How I use ChatGPT to run my fashion business

1. 0:00 – 2:38

   Introducing Yana Welinder and Yana Bana

   1. YWYana Welinder0:00

      Normally, I would hire a technical team, like engineers. I didn't, right? I sort of just came to Codex and asked it to build the website. The idea is to use AI really anywhere in the process where that makes sense. Literally my technical co-founder.

   2. CVClaire Vo0:15

      There's so much you couldn't do before practically from a cost perspective, even from an execution perspective, that is now totally possible, and so you can, like, unlock your creativity in a way that wasn't possible before.

   3. YWYana Welinder0:29

      Really does unlock so much creativity. A lot of my designs start from a hand-drawn sketch, but the other piece of this is I sort of developed the fashion prompt that's behind it, and it describes a lot of sort of what goes into garments. So it has, like, the, the silhouettes, uh, the proportion or the volume of, of the dress, like, kind of like the fabric, how it flows, how it behaves, the construction details, how it moves, even how it sounds. The other piece that is still unsolved, and I'm sort of still banging my head against the wall, is to get it to create patterns based on my design. And there I'm kind of running humans and AI in parallel, so I, I am working with human patternmakers, Codex, and just seeing who's gonna get to making my thing fastest.

   4. CVClaire Vo1:15

      [upbeat music] Welcome to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today I have Yana Welinder, and she is building an AI-native fashion startup, and she's gonna show us how AI can intersect art, creativity, and real-world production, and why computer use plus software means SaaS really isn't dead, at least not yet. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Merge. Building an AI product is one thing. The hard part is everything around it: connecting to the tools your team and customers rely on, letting agents take action with the right permissions, and keeping everything reliable and cost efficient once you're in production. Most teams end up piecing that together themselves. So instead of building the products you actually care about, you get pulled into integrations, permissions, routing, and all the infrastructure underneath. Merge is the infrastructure layer for production AI. It connects to thousands of tools, gives agents secure ways to act inside them, and optimizes model routing and spend without you building or owning any of it. OpenAI, Dropbox, and Ramp already use Merge to move fast and build AI right. Visit merge.dev/howiai to start building

2. 2:38 – 5:20

   Tour of the Yana Bana site

   1. CVClaire Vo2:38

      for free. Yana, thanks for joining How I AI. I'm an art and fashion girl. You know this. There are, like, five of us AI art and fashion girls on Twitter.

   2. YWYana Welinder2:48

      [laughs]

   3. CVClaire Vo2:48

      And we all find each other, but I am one, and I love what you're working on. So immerse us in this new thing that you're working on, and then we'll talk about how you're using AI in this really unique fashion.

   4. YWYana Welinder3:00

      Cool. Yeah. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I, uh, am building this AI-native fashion brand, and, um, the idea is to use AI really anywhere in the process where that makes sense, so obviously heavily in the design and production process, but also it's literally my technical co-founder, and so I... That's, that's what I use it for. Everything. [laughs]

   5. CVClaire Vo3:26

      And can you show us... Like, it's, it's probably hard for people to conceptualize what, like, an AI-powered fashion brand looks like. Can you just, like, show us a little bit of kinda, like, some of the stuff that you're working on, and then we can get into how it actually, how you actually got there?

   6. YWYana Welinder3:41

      So this is Yana Bana, the, the, the fashion brand, and you can kind of see, like, every- everything here is built with AI, and so you have some of the different garments that I designed. And, um, I'll show later that, like, d- different ones starts from different po- like from different inspiration or from different points. And so oftentimes I start from a sketch. You can see that when you hover over some of these. So I start with, with a hand-drawn, humanly, manually, you know, old-school hand-drawn sketch, and then I use AI to turn that into different types of fashion collateral and kind of technical specs and everything along the line to ultimately get to a garment. And I kind of use AI for all the things to visualize it, to create photos, to create videos of some of these garments. There... A lot of them kind of allude to different, like, uh, technical, uh, you know, computer things [laughs] in a lot of ways because I feel like that should be really part of the theme. It should be obvious that, uh, that what it comes, comes from, and so the fabrics, uh, will use a lot of kind of the punch card, like computer punch card, uh, patterns and, and things like that so that you can really see that. And the other, the other way in which it sort of appears is you can see, uh, for example, for this, like, uh, post-keyboard, uh, T-shirt, which I'm wearing myself right now-

   7. CVClaire Vo5:03

      [laughs]

   8. YWYana Welinder5:04

      ... um, it also is, uh, alluding to the fact that now we are not gonna be using keyboards and, uh, and a lot of this stuff, but can we now have... Like, give it a second life, essentially, and make sure that it's, like, obvious, the world we live in and the world we're entering.

