Sovereign AI Hubs: Dubai Is Finished. This Is Why I Moved Everything To El Salvador | @ARQ.Studios ​

What's in El Salvador? Something else. In El Salvador there is hope, there is proof that you can turn one of the most dangerous places in the planet to place that's as safe as this place is now.

And no one knows, like we know that it's actually safe. And that hope alone, that combination of by doing that, the people that came here, it's not that I do not feel like low quality people are even attracted to this place.

It's very niche, it's as if you know that type of place.

Hi guys, today is going to be an interesting one. I'm kind of a guest in my studio because Amir is here with his team. They've actually been living here in Bitcoin Beach at my house for the last month and so they're letting me visit today.

It's kind of funny to come in here and yeah, I have to have to walk in through my front door but I'm glad you guys are having sounds like you're having an amazing time.

This has been getting the creative juices flowing, being here in El Zonte, the natural beauty and all of that.

Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your history in AI film and then we'll talk about what's brought you guys to El Salvador.

You've done some cool films already. There was one released I think last year on El Salvador.

I think the first AI film I ever saw. So yeah, give us a little bit about your background.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm Amir. I am 23 years old and for the past month I've been staying in your house.

It's been absolutely amazing. Like you said, creative juices flowing and we found what we were looking for.

Absolutely. So thank you for that.

An introduction. So I am the CEO and founder of ARC. And ARC is AI Film Studio basically. And the reason we chose for the name ARC is because it's supposed to serve as a safe haven for the soul.

Where AI allows anyone to create anything in a second.

Hey guys, you know, we don't do commercials here at the Bitcoin Beach podcast because we want to keep it focused on what's happening here in El Salvador.

But we have something special that we're promoting right now because we have the stay at Bitcoin Beach project that's just been launched.

We've always wanted to make sure that when Bitcoiners come to El Salvador, they have a truly Bitcoin through and through experience in their accommodations and being able to stay at a place that mostly has other Bitcoiners.

And so we came up with this idea and I actually found my buddy Peter here to take the bull by the horns and then make it happen. So Peter, tell us what you got cooking for us.

Thanks, Mike. Stay at BitcoinBeach.com. This is the website and the brand that we started that it will host a growing number of premier properties that we have both the Tamango area and here in El Zonte.

The first is Puntamango Villas, which was the original place that Mike, you and I bought 16 years ago and it's been newly remodeled.

Six Villas that sit upon the best break, my opinion in the country, but stunning. The pool has been redesigned. We've got a bar on the Cantina, the full restaurant.

Casa Aguafria is a small little cabin in the same area and it sits right on the Aguafria Beach, a little bit more intimate. It's great for families and they want to go out and kind of get away.

And then here in El Zonte, there's three properties. First is the Citadel Mar, which Mike, you put your heart and soul into. We're sitting here now in the podcast studio that has two main houses overlooking the break of El Zonte, beautiful infinity pool.

Jim just got a first class place to stay and then a new condo that just got released in the barefoot project that's on the other side of the river.

Fifth story overlooking the ocean, again beautiful two bedroom and then seven suites that were opening up called Bitcoin Beach Suites.

That is really close to where a lot of the Bitcoin Beach story started. So when you come, you can use Bitcoin to book your stay right on the website.

You also can use it for transportation, for food, for all the services that we continue to add to the business.

So we'd love to have you. Please go to stay at Bitcoin Beach.com. You'll see pictures. You'll see all the different descriptions and information of the properties.

And you can hit us up on either on our web page or on Instagram. And we'll get back to you. We'd love to have you up. Please come to stay at Bitcoin Beach.

The most important thing becomes the ID and the effort behind the ID. And we've seen this. We've seen there's this term called AI Slop.

And a Slop is something that is effortless content that's easy to create. My take is more that we've always had Slop content.

We have people promoting gambling. We've people promoting all types of content that Slop and effortless. It's not AI that does this. It's more the human behind it.

So AI maybe just makes it a little easier. Yes, exactly.

So we created the arc. And I mean, the story of that is ancient times where we're going to go into that more.

But we, we, we always wanted to make films. My brother, my younger brother, a co-founder of Arc, he was always writing scripts from when he was 13, not me taking it seriously.

I couldn't care less to be honest, but when we saw these generation models come to life and we saw, hey, you can make an image now.

Maybe it will be possible to make a video soon. And then a month or two later, a five second clip was possible.

So when just to give people a little history, what kind of timeline are we talking five years ago? I think that come along.

I think I'm now 23, I think three and a half years ago, Chajibit came out. And that's the moment where I was like, whoa, technical revolution. It felt like, okay, this is the new internet wave that we had in like the 2000s.

We're going to have now again, but now for my generation. And I always wanted to just be part of of something like that, right?

I never really wanted to go into e-commerce or these, these, what I saw as small like hype, so I wanted to really be part of a new technical revolution.

So I remember calling my dad, I was like, look at this and I show him Chajibit and he's like, oh, you're onto something here was super awkward still, but it, but it worked.

And from that moment, I stopped with school, I moved from Holland to Morocco. And it's a beautiful moment where I was like, hey, dad, so did you grow up in Holland?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, born and raised. And but my, we were originally from Morocco, absolutely. And then I just told my father like, hey, I'm earning like $500 a month now.

I don't really know why I'm here. I'm going to leave and he was like, okay, well, great, but take your brother with you.

And he was 16 at the time and we did that super beautiful adventure, basically, and that's where it started. So we left and, and my brother really grew up with these tools.

I was 20, but he was like 16 years old and he doesn't know anything else than Chajibit and stuff like that.

And then the first image generation models came out and then the first video generation model came out.

It was really bad quality, but we could see that it was going there. And then we just made the decision to go all in on learning about those tools on translating his scripts that he had already like his passion projects and turned them into short 20, 30, 40 second things.

I see what happened. And I think that went that went on for around like a year that was still really bad and you kind of like sell this. It was just nothing to do.

And then the first video model came out that allows you to turn any image into a five second video compared to now still super bad quality.

But you could now officially stitch together five second five seconds until you had something of a minute.

