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The Way we Create Will Never be the Same
The way we work, create and learn is changing – fast.
Roberto Nickson
March 04, 2025
Welcome back to The Signal (soon to rebrand creator.win), a weekly letter where I share stories, trends, strategies and insights to help you level up as a creator and win on the internet.
There’s a lot to cover in today’s issue, but I put this together because I am focused on keeping you ahead of the curve at the intersection of tech and creativity.
All of the software and tools featured today are currently best-in-class.
The Latest in Creative Tech
I implore you to pay attention to what’s happening here – things are moving fast and the future of work, creativity and education is being written in real-time.
I’ll break down all of the creative tech advancements into categories:
AI Video Generation
Google’s Veo 2 is still the most impressive text-to-video model on the market. It is actually now widely available on Freepik for you to try.
Kling 1.6 is still my favorite image-to-video model. At the moment I am using this workflow to create compelling (and unexpected) graphics out of popylar images that stop the scroll, like this or this.
AI Video Upscaling
If there are old or fuzzy videos you want to restore, the technology is getting really good to do so.
The best tool on the market is Topaz Labs, especially with their latest release, Project Starlight.
However, I am here to put you on a little bit of game. There is actually an open source alternative, which is the exact same thing Topaz uses. It requires a small amount of technical expertise to run locally, and a powerful GPU. Topaz is a cloud alternative, which may be worth the price of admission for those looking for an easier video upscaling solution.
AI Video Visual Effects
This is a really exciting category right now. You’re not quite going to achieve Hollywood-level theatrics (yet) – but you can get some really good-looking VFX that’s more than serviceable for casual internet videos.
For example, you can take any image, use Magnific to change the lighting and style, then use the aforementioned Kling (or Sora) to animate it and bring it to life.
There are also two great tools that I highly recommend: Pika Labs and Viggle.
I’ve covered Pika before. It’s a simple way to inject some creative juice into your videos.
Viggle is my favorite way to swap a character in any video.
For animation, the tools above can honestly get you a flawless result. Check out this video by Enigmatic_e. He uses Viggle, ComfyUI and Runway’s Act 1 to “act out” a performance and bring it to life as an animation with AI.
AI Voice
My favorite platform for all things AI voice is still Eleven Labs.
They are yet to be dethroned when it comes to AI voice synthesis.
However, a new company called Sesame has delivered the most natural, human-like AI voice I’ve ever heard. I highly recommend trying out their demo.
It’s the future of everything – Siri, Alexa – every operating system, robotics. I believe we are all going to have our own JARVIS. Here’s a video I made about it.
The Latest in Design & Development
AI Design Tools
Look, I still consider myself a designer by trade. I started my career as a product designer. I’ve designed dozens of products, websites and interfaces used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
AI is not going to generate a world-class design for you.
But it is very useful as a starting point – an on-demand template so to speak.
Most design software will actually have an AI generation tool built in, which works wonderfully as a starting points. For example:
Framer (my tool of choice for website design) has a great AI website builder.
Canva has an AI “magic design” tool.
Figma has a similar integration to generate designs with AI.
Again – this is brilliant as a starting point, or for inspiration. If you want the highest quality, you still need the touch of good old fashioned human creativity.
For graphics, I recommend Ideogram. It is one of
(if not the) best for creating logos, icons, posters, flyers – that kind of thing.
Motion Graphics
We won’t go too deep into these tools in this edition, but if you own a business and want to improve your website or content with subtle and attractive animations, you should have these tools on your radar.
Rive requires a lot of technical ability, but it’s a phenomenal tool. You can design and build run-time graphics that can change state at any moment. For example, when you hover over them with your mouse, or scroll. Gone are the days of hard-coded graphics.
Jitter is a simple, every day tool that anyone can use, even without expertise in design or development. It’s useful for things like social handle popups, subscribe buttons, ogo animations, etc.
AI Coding Tools
Here is where things are getting really interesting.
According to a new report by Anthropic, almost 40% of software developers are already using AI to streamline their workflows.
There’s a lot of chatter in the product world about how SAAS is being threatened. Why pay for software when you can just generate it on-demand?
There are 6 tools that I want you to pay attention to: Replit, Windsurf, Bolt, Cursor, Lovable and CoPilot.
If you have no coding experience whatsoever.
You can create fairly basic websites and apps with no design or coding expertise, and deploy them live (this takes some technical ability).
I was thinking of making a full tutorial on these but there are hundreds already available on the internet. Dive into them!
Turn a Simple Prompt into a Rich, Multi-Scene Film
This section is sponsored by InVideo.
I only work with sponsors that I already use, love and trust.
I love InVideo because it allows you to create an entire video, in any aspect ratio, for any platform – from a simple prompt.
It’s perfect for:
explainer videos
animated videos
faceless short videos
listicle shorts
TikTok shop videos
presenting a brand story
The list goes on.
Thank you to InVideo for sponsoring this newsletter!
Personal Updates
My biggest update is that I will soon have the honor of raising a man.
My wife and I are expecting a SON!
I also just recently spoke with the crew at Bad Decisions Studio.
We had an awesome conversation covering:
How the intersection of tech & creativity is changing
Faceless vs. personal brands
How to get started as a creator
How to win as a creator
Consumer robotics
+ a lot more
Quick Hits
This section includes things I have found interesting and helpful this week.
‣ Anthropic just released their Economic Index, which explores AI’s impact on the economy over time.
‣ Eleven Labs just introduced Scribe, the most accurate speech-to-text model on the market.
‣ Kennan announces Icon, an AI ad-maker which he says 10X’s output.
‣ Levels built a full multiplayer game using Cursor and Grok 3.