3. 5:20 – 7:39

   The fashion prompt stack

   1. CVClaire Vo5:20

      And I just wanna pause because when I first saw this, I was like, "What a fun, like, little art project." Like, I once made this, like I vibe coded this app which was, um, anthropic as an anthropology website [laughs] 'cause I thought it was very funny.

   2. YWYana Welinder5:34

      [laughs]

   3. CVClaire Vo5:34

      But you're actually bringing these designs to life. Like, you are actually wearing this keyboard shirt, which is super cool. And so what... You know, I hear a lot of people who are in the creative fields be really fearful of AI because I think it is, like, displacement in a lot of ways. Like, let's, let's all be honest here. There's, like- Videos and sketching and all sorts of stuff that AI can do, and yet if you step on the other side of this, like, post-keyboard future, there's so much you couldn't do before practically from a cost perspective, even from an execution perspective, that is now totally possible. And so you can, like, unlock your creativity in a way that wasn't possible before. So I want you to show us step by step kind of what goes into creating a garment like this, creating and imagining a design like this, and then actually getting it to production and getting a website like this up.

   4. YWYana Welinder6:31

      I think, I think you're absolutely right that it really does unlock so much creativity. A lot of, a lot of my designs start from a hand-drawn sketch, but, um, the other piece of this is I sort of, kind of developed this, um, uh, technical... It's essentially a stack, but I've, for the purpose of visualizing what it looks like, I have this sort of set up as just, like, the, the, the fashion prompt that's behind it. And it describes a lot of sort of what goes into a garment, so it has, like, the, the silhouette, uh, the proportion or the volume of, of the dress, like, kind of like the fabric, how, how it's, how it flows, how it behaves, um, the, the construction details, how it moves, um, even how it sounds. And I can, I can show in one of the pieces, it kind of has this really interesting kind of sound as you're walking in, in, uh, in the dress. And I take all of this and put it together in, in essentially kind of when we-- if we take it out of my, my, my flow, uh, you can see that it's at, at the core of it, there's sort of this, this prompt

4. 7:39 – 10:01

   Live demo: generating a jacket from a prompt in ChatGPT

   1. YWYana Welinder7:39

      that we could take, um, and plug into ChatGPT. Um, and oftentimes in, in, when, when I'm working with this, I will also have an actual sketch of what I want, and I sort of am def- then defining this in addition to the sketch. But just for the sake of us kind of playing in real time, um, I just thought it'd be cool to just, um, just use prompts to start with. So, so here we have a sharply tailored, waist-defined jacket with exaggerated shoulders and blah, blah, blah, right? So now we're putting this in. Oh, I should have told it to make an image, but maybe it'll figure out to do that. Yeah, there we go. Sometimes, sometimes it's smarter than you think, even on Instant.

   2. CVClaire Vo8:19

      [laughs]

   3. YWYana Welinder8:19

      And so now it's gonna generate an image, and oftentimes this will give me kind of like a product photo. But usually what I then wanna do with this is to then take it to kind of the next level, and I will have very specific types of, like, collateral that I wanna get out of it. So once we have this ready, I will ask it to generate a Vogue style runway photo. Oh, there we go. So this is kind of like the product photo of this. Um, so it has these exaggerated shoulders, uh, the waist, a lot of kind of the stuff that I asked it to. And if I had a specific sketch, it would really adhere to my sketch much more so than, than what was in the prompt. But then if we go to, um, here and we say, uh, like, now make it into a Vogue style. Can you tell that I normally do not type anymore?

