Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #440

1. 0:00 – 2:03

   Introduction

   1. PLPieter Levels0:00

      So I was trying to figure out how to do photo-realistic AI photos, and it was... Stable diffusion by itself is not doing that well. Like, the faces look all mangled.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:06

      Yep.

   3. PLPieter Levels0:07

      Um, and it doesn't have enough resolution or something to, to, to do that well. So... But I started seeing these, these, m- um, base models, these fine-tuning models, and people would train on porn. And I would try them, and they would be very photo-realistic. They would have bodies that actually made sense, like body o- uh, a- a- anatomy. Um, but if you look at the photo-realistic models that people use now, still, there's still a core of porn there, like, of naked people.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:31

      Yeah.

   5. PLPieter Levels0:31

      So I need to prompt out the nak-... And everyone needs to do this with AI startups with imaging. You need to prompt out the naked stuff.

   6. LFLex Fridman0:36

      Do you have to keep reminding the model you need to put-

   7. PLPieter Levels0:38

      It's not-

   8. LFLex Fridman0:38

      ... clothes on the thing?

   9. PLPieter Levels0:39

      Yeah, "Don't put naked 'cause it's very risky." I have Google Vision-

   10. LFLex Fridman0:42

       Yeah.

   11. PLPieter Levels0:42

       ... that checks every photo before it's shown to the user to, like, check for-

   12. LFLex Fridman0:45

       Like a nipple detector?

   13. PLPieter Levels0:46

       ... NSFW. Yes.

   14. LFLex Fridman0:47

       Oh (laughs) NSFW de-, detector.

   15. PLPieter Levels0:48

       Because you get the journalists get very angry.

   16. LFLex Fridman0:52

       The following is a conversation with Pieter Levels, also known on X as LevelsIO. He is a self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed, programmed, shipped, and ran over 40 startups, many of which are hugely successful. In most cases, he did it all by himself while living the digital nomad life in over 40 countries and over 150 cities, programming on a laptop while chilling on a couch, using vanilla HTML, jQuery, PHP, and SQLite. He builds and ships quickly and improves on the fly, all in the open, documenting his work, both his successes and failures, with a raw honesty of a true indie hacker. Pieter is an inspiration to a huge number of developers and entrepreneurs who love creating cool things in the world that are hopefully useful for people. This was an honor and a pleasure for me. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Pieter Levels.

2. 2:03 – 9:34

   Startup philosophy

   1. LFLex Fridman2:03

      You've launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products. As you say, most failed, but some succeeded. What's your philosophy behind building the startups that you did?

   2. PLPieter Levels2:14

      I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups, 'cause most people in startups, they, they build a company, and they raise money, right? And they hire people, and then they build a product, and they find something that makes money. And I don't really raise money. I don't use VC funding. I do everything myself. I'm a designer. I'm the developer. I, I make everything. I make the logo. So for me, I'm much more scrappy. And-

   3. LFLex Fridman2:36

      (laughs)

   4. PLPieter Levels2:36

      And because I don't have funding, like, I need to, I need to go fast. I need to, uh, make things fast, uh, to see if an idea works, right? I have an idea in my mind, and I build it, build, like, a micro, mini startup, um, and I launch it very quickly, like within, you know, two weeks or something of building it. And I check if there's demand and if people actually sign up. And not just sign up, but if people actually pay money, right? Like, they need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is validated. And most ideas don't work, like, as you say, most fail.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:05

      So there's this rapid iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works, launch it-

   6. PLPieter Levels3:11

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman3:12

      ... see if people like it, improving it really, really quickly to see if people like it a little bit more, enough to pay and all that. That, that whole rapid process is how you think of-

   8. PLPieter Levels3:21

      Yeah. I think it's, it's like, it's very rapid. And it's like, um, if I compare it to, for example, Google, you know, like, or big tech companies. Especially Google right now is kind of struggling. Like, they made, like, transformers. They made all the... invented all the AI stuff years ago, and they never really shipped L- like, they could have shipped ChatGPT, for example, I think I heard in 2019. And they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy. But they had everything. They had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers, and they could, didn't do it. Um, and it's because these big organizations, it's, it's, it can make you very slow. So being alone by myself on my laptop, like, you know, in my underwear in a hotel room or something, I can ship very fast. And I don't need to, like, I don't need to ask, like, legal for, like, "Oh, can you vouch for this?" You know? I can just go and ship.