And that's when we just started to do that every day. We tried to push out a minute video and our artisus was if we do one video a day for a year, it's going to be fine either way, right?

Because it's just compounding. We learn and something's going to happen and it's going to be fine. And that's actually what we did. And I think six months later we were like, okay, we have to found like an actual company.

Because we saw the rise of AI Slop and we saw the rise of the AI haters and we were like, okay, it's a beautiful opportunity for us to make a sense.

And that's what we did founded the arc. And when was that you founded the company six months, six months ago, just six months ago.

Yeah, really, this is so fresh. Wow. And it was a year ago that we were actually doing like one thing.

When was it that you guys did the release the El Salvador video? That was more than six months ago, right? No.

No, we released the El Salvador video in the 12th December. Really?

Okay, I thought it was, I'm getting old. My time, my time line up ends together.

I mean, it feels like months. So that was just a few months into the company.

Yeah, we were, our strategy was the following. We had zero following on social media. We kind of realized, okay, we need personal brands.

The biggest CEOs in the world started to create Instagram accounts. So a personal brand is obviously necessary.

So we started this. If you look at my Twitter, you will see, it's a six months old account also zero followers. And we were like, okay, how do we?

How will we make sure that we can charge for this video? No one knows us. How do you do that?

So we just picked like the high most hyped tech startup at the moment.

With the most tech social media presence, it was cluely. They just raised like 15 million dollars.

And it was what? Cluely. Cluely. Yeah, most hyped, a small tech startup in San Francisco that did really well.

And we were like, do you know what? Let's make an AI commercial for them.

And without them knowing just for free. Yeah.

And then in the hopes that they retweeted on Twitter so that we get this kick start of followers.

And then somehow authority so we can charge because if we can charge like $500 for a video, we do that four times a month.

And we can keep this company alive until we become actual filmmakers.

And we did that. And in 24 hours, we made a video, we put it live, we woke up to 250,000 views and 1000 followers gained.

And the entire company retweeted us. And that's where we closed our immediately, our first deal.

And we were like, okay, this is working, you know, for us, it was just fun.

And then we did second commercial, third commercial, fourth commercial, fifth commercial until we got invited to the Royal...

And were these commercials you were still just doing on your own?

Or were these ones where now actually people were coming to you and contracting you to do...

Yeah, after cluely, we started to get paid.

And then... That's pretty impressive after one.

Obviously, there was a lot that went into it before that.

But that gave you that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I kind of try to sell it also in terms of like to the community.

It is possible in just one video.

You kind of have to make like a smart move.

Is it lucky? I mean, I just understood the market at the moment.

But it's always kind of possible.

And then the only luck is them appreciating it.

And then we got invited to the Royal Opera House, the first AI Film Festival in India in Mumbai.

There was very like lucky and the guys saw like a video that we did.

And they were like, hey, we fly you out.

And there's this contest of like 10 teams or whatever.

And that's where we were able to finally make an own film.

So not a commercial, not title company, but something that we wrote from scratch.

And seeing that on the big screen in the Royal Opera House and the responses of the people.

That's when we were like, okay, we want to stop doing commercials actually.

And was this one of your brother's scripts that he had done before?

Yeah, this was one of his ideas that was born seven years ago or something like that.

That he was like, he just grabbed it out of the fault because I mean, necessary.

And we made the video in 12 hours from a hotel room in Mumbai.

And it was amazing.

And that is November, right?

And if you compare like that video to the videos that we can make today, the technology is doing.

It's doing, it's going so fast.

It's like, what was possible now?

Wasn't possible two weeks ago.

And then you can track that down two weeks and two weeks.

It's every, it's going to be so hard to keep up with.

You're trying to do your own project, but you're trying to keep up with all the advances at the same time.

And it's actually come to a point where sometimes you work on a project for a week.

And you have to redo the entire project because the model that came out makes everything that you did bad.

So this is the space that we're in.

And then in Royal Opera House, we obviously did it like in 12 hours.

And then we came back, we were located in Dubai at the moment.

And we came back from Mumbai to Dubai.

And we were like, oh, we got to go out there.

We need to meet more people.

What we did in Mumbai was so efficient.

We made films.

We met people.

We actually leveraged our character and our story.

And in Dubai, we're not meeting anyone.

We're here.

Really?

Not anyone.

So Mumbai had a much more thriving in the AI space.

I would think Dubai, there would be a lot of people there.

You would think so too.

You would think so too.

And I believe that maybe there are.

But I feel like we were just grinding 16 hours a day from the department.

And leaving the house, this is so flashy.

It's not really people actually grinding it out.

And the people there.

The very sterile environment there in Dubai.

Yeah.

Very clean, very organized, very...

Everything that you need.

Except sometimes what you actually need.

Doesn't sound like grit.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's when the El Salvador story came in play.

I mean, my brother literally spent six days walking around the house

being like, what are we going to do?

Are we going to keep making AI commercials?

And then other people are going to make AI films.

And they are going to be AI filmmakers.

Because we were too scared to get out of this commercial loop.

What are we going to do?

What was hard about the situation is you're one of the first.

So there's no one that laid down a road for you to welcome.

Yeah.

You're quite literally writing history with every video that you are making

because it wasn't done before.

And we really weirdly felt that weight on our shoulders.

It was like, oh, what are we going to do?

Because we knew that we could do way more crazy things than we were doing.

And then we made the list, where can we be the first in?

Okay, we can be the first in a 60-minute production.

But it's too expensive and the tech is a little bit too...

Not good enough for 60-minute production.

So let's wait with that.

What else?

And we made a list and a list.

And then we had like, okay, the first AI short film for Nation came on.

And we looked at each other.

We were like, okay, that is awesome.

What Nation?

And I am on Twitter and I see the president getting these B-300 Blackwell in Fidia AI chips.

First sovereign country to get them, right?

And I walked to my brother.

I'm like, come on, man.

This is too good of a sign.

And we literally booked a ticket and fly the next day.

Really?

Yeah.

We fly the next day.

We were like, we don't know anyone.

That's not a short flight.

No, it's not 29 hours.

And we were like, we don't need to know anyone.

We're just going to tweet.

We're going to go to El Salvador.