   4. CVClaire Vo9:12

      [laughs]

   5. YWYana Welinder9:12

      And so I usually just use voice for all these things, and so it's just like so hard.

   6. CVClaire Vo9:16

      Well, use voice. It's easier for our podcast guests, um, when you use voice because they don't have to imagine what you're typing. So she's... You know, you're typing, "Make it into a Vogue style photo."

   7. YWYana Welinder9:27

      Of a model walking down the runway in this outfit. And so then I kind of just, like, iterate on this, and there's, um, I go to, to photo, um, that's a runway photo, then I go to, like, a, uh, influencer photo. And you can kind of see this in a lot of, from a lot of different angles, and also iterate on it based on kind of what you're seeing. Now make it, you know, red, make it shorter, make it longer, and all those different things. But I usually just start from, from a specific point and then

5. 10:01 – 11:51

   Why Image Gen 2.0 beats other models

   1. YWYana Welinder10:01

      iterate from there.

   2. CVClaire Vo10:02

      I have a question for you.

   3. YWYana Welinder10:03

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CVClaire Vo10:03

      Which is, um, why ChatGPT and why Image Gen 2 as the, as the model you're using? There's a lot of image gen models out there. Um, why that particular one?

   5. YWYana Welinder10:15

      Yeah. So I've done a lot of experimentation with lots and lots of different image models, and what I found was ultimately, um, Nana Banana and Image 2.0, really Image, uh, one, uh, 1.5 was already pretty good at this, are the best at following visual directions. And often I'm not doing this. Usually I'm sort of, as I mentioned, I'm mostly giving them a phys- like a sk- a sketch that I want them to turn into a picture. And what Image 1.5 did better than Nana Banana and Image, uh, Images, ChatGPT Images 2.0 does even better is it really well follows the sketch. In fact, it follows the sketch sometimes a little bit too precisely, and so you get something that doesn't look like fabric anymore, and you have to kind of be like, "No, no, no, no, no." You gotta like, it's gotta flow. Like, this is kind of why I have this, this very detailed kind of prompting, um, where I tell it how the fabric should flow, because otherwise it can get into the mindset of, oh, she really wants it to look like paper, you know?

   6. CVClaire Vo11:19

      [laughs]

   7. YWYana Welinder11:20

      But, but the flip side, though, with all the other image models that I've tried is that they will make it look beautiful and realistic, but it will look very, very different from my design.

   8. CVClaire Vo11:30

      Mm-hmm.

   9. YWYana Welinder11:31

      And obviously, when you're designing fashion, you, you need it to look new and different.

   10. CVClaire Vo11:35

       Mm-hmm.

   11. YWYana Welinder11:35

       You don't need it to look like the most similar thing that's walked the runway some other time, and that's usually what you get with a lot of other image models.

   12. CVClaire Vo11:43

       What I love, and if you can go back to your prompt, um, flow.

   13. YWYana Welinder11:46

       Yeah.

   14. CVClaire Vo11:46

       What I love about this is this is just ju- okay, so people are gonna be like, "I'm not a fashion designer. I don't have any use

6. 11:51 – 14:02

   The “prompt as spec” principle

   1. CVClaire Vo11:51

      for this."

   2. YWYana Welinder11:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CVClaire Vo11:52

      What I think is the takeaway here generally for folks is- Write down your process and write down what a definition of complete or good is. Y- you and I, like, you know, we're product ladies. We live this life