   9. LFLex Fridman4:02

      Do you always code in your underwear? The- your profile picture, you're, like, slouching-

   10. PLPieter Levels4:07

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman4:07

       ... on a couch in your underwear, chilling on a laptop.

   12. PLPieter Levels4:09

       No, no, but it's... I w- do wear, like, shorts a lot. And I, I usually just wear shorts and no T-shirt 'cause I'm always too hot. Like, I'm always overheating.

   13. LFLex Fridman4:16

       Mm-hmm. Thank you for showing up not just in your underwear, but-

   14. PLPieter Levels4:18

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman4:19

       ... wearing shorts.

   16. PLPieter Levels4:19

       I know. You know, I'm still wearing this for you, but-

   17. LFLex Fridman4:21

       Thank you.

   18. PLPieter Levels4:21

       Um-

   19. LFLex Fridman4:22

       Thank you for dressing up.

   20. PLPieter Levels4:23

       (laughs) I think it's c- 'cause I, since I go to the gym, I'm always too hot.

   21. LFLex Fridman4:26

       What's your favorite exercise in the gym?

   22. PLPieter Levels4:28

       Man, overhead press.

   23. LFLex Fridman4:29

       Overhead press, like shoulder press?

   24. PLPieter Levels4:30

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman4:31

       Okay.

   26. PLPieter Levels4:31

       But it feels good 'cause you're doing, like... You do, you win. Uh, 'cause when you, like, I do-

   27. LFLex Fridman4:35

       (laughs)

   28. PLPieter Levels4:35

       What is it? I do 60 kilos, so it's like-

   29. LFLex Fridman4:37

       Yeah.

   30. PLPieter Levels4:37

       ... 120 pounds or something like this. It's-
3. 9:34 – 13:03

   Low points

   1. PLPieter Levels9:34

   2. LFLex Fridman9:34

      (inhales) You said that there's been a few low points in your life, that you've been depressed, and the building is one of the ways you, you get out of that. But c- can you talk to that? Can you take me to that place, to that time when you were in a, at a low point?

   3. PLPieter Levels9:47

      So I was in Holland and I graduated university and I didn't want to like get a normal job. And I was making some money with YouTube 'cause I had this music career and I uploaded my music to YouTube. And YouTube started paying me like, uh, uh, with AdSense, like $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month. And all my friends got like normal jobs and we stopped hanging out 'cause people would... Like in university, you hang out, you know, you chill with each o- at ch- at each other's houses. Uh, you go party. But if and when people get jobs, they only party like in the weekend and they don't hang anymore in the week 'cause you need to be at the office. And I was like, "This is not for me. I want to do something else." And I was starting getting this like, I think it's like Saturn return this, you know, when you're t- turn 27. It's like some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit that it was when you're born. Man, it's like-

   4. LFLex Fridman10:28

      I'm learning so many things.

   5. PLPieter Levels10:29

      ... it's some astrology thing, you know?

   6. LFLex Fridman10:31

      So many truly special artists died when they were 27.

   7. PLPieter Levels10:34

      Exactly. Something with 27, man. And it was for me. Like I started going crazy.

   8. LFLex Fridman10:38

      Yeah.

   9. PLPieter Levels10:38

      Because I didn't really see like my future in Holland, buying a house, going living in the suburbs and stuff. So I flew out. I went to Asia, started digital nomading and did that for a year. And then that made me feel even worse, you know, 'cause I was like alone, um, in hotel rooms, like looking at the ceiling, like, "What am I doing with my life?" Like, this is a... Like I was working on startups and stuff and YouTube, but it's like, "What is the future here?" You know? Like, uh, is this, is this something... While my friends in Holland were doing really well and with a normal life, you know? Um, so I was getting re- very depressed and like, I'm like a outcast, you know. I'm... My money was, was shrinking. I wasn't making money anymore a lot, was making $500 a month or something. And I was, you know, looking at the ceiling thinking like, "Now I'm like 27. I'm a loser." And that's the moment when I started building like startups. And it was because my dad said like, "If you're depressed, you need to, you know, get sand, get a shovel, start shoveling, doing something. You can't just sit still." Which is kind of like a interesting way to deal with depression, you know. Like it's not like, "Oh, let's talk about it." It's more like, "Let's go do something."

