in big companies
23. 41:07What people still pay for in a studio
24. 42:38A third way between studio and app
25. 44:40What comes next for Kristina
26. 46:01Which photography she thinks is safe
27. 46:55Thanks
28. 47:33Outro and the book

Episode page

Episode page

The book

The Elephant in the Algorithm, Kindle edition out November 18, print to follow: pre-order it

In print

Want it in print? Join the book list

Free tool

Where does your team sit on AI? Take the AI Profit Ready Assessment

Guest

kristinasherk.com

Her app

GenerAItion Headshots

Instagram

@shark_pixel

LinkedIn

Kristina Sherk