   4. YWYana Welinder12:05

      It's product people, yeah. It's a spec. You gotta have a spec

   5. CVClaire Vo12:06

      Once upon a time, we were, like, official product ladies, and you need a spec. Like, your prompt is a spec. And so if you can put into the effort of saying, like, "What makes a really good garment?" Like, "What makes a really good photo? What makes a really good illustration?" And come up with, like, five things that you can define for the prompt, you can get a really good output of AI. And then what I love, my friend Zach says, "What's good for AI is good for humans." Like, let's just say you have-- you were gonna have a human sketch this out or build this. This is the exact information they would need as well to do a good job. And so whether or not you're doing, like, fashion illustrations or coding, right? Like this, uh, the spec, the PRD matters, people. Like, the spec matters. And so getting-- Forcing yourself to sit down and be a little bit more precise is gonna get you that exact outcome that you, that you want. And, um, you know, to be honest, I think that jacket's pretty, pretty rad. I would-- I'd wear it. This episode is brought to you by Jira by Atlassian. The Teamwork Graph in Jira delivers 44% more accurate agent results with 48% less token usage. That's a huge difference when working with AI coding agents like Claude, Cursor, Codex, or Copilot. The hardest part of shipping with AI isn't the code. It's the context. What's the right ticket? What did the spec say? What got decided in Slack? The Teamwork Graph pulls all of that from across your entire stack, from Jira and Confluence to GitHub, and feeds it directly to your agents before they write a single line. You assign the work, the agent gets everything it needs, and a PR surfaces when it's ready. No digging, no context switching, no broken flow. Same team, smarter agents. Try 'em free at jira.dev. That's J-I-R-A dot D-E-V.

7. 14:02 – 17:12

   Iterating the design

   1. CVClaire Vo14:03

      I love it. So you've created this, this image. I- I also love this idea of taking, like, a core image and iterating it through, like, runway photo, influencer photo, like, you know, standalone catalog, like, photo, product, product shot. What do you do next? Like, what's the next part of your flow?

   2. YWYana Welinder14:22

      So a lot of what I do is, um, kind of iterate on it. And so I, I have this, like, you know, change the color, change the, you know, change the fabric. Um, and so I, I have, uh, I have kind of a lot of these different ways to do that. But then the next piece really comes to kind of like, what is the production process? And the production process is gonna be very different depending on what I'm doing. And so, um, to give you an idea from one of these. So, for example, I had this, uh, dress that actually did not come from a sketch. It came from-- I had this one day where I was just being bombarded with Ruth Asawa's, um, artwork in different places. Like, I went to, I went with my son to this, like, ev- like, kids event, and sh- there was an exhibit across the street that I, like, accident-- Like, we were just early, so we went and watched it. And we were like at SFMOMA, and there's, like, a permanent exhibit there. Uh, he had a piano recital, and, and the church had one of her pieces hanging, like, literally almost above my head. And I was like, I keep-- I don't know. Uh, so and so this was, this is literally from my phone. So I didn't have a sketch, right? Normally, I start from sketch. But in this case, I was like, you know, make a photo of a model walking down the runway in a dress inspired by Ruth, Ruth Asawa's, uh, loop wired sculptures. And it was important to, that it had a beige undergarment because otherwise ChatGPT will not, like, it's like, "No, you're trying to make me make nude pictures, and I don't do that."

   3. CVClaire Vo15:55

      [laughs] Very artistic nude picture.

   4. YWYana Welinder15:59

      Just, no, I don't do that. Um, actually, I think, I think even here, I tried to make it to remove the sculptures in the background.

   5. CVClaire Vo16:06

      Mm-hmm.

   6. YWYana Welinder16:06

      And it was like, "We're sorry, this violates our nudity guidelines," right? This, like, happens all the time.

   7. CVClaire Vo16:11

      I have to tell you-

   8. YWYana Welinder16:12

      It's very frustrating

   9. CVClaire Vo16:13

      ... quick side-- You know what? If I showed up to a date with my husband in this gown, I do not think he would be thrilled. [laughs] I don't think he'd be like, "Ooh." It's not quite-

   10. YWYana Welinder16:22

       True. Exactly, exactly

   11. CVClaire Vo16:23

       ... not quite the erotic vibe that we're going for.

   12. YWYana Welinder16:24

       It's like it's not-- Exactly. It's not, it's not, um, it's not nudity. It's not, you know, it's not torn. Um, but, but here we are. And so, so this one, right? Like, this is, uh, and I think that, um, uh, a lot of garments you would do, like some, some garments I will drape, right? Like on, on, on the, on the model behind me. Or some, some garments, uh, go into, they become, uh, you create a, kind of a pattern. And I have different, some d- some AI processes, some m- non-AI processes that I've done for patterns. But this garment is previously unmanufacturable. And so what I-- And I e-ended, ended up kind of taking this and, uh, and also creating a video of it. This is, this is kind of like you can, you can see a little bit more of,