   10. LFLex Fridman11:38

       Mm-hmm.

   11. PLPieter Levels11:39

       And, um, and I started doing a project called 12 Startups in 12 Months where every month I would make something, like a project, and I would launch it with Stripe so people could pay for it.

   12. LFLex Fridman11:49

       So the basic format is try to build a thing, put it online and put Stripe to where you can pay money for it.

   13. PLPieter Levels11:55

       Yeah. Add a Stripe check. I'm not sponsored by Stripe, but add a Stripe checkout button.

   14. LFLex Fridman11:58

       Is that still like the easiest way to just like pay for stuff, Stripe?

   15. PLPieter Levels12:02

       100%. Like I think so, yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman12:03

       It's a cool company. They just made it so easy. You can just click and-

   17. PLPieter Levels12:06

       Yeah.... and they're really nice. Like the CEO, Patrick, is really nice.

   18. LFLex Fridman12:09

       Behind the scenes, it must be difficult to, like, actually make that happen. 'Cause that used to be a huge problem, like just-

   19. PLPieter Levels12:15

       Merchant?

   20. LFLex Fridman12:15

       ... just, just adding a thing, a button, where you can, like, pay for a thing.

   21. PLPieter Levels12:20

       Dude.

   22. LFLex Fridman12:20

       It's-

   23. PLPieter Levels12:20

       Dude, I know this because when I was a, when I was-

   24. LFLex Fridman12:22

       Trustworthy.

   25. PLPieter Levels12:23

       ... nine years old, I was making websites also. And I tried to open a merchant account. That was like before Stripe, you would have like, um, I think it was called WorldPay. So I had to, like, fill out all these forms, and then I had to fax them to America from Holland, with my dad's fax. Um, and my dad had to s- it was in my dad's name, and he had to sign for this. And he started reading these terms and conditions, which was like, he's liable for like 100 million in damages.

   26. LFLex Fridman12:47

       Mm-hmm.

   27. PLPieter Levels12:48

       And he's like, "I don't (laughs) want to sign this." I'm like, "Dad, come on. I need a merchant account. I need to make money on the internet, you know?"

   28. LFLex Fridman12:52

       Yeah. (laughs)

   29. PLPieter Levels12:53

       And he signed it, and we sent it, we faxed it to America, and I had a merchant account. But then never, nobody paid for anything, so that was the problem, you know?

   30. LFLex Fridman12:59

       Yeah.
4. 13:03 – 19:55

   12 startups in 12 months

   1. PLPieter Levels13:03

      yeah.

   2. LFLex Fridman13:03

      So 12 startups in 12 months?

   3. PLPieter Levels13:05

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman13:06

      So what, (laughs) how do you, what, startup number one, what, what was that, what, like what, what were you feeling? What were you sitting behind the computer, like how much did you actually know about building stuff at that point?

   5. PLPieter Levels13:18

      Well, I could, I could code a little bit 'cause I did the YouTube channel. And I made a website for, I would make websites for like the YouTube channel, it was called PANDAMixShow, and it was like these electronic music mixes, like dubstep or drum and bass or techno or house.

   6. LFLex Fridman13:29

      I saw one of them had like Flash. Were you using Flash?

   7. PLPieter Levels13:32

      Yeah, my album, my CD album was using Flash, yeah, yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman13:35

      Yeah.

   9. PLPieter Levels13:35

      I sold my CD, yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman13:36

       'Cause Flash was a-

   11. PLPieter Levels13:37

       Dude, Flash was cool.

   12. LFLex Fridman13:38

       ... software. This is like the-

   13. PLPieter Levels13:39

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman13:39

       ... the break that-

   15. PLPieter Levels13:40

       Like Grandpa, you know? But Flash was cool.

   16. LFLex Fridman13:42

       Yeah. And there was, uh, what's it called? Oh boy, I should remember this, ActionScript. This is some kind of programming language.

   17. PLPieter Levels13:47

       ActionScript, yeah, yeah, ActionScript.

   18. LFLex Fridman13:48

       Oh, yeah.

   19. PLPieter Levels13:48

       It was in Flash. Back then, that was the JavaScript, you know?

   20. LFLex Fridman13:50

       The JavaScript, yeah.