Make the first AI short film for Nation.

Anyone wants to meet us there.

Please reach out because we can use any help we get.

And we arrive.

We sleep.

Intercontinental hotel in San Salvador.

And do you know Murf's life?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amazing guy.

And we tagged him in the post and some other people that we were like, okay,

if those people reach out, we kind of have a first boost.

Where it's like, okay, it's worth it to do this.

And we wake up and I have a DM from him.

And he's like, hey, I can't today.

But I would love to meet.

But today is to pack them at an AI conference.

And like, AI conference.

I mean, I want to go to the AI conference.

Where's the AI conference?

He's like, oh, well, I don't know if you know the hotel's

intercontinental hotel.

And I'm like, intercontinental hotel.

And I look around and I see like the car that went broke.

What?

We're in that.

And then there we saw things are also coming our way.

So we might have made the right decision.

And we go down with the elevator.

There he is.

And we meet him.

He shows us around the country for two or three days.

And we had an amazing time.

You go out to his property.

Yeah, absolutely beautiful.

Wow.

And what an inspiring story also, right?

And yeah, that's where started where all people started to

understand that we were here.

So we started to get more people reach out.

And we spent two weeks learning about the country and the story.

And translating that into a film.

And after two or three days, we started to realize what an

emotional story it is.

A country going from such a dangerous place to having

something that should be normal.

Peace.

Yeah.

Safety.

And then how do you translate that from...

How do you translate that into a eight-minute short film

where the people are not real that you're going to generate?

But the people creating it are 100% real, right?

I mean, it's...

So let's, Paco, can you pull that up?

And we'll play a clip of that.

Because I'm curious is to...

Like, did you need to be in El Salvador to do this?

Since it's AI, I'm assuming you don't.

But you tell me what the process is, what the...

Yeah.

I think it would have been a little bit disrespectful

if we didn't come here and do it.

It's like...

It was proving the point of a lot of the AI haters.

It's like, you actually don't want to put effort in.

You want to tell the story of a nation.

You do not even go there.

Okay, you do not take the entire crew and do it with your little computer.

But you do not go there.

And that's really we wanted to have respect for the craft also.

Yeah.

Because I believe it was going to be...

It was going to be a bad film if we did it from Dubai.

From Dubai with our Taliban orders,

that with our cheesecakes, that we can order in a second.

And then making such a film with so much weight.

Yeah.

Can we roll out, Paco?

Yeah.

Today, I will tell you a story about Mays.

A name is not just what we used to call each other.

Every name is a pray.

Every society goes through a phase where evil rules.

And it must decide whether it will stay true to its name.

All of this is AI generated.

None of that's real.

There's no real stuff in there.

And you just tell the AI what you want.

You want to show like, I'm asking members on the street sitting like,

like how much work goes in the like, this is very interesting.

And I think very useful for people also to know.

Yeah.

This is why on our website the main thing is,

AI is going to replace everyone except humans.

And it's really true.

So how does this work?

The number one thing and the only thing that no matter when or how much AI progresses,

AI won't be able to replicate is the ID.

AI will just not be able to write a script.

It is obviously able to write a script, but not with the way my brother does it.

Yeah.

So you don't think AI will ever be able to replace that human creativity at that level?

Never.

Because how my brother always says this beautifully, he says like,

how much electricity your brain runs on and how much electricity is needed to get that AI running.

They're not figuring the craft of God out.

They're mimicking God to a certain extent, but you can't.

You can only get so far, right?

But it's the ID that the number one thing that's going to, it's the mode now.

Anyone that can come up with good IDs is 100% safe.

And it's actually like arguably the only thing human should be doing anyway.

No one should be packing packages and doing this automation work.

People should come up with IDs and wait to inspire each other, tell stories, etc.

So that's very interesting to me because my thinking about AI was it was going to replace a lot.

It was going to replace the writers, the authors, the creatives.

Yeah.

And to me that was really sad, but you think it's actually going to be the opposite.

The opposite.

It's going to allow a lot of people like us that had zero resources, zero opportunity to get into Hollywood.

Also, they're one to get into Hollywood to make movies that compete with the quality of Hollywood.

Because you can have such a good story to tell.

But if it's packaged in a way that's just ugly, it's very hard for people to consume.

It's hard for me to watch a YouTube video with bad audio.

Because it's just very hard to go through.

It doesn't matter what's being said.

So you need a mic, right?

And who has money for this stuff?

And with AI, we get the opportunity to make things with very low cost,

and all of our effort and human creativity in there.

And I feel like with ourselves, or this is what we did, it's like,

we had a really, it was a rough trip.

No halal food.

That means we had to live on purposes for two weeks.

We almost didn't sleep.

We traveled around.

We tried to really feel the entire country.

We put effort in it.

29-hour flight.

29-hour flight back.

Leaving your very cozy apartment in Dubai behind.

And then, yes, step one, the ID generation.

And then, yes, there comes to me with first script.

And I read it, and we were sitting around the table.

I was like, no, no, no, this is not it.

This is not what Josef Al-Jezdus told us yesterday.

This is not the guys coming onto the street and knocking on the window

with the gun and asking you to give the money, right?

This is, we have to emphasize more on the problem before we show people

the solution.

The script was very fast going from problem solution.

Well, you need problem, problem, problem to show people,

oh, it was bad.

And then, salvation, right?

So that was a fun process.

I think we did five versions of the script until we had a version

where it's like, oh, nice.

And then it's, you start storming.

So you do, so you make sure you're good with the script

before you start doing any AI generation.

Anything before the script is done.

And then you have the actual narration script.

The thing that you hear on the background, the narration, the guided talks,

and a visual script.

So the narration script is the actual words that he says.

The visual script is the shots that you will see based on the things that he says.

And these are all human creations.

Yes.

You guys are not using AI to produce this aspect.

No, we really come up with it ourselves.

So example is living side by side with contradiction.

That's one line.

That's not a visual script.

That's the actual line.

The visual script was showing the 666 tattoo

and then cutting to a crash zoom in of Jesus Christ on like the statue.

Living side by side with contradictions.