8. 17:12 – 20:50

   Using Codex and computer use to build CAD files in 3D software

   1. YWYana Welinder17:12

      of, of how, what it looks like. But w- the next step for this pa- this particular garment will be to take it and 3D print it. And the, particularly these kind of big ball pieces will need to be, um, 3D printed. And so I, uh, then went on to Codex and had it help me create CAD files-

   2. CVClaire Vo17:39

      Oh

   3. YWYana Welinder17:39

      ... for these balls. So I first prepped it and had it, like-- I was like, okay, so I d- made, made that into sketch. Then I made these pieces into, uh, into kind of more sketch illustrations. Then I, uh, it didn't do well. It Still didn't do well. We had a bunch of back and forth. Eventually, it started doing something that was a little bit more similar. Um, I had to do-- This is a really, really long process, and then ultimately, I had it using, uh, computer use, um, go and build this in 3D software so that I could create, like, an STL file and send, send off, uh, to 3D prints.

   4. CVClaire Vo18:18

      [laughs]

   5. YWYana Welinder18:18

      So that's the process for this particular garment is sort of to, to 3D print it.

   6. CVClaire Vo18:22

      I have to, again, like, I have to pause because if, if we're just talking about the creative, like, generation process, again, this is now a garment that would've been previously, like, almost inconceivable to make, not just because it was, it's difficult to construct, but even if you were like, "Of course, we could 3D, we, we could 3D print that before AI, we could 3D print it after AI," the, like, tedium of creating the CAD models was so onerous that, like, even getting to the point where you could execute on it is, is really hard. And so I just think this moment of, like, un-unlocking the previously impossible, whether the impossible was technically impossible or if it was just, like, practically infeasible, is, is super important. The other thing, um, that I love, bless computer use, and, like, Codex plus computer use, love you so much because I can just be like, "I don't need to know how to use this software." Like, you go use that software. You do whatever you want. Um, I've gone through this, like, trough of despair of, like, SaaS is dead, maybe, like, we're never gonna touch a website again, to you know what? Like, agents are really good at pressing buttons, so, like, software is back for-- but agents are gonna use it. It's very, very kinda, like, interesting shift I'm seeing.

   7. YWYana Welinder19:43

      I think that that's a great point, and one, one fascinating piece is that a lot of these things, like for actual end product like a CAD file, um, Codex, as amazing as it is, um, is not great at generating a final CAD file if you ask it to do it on its own.

   8. CVClaire Vo20:01

      Mm-hmm.

   9. YWYana Welinder20:01

      But if you use, um, yeah, if you use computer use, uh, and have it go and do it in a piece of software that's designed for that purpose, and I have-

   10. CVClaire Vo20:10

       Yeah

   11. YWYana Welinder20:10

       ... both for, like, actually for 3D printing, and there's a, there's a, uh, uh, fashion, um, uh, software called CLO, um, that I've used as well, and it generates this, like, like, it generates patterns, and it, and it then fits them on the 3D model. And, and I tell Codex to go and use this software that I haven't learned how to use myself, and it does such a great job at something that it itself couldn't do. So it's sort of like SaaS in combination with-

   12. CVClaire Vo20:36

       Yep

   13. YWYana Welinder20:37

       ... Codex works so well on a lot of these things that, uh, that don't, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time, but that's, that's where we are today. And I wanna do it today. I don't wanna wait.

   14. CVClaire Vo20:47

       Yeah.

   15. YWYana Welinder20:47

       I don't wanna wait, like, a year, you know?

   16. CVClaire Vo20:49

       I, I love

9. 20:50 – 23:34

   Vendor research, outreach emails, and Superhuman browser use

   1. CVClaire Vo20:50

      it so much. Okay. So you, like, generate an idea. We've sketched it. We've created images. We've even started to prototype the construction of it. How are you getting something built? And maybe not the gown, like, maybe this, like, keyboard shirt that you're wearing. Like, how are we actually getting this manufactured?