   21. PLPieter Levels13:52

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman13:52

       And I, I thought that's gonna, that's supposed to be the dynamic thing that takes over the internet.

   23. PLPieter Levels13:56

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman13:56

       I invested so many hours in learning that.

   25. PLPieter Levels13:57

       And Steve Jobs killed it.

   26. LFLex Fridman13:58

       Steve Jobs killed it.

   27. PLPieter Levels13:59

       Steve Jobs said, "Flash sucks. Stop using it." And everyone's like, "Okay."

   28. LFLex Fridman14:02

       That guy was right though, right?

   29. PLPieter Levels14:04

       Yeah. I, I don't know. Yeah. Well, it was, it was a closed platform, I think. And it-

   30. LFLex Fridman14:08

       Closed?
5. 19:55 – 32:34

   Traveling and depression

   1. PLPieter Levels19:55

   2. LFLex Fridman19:55

      Actually, can we go back to the you laying in a room, feeling like a loser?

   3. PLPieter Levels20:00

      (laughs) Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman20:00

      I still feel like a loser sometimes. What's... What can you... Can you speak to that feeling, to that place, of just like feeling like a loser? And 'cause I think a lot of people in this world are laying in a room right now listening to this-

   5. PLPieter Levels20:16

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman20:17

      ... and feeling like a loser.

   7. PLPieter Levels20:18

      Okay, so I think it's normal if you're young that you feel like a loser, first of all.

   8. LFLex Fridman20:21

      Especially when you're 27.

   9. PLPieter Levels20:23

      Yes. (laughs) Yeah, especially-

   10. LFLex Fridman20:24

       There's like a peak.

   11. PLPieter Levels20:25

       Yeah. Yeah, I think 27's the peak. And so I would not kill yourselves. It's very important. Just get through it, you know? But, uh, because you have nothing. You have n- probably no money. You have no business. You have no job. You ha- You... Y- Like, Jordan Peterson said this. I saw it somewhere. Like, the reason people are depressed is because they have nothing. They don't have a girlfriend. They don't have a, a boyfriend. They don't have... You need stuff. You need like a r- a family. You need things around you. You need to build a life for yourself. If you don't build a life for yourself, you'll be depressed. So if you're alone in Asia in a hostel, looking at the ceiling, and you don't have any m- money coming in, you don't have a girlfriend, you don't... Of course you're depressed. It's logic. But back then, if you're in the moment, you think, "This is not logic. Uh, there's something wrong with me," you know?

   12. LFLex Fridman21:02

       Yeah.

   13. PLPieter Levels21:03

       Um, and, and also, I think I started going... I started getting, like, anxiety, and I think I started going a little bit crazy, where I think travel can make you insane. And I know this because I know that there's like digital nomads that they kill themselves. And I don't, I haven't checked like this, the comparison with like baseline people, like suicide rate, but I have a hunch, um, especially in the beginning when it was a very new thing, like 10 years ago, that it can be very psychologically taxing. And you're alone a lot. S- Back then, when you travel alone, there was no other digital nomads back then, a lot. So you're in a strange culture. You look different than everybody. Like, you're in... I was in Asia. Like, you l- Everybody's really nice in Thailand, but you're not part of the culture. You're traveling around. You're hopping from city to city. You don't have a home anymore.

   14. LFLex Fridman21:49

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PLPieter Levels21:50

       You feel this routed.

   16. LFLex Fridman21:51

       And you're constantly an outcast in this, in that you're different from everybody else.

   17. PLPieter Levels21:55

       Yes, exactly. But people treat you... Like Thailand-

   18. LFLex Fridman21:57

       Yeah.

   19. PLPieter Levels21:57

       ... people are so nice, but you still feel like outcasts. And, and then I think that the digital nomads I met then were all kind of like... It was like shady business, you know? They were like vigilantes 'cause it was a new thing.

   20. LFLex Fridman22:06

       Mm-hmm.

   21. PLPieter Levels22:07

       And like one guy was selling illegal drugs. It was an American guy who was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans, you know, on his website. There were like a lot of dropshippers doing shady stuff. Um, there was a lot of shady things going on there. And they were, they didn't look like very balanced people. They didn't look like people I wanted to hang with, you know? So I also felt outcast from other foreigners in Thailand, other digital nomads. And I was like, "Man, I made a big mistake." And then I went back to Holland, and then I got even more depressed.