So it's like, it's an art where we actually grab the narration script

and try to turn it into something that makes sense when you're watching it.

Because you can say side by side with contradictions

show a road with someone driving on it.

Something that absolutely doesn't make any sense.

What AI would have done, right?

If you just try to automate it in any way.

So that's step one and two.

And then you go into the generation process.

And AI is like this.

If you want to maintain consistency over your scenes,

you cannot use text-to-video models.

Text-to-video models, you can say,

you can say, generate me a man walking on the street

and you can run it 10 times.

And 10 times you will get a different video.

Well, if you generate first an image

and then you use image-to-video,

you can maintain consistency in your scene.

So what we do is we build an entire storyboard with images.

And then we turn those images into video separately.

So it's all five second clips, ten second clips, five second clips,

stitch together.

And that's very easy explained the process.

ID, Visual Script, Image Generation, Video Generation.

And then editing is also something that happens with it.

And is this something that you guys learn

just by trial and error?

I'm assuming this is so new.

You're actually having to invent the craft as you're going along.

Yeah.

And I think one of the most important things

is AI is trained on actual knowledge.

AI is not trained on your opinion or your context or the way you feel.

AI is trained on 180 degrees orbit angle

that the terminology.

It's not trained on, yeah, can you please move the camera

a little bit like this, AI?

Then it's not going to listen.

It performs best if you talk to it with the terminology of the craft.

So for us, that was a slap in our face.

We were like, OK, well, we have to go back to the books

and actually read about lightning, composition, angles,

camera movements and shadows and all these things.

And then it's just trial and error.

What do you say?

What do you get back?

Input, output, input, output.

And the higher quality or input, the higher quality or output.

And along the way, you actually learn this terminology.

And you actually figure out how to do it.

So I'm assuming when you first started, it would take,

just say, 50 different prompts or trying to be finally

get it.

But then you get to the point where it just takes a couple

because you kind of, OK, absolutely.

That's exactly how it went.

Obviously the models get better.

But we also get better.

So it's kind of a combination of two entities moving forward.

And that's really, yeah, it.

And then.

And within your team, do you guys have different specialties

or how does that?

How did the team come together?

And how do you guys make that turn into a film?

Now that we're making a little bit of more money,

we're searching for more experts in certain fields,

because we are self-taught, zero.

And you guys are so young.

Yes, right?

So it's like, it's for us now really the point

where we try to reach out to traditional filmmakers

and learn from the actual OGs.

But our team is very funny.

I love how young you guys are and you just did it.

Yeah.

Most people have all these reasons why it wouldn't work.

But you guys just did it.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, it's funny because it's always,

oh, you were so brave or whatever.

And for me, if I have to be completely honest,

I don't know.

For me, it was very logical, hey,

we have this technical revolution going on.

That means that it will be very easy to make, like,

it's not even about the money, but have big impact.

Yeah.

Because where friction happens within that friction,

that energy, you can always gain something,

buying Bitcoin and one dollar, right?

No one does it.

So this friction of the unknown and the known,

like, it pays off.

Yeah.

And I felt that really, really heavy.

And I was like, OK, now one plus one is two.

Let's stop with school.

I would have been in school.

Let's go all in AI and it's going to be fine.

And that wasn't really that I felt like there was any courage

involved.

Obviously there was, but it was so logical

that it was just jumping in, right?

Yeah.

So the team is a really do-it-yourself team,

the DIY team.

It's actually all people we grew up with.

It's obviously me that kind of made these very big swings

and risks when I was younger.

But eventually everyone kind of did.

It's my brother.

And then our main generator,

the guy that knows the models, he breeds the models.

It's like, as he's talking to a friend when he's talking

to the model.

So he's the guy that, when we have an idea,

we send it to him and he could, within six hours,

give us like a video back if he wants to.

And then we have more of an operator that makes sure

that everything flows.

And that is like actually a group of four, like a wolf pack

that's responsible for the creative side of things.

And we also have like some developers

that we hired a few months ago because we wanted to

develop our in-house tools.

Because nothing out there was really satisfying our needs

as creators.

And it clicked for me.

It was like, okay, let's create tools that we need.

And then probably we will attract other users along the way.

And that worked out completely fine.

So we have developers.

Those are not here.

Those are remote and amazing guys too.

But our creative team is like group of four, very young guys

at 24, 24, 23 and 20, my brother.

And literally figuring things out as we go.

Yeah, no formula.

That's just going on.

So you guys released the film on El Salvador.

Yeah.

It was received very well.

So I remember seeing it and being like, oh, that's, that's.

That's nice.

Amazing.

What happened between then and when you guys came,

because you left El Salvador after that, right?

We went back to Dubai.

Yeah.

And I got into a huge dip that I didn't understand.

I understood why it's Mumbai.

El Salvador.

And now you're back in Dubai.

What's going to top that?

What's going to be because you're kind of getting addicted to the first of being something.

And a mentor of mine was like, he kind of warned me for this month and months before that.

He was like, sit down and execute, execute, execute.

Do not try to chase too much these highs.

And he was right 100%.

However, El Salvador was 100% necessary to do.

It was like the ROI there and also the reach.

You can't get it anywhere else.

It was once in a lifetime opportunity.

But I did have this dip and I didn't know what to do with it.

We were back in Dubai during the last time.

And like a huge dip.

Like a just emotional dip where it was like, oh, and now commercial.

But money has to come in.

You have to pay the bills.

So you have to make a commercial for like $7,000 or $10,000 that for a company that doesn't deserve your attention.

And it's not about the company.

It's not, oh, we are so good that the company doesn't deserve the attention.

It's really that are like our ideas deserve our attention.

Not the ideas of someone else.

There's other commercial companies for that.

It's not us that they're supposed to do that.

So yeah, it was it was it was weird.

And I'm very like a religious man and I prayed a lot and I was faster than I tried to pray and fast more.

And I was like, I don't know what to do with this.

And then I made a list of things that I want to achieve.

I made a list of things that I had to like figure out with myself like bad habits that I wanted to get rid of.

I felt like there was a door being held close before I could move on.

I had to clean everything up in the room.

So I did that.

And it's very simple things like do not order too much food.