   2. YWYana Welinder21:08

      Yeah. So for something like that, um, uh, what I've done, and I do this a lot, is I will go and now, uh, now this same tool be- is becomes my research assistant, and I ask it to identify, like, um, you know, find 10 US-based custom apparel manufacturing companies that are similar to the one that I liked, but I wanna see if there's other ones. And then I just like, "There's a bunch of things I want," and I kick off a deep research, uh, on extra high so that it's extra high-

   3. CVClaire Vo21:44

      [laughs]

   4. YWYana Welinder21:44

      ... while doing it in that, in that way. Um, and, um, and then, and then I get back a bunch of things, but usually, so, so for, for a lot of my work, I end up, like, I'm doing something else. So I'm like, I am kicking off this research, and then I go and, like, drape fabric on, on model, or I do, like, I'm, I'm on my sewing machine doing prototypes. Like, I'm doing something else. And so a lot of them, kind of the next steps end up being via voice, and so I c- like, in this case, I came back to it and I was like, "Well, do you see the," um, because I'm talking, uh, "apparel-"

   5. CVClaire Vo22:18

      [laughs]

   6. YWYana Welinder22:19

      "... I've been using voice, right? Like, the apparel manufacturers that I asked you to find? Um, now can you, like, put together an email that I can s- that you can send off to them, but, like, you may, wanna make sure that you get my, my approval to do that." And then I have, and then I use browser, uh, use to let it go into Superhuman and, like, set all of these up for me, but I really wanna click the send button before.

   7. CVClaire Vo22:43

      The send button. [laughs] I love this.

   8. YWYana Welinder22:44

      Just to check its work.

   9. CVClaire Vo22:46

      Again, like, something that is just so tedious, and, you know, if, if I was like, you're, you're, you're much more diligent at this than I am, but if I was like, "Oh my gosh, I had this vision. We're gonna make, we're gonna make these keyboard shirts. They're gonna be amazing," and then I'd be like, "How can I make it?" And they're like, "Ugh, I have to, like, look up vendors," I would just practically give up because it feels so boring, but-

   10. YWYana Welinder23:08

       So boring

   11. CVClaire Vo23:08

       ... if you can, if you can get that work off to someone, again, like the next step, and the next step, and the next step, and then what you're gonna end up with is this, like, incredible business. And so I just am, like, so inspired by people like you that take AI and create, like, a, a niche and, like, can, can then take that and build out a business where maybe one wouldn't, wouldn't have been available or possible before, um, I just think is,

10. 23:34 – 27:40

    Building the full e-commerce site

    1. CVClaire Vo23:34

       is, is super cool. Okay, so you're doing this vendor outreach. You're actually gonna get this thing, this thing produced. Side note for all the cool girls out there, um, when they're ready, we all want one. Put me on the, put me on the pre-order, [laughs] pre-order list.

    2. YWYana Welinder23:49

       There absolutely is. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be that person, but you can pre-order it. [laughs]

    3. CVClaire Vo23:54

       Amazing. Perfect. Okay, and then last kind of, kind of flow you have is, like- Again, going back to like pre-orders and how to actually run this business, how are you using it to, like, be your technical co-founder in all this?

    4. YWYana Welinder24:08

       That's-- I, I, I gotta say that that's probably, like, my favorite piece because this... I mean, apart from the fact that it is, like, s- there's so much AI in this, but it's basically like an AI native, like, Everlane or something, right? Like, normally I would hire, like, a technical team, like engineers. I would have, possibly have a t- I'd probably, I probably wouldn't. L-let's be real, I wouldn't have a technical co-founder. But, like, I could have had a technical co-founder. I'm a solo, solo founder girl. Like, it's, that this is just my, my, my nature. [chuckles] But-

    5. CVClaire Vo24:38

       It's the life. [chuckles]

    6. YWYana Welinder24:40

       It's the life. But, uh, but I would hire engineers. And, um, and I, I, I didn't, right? Like, I, I, I had to build this website, um, and, and I did it, and I sort of just came to Codex, yeah, and asked it to build the website. There's a lot of pieces here that, that aren't just, like, a static website in that it, like, you can, you can obviously pre-order things, and I could, like, add Stripe to it, which is, like, in prior lives have been, like, a tedious, big exercise, but I can go back and kind of show you the Stripe flow. But adding that was just, like, you know, a second. Um, I-