   22. LFLex Fridman22:32

       You said digital nomad. What is digital nomad? What is that way of life? What is the philosophy there? And the history-

   23. PLPieter Levels22:38

       So-

   24. LFLex Fridman22:38

       ... of the movement.

   25. PLPieter Levels22:39

       I, I, I struck upon it on accident, 'cause I, I was like, "I'm gonna graduate university, and then I'm gonna... I need to get out of here. I, I'll fly to Asia," 'cause I've been before in Asia. I studied in Korea in 2009 like study exchange. So I was like, "Asia easy, Thailand's easy. I'll just go there, figure things out." And it's cheap, it's very cheap. Chiang Mai, I would live like for $150 per month rent-

   26. LFLex Fridman22:55

       Yeah.

   27. PLPieter Levels22:56

       ... for like a private room, pretty good. So I struck up on this on accident. I was like, "Okay, there's other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely." Back then, nobody worked remotely, but they worked on their, their businesses, right? Um, and they would, you know, live in like Columbia or, uh, Thailand or Vietnam or Bali. They would live kind of like in more cheap places, and it looked like a very adventurous life. Like, you travel around. You build your business. There's no pressure from like your home society, right? Like, you're American, so you're- you get pressure from American society telling you kind of what to do. Like, "You need to buy a house," or, "You need to do this stuff." I had this in Holland too. And you can get away from this pressure, and you can finally kind of feel like you're free. You're kinda... There's nobody telling you what to do. But that's also why you start feeling like you go crazy, 'cause you are, you are free. You're disattached from anything-

   28. LFLex Fridman23:43

       Mm-hmm.

   29. PLPieter Levels23:43

       ... and anybody. Um, you're disattached from your culture. You're disattached from the culture you're probably in 'cause you're staying very short.

   30. LFLex Fridman23:49

       I think Franz Kafka said, "I'm free, therefore I'm lost."
6. 32:34 – 36:37

   Indie hacking

   1. LFLex Fridman32:34

      to startups. You wrote a book on, uh, how to do this thing, and, uh, gave a great talk on it, how to do startups. The book's called Make: Bootstrapper's Handbook.

   2. PLPieter Levels32:44

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman32:44

      I was wondering if you could go through some of the steps. It's idea, build, launch, grow, monetize, automate, and exit. There's a lot of fascinating ideas in each one. So, idea stage.

   4. PLPieter Levels32:55

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman32:55

      How do you find a good idea?

   6. PLPieter Levels32:56

      So, I think you need to be able to spot problems. So for example, you can go in your daily life, like when you wake up, and you're like, "What are stuff that I'm really annoyed with, that's like, um, in my daily life that doesn't function well?" And that's a problem that you can see, "Okay, maybe that's something I can add, write code about, you know, code for, and it will make my life easier." So I would say make like a list of all these problems you have, and like an idea to solve it, and then see which one is like viable, you can actually do something, and then start building it.

   7. LFLex Fridman33:25

      So that's a, that's a really good place to start. Become open to all the problems in your life. Like, actually start noticing them.

   8. PLPieter Levels33:33

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman33:33

      I think that's actually not a trivial thing to do, to realize that some aspects of your life could be done way, way better.

   10. PLPieter Levels33:39

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman33:39

       'Cause we kinda very quickly get a- accustomed to discomforts.

   12. PLPieter Levels33:44

       Exactly.

   13. LFLex Fridman33:45

       Uh, like for example, like doorknobs.

   14. PLPieter Levels33:47

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman33:48

       Like design of certain things. (laughs) Like-

   16. PLPieter Levels33:51

       New Lex Freeman doorknob.

   17. LFLex Fridman33:52

       (laughs) Yeah.

   18. PLPieter Levels33:52

       $50.

   19. LFLex Fridman33:52

       Well, now, th- that one I know how much, uh, incredible design work has gone into. It's, uh, really interesting.

   20. PLPieter Levels33:59

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman33:59

       Doors and doorknobs, just the design of everyday things.

   22. PLPieter Levels34:03

       Yeah.

   23. LFLex Fridman34:03

       Forks and spoons. It's gonna be hard to come up with a fork that's better than the current-

   24. PLPieter Levels34:07

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman34:07

       ... fork designs.