I was very bad habit of mine.

I ordered so much food.

I threw away every day.

And the day I write these things down, I put the notes down.

I pin it.

And I'm like, okay, nice.

I sleep.

I wake up next morning.

We get a first deal.

First like movie deal.

First first deal that was interesting enough for us to look at where we're like, okay.

But you had commercial.

Like commercial.

That was such high demand, but like doing that was only going to bring us down.

This was really something that was like, okay, cool.

Yeah.

This was something else was different working together with traditional artists for the first time.

And literally from that moment, I post our Mumbai video again on Twitter.

I don't know, I felt this urge to do that.

And I post it again.

And from that old film, not something new that we posted again, we got so much people reach out to us.

So weird.

And we had plan B here in El Salvador that was coming up.

And it was a lining that we were coming back.

That we were feeling that we were like, you already had it in your mind that maybe we should go back to El Salvador.

Yeah.

And now we actually have people to meet there.

Last time we came blank.

And now we were coming to actually meet people.

Okay.

And momentum started to build up, momentum started to build up.

And then we flew back.

Plan B met with the Tetra team.

Was that here in El Salvador?

Okay.

Rumble, Safidina Mous, the writer of the Bitcoin standard gold standard.

Stacey and William of the actual Congress.

And that was so sick.

There was one week where it felt like everything was aligning perfectly.

And I just never went back to Dubai.

Really?

Yeah, I thought I was going back.

We were on a temporary trip just to come for a week to meet and set up like we never left.

We never left.

I called the moving company.

We emptied the entire apartment and we moved the company here because it made too much sense then.

It was like, okay, what do we want?

We want to actually make AI films.

Okay.

Now we have the network.

We actually have the network now to be the first to make actual AI films.

We feel like this is our responsibility to do so because we are fighting Slop.

So I think I don't want to distract you but I just want to circle back on one point because I think a lot of people will be kind of blown away by this.

But it sounds like you're saying you felt like there was more potential for network and contacts in El Salvador than in Dubai.

Which most people I think would think the opposite.

Yeah.

This is cool title also because this is what you hear.

People moving to Dubai.

I've been living in Dubai.

I've been going back and forth out of Dubai for two years.

I lived in Dubai for six months straight.

Do I have anything bad to say about Dubai?

No.

Is it safe?

Yes.

Is it supporting me?

Is it pushing me to become a better businessman?

Absolutely not.

It is supporting me to become a better husband.

I mean, it's nice to go out with my wife and eat something out.

Good space.

Yeah.

But that's it.

It's nice to walk around the Burj Khalifa with my father and talk about how impressive it is that they turned it from a desert into that.

It's a conversation.

But no, no.

What's in El Salvador is something else.

In El Salvador there is hope.

There is proof that you can turn one of the most dangerous places in the planet to place that's as safe as this place is now.

And no one knows, like we know that it's actually safe.

And that hope alone, that combination of what by doing that, the people that came here.

It's not that I do not feel like low quality people are even attracted to this place.

It's very niche.

It's as if you know you know that type of place.

Well, and it because it's not easy.

Yeah.

Like there's still a rough edge to it.

Yeah.

So you have to be somebody with some grit.

Yeah.

You have to see the vision and say, okay, we're going to exchange like some things in return for being here this early on.

And I have not, like I've been to like now, like obviously young, but I did travel.

I see a good portion of the earth and the people that have met here, the five and the actual speed of execution that you can sit on Monday, have a conversation and be executing the idea of that conversation on Wednesday.

Well, I've been in context with the government of Dubai and about like education, etc.

Emails is six weeks going back and forth and you do not even have anything.

So, and here it was like I arrived.

No one even knew me and I was in the room with Mario and Stacy a week later, right?

Where you're actually having a conversation about what are you going to execute?

What are we going to do?

Right?

What do you need for us to do what you want to do?

And this attitude, this is next level, and then you are attracting people like us.

You're actually saying, hey, we are going to provide you with personal attention.

We believe that you are a high quality person. You have something to add to the country. Here is just our number.

If you need anything, reach out.

That alone is already customer service on a level where I would like to say, okay, then I would pick this place over that place, right?

I didn't go back to pack my stuff out of Dubai. So that says enough already, right?

I just didn't want to go back. I was like 29 hours. That's just, this is stay.

And let's just spend here now. We've been here for a month, a full month.

And we've never been this creative. We've never felt this free.

We are enjoying the people a lot. We do not really leave the house, but obviously we have people coming in and out the house constantly.

And I do not really see why leaving is even on the table, right?

And do the other partners, the rest of the team, do they feel similar?

People are homesick or I know it's, you know, yeah, I mean, it's when you're, when you're, for me, I'm very used to not seeing my parents for eight months.

Right? So if you, if you leave that out of the equation, these people are absolutely amazed by the fact that this country is the way it is.

But also that we are now like working on a video and I'm like, I have a podcast with Mike Peterson.

And here the convenience of it, the flow, where else? And that's, that's, that we do notice.

And we're linking this success and this very interesting times that we're in right now also to the country now.

So for us, in five years, El Salvador is going to be this nostalgia that's going to have this, this vibe over it.

And I feel like it's very good position to, we need some equipment that's not available here.

We fly to Miami two hours and two hour back and you could do it in one day in theory, right?

Yeah. Very easy. And there's some, some, some convenience to be in on the same time zone as the US.

It's what I work business wise. It's 100% better.

So there is there, it is, it is beautiful.

And I do also feel like that as a businessman, there is an opportunity to just work on your business and along the way without any pressure figure out some sort of offer or solution for the country.

And then you end up working with the country and actually help rebuild this place.

For us, for example, it's like teaching people how to generate films with AI, it is valuable.

Especially for kids that schools, nothing, not really for them, they don't really like it and they have a story to tell.

I mean, these kids have stories to tell. You give them these tools, you teach them how to do it, they can all make five to $10,000 a month.

They can all do that.

I mean, we did it. We made one film and like two minute video in 24 hours and we charged 5K after that standard rate.

So like it is possible.

So you can figure out how to package this education for the people from El Salvador.

And it is without pressure, you are doing these things, you are building education material and then you figure out a way to pass that on to the country and actually help like be part of this place.

I mean, this is for me. It's a no brainer.

So as you guys look at the future of your company, like what are you focused on?

What is your market? If there's people even watching this that have an idea, what are the type of like projects that you guys are willing to take on?

Are you only doing your own films at this point or explain to me how the business model works?

I think now we are, I think we want to be like a new generation Disney or something like that.

It's like a studio that has this own in-house technology, has its own in-house creators, is own in-house workflows and IPs, characters that we came up with really.

Tony Stark, right?

So you see there being like in a future of there will still be a role for characters.

100%. I think world building is going to be one of the biggest things in the future because there's going to be so much room to spend time on world building.

I mean, I don't know if you can explain to me what you mean by world building.

I mean, the best example is you've seen the trilogy Avatar with the blue aliens.

I think the only trilogy that the billion dollars grows every movie, one, two, and three.

And then you ask why? It's because of world building. It's because James Cameron created an entire world that goes so deep, language, fruit, way of speaking, way of...

Like when people watch it, they forget that they are on earth. It's Lord of the Rings. It's the same.

Harry Potter.

When everyone can generate anything, the biggest thing becomes the world that you build behind it.

So there's going to be so much time because the rest of the process is very easy or not easy, but easier than traditional filmmaking to build worlds.

To spend time for a director to sit down and create a language from scratch.

Because that's what they did with Lord of the Rings, right? They created an actual alphabet and then actual language.

It is what attracts people. It is what the effort behind it, right?

So for us, it's we are going all into world building and then how we make money is obviously by creating a fan base of people that want to watch our creations.

And what we stand for is create films that our children can watch. I do not feel like there's too much content being created at the moment by Hollywood, Disney, Pixar, or anyone of content that I would feel comfortable with letting my little sister watch or my kid.

So I would love to do that. I would love to make content for the intellectual people.

The people that want to watch something and actually watch it, finish it, and then sit down with their wife or the entire family and have a conversation about what they just watch.

Give families some food to talk about, some nurturing the brain. That's the type of content that we want to make.

And if we, I don't mind partnering up with companies, as long as the companies, I mean, we did a music video for TETTER, UZT.

And the ask was there for like, hey, they played that at the conference, right?

No, it was after we did a few days ago.

The question here was, hey, where this huge company were humans?

We are actually trying to do good. The entire reason for our companies to try to do good.

But because there's so much money behind the company, people just hear the money and they're like, must be evil people.

So how do we make this company human? We were like, I mean, that's what we are for.

So we sat down, we wrote an entire song, we produced it, completed it from scratch, and we made this and you release it and you see the responses of people.

People actually getting shivers and feeling something. This I'm 100% willing to keep doing.

As long as the company that we work with or the people that we work with have a story to tell.

But for me, the most attention is going to go to actual films, 60 minutes, like 90 minutes, actual.

And monetization of that will be, do you see this as like going forward?

Netflix and those things, they'll actually, they'll be buying these films.

I see it will replace a lot of the traditional films of what people are consuming.

Yeah, I think if the quality is high enough, no one is going to care to this AI anymore.

We're really in this transition period where people are going to be like, there were people can you imagine that said, no, who is going to use a phone?

Who's going to do online shopping?

I remember thinking, why would you want a camera on your phone?

I remember thinking that like that stupidest thing ever.

And now it's like, it's the normal thing ever.

Same with online shopping.

It was a huge group of people that said online shopping, where would I give my credit card to this computer thingy?

And now no one ever even goes to shops anymore.

So it's this transition period where people want to have an opinion about, oh, AI was just like CGI.

CGI came, replaced someone, okay, fine, that happens, it's technical revolution.

But do people now have a complete new category at the Oscars for CGI films?

Or is it just part of the creation process?

Yes, it's part of the creation process.

So maybe there is going to be a separate section for fully AI-generated films.

But I am 100% sure that in five years, there's going to be films where it's 50% AI.

No one's going to even be able to tell.

No one's going to be able to tell.

80% AI you won't be able to tell.

We're going to get to a point where 100% AI you won't be able to tell.

And then it's again, reset the levels and it comes back to taste.

But people just want to watch something good.

If it's AI or not AI, you want to watch something good.

You want to spend your money on something that is worth your time.

And if that is with AI or without AI, no one.

So you think there will still be a huge premium on the creative aspect that maybe the actors and actors

and that part goes away over time.

Yeah, but also maybe even this is very hard to predict.

But there's also a future where maybe actors become more valuable because they become so scarce.

And one thing is for sure is human labor.

That value is going to skyrocket.

Like someone that actually knows how to play file in in 100 years.

So now it's okay with like in 100 years.

It's like, oh, you still know how to play file in.

So I do feel like the human is going to become more valuable.

Well, the robot learns how to do most of the things the human can do.

So you have this guy, very famous guy on TikTok.

He works at Papa Johns.

He makes pizzas.

You could say there's going to be a robot that's going to make that pizza one day.

But the way this guy makes the pizza, how he flips it,

and how he builds his brand around like the way he screams while he's flipping the pizza,

it's the human.

And that part of creativity that's going to be so valuable.

So I don't know.

Like if actors are completely going to be replaced,

what I do know is that it's a headache to work with people overall.

And someone said this very smart, smart man.

I don't remember who, but he said like when you do season one,

a season one is a big success.

Then that same actor that you got for X amount of money comes and now is,

yes, I want more because it was a success, right?

This is very hard to deal with.

Yeah.

Very hard to deal with.

Because the movie becomes less profitable over time because everyone's value grows,

but you as a director apparently do not grow for value.

With the eyes different.

You own the character.

You quite literally say you prompt it and it does whatever you want.

There's no soul.

You can tell it to shut up and it shut up.

Yeah.

So I do feel like there's going to be some slightly artistic directors

that really do not feel like working with people too much,

that are going to take this to their full advantage.

They're going to be like, yeah, because they can implement their vision

and their dream and not have to deal with the drama of anything.

Yeah.

So I feel like there's going to be very interesting new types of people also

that couldn't really exist before, that couldn't shine.

This maybe maybe a better way to put it and are now going to shine.

Yeah.

Because they do not have to deal with people anymore.

So it's interesting.

I try to predict only very small things like AI film is going to be a category.

That's something that a year ago I made that like logical connecting the dots type of thing in.

If actors actually going to be valuable, I know that humans are going to be valuable.

How actors are going to play in it.

I mean, the actors that are well established now are going to be like a very rare Pokemon card.

Right.

It's not going to be made anymore like that.

It's just going to be different.

I mean, I'm an actor.

I act.

We have this feature that's called motion control.

You film me and I actually perform the scene and we motion control it

so that I can put like a bunny or whatever that does exactly the movements and the lip sync that I do.

Right.

That's acting.

I mean, that's what they did with the avatar, the dots and the motion control, the traditional way.

So you're going to have a lot of those type of actors that have way less anxiety

because they know that it's not even their face.

It's going to be on there.

You just put another face on there.

They are going to be more expressive and insecure people that are going to have a chance to shine too.

So for me, it's like complete positive future to be honest.

This is the soaping future.

I do not see.

I see that.

That's what the movie start us.

How they try to shape it.

But I think it's going to be awesome.

Actually.

So I'm curious for you guys and I don't know if it plays much of a role at all for you guys or not.

But we're here in El Salvador.

Obviously, it's Bitcoin country.

I know you guys are familiar with Bitcoin because you paid me in Bitcoin.

And I know that was a lot easier for you because Ramon said the place you were renting before

I didn't want to be paid in Bitcoin and it was a big hassle.

So I'm just curious.

Do your take on Bitcoin where that comes in and how that is synergistic with AI

and then what you see in El Salvador, the fact that they've adopted Bitcoin, how that plays into the story here?

Well, I think personally that the philosophy behind Bitcoin is what attracted me to crypto like very early on.

I think in 2000, like for me early, 2020 or something.

I was so young and I was like, this makes so much sense.

Freedom being able to transfer something without having to check it with the third party and stuff like that.

Perfect.

I feel like there's a lot of people making trying to take advantage of this.

I mean, the crypto space is quite weird.

I feel like the only token that's like standing like Bitcoin.

I feel like where it comes to play is overall just blockchain.

The ownership of blockchain.

I feel like especially now that AI is able to, you can copy whatever I create in a second.

When I created this beautiful character, I prompted it or whatever.

It's really an idea that came to life.

You can copy paste it, slightly adjust it and you own it.

I feel like that's where the blockchain comes in play where you can actually find a new way to own your videos.

In terms of the payment things and the financial side of things, I feel like.

So it was surely it's getting adopted by a lot of people.

I mean, you see the five in El Salvador.

You see how easy it is and that it was 100% the right choice for the country to do this and a good risk, I guess, as a government to adopt it.

For me, as AI filmmaker or filmmaker, I didn't come across a day-to-day use case yet where besides paying for the house and paying salaries or whatever.

What about when you guys get paid from people?

For example, yes, this is very easy to get paid in Bitcoin and then we do get paid actually in Bitcoin or in USDT or whatever.

It's like mostly crypto actually invoices is outdated.

No one really does that anymore.

Especially guys are kind of moving all around.

It's the best.

You don't have to worry if you have a bank account someplace or whatever.

It's being able to move around and take it with you everywhere you go.

It's the best.

So in terms of that, I am a daily user constantly, if it would be taken away from me today, I would have to change the entire company structure basically.

But I do feel like there's a very big technical use case too that makes a lot of sense that has to be explored or is being explored as we speak and we have to see how that plays out.

Overall, I think marketing wise and strategic wise, Al Salvador did a really great job at doing this.

At the end of the day, building a company is also just like building a company, right?

You have to market.

Yeah.

And I think it attracted the exact right people by doing adopting Bitcoin in the way that people like you is perfect.

And I'm interested to see how that plays out in the coming years.

One you're seeing, I mean, like your company, like bringing in here, like you see so many unique individuals that are drawn into Al Salvador that, you know, it's not because they have the best infrastructure or, you know, the best education system, but they have this openness to new ideas and this embrace of future.

Of things of the future.

Yeah.

So it makes people feel like this is a place that's not living in the past.

Yeah, but we're moving forward.

And that's what attracted us in the perfect in one sentence, a country that thinks about the future.

And they did this with Bitcoin.

They showed this with the infidia, B 300 black hole chips.

They showed this with the XAI partnership for the education.

And then here on seems like on every aspect, they are doing something that is putting trust into what just one thing to be here.

So you're safe.

Yeah.

So is there anything else that we forgot to cover?

I want to end with you being able to talk more about your company and if potential people that would want to be involved or bring projects to you or that kind of stuff.

But is there anything else that I think we covered a lot?

Yeah.

We did.

This was fascinating for me because this is an area that I knew very little about.

And I feel now like I have a, you know, obviously not the nitty gritty, but like at a high level, I feel like I have a grasp of where things are going.

And I love the fact that you think it's going to actually help the creators like the creative mind because I would hate to see that lot.

Like that's something very human, the ability to be creative.

And you see it with us.

I think where the, it's not really just talk.

It's the perfect example.

I tweeted about this yesterday.

I was like, AI saved our life.

We, I have no idea what I would be doing right now.

There's nothing where I felt like home.

AI literally allowed us to do whatever we want.

I don't have to do anything else, but create ideas the entire day and manage around.

My people and be like, maybe there's a better workflow to do this.

That's the hardest thing about my job.

And I do not see that it may be it is frustrating for the people in Hollywood that are like,

oh, we built this empire and we own this empire.

And now some 20 year old will be able to compete with us.

I mean, I would be a bit annoyed too, right?

But at the end of the day, and this is maybe very important thing to have here and just say,

Edward Bernays said,

a motion picture can standardize and shape the ideology of the nation.

He understood very early on that motion picture was going to be the biggest propaganda machine ever

because it's the very first time that you can put something on screen and make it move

what the effect that this has on the human for us is normal back in the days.

It creates that emotional connection.

And then your brain can't actually separate something that it deeply imagined,

deeply imagined from something that it actually experienced, right?

So when you watch society's sexualized content or pornography,

your brain makes the same hormones and the same, it simulates the same feeling as if you are actual sexual intercourse

and the same with, if you're watching a series and someone dies that you formed an emotional connection with,

you are actually making the same hormones, right?

So this is motion picture.

So important.

What a weapon actually.

Yeah.

And this has been in the hands of the same entity for a hundred years.

So I am extremely happy that it's now being rolled out to people like us that are not going to make porn with it.

Yeah.

Right?

No, I love that.

I love that.

It's decentralizing that power.

And because it has, it has been weaponized and it has been controlled mostly by people with certain agenda.

One other person.

And it's had an impact on impressionable young minds.

100% through that.

So we've suffered from it.

Yeah.

So I think that's a good way to at least end the topic.

Yeah.

And now I have to sell myself.

Yeah.

So tell us, what type of projects should people bring to you?

What type of services?

Yeah.

And obviously as a company, you need to make money.

Of course.

Please explain how that works.

And hopefully we'll get some people reaching out to you.

That would be amazing.

I mean, if you throughout the podcast felt any type of like connection with us.

And you have a story to tell you can reach out.

And then we can make something work.

So I think that's the basic thing.

And then in terms of like very specific use cases, the ones that we are exploring right now is working with authors.

People that wrote book.

Uh-huh.

No one really reads books anymore.

That doesn't mean that what you wrote is invaluable.

It's very valuable.

But respected enough to put it or package it in a way that can reach people like us that do not really read books anymore but consume motion picture.

And we are now exploring this, this working together with actual authors and making movies.

I love that.

I mean, I could see that being a huge market.

And for authors, it's the most inspiring process ever because they spend so much effort on writing something with their hands.

And then we can turn it into a movie.

So I feel like if any cool author is watching and is like, okay, that's something I would like to allocate or invest in.

I think that's a project.

I'm very important.

I'm just curious.

And then I know it would vary.

And obviously this is not a figure we anybody could hold you to.

But what would that cost for an author to take a book and and have that turned into a film?

For under 20 million dollars.

No.

I don't know.

It depends on them.

If they want a movie or they want like episodes or series.

Right.

So it really depends.

It's hard to say a number because it.

Obviously a fraction of what it would cost you that tradition.

That's the most important thing.

So where it would cost five million, it's going to cost like five percent of of that.

But the most important thing for us is more is like when you work with us, you're more paying for our time than for the tools or anything because we are allocating our time.

We're very small team.

And it also just doesn't I can't hire five more people and then take two more extra projects because it's our bottleneck.

And that's the ID generation.

And that's not something that someone else can do.

So how much it would cost it, but it depends.

I can get like a general number of like what the market stands at.

And I think like you can get something created for like, I think you can very easily get something for like one and a half K a minute.

Right.

So, so like that.

Let's say for five minutes, you would pay like five K or six thousand dollars something like this.

If you would get the top of the top quality with that, I'm not completely sure.

But it's also what you want to be an author with almost zero budget is watching.

I mean, you can start small and see where it goes out.

But for authors that are well established, it's also an opportunity now.

I feel like because there's going to be a lot of attention just because it's AI.

People just want to know, right?

And the AI haters want to have an opinion.

But it's funny because it's a completely different format.

What is an AIator going to say against an author that didn't write his book with AI?

Yeah.

It's like, I want this.

Shut up, man.

It's what I want.

So I think that's for me at the moment, the most interesting use case to be honest.

Then obviously, if you have a very cool company with a nice story behind it, we can try.

However, it has to have an actual story.

If it's just like a very simple product or like, I would personally not work together with like a e-commerce brand that's dropshipping a toy letter or whatever, right?

It's just not what we would like to do.

But if there's a company with an actual story, I mean, like Bitcoin Beach, for example, has an actual story doing a film for Bitcoin Beach is an interesting project for us.

And anything of that like magnitude.

Yeah.

So that's it.

And the thing, I don't really like to sell myself.

But whatever, when you want to work with us, what we do is we just make sure that we do everything in our power to translate whatever vision you have into a film, a short film or music or whatever.

And the most important thing is that the limitations are completely removed.

So it's endless.

You can, whatever you have in your mind, we can do.

So I think that's it, yeah.

I love it.

What is the best way for people to reach out?

We'll put some stuff in the show notes, but it's always good for people to be able to hear it audibly too.

What's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

So there is a joint arc is for actual creators, higher arc is for companies.

If you click on higher arc, you will get a form and you can fill in the form.

And there's a.

And this is this is from your guys website website.

What is the actual website?

Arc dot live.

Arc dot live.

Okay.

Perfect.

And I have like Twitter account where I'm super active.

So anyone reaching out to Twitter should be fine.

And what's your Twitter account?

And let's talk about.

Okay.

What's your thoughts?

Lower lower case.

Arc.

Okay.

That lower like the.

That's like the underlying underscore and lower on the square, and then arc okay.

So Pacco, let's put that in the show notes too.

So people can find that that's that's basically it.

It's not too hard to find me to be honest.

Okay.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I'm excited to see what comes out of this and.

You guys being here in El Salvador is obviously I think a huge.

a huge blessing for the country and I love seeing young entrepreneurs that are hungry

and coming in and creating and seeing El Salvador as the place they feel like they can do

that the best.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having us, man.

Yeah, it was my pleasure.

Hey, Bitcoin family, we want to kind of end the podcast this month with a special tribute

to our dear friend, Andy, as a lot of you guys know, Andy recently passed away after

a battling cancer and Andy was really the heart and soul behind this podcast getting

off the ground.

He was the one that kind of helped convince me to do it, to design the studio that came

up with the format and did the great intro that we had and has really been the energy

behind it.

He brought Paco in and kind of trained Paco to take over the daily production.

But you know, Andy still always had his kind of fingerprint on what was going on here and

so we just ask you guys to really be keeping his family in prayer, his wife Suez and his

daughter Maven as they kind of struggle through this time and we just want to give a shout

out to Andy and just what an amazing friend he was.

He was the guy that everybody loved.

You didn't find anybody who didn't love Andy and so rest in peace, brother.