    7. CVClaire Vo25:17

       Wow

    8. YWYana Welinder25:17

       ... had to create, like, databases to be able to, like, track votes as people are voting on these different garments, um, so I can decide, kind of figure out which are the most popular ones to bring to life. And so, like, I, I had to do that. Um, in, in an earlier phase of this, I had to create a separate dashboard for me to track the votes in real time. Um, and so I did that. Now, I really just, like, I just use voice, and I'm like, "Oh, hey, um, how many votes do I have for this thing now," right? So, like, why would I even have a dashboard? [chuckles]

    9. CVClaire Vo25:49

       I know. [chuckles]

    10. YWYana Welinder25:49

        Um, it's-- [chuckles] So I don't do that. But, like, just to kind of show you, like, the Stripe flow as, as, as an example of, of, like... Yeah, I, I came here, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, use browser to add Stripe to my site." It was like, "Uh, I don't know." You're like, "I'm not signed in." I'm like, "No, you gotta sign in, in my, in my own in-app browser." I'm like, "No, no, no. You go, go to mine. I'm already signed up there." And then it was like, "Yeah, you gotta do it." I'm like, "No, you can do it." [chuckles] You know? You have this, like, back and forth. It's like, "No, no, you can do it." Um, and, uh, and yeah, this is it. And, and then I hit Done. Um, everything's, uh, added, and, and now pre-order is live. It's just, like, a very, very fast process, and literally whenever I, like, need to change something about, like, the, the process, I can, I can really just come here and just, like, list out all the things I wanna, I wanna change, and, and it goes off, and it finds the Vercel project. It, um, it's, it has, like, finds, uh, the repository in GitHub and does all the things. I will say, like, this weekend, uh, my son built his own, uh, website w- using, like, ChatGPT sites, and I'm sort of just, like, sitting there going like, "Do I, should I really, like... Do I wanna migrate off of Vercel? Do I really want, like, d- you know, like, is this, is this a whole new..." Like, now, like, now a nine-year-old can have his technical co-founder, like, do this and, like, build a, build a company for him, right? Like, just, it's, it's just so cool to see this all, uh, evolve, you know?

    11. CVClaire Vo27:26

        Your, your nine-year-old and my nine-year-old are gonna be best buds. We can create, like, a, like, a Codex club for-

    12. YWYana Welinder27:32

        We should

    13. CVClaire Vo27:32

        ... fourth graders. [chuckles]

    14. YWYana Welinder27:34

        We should totally do that.

    15. CVClaire Vo27:35

        Um, this is a very... Sorry, we are doing San Francisco, uh, Silicon Valley momming

11. 27:40 – 30:05

    Quick recap and what’s still hard

    1. CVClaire Vo27:40

       stuff right now. I just wanna, I wanna, like, go back to one thing, because ripped from the headlines Codex prompting, I too am like, "Hey, Codex, do this thing." And it's like, "Nah. No, thanks. I can't." And I'm like, "No, I'm pretty sure you can." And then, like-

    2. YWYana Welinder27:55

       Yes, you can

    3. CVClaire Vo27:55

       ... after two, like, "I'm pretty sure you can," it's like, "You're right. I can." I, um, I'm gonna post about this later, but I have this, like, smart light bulb. You can see it's on my, on my thing.

    4. YWYana Welinder28:04

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CVClaire Vo28:04

       And I was like, "Hack it." And it was like, "No, I really shouldn't." I was like, "You can do it." And it was like, "Done." [chuckles] So-

    6. YWYana Welinder28:10

       [chuckles] I love that

    7. CVClaire Vo28:12

       ... so just be a little bit insistent. Um-

    8. YWYana Welinder28:15

       Yes

    9. CVClaire Vo28:15

       ... you know? And, and you can get, get stuff done. This has been so, so fun. Again, just, like, recapping for folks, a business that I think, like, would probably be inconceivable before AI, fully stacked from the creative process, creating images, creating videos, imagining product ideas, all the way through, like, hardcore manufacturing and sourcing vendors, to just, like, being able to voice note your virtual CTO and update anything you need to do, and have your engineering team on demand in ChatGPT. Pretty incredible. I wanna get through some lightning round questions, and then we're gonna get, get you out of here. You know, my first question for you is, like, what is the hardest part of this? Like, what is still... Maybe, like, what is still hard? What isn't solved? What, where are you still feeling friction?