   26. PLPieter Levels34:09

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman34:09

       And the other aspect of it is you're saying, like, in order to come up with interesting ideas, you gotta try to live a more interesting life.

   28. PLPieter Levels34:15

       Yeah. But that's where travel comes in, because when I started traveling, I started seeing stuff in other countries that you didn't have in Europe, for example, or America even. Like if you go to Asia, uh, like, dude, especially 10 years ago, nobody knew about this. Like WeChat, all these apps that they already had before we had them, these everything apps, right? Now Elon's trying to make X this everything app, like WeChat, same thing. Like in Indonesia or Thailand, you have one app that you can order food with, you can order groceries, you can order massage, uh, you can order car mechanic. Um, anything you can think of is in the app. And that stuff, for example, you, you know, that's called like arbitrage. You can go to, back to your country and build that same app for your country, for example. So you start seeing, um, problems, you start seeing solutions that other countries already, other people already did in the rest of the world. And also traveling in general just gives you more problems, 'cause travel is uncomfortable, you know? Um, airports are horrible. Airplanes are not comfortable either. Th- there's a lot of problems you start seeing just getting out of your house, you know?

   29. LFLex Fridman35:19

       But also you can... I mean, in the digital world, you can just go into different communities and see what can be improved by the-

   30. PLPieter Levels35:25

       Yes.
7. 36:37 – 1:12:53

   Photo AI

   1. PLPieter Levels36:37

   2. LFLex Fridman36:37

      Uh, can you actually explain... It'd be cool to talk about some of the stuff you've created. Can you explain, um, this, the photoai.com?

   3. PLPieter Levels36:45

      Yeah. Yeah. So it's like fire your photographer. The idea is like, you don't need a photographer anymore. You can train yourself as an AI model, and then you can take as many photos as you want anywhere in any clothes, uh, with ex- facial expressions like happy or sad, or, uh, poses, uh, all this stuff.

   4. LFLex Fridman37:02

      So how does, how does it work?

   5. PLPieter Levels37:03

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman37:03

      This is, uh, (laughs) you sent me-

   7. PLPieter Levels37:06

      So you could press-

   8. LFLex Fridman37:06

      ... a, a link to a gallery of, uh, ones done on me-

   9. PLPieter Levels37:09

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman37:09

       ... which is-

   11. PLPieter Levels37:09

       So on the left you have the prompts, the-

   12. LFLex Fridman37:11

       Yep.

   13. PLPieter Levels37:11

       ... box. Yeah. So you can write like... So model is your model. This is Lex Fridman.

   14. LFLex Fridman37:14

       Yeah. Yeah.

   15. PLPieter Levels37:14

       So you can write like, "Model as a blah blah blah," whatever you want.

   16. LFLex Fridman37:18

       Yep.

   17. PLPieter Levels37:18

       Then press the button and it will take photos. Take, we'll take like one minute.

   18. LFLex Fridman37:21

       60 photos. What are you using for the hosting for the compute?

   19. PLPieter Levels37:24

       Replicate.

   20. LFLex Fridman37:25

       Okay.

   21. PLPieter Levels37:25

       Replicate.com. They're very, very good.

   22. LFLex Fridman37:27

       Okay. It's cool like this, I- interface wise, it's cool that you're showing how long it's gonna take. This is amazing. So it's taken a, um... Presuming you just loaded in a few pictures from the internet.

   23. PLPieter Levels37:37

       Yeah. So I d- I went to Google Images, typed in Lex Fridman. I added like 10 or 20 images. You can open 'em in the gallery, and you can use your cursors to... Yeah. So some don't look like you. So the, the hit and miss rate is like-

   24. LFLex Fridman37:50

       Mm-hmm.

   25. PLPieter Levels37:50

       ... I don't know, I'd say like 50/50 or something. It's getting better.

   26. LFLex Fridman37:53

       But when I was watching your tweets, like it's been getting better and better and better.

   27. PLPieter Levels37:56

       It was very bad in the beginning. It was so bad, but still people signed up to it, you know? Uh...

   28. LFLex Fridman38:01

       (laughs) There's, there's two Lexes, it's great. It's getting more and more sexual, and it's making me-

   29. PLPieter Levels38:07

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman38:07

       ... very uncomfortable.

Episode duration: 3:43:33