    10. YWYana Welinder29:03

        So I'd, I'd say it's kind of two things. One is that, like, getting, getting it to really do, getting image models to do really unique things per your vision while still making it realistic. That i- that has been really, really hard. I feel like I've solved it, like I've kind of cracked that nut, but it still is. And every now and again, I'm sort of still get something that is really two-dimensional or whatever, and I have to really refine it. Um, the other piece that is still unsolved, and I'm sort of still banging my head, head against the wall, is to get it to create patterns. So to get, uh, get it to create, like, actually accurate patterns based on my design. And there I'm kind of running humans and AI in parallel, so I, I am working with human patternmakers and, uh, and Codex and just seeing who's gonna get to, like, making my things fastest, like, most accurate, like, to my vision, you know? Um, and so that's, uh, that's been really cool to see. I'm not, I'm not there yet with either, actually, with either, uh, flow, so-

12. 30:05 – 31:15

    How Yana prompts when AI pushes back

    1. CVClaire Vo30:05

       Okay I love it. All right, and then my last question that I ask everybody, speaking of like when it's hard and when it fails you and not getting there quite yet, which is how do you prompt AI when it's not working? What's your ... Are you nice? Are you a nice mom or a mean mom?

    2. YWYana Welinder30:20

       [laughs] I can be both, but I, I think I'm mostly a nice mom. Uh, and, and the reason is that I find that I get better outputs. So, uh, like I mean, I am very direct, and I'm sort of like, "Yes, you can." Uh, you know, "You go do that." Like, I'm not just like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna do this for you." Um, but I'm k- I will be like very polite. I will still say please and thank you. Um, and I do think that it's because, like the, the ... it's, it's trained on body of text, and so if it sees poor text output that is like rude and mean, it will like kind of get in the mind frame of that part of the internet, right? Like, versus like kind of more professional business context, and then it will deliver something that's a little bit more what I want it to be. So that's, that ... I, I do it for selfish reasons-

    3. CVClaire Vo31:12

       I love it

    4. YWYana Welinder31:12

       ... not because I'm afraid of the future

13. 31:15 – 32:50

    Where to find Yana and how to vote on her garments

    1. YWYana Welinder31:15

       AI overlords.

    2. CVClaire Vo31:16

       [laughs] Perfect. Well, this has been super, super fun and inspirational, and just like a breath of fresh air in terms of a new use case, a creative space that we haven't seen before, and something sort of like manifesting the world. So where can we find you, and how can we be helpful to you?

    3. YWYana Welinder31:32

       You can find me on X mostly. I am Yana Bana on X. I am now Yana Bana at X. Um, I, I changed my handle to match the brand. Um, but, uh, but yeah, the ... in, in terms of just like helpfulness is getting feedback on all the stuff. Like, you can come, you can come to Yana Bana and like vote on the garments that you like, um, so I can get feedback on like what's, what's working for people and what's not. Like, I'm all about user feedback and customer input. Um, and yeah, uh, tell me, tell me what you like.

    4. CVClaire Vo32:06

       I love it. Well, I love Poppy Love.

    5. YWYana Welinder32:10

       Yeah.

    6. CVClaire Vo32:11

       Smash that like button. It is very cool.

    7. YWYana Welinder32:13

       Awesome. Thank you.

    8. CVClaire Vo32:14

       Awesome.

    9. YWYana Welinder32:14

       I will, uh ... I'll let you know when that one is ready to go.

    10. CVClaire Vo32:17

        Available for purchase.

    11. YWYana Welinder32:18

        [laughs]

    12. CVClaire Vo32:18

        Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining How I AI.

    13. YWYana Welinder32:22

        Thanks for having me.

    14. CVClaire Vo32:24

        Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time.

Episode duration: 